Shabbat shalom and welcome to the third part on our series entitled The Kingdom Road and to the second part of our long look at the Old Romans Road. I realise what we covered last time was huge in its scope so before we get back into our study I think a summary might be helpful.

1. We understood the underlying religious system of the Tanakk or Old Testament believers was not so much 'a faith' (as we might call it today) as a 'Way/Road/Path', a collection of laws and a 'way of being' in the world. We saw that Yah'shua did not come to earth to abolish the Torah but to properly interpret it so that it can be lived the way Yahweh always intended, which finds its fullest expression in the New Covenant of Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) through His resurrection power. Yah'shua (Jesus) Himself both explained and lived Torah perfectly, being qualified as Elohim (God) to be the perfect, sinless sacrifice for the sins of mankind so that by emunah (faith) we might have His righteousness credited to us in Elohim (God) the Father's eyes, enabling us to approach Him, without condemnation, through the Son, and through Son alone;

2. We looked at one of the most commonly cited 'Romans Road' lists used by Evangelical Christians to present the Besorah (Gospel) in a simple a comprehensible way, a list that deals with:

• a. The human condition;
• b. The peril we are in outside of Messiah;
• c. The provision that has been made for us in Messiah;
• d. The covenant confession we are required to make; and
• e. How it is that our emunah or active faith puts us in a forensic, legal, right-relationship with Yahweh the Father.

• i. the Kingdom;
• ii. the Resurrection;
• iii. the Ascension;
• iv. the Messianic Community (Church);
• v. the Master's (Lord's) Supper;
• vi. Heaven;
• vii. Hell;
• viii. Repentance;
• ix. the New Birth;
• x. Baptism;
• xi. any mention of the Father, etc.

3. We understood that Romans was not a tract or salvation manual of the Besorah (Gospel) but was a letter addressing Roman believers' needs, containing a mixture of theology, pastoral admonition and how to handle political realities in heart of the Roman Empire. We saw that it therefore emphasises some things (like Justification by Faith) whilst saying virtually nothing about other imporant areas of the Besorah (Gospel).

4. We made the distinction between initial (alef/alpha) and final (taw/omega) salvation and talked at length about the difference between faith and works and how they are related using a number of illustrations such as 'ingrafting', 'marriage, and 'binary stars'.

5. We looked at Bible translations and the problems that are faced including the fact that we bring our own personal hermeneutic or personal worldview to any reading of Scripture and how important it is to get to Hebrew roots, and understand hierarchies of apostolic authority within the canon of Scripture.

6. We looked at Luther's teaching about Justification and tried to flesh out the relationship between Justification by Faith and Justification by Works. And that is where we left off.

Paul's epistle to the Romans is a very 'different' kind of letter to all of Paul's other ones, whether you assign it to the top of the list or follow the chronological order where it appears mid-way. It is important to note that the main difference between Romans and all the others is that Paul did not found or plant the assembly in the Imperial Capital - someone else did (either Peter or Clement - no one knwos for sure). Indeed, he hadn't even been to Rome when he wrote the letter at either Corinth or Cenchrea! It is, however, centre of the Empire and there are some definite political statements within the letter having, I believe, in part, the aim of some sort of détante with the State. So the epistle is part theological, part pastoral and part political.

Chapter 13 tells the Roman believers to respect the political leaders and pay their taxes. This sounds to me as though Paul is preparing the Roman qodeshim (saints, set-apart ones) for future persecution so that no legitimate blame could be laid at their feet by the authorities when it finally came. This seems to be an important part of the letter's agenda. He did not have to wait long. Seven years later, Nero (64 AD) began the first of a series of almost continual persecution of believers over the following three centuries. Nero was followed by Domitian, Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius through to Maximus, Decius, Valerian, Diocletian and Galerius. It was a veritable bloodbath, a terrible time, and not just in Rome but throughout the Roman Empire.

Why so much persecution, and for so long? There are also peculiar problems in the Great Metropolis which Paul addresses in his letters. Of the first 15 emperors, 14 were sodomites (see Rom.1:26-27), so one can only imagine what the courts were like, and how Christian/Messianic morality must have upset, and then enraged, the political power of the day. He talks about the kinds of social problems one would expect to find in any great capital - antisocial behaviour, disobedient and disrespectful children, people abandoning law and order, uncontrollable violence and crime, perversions of every kind, and so on. This is a letter that has immense value for believers living in large cities - if you live in cities like London, Paris, Berlin, Los Angeles, New York, Beijing, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janiero, Johannesburg, Nairobi, or Lagos you'll find Romans really useful. Why was Paul so particular that the qodeshim (saints, set-apart ones) pay their taxes? Again to avoid any pretext by the authorities for persecution because Romans were notorious for moonlighting and avoiding the payment of taxes. (It's a pity that Baptist minister and creation evangelist Kent Hovind, who was locked up for nearly a decade for failure to pay taxes, didn't heed Paul's advice). Paul also doesn't want the believers there to become corrupted. There are more temptations in the big cities than in any other places, and particularly in imperial capitals.

These and other observations will, I think, help us understand what the overall aim of the letter to the Roman believers is. We can summarise the basic themes as follows:

• 1. Chapters 1-8. Sin, Justification, Licence and Legalism;
• 2. Chapters 9-11. Judahites and Gentiles; and
• 3. Chapters 12-16. Conduct or Behaviour.

There is a lot of theology in Romans which was undoubtedly provoked by the need to address questions and issues the cosmopolitan Roman believers had. We can put these under the following headings or categories:

• 1. Elohim (God);
• 2. Torah (Law);
• 3. Sin;
• 4. Emunah (Faith);
• 5. Righteousness (Imputed and Imparted);
• 6. Justification;
• 7. Sanctification; and
• 8. Glorification.

For many, if not most, Protestant Christians, Romans is the 'book of books', and it certainly (and deservedly) heads the Pauline collection of writings. It is a book from which Luther assuredly derived a lot of inspiration but some of which he misunderstood. It is full of clear, logical thinking, and shows Paul at his best. But as we have already seen, it does not contain the whole gospel and so we cannot rightly view Romans apart from the whole of the Messianic Scriptures (New Testament) or indeed the whole Bible, and most especially in the proper context of the whole Bible and in its proper ranking in terms of authority:

• 1. Torah (Genesis-Malachi);
• 2. The Gospels (Matthew-John) + Acts (Luke II);
• 3. The senior, presiding Apostles (Peter, James, John) + Jude; and
• 4. Paul + Hebrews (if Paul is the author; if not, in Rank #3).

The implication of this is that revelation from a lower category must harmonise with any revelation from a higher one (The Father being senior to the Son who is senior to the Presiding apostles who are senior to Paul) where apparent contradictions surface which means that what comes lower down in the hierachy must harmonise with what comes from higher up and never the reverse. Paul must harmonise with the senior apostles, the senior apostles with Yah'shua (Jesus) in the Gospels (+ Acts & Revelation), and Yah'shua (Jesus) with what Elohim (God) the Father (Yahweh) reveals in the Tanakh (Old Testsment). This ought to be common sense as it is attested to throughout Scripture with Paul (for example) submitting to the decision made by the Council of Jerusalem presided over by James. Most of the errors in Christendom would be proscribed if this hierarchical hermeneutic were to be used. Indeed, some most Protestant churches completely reverse the hierarchicial order, placing Paul's wrings at the top and the Tanakh (Old Testament) at the bottom while others (like the Catholics and Eastern Orthodox) put popes and tradition ahead of the Bible and others (like some Messianic Jews) put the Rabbis and their Talmud or so-called 'oral Torah (Law)' ahead of the Bible! Such is the perversion that abounds. New revelation never replaces or superceeds old revelation but expands, completes or fulfils it. That is why our own revelations like the Olive Branch, which we're going to be discussing in a minute, are right down at the bottom of the hierarchy so as to be virtually out of sight. Everything that comes out of this work must be viewed as an outgrowth of everything else that went before. That's also true of other collections of books claiming scripture status like the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha nearly all of which we view as uninspired or corrupted.

That clearly said, those who view Romans in isolation or who put it at the top of their scriptural hierarchy can, and usually do, arrive at a distorted image of the Besorah (Gospel). That's why I believe it to be one of the most misunderstood books of the Scriptures and this is a reason I have personally studied it so deeply. I wouldn't be surprised if "some things [that are] hard to understand" in Paul's writings, as Peter confessed (2 Peter 3:16, NKJV), are particularly to be found in Romans. And that is why, I also believe, we need brilliant scholars like N.T.Wright and others, to better unpack it (and his other epistles) in the context of the whole and with a clear understanding of the linguistic, historical and cultural backdrop, which is not easy, requiring generations of painstaking research. We must never forget that Paul was not the author of any of the gospels, which are the primary witnesses of what Yah'shua (Jesus) taught. Everything else is essentially commentary because the post-ascension rôle of the Ruach (Spirit) was to bring back to the apostles' remembrance all that Yah'shua (Jesus) had said in the flesh (Jn.14:26).

We must now return to our five 'Romans Road' scriptures and put them back where they come from. We must very carefully look at the overall context of each, first, to know what Paul was using them for and in so doing try to get a better idea of where this 'road' was actually going in the first place - the bigger road, the Kingdom Road. And you will see, as we do this, that we get a picture of the Besorah (Gospel) that is a little different from the over-simplified, and sometimes misleading, Protestant cariacature of the fullness of the Derech or Way - the Kingdom Road - being explained by the apostle to his Roman readership.

• 1. An essential element in Paul's argument in Romans 1-3 is that the Israelites, Yahweh's chosen people, were no less subject to the power of sin than the Gentiles. What he is doing here is 'equalising' Judahites (Jews) and Greeks (Gentiles) before Elohim (God) so that none think of themselves as superior to the other. All are equally guilty of sin. The wall separating Judahite (Jews) and Greek (Gentile) has been torn down by the cross. Rhetorically, Romans 3:23 belongs to this argument against the Judahites (Jews) - the sort of argument that Paul would have had repeatedly used in the synagogues as he travelled across the Roman Empire. What is in focus here is groups of people and their salvation - Judahites (Jews) and Greeks (Gentiles - which would have included Romans and every other race of the Empire), not individuals, even if individuals are, of course part and parcel of the narrative;

• 2. Yes, at one level the wages of sin is death. That is an absolute. It is true for all of us. But it is not the inevitable death of the individual sinner that drives Paul's argument here, even if we make extrapolations from that. It is the coming day of Elohim's (God's) wrath, first against the Judahite (Jew), then against the Greek (Gentile) (Rom.1:18; 2:5,9,16)- THE DAY OF YAHWEH (or 'Day of the LORD' to use the orthodox jargon). The day of Elohim's (God's) wrath is a macro-level event - a global, political event. It would mean destruction for Israel (as indeed happened) and the overthrow of pagan imperialism (which has been in the process for two millennia) - Rome may have been sacked by the Visigoths under Alaric (410 AD), the Vandals under Geiseric (455), the Ostrogoths under Totila (546), the Normans under Robert Guisard (1084), Emperor Charles V (1527) and Cadona's army (1870). It may have split into two Empires in 284 AD, a Western one in Rome (see the Roman Catholic Church) and an Eastern one in Constantinople ('New Rome' - Byzantium, modern İstanbul) but it's still going. The Roman Empire is still alive and Paul in Romans is still therefore addressing it and its modern deep-state Caesars and their front men. Both halves of the Roman Empire, respectively in Rome (now the EU) and the other (now transplanted) in Moscow (Eastern Orthodox Church), are still here so that prophecy has not yet been fulfilled. That makes Romans very relevent indeed! Pagan imperialism still hasn't been overthrown even if it is wearing threadbare Christian labels, the more so in the West;

• 3. Æonian (or Olamic) - wrongly called 'eternal' - 'life' is not in the first place 'life after death' in Romans because that is not his focus. It is life after judgment. It is the life of the aeon or age to come, the aeon (age) that will come after the massive historical upheavals that will constitute the wrath of Yahweh against Judahite (Jew) and Greek (Gentile). Righteous Gentiles will find themselves justified or made right with Elohim (God) for having persevered in:

  • a. Trusting in Yah'shua (Jesus) - justification by emunah (faith) for salvation (Rom.3:28) and a ticket out of hell; and
  • b. Doing what is good and right - justification by deeds or works for temporal and heavenly rewards and glory (thereby bringing emunah/faith to completion or perfection - Jas.2:21,24-25)

  when Yahweh judges the pagan world. Those of Elohim's (God's) people, however, who lose their lives because of their testimony will be raised and will reign with Messiah throughout the coming aeons (ages). What traditional Christians call 'eternal life' following the New Birth down here on earth as mortals, is to be properly understood as a bikkurim or "firstfruits", a sample or downpayment of what is to come later. We know it isn't complete yet, just as the firstfruits of the barley harvest offered at Yom haBikkurim (Day of Firstfruits) was not the full harvest that came later at the end of the season, which is why Paul says:

  "...we...who have the first fruits (bikkurim) of the Ruach's (Spirit's) chayim (life) within us, are groaning within ourselves, as we eagerly await our adoption, the redmeption of our body" (Rom.8:23, KNT).

  What the 'orthodox' call 'eternal life' is in reality 'aeonian (age-long) life', a firstfruits of the 'aeon of the aeons' or 'eternity', a wonderful and delightful sample of the glory to come. It's because we don't have it fully yet that we we must still continue to 'groan' and 'suffer'. We are still awaiting the full adoption that comes at the end of the aeon but we nevertheless have what Yahweh has granted, by grace - a portion - for this particilar aeon, which He says is adequate (2 Cor.12:9);

• 4. People with a genuine heart-felt conviction were saved by verbally confessing with their mouths before others that Yah'shua (Jesus) is Master (Lord). Nobody can argue with that. But if we reduce this to confessing Yah'shua (Jesus) as our personal Master (Lord) and Deliverer (Saviour) alone, and especially just before a local congregation prior to baptism, we seriously truncate Paul's gospel. The Besorah or Good News for Paul in Romans is that by raising Yah'shua (Jesus) from the dead, Yahweh had made Him Judge and Ruler of the nations (Rom.1:1-4) - all of them. The resurrection and exaltation of Yah'shua (Jesus) anticipated future régime change. Not only Israel but the whole Greek-Roman world would have a new King, which eventually would mean the confession of Yah'shua (Jesus) as Master (Lord) by the nations of the Roman Empire, an Empire, as we have seen, which still exists and, whilst now worldwide, nonetheless has weaknesses because of its strange spiritual mixture (as Daniel prophesied), a ten-toed global Empire whose feet are of mixed iron and clay (Dan.2:33,41-43) which Yah'shua (Jesus) shall destroy at His Coming (Dan.2:45).
  Why the World is Enraged at True Believers

  Can you understand why the Imperial Roman régime in Paul's day, and in the immediate centuries afterwards, were so murderously enraged? This wasn't just a confession of personal salvation amongst fellow believers but a public confession that the whole 'Babylonian'/Roman System was being served notice of future régime change. That is why today the nevi'im (prophets) must do the same as their predecessors, as today's globalist, deep-state 'caesars' are reminded that their reign is only temporary - for so long - and that they are therefore going to have to either stand aside for the Cosmic King or be destroyed. And as you well know, despots almost never yield power voluntarily, do they? The days of their own hegemony are numbered, along with their entire supporting socio-political-economic-military system. And they're about to be partially judged in our own day. So Paul is talking far more about confessing Messiah as your personal Saviour! He's saying we have to announce that the whole devilish system around us must surrender, with all that implies. How many nevi'im (prophets) are doing that? Most are cooperating with the system, even collaborating with the caesars.

Now I am going to pause there at the 4th paving stone for a moment because I need to explain some things before we go on to the 5th statement of the Evangelicals' 'Romans Road' as this is an area of huge controversy. We must do our homework carefully and rigorously. So what I am going to do now is tell you what a Protestant would say he means by Romans 5:1, which in the King James Version reads:

"Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom.5:1, KJV).

• 5. (The argument is offered by Protestants, in this final paving-stone of the short little 'Romans Road', is that the "works (deeds) of the Law (Torah)" could never save Israel because the Torah or Law could not deal with the root problem of human sin; in the end it could only condemn Elohim's (God's) people to destruction. Only those Jews, along with a growing number of Gentiles, who took the narrow path of trusting in the way of Yah'shua (Jesus) - the way of suffering and vindication - would be justified, would have shalom (peace) with Elohim (God), would not come under condemnation, and would find themselves on the right side of history, Therefore, the argument goes, we are 'done' with the Law - it's over, finished, discarded, has no final use).

This series of sermons, plus some other materials, has got one or two people very upset indeed. That is to be deeply regretted but at the same time I know for a fact that these reactions are caused by misunderstandings coming out of sincerely held personal and denominational hermeneutics which I talked about last time. It is easy to trigger people and when they get upset it's not so easy to get them focussed again because the theological tribal kicks in and ears suddenly become deaf. People rush off to their denominational corners with drawn swords, swinging cudgels, armour-plated and spiked Bibles, and with gritted teeth, smoke pouring out of their nostrils, and large red and yellow flames on the tips of their tongues breathing threats of damnation.

Let me say that I admire loyalty and a willingness to defend preceived emet (truth) because it is beyond question a gospel virtue. Whether as 'mother-bear' or 'father-lion' we have certain instincts and dispositions born into us, just like the animal world. It's absolutely fine to seek security in a denominational corner until we are convinced that maybe we shouldn't be there but elsewhere, but as Christians/Messianics we don't need to be lobbing grenades at one another. And more often than not misunderstandings arise out of wrong perspectives.

You know, NASA is often accused by flatearthers who deny the earth is a globe and point fingers at the Space Agency for allegedly faking pictures of the earth from outer space. Why? Because sometimes the continents appear larger, sometimes smaller in their composite pictures. And yet there is a well-known optical phenomenon that these people are ingorant of. If you take a globe of the earth and look at it close, and then far away, the proportionate size of the continents appear to change. They're actually the same but it's an optical illusion. We have this problem in theology too sometimes.

To help illustrate the problems we face in the 'justification by faith' and 'justification by works' dialectic, I want to first of all deal with a similar problem which has caused a great split in Evangelical circles between essentially the Reformed-Calvinists and the Arminians like the Methodists, and that concerns the relationship between the Sovereignty of Elohim (God) and human freewill as if these were two mutually opposed concepts. Christian philosopher Ravi Zacharias handles this particularly well - sometimes you need philosophers in the mix to give an overall theological perspective.

Zacharias views divine sovereignty and human free will as the opposite poles of the same position, rather like the north and south poles of the same planet earth or the two ends of the same bar magnet. In physics we have something similar, what's called 'wave-particle duality' in quantum mechanics - I was talking recently about Niels Bohr, Pauli, Schrödinger and Einstein - some of you may have seen the video. Light, Zacharias points out, can be viewed from one perspective as consisting of particles and from another as waves, which seems contradictory. How can they be both? Yet this has been estsablished not only for particles but for compound particles like atoms too. What appears to be a contradiction to us is not to the Creator who made things that way. So what do physicists do with this strange duality? They name it - for what more than they do? - and then assign it a category which accommodates both perspectives. We, as scientifically-minded and logic-oriented Westerners trained to do such things, can do no less theologically, whether it it is with 'Yahweh's Sovereignty' and 'Man's Free Will' or 'Justification by Faith' and 'Justification by Works'. If you don't you will just go around in circles. So let's call it 'Justification Mechanics' for wont of a better term.

Zacharias also uses the analogy of precious stone with two facets. When it catches light from one direction, you see one colour; when it catches light from other, you see the other colour.

Zacharias concludes:

"Our propensity in the Western world to put God (Elohim) into a box and systematise everything sometimes violates a fundamental precept in philosophy. It is not possible for a finite person to infinitely understand the infinite. If a finite person can fully understand the infinite, the very category of infinity is destroyed. So my proposal to you is to see both of these perspectives and hold them in balance" [1].

This is also true when it comes to finite humans trying to grasp time. The idea of 'eternity' is just a human construction because we cannot conceptualise what the complete set of aeons (assuming there even is one) looks like.

I recommend you read the whole of his article - I'd love to share all of it with you as it is so well written but alas we must not lose sight of what we are here to talk about today - you will find a link on the website at the end of the article. "Somewhere," Zacharaias says, "the sovereignty of God (Elohim) and the responsibility of man meet" which he likens, not to two overlapping circles, but to two conjoining circles what in mathematics we call a vesia piscis or a Venn, set, or logic diagram [2]. I have used this, over the years, in all sorts of ways to resolve apparent 'contradictions' in the Bible, as in a very popular one showing the relationship between salvation, Torah-observance and humanism, consisting of three interlocking circles:

There is no doubt that this method successfully represents all kinds of phenomena in this mortal sphere, especially the more complex ones like human relationships and statistics. There are even three-dimensional versions of this, as with two spheres intersecting. The next one shows, using this method, how we as believers can be in communion in Messiah (Christ) even if we disagree about some of the issues we are discussing today! Grace demands that we find common ground with all people, but especially fellow believers.

We have now talked about hierarchies of scripture and used Venn diagrams to illustrate the way to find conceptual solutions to apparent contradictions occasioned by human finiteness and mortality. We can use other illustrations too in order to explain the relationship between grace and works, between love and the commandments, as in this series of concentric circles which accomplishes a similar goal showing a direction, like a hierarchy, from the centre outwards:

Our illustrations are, of course, limited and we may indeed find better ones in time. Last time I spoke to you I used the illustration of a binary star to explain the relationship between 'Justification by Grace' spoken of by Paul and 'Justification by Works' spoken of by James. Actually, I think this is in some ways a better illustration than either a globe with two poles or two concentric circles because there is a hierarchy between faith and works but it's a dynamic one, each feeding off the other once the cycle has been initiated:

But let's wrap up this Sovereignty-Free Will issue first. Ravi Zacharias, in the conclusion of his article, leaves us with this summary taken from J.I.Packer's book, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, which I think is very well-written:

"If God (Elohim) were absolutely sovereign, then it would be a contradiction to say that man is absolutely free. God (Elohim) is not absolutely sovereign to the point that He can call something that is not as if it actually were. For example, God (Elohim) cannot make squares into circles. That would be a contradiction. So absolute sovereignty is really not what is being talked about there (in Romans 1-2, 9-11. etc.). God (Elohim), therefore, has chosen to give us the option and, within that framework, He cannot call us free while absolutely violating that freedom. Both poles exist -- His sovereignty and our responsibility. We rest on the fact that God (Elohim) is just, that God (Elohim) is good, and He woos us enough so that we may trust Him and yet gives us enough freedom so that we might know that this freedom cannot be transformed into coercion." [3]

I think, if you are patient, you will see that a similar relationship exists between faith and works, and how justification works in this fallen physical dimension of mortality. I don't want any of us to fight over this but I do expect us to be mature about how we handle what is, after all, very complicated theology, which of all the apostles, only Paul grapples with. And when believers fight, it is usually fear that propels them - fear that someone is going to be 'lost' if we don't ram the emet (truth) down the throats of those we're trying to win over (assuming you don't believe, like a Calvinist, they are predestined to destruction...which you can't know either for yourself or them until either one of you dies...and even then you can't be sure so you have no security at all!) Yahweh is in control and the salvation of souls does not, in any case, ultimately depend on our witnessing to others. It doesn't depend on the Calvinist who can't do a thing about what Yahweh has supposedly already sovereignly decided (which makes a mockery of evangelism - why even bother?) and it doesn't depend on those (like Arminians) who believe in human free-will like ourselves because Yahweh will ensure that everyone has the opportunity to hear and respond to the Besorah (Gospel) at least once whether using the language and labels of the Besorah (Gospel) or by those moral and spiritual choices which may not involve religious language at all. I do believe that ahavah (love) compels us to witness, I do believe we are commissioned to witness, but I do not believe we should ever have to live in any fear that our negligence will result in souls possibly being ruined for eternity. That's another dualism that can only be dealt with using the kinds of models I have been trying to share with you. You see, it's a mixture of salvation by Elohim's (God's) grace and man's work of witnessing...somehow! I have to believe that Yahweh has suffient control over events to ensure that A witness to X even if B, who has the opportunity, fails to do so.

If nothing else, I hope that what I have shared with you so far will make you more tolerant of other believers' theological positions, not meaning that we should not continue to reach out with the emet (truth) but rather that we can be both urgent and relaxed in our witness - urgent outwardly but relaxed inwardly, if you can grasp that apparent contradiction! I do what I can do given the circumstances and tools that I have and don't stress if my witness doesan't go the way I expect or would like it to. There is nothing quite as off-putting as a stressed-out evangelist! Stress and fear draw no one - only genuine ahavah-love can do that. I knew one missionary who had very low self-esteem beg on his knees that I woman he was witnessing to would convert. She felt so sorry for him that she did. But was the conversion genuine? No. His anxiety and lack of faith ended up harming her for I believe she eventually reverted back to unbelief when the missionary left her area.

Nevertheless I feel an obligation to set the record straight when we are misrepresented. I accept we won't always succeed but we can do our best. I was recently accused of changing this ministry's doctrine on salvation, damnation and justification and so forth, about ten years ago but I can assure you that we have been teaching the same doctrine since we began. The only differece between now and a decade ago is that we had not done the 'deep theology' back then that we are doing today. Why not? Because no one had accused us of this before but now they are. I want to assure our friends that the revelation we received in the 1980's remains essentially the same in substance.

So what I am going to do now is break with 'tradition' by giving you an OB-HP Branch presentation, something we don't normally do here as this is a collection of revelations principally for use only by our ministers. Since I am the revelator of all the materials I will be sharing, I can tell you exacly what I meant, so you won't have to second-guess. If you want to know more, just ask while I'm still alive.

By way of orientation, my Bible background is the King James Version, so when Yahweh brought scriptures to mind as I was recording these revelations, I was invariably quoting the KJV, even though by then I was already conversant with the Revised Standard Version (RSV), which I had used for academic teaching, and the New International Version (NIV), which I used mostly in ministry. I will cite texts I am going to use in chronological order as far as possible and give you time stamps. And as you will I hope see, the tensions between 'Justification by Faith' and 'Justification by Works', even though at the time I had very little theological or exegetical knowledge of the term 'justification', just wasn't an issue for me or indeed our first members. So have a Venn diagram in mind as we go through these passages.

I am not going to add messianic terminology here so you can see the revelations in their original form (most of them have since been cosmetically changed when subsequently quoted in articles and sermons). First, the preface to this revelation which, along with all the other prefaces, was written in either 1996 or 1997 when the Olive Branch was being compiled into a book (as is also true of the footnote commentaries):

"Revelation on faith. Many people come to the Church with a distorted, legalistic view of the Gospel which says that they will be made right with God (as far as sin is concerned) by obedience to the commandments. Because obedience to the commandments is a requirement of the Gospel it is wrongly assumed by many that salvation is by works. Others come with an equally distorted view which says that we need only have faith and that works are unimportant. Paul taught that a man is saved by faith (Eph.2:8), not by works; and lest that be misunderstood, the Bible includes the writing of James which teaches that faith without works is dead (Jas.2:14,18,20,26). Our obedience must come through true faith; though we shall be rewarded for our works in the next life (and to some extent in this one too) we are saved (made right with God) by our faith alone {the use of this word is incorrect} (by clinging, trusting and adhering to Him). However, the evidence of our faith is our works, so that if we say we are living by faith but do no works (deeds), our lack of works proves us to be liars. The revelations continually stress the need to get the right perspective -- faith first, works after. Those who obey the commandments hoping they will come to faith thereby will be disappointed."

And here is a sample of the revelation from 1989 - you can read the rest in the link on the website:

"These are the words of He who seeketh after His own, the faithful One, in whom there is no variableness of turning. Those whom I have sought out, who have received Me, I have justified. And those who are justified shall live by faith (Hab.2:4), believing through they do not see Me, hoping always for the Kingdom and the glory of Zion" (OB 152:1-3).

The core of this revelation is Habbakuk 2:4 which, recall, is the 'senior' revelation on the subject in the hierarchy of scriptural toqef (authority), coming from primary Torah. It shows us the relationship between the tzaddik (the one who is righteous) and how such a righteous one attains chayim (life) by living by emunah which is "trusting faithfulness", that is to say, 'active faith', which is trust leading to those actions which identify the one trusting in Yahweh as one who is cultivated in Torah-observance and who in consequence of the two possess chayim - the strong, active and invigorating life, the authentication of those belonging to Elohim (God). It reads:

"...the just shall live by his faith" (Hab.2:4, KJV).
"...the righteous live by their faith" (Hab.2:4, NRSV).
"...the righteous lives by his faith" (Hab.2:4, HRV).
"...the tzaddik shall live by his emunah" (Hab.2:4, OJB).
"...the righteous will attain life through trusting faithfulness" (Hab.2:4, CJB).

This single phrase is jam-packed with so much meaning! "The righteous," and thus also, the 'just', or 'justified', "shall live by confidence in God's (Elohim's) own trustworthiness" (New Interpreter's Study Bible, p.1324). In context, and in contrast, the proud trusts in himself but the righteous soul - the one who is justified before Yahweh - shall live by his emunah, faith or trusting in Yahweh. And as even John MacArthur notes in his commentary, "faith is not a one-time act, but a way of life" (The MacArthur Bible Commentary, p.1032), i.e. a lifestyle - a journey down a road. And that has always been the doctrinal position of this ministry, without variation, in over 30 years.

No attempt back then was made to analyse the Hebrew word for "faith" (emunah), as we were not at that time 'messianic', nor did we examine the dynamic between faith and works in any greater depth. So what you read in the revelations was very much our doctrinal position (though not always the prefaces or footnotes which respresent the positions we held at the time they were written in 1996/7). But as a summary it was, and still is, I believe, adequate.

The next example, also from 1989, looks at the relationship between salvation, righteousness, power, and authority. At that time many who joined this work had come out of authoritarian and legalistic systems (Catholics, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, etc.) and did not understand the ways of grace fully, yet they were by-and-large correctly aware of the importance of commandment-keeping but did not understand the right way or spirit in which to live the Messianic Evangelical way. That is why many of the revelations address these matters, often in much detail, such as the one that follows. These revelations are not addressed to Protestants which should be remembered as you read them:

"He who hath the Son hath authority, and hath been saved, for he who hath the Son loveth the Son and obeyeth His commandments, and varieth not from the path of holiness, but is true. He who is unrighteous hath no authority, having no power, but is as a reed in the wind that bendeth and breaketh" (OB 192:20-21).

Never at any time do the revelations of the Olive Branch attempt to sever the relationship between faith and works which are viewed as closely interconnected, as two cojoined circles. They aren't two separate, independent circles, whether literally or in theological abstraction. And yet no attempt is made in the revelations to create an intricate or detailed 'system' of understanding the two, as would be expected of something beyond the ken of the finite human mind, even if I, as the revelator, would have wished it myself.

The purpose of this revelation was to show that genuine spiritual authority is not outward or legalistic (the claim made by many cults) but a function of 'savedness' (salvation) which is made visible by the lifestyle of holiness that is being lived. And though works can be performed with wrong motives, the works here refer only to those born out of authentic savedness, which are consistent because they spring forth naturally from the saved life - the life that is inhabited and empowered by Messiah.

The next revelation, received in 1990, about 'Righteousness', is very important, along with the preface and footnote written six or seven years later in 1996 or 1997. First an extract of the revelation:

"It is not expedient that I, the Lord, should reveal all things for it is the natural disposition of all men to boast of their righteousness and to idolise those who are righteous. None is righteous of their own works, saith the Lord, for all fall short of the perfection unto which they have been called. It is the good pleasure of thy God to declare righteous whomsoever He will, His judgment being perfect and not after any human standard. A man is justified by his faith in Me, even as it is written, and [is] declared righteous on account of his faith. And such a one will have the faith of Abraham, glorying in all his works of holiness, for he is the earthly father of all the seed of the righteous, not by the flesh, but by the woks of righteousness" (OB 237:1-5).

We are reminded immediately of Galatians:

"Even as Abraham believed Elohim (God), and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Know ye therefore that they which are of emunah (faith), the same are the children of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that Elohim (God) would justify the heathen through emunah (faith), preached before the Besorah (Gospel) unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed. So then they which be of emunah (faith) are blessed with faithful Abraham" (Gal.3:6-9, KJV).

I want to take a closer look at this passage before we examine the Preface and commentary to the revelation. It would be a couple of years before a brother gave me my first copy of a messianic translation (Stern's JNT) so what I learned from the messianics had no bearing on any of the revelations I am sharing with you today even if the Prefaces and Commentaries were certainly influenced when they were written later. David Stern translates this passage very satisfactorily (just as he did Habbakuk earlier), capturing both the 'faith' and 'faithful' nuances of emunah:

"It was the same with Avraham. 'He trusted in God and was faithful to him, and that was credited to his account as righteousness (Gen.15:6).' Be assured, then, that it is those who live by trusting and being faithful who are really children of Avraham. Also the Tanakh, foreseeing that God would consider the Gentiles righteous when they live by trusting and being faithful, told the Good News to Avraham in advance by saying, 'In connection with you, all the Goyim will be blessed (Gen.12:3).' So then, those who rely on trusting and being faithful are blessed along with Avraham, who trusted and was faithful" (Gal.3:6-9, JNT/CJB).

Notice how Stern carefully brings out the dual Hebraic sense that emunah (faith or trusting) leads to "faithfulness" which is the execution - or carrying out - of faith in daily living. Note that the two are closely interlinked, two sides of the same coin, in fact, to use yet another analogy.

If you examine the verse before this passage, you will see even more clearly that this dualism exists, but first you'll need to know about the original Aramaic and Hebrew. First the KJV, then the NIV, then Stern's JNT, just to give you an idea of how Bible translators struggle with this verse:

"He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?" (Gal.3:5, KJV)

"Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law, or because you believe what you heard?" (Gal.3:5, NIV)

"What about God, who supplies you with the Spirit and works miracles among you - does he do it because of your legalistic observance of Torah commands or because you trust in what you heard and are faithful to it?" (Gal.3:5, JNT/CJB)

There are two separate translation issues here:

• 1. "Works of the Law" (KJV), wrongly translated as "observe the law" (NIV) and correctly rendered as "legalistic observance of the law" (JNT/CJB) - we will make a detailed study of this later because it is so important; and

• 2. "Hearing of faith" (KJV) or "believe what you have heard" (NIV) which should be rendered "heard and are faithful" (JNT/CJB). Because the Aramaic shemaia (or its Hebrew counterpart, shema) doesn't just mean "hear" but also "obey" so whilst Stern's translation is good, he doesn't explain what "faithfulness" means exactly, though it's not hard to deduce. Accordingly I prefer Roth's translation directly from the Aramaic which reads:

  "He therefore who gives you the Ruach (Spirit) and works miracles (power) among you, does he do things by the works of the Torah (Law) or by hearing (and obedience) to faith?" (Gal.3:5, AENT).

For those of you who don't want to wait another week or two before we look at what "works of the Torah or Law" actually means, you can go and read the article, Just What are the 'Works of the Law?' but I really don't have time to get into that today. If you can wait, so much the better, but it's up to you.

Are you with me so far? Keep this constantly repeating dualism firmly fixed in your mind. Let's go back to the Olive Branch and to chapter 237 where we left off. First the Preface:

"The revelation that follows was for the Presiding Patriarch but is applicable to all those seeking the Kingdom. A question that Christians often ask themselves is if they are righteous in the eyes of God. The Lord reminds the saints that there is no-one who is perfectly righteous and that God declares a man forensically righteous solely on the basis of that man's faith. That faith, however, is not passive, but active, and this is illustrated using the the life of Abraham as an example. Those who have faith do the works of Abraham, as the Saviour Himself taught. The Royal Priesthood is sealed up in an individual according to his faith. Responsibility should not be feared. Teach only the truth and not personal speculations. The two keynotes of the Gospel -- faith in Christ and repentance from dead works -- are to be the centre of the Church's ministry. Exhortations are given to the ministry to govern their families well, not to belittle (or exalt) oneself, and to remember that those true disciples who do the works of Abraham must expect to have their hearts stretched in order to be brought to ultimate perfection in Christ".

Can you see how, implicit in the background both of this Preface and the revelation itself, that Paul and James - 'Justificatiion by Faith' and 'Justification by Works' - are being juxtapositioned? Can you understand how Stern's and Roth's translations better get the sense of what Paul was teaching than the traditional Protestant versions?

Now let me share with you the rather lengthy, but important, footnote on Righteousness, the subject of this revelation, so that our accusers may be silenced and all may know exactly where we stand, what we believe in, and what we teach and preach. But before I do, I should point out that the footnote commentaries are not set in stone and do sometimes change over the years as we refine our doctrine though this has actually hardly ever happened save in respect of the divine moedim (appointments). The prefaces and commentaries are not obviously revelations. Those who have had to make changes inserting updates on the festivals and the sabbath will know what I am talking about. I am including references to other parts of the commentary which those who own a hardcopy of the Olive Branch will be able to check up too as these are still not online (2018).

"Righteousness is a characteristic demand of the OT. Right action and fair dealing between man and man was insisted upon by the prophets. "Let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream" (Amos 5:24). The ground for this insistence is that God requires righteousness in men (Mic.6:8; Ps.15:2). Those who judge are particularly required to exercise their office righteously (Lev.19:15). Preeminently God is the righteous Judge. That God will judge with the strictest justice every man according to his works is a sentiment found throughout Scripture. In the OT this was often a source of comfort to the afflicted believer. But there is also in the OT the recognition that our righteousness is insufficient of God's standard. The last sentiment is central to Paul's concept of righteousness. He distinguishes between "the righteousness of the law" or "my own righteousness" (Phil.3:9,6; Rom.10:1-6), and the righteousness of God. The latter righteousness has God as its source (Phil.3:9), and is received as a gift, "the gift of righteousness" (Rom.5:17). This gift from God is based on the work of Christ (Rom.5:17), More particularly, it is based on the propitiation of Christ's death (Rom.3:19-26 -- see Propitiation & God's Wrath (fn336-p360)). It consists of the righteousness which Christ Himself achieved in His perfect obedience to His Father's will in life and death, in which He bore the curse of separation from God, which our breaches of God's law entail. Salvation is achieved by a judicial exchange between sinner and the Saviour; the sinner receiving Christ's righteousness, the latter being made sin (2 Cor.5:21; cp. 1 Cor.1:30; 2 Pet.1:1, where it is said we share in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. See Salvation & Works (fn416-p443f). This gift of Christ's righteousness is made by God to all who believe (Rom.3:22), and it is the basis of God's verdict of justification (see Justification & Salvation (fn416-p443f). Those clothed with this righteousness are justly acquitted and accepted as righteous at God's judgment bar (Rom.3:26) so long as they keep faith, the evidence of which will be their good works. The fact that God has provided this righteousness for sinners is the central fact of the Gospel (Rom.1:17). It is a righteousness which is independent of the degree to which we are able to conform to the law of God in our own strength (Rom.3:21), because it is based on Christ's perfect conformity to the law and will of God. Though the gift of righteousness in Christ to all who believe is the theme of the Gospel, it was not a novel doctrine, but was testified to by the OT (Rom.3:21). Paul quotes Habakkuk (Rom.1:17) and speaks at length of Abraham, whose faith God took account of (Rom.4:3; cp.4:6). Righteousness is conformity to law, especially the law, mind, and will of God, which is the norm of righteousness. Christ fulfilled this righteousness both by conformity to the precepts of God in life, and by conformity to the righteous judgment of God on sin in His death. We now, empowered by Christ because of our new life in Him, are able to conform to the Law ourselves according to our faith, which in our previous unsaved state we could not. Christ's resurrection and exaltation is the vindication and reward of His righteousness (Heb.2:0; cp. Rom.2:7). The word righteousness may be applied to well-doing of a less complete sort (e.g. Lk.1:6), and in the Jewish vocabulary of the day it was applied to the particular act of well-doing in giving of alms (Mt.6:1-2)." (Olive Branch, footnote #487, pp.535-536, First Edition: 1997).

I don't think any Protestant would disagree with that other than the points about the importance of continuing to observe Torah (Law) in this new-found grace and power - in the righteousness of Messiah. Yet that is surely the very Torah lifestyle alluded to by Habbakuk produced by faith leading to obedience.

The final revelation I want to look at, which connects back to the cultivation principle we were discussing last time in connection with the cultivated olive tree and the uncultivated branches (e.g. Rom.11:24), was received in 1994, three years before the Olive Branch was published, really undercuts the false accusations levelled against us for it reads:

"For those who believe they are justified by works lose the ground of reality from under their feet, and instead dwell in mystical worlds of illusion" (OB 352:115).

Yet this has nothing to do with the false 'Once Saved, Always Saved' theological universe which is explicity and forcefully repudiated:

"Let none persusade you that a soul is justified forever by grace in the hour that he receiveth Me as his Saviour, saith the Lord, for the experience of salvation is a daily event. The Lord your God is one eternal round and Salvation is Eternal. Therefore only as ye are in the spirit of the Eternal do ye have salvation. And what is the door into the Eternal? Verily, verily, I say unto you, it is the spirit of contrition and repentance. Time is of this world, but the heavens are eternal. Let no man therefore say: 'I was saved upon this day and this time,' for such is not of God. But rather let him say, 'Behold, on this day and at this hour I entered into the Eternal, and I obtained His salvation through faith in His Name. Hallelujah! O Lord, I sin daily, and therefore I stand under the judgment, in the spirit of time. Yet I am still under grace, O Lord, for Thou hast given me space for repentance. And when I repent, behold, I enter into the Spirit of the Eternal, and enter into my salvation [experience] again. Praise the Lord!' But if this man does not repent in the space granted unto him for repentance, then behold, he loseth his salvation. Though he may continue to believe, his belief is not unto salvation, for his faith is that of the Pharisees and the hypocrites. Therefore he must be born again. No man knoweth the space of time that God giveth for his repentance; therefore let him not play with the Almighty, but humble himself, confess, obtain the spirit of godly sorrow, make ammends, and invite the cleansing of the Holy Spirit" (OB 352:89-103).

Now what this revelation is not saying is that if you fail to repent you must be born again each time you sin. It means, simply, you must remain in that 'born again' state, which is to have the Messiah-image within you, so easily lost when we turn to the flesh. Turning back does not involve any work other than repenting and returning to being in Messiah and producing the fruit of salvation in works. To make sure that the reader does not get the wrong end of the stick, the revelation continues:

"They...who believe in their own self-righteousness shall fall, saith the Lord, and great shall be their fall! For they abide in a terrible darkness and know not the spirit of grace or of humility" (vv.107-108).

And so that we are no doubt as to the condition of the one who has moved out of his salvation and Messiah-imaging is, we are further told:

"The fruits of self-righteousness are arrogance, blindness, fanaticism, intolerance, coldness, words without substance, condemnation of the righteous, hypocrisy, conceit, and every kind of spiritual darkness that masqueradeth as light" (v.110).

You will notice that the same kind of tension between the Faith and Works described by Paul and James, respectively, is present in this revelation too. And any apparent contradiction in either is resolved by placing these two as poles, interlocking circles, concentric rings (with 'Works' in the outer ring and 'Faith' in the centre) or as a binary system with a major and minor 'star', 'Works' being the minor star. Here I have chosen to represent them as interlocking rings with a fixed direction from Faith to Works. This revelation simply presents the same emet (truth) in slightly different language having the hindsights of the abuses in the Reformation and elsewhere. This is a long revelation and it is worth reading the whole to get the entire picture.

I actually had an interesting vision while I was compiling these Olive Branch revelations for this teaching today. I saw a long tunnel that was above ground, like a wide pipe or tube with a diameter more than sufficient for a human being to comfortably walk upright in it, with space to spare) and along both sides of it were regularly spaced windows like the round portholes of a ship. On the side that I could see there was a rail that the pedestrian could hold onto for the entire length of it. There was much light in it because there were so many windows on both sides. Thus none of the inside was dark. I do not know what was outside for where the tunnel began or ended. I saw this at 11 am on 20 November whilst fully awake.

In reflecting on the meaning of this vision I quickly arrived at the conclusion that the tube represented our theological journey that has been separated from the 'outside' in order to preserve doctrinal purity. The section of the visible tube represented the point at which these revelations were received between 1989 and 1994. Where we stand today (2018) is further down the tube and though the doctrine remains the same it is greatly refined what with the acquisition of new revelation and understanding in the 24 years since the last of these were received.

We will continue with our analysis of the Romans Road next week. I must still explain what "works of the law" meant in the apostles' day (it does not mean 'obeying Torah') and then we can put the 5th paving stone into its proper context. I do feel all this extra work and digging has been necessary, though, because we are dealing with a deeply entrenched and over-simplified 500 year tradition about Justification that needs to be put into its proper perspective. We have yet to build the 'Kingdom Road' but we're getting there. Yahweh bless you all until next time.

Endnotes

[1] Ravi Zacharias, God's Sovereignty and Man's Free Will (1987)
[2] See, for an overview, Wikipedia's Venn diagram
[3] Ravi Zacharias, op.cit.

Acknowledgements