Chag Rosh Chodesh Sameach kol beit Yisra'el and Mishpachah and welcome back to the second and final part of this year's Shavu'ot message which I was not well enough to prepare in time for the festival itself and almost bearly didn't manage to complete in the last 24 hours. So I hope you will forgive me for the delay as we wrap up the message I started a couple of days ago. My purpose last Shavu'ot was to lay out more fully the concept of the Elohimhead (Godhead) being the the Divine Royal Family in Heaven, consisting of the uncreated Father, uncreated Son and uncreated Sevenfold Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) on one level, together with all the created, faithful saved souls of humanity and faithful malakim (angels) on another level. My purpose then was not so much to get into a Godhead doctrine discussion with you but to underscore more clearly what it means for us as created beings or creatures to become adopted into that Uncreated Royal Family's Image and to explain better our calling to conform ourselves to that same image within, and in so doing become more authentic human beings rooted in ultimate 'family-ness'. In a word, to lay out more concisely what Christ meant when He said:

"You shall therefore be perfect, as your Father (Yahweh), who is in Heaven, is perfect" (Mt.5:48, RSV).

Last time you will remember we looked at the four family member types:

• (a) spouses,
  
• (b) parents,
  
• (c) children, and
  
• (d) siblings

• (i) husbands and wives,
  
• (ii) fathers and mothers,
  
• (iii) sons and daughters, and
  
• (iv) brothers and sisters.

We saw clearly, I hope, how we are reflections of that Divine Family Order in Heaven. And the overall divine purpose of Shavu'ot is to spiritually mature us by moving us upwards from purely self-consciousness into family-consciousness and commitment - from the singular to the plural, something that is urgently needed in our modern atomic society that is completely occupied with self. We live, therefore, in a theomorphic (God-shaped) rather than an anthropomorphic (man-shaped) universe. For those unfamiliar with these useful words, 'theomorphic' means to have the form, likeness and aspect of Yahweh-Elohim. Thus to be spiritually-minded is to be theomorphic; to be anthropomorphic means to be carnal or self-centered. We see this egocentric view of the self when, for example, we try to give human form or traits to non-human things like animals (look at the way we have made cartoon animals resemble our behaviours - e.g. Tom & Jerry, Mickey Mouse).

But the most dangerous aspect of this, and the worst thing we could ever do, is to start making Elohim (God) in our image by attributing or projecting fallen, ungodly human feelings to Deity. We see this particularly in paganism where the gods behave very much like unsaved human beings, with rivalries, pettey jealosies, cruel behaviour, demands for bloody sacrifices, superstitious fears and so forth. This the urge to be anthropomorphs is a form of idolatry because the drive is to elevate human-beings to godlike status which we see typically in our fantasy figures like Superman (1933), Wonder Woman (1941), and thousands of others Nimrod-like fantasy characters). Did you know that the creator of Wonder Woman was an American psychologist and writter called William Moulton Marston who was a polyamorist and ardent feminists? He and his wife Elizabeth Holloway Marston lived together in a polyandrous triad with a bisexual woman called Olive Bryne. When Marston died the two women continued in relationship a lesbian relationship.

My generation knew nothing about these things, and though I never liked Superman-like cartoon series (the only one that interest me was a cowboy series called Kid Colt which was all about righting injustice, otherwise I was a regular book-reader), it was hard to avoid them on TV when we moved back to England from Malaysia. I am highlighting Wonder Women because she became a feminist rôle model for my generation's youth, and from her most of what we see in children's female fantasty characters find their origin, replacing the male super-heroes like Superman, Batman, The Hulk and their successors. Wonder Woman was birthed out of Marston's polyamorous triad experience and his pagan passions. Wonder Woman possessed a 'lassoo of truth' (a counterfeit of Yah'shua/Jesus being the source of truth and the Ruach haQodesh/Holy Spirit as our means of discernment). She also had bullet-deflecting bronze bracelets.

Few know her human creator was New Age and spiritualist to the core. We know for a fact that Marston's family was influenced by the New Age spiritualist movements of the early 20th century that focussed on 'female empowerment' and psychic energy. Marston, you will remember, was a psychology professor and invented his own psychological and moral philosophy that was vehemently anti-patriarchal and anti-Christian. In fact, he deliberately went out of his way to distance his super-heroine from Judeo-Christian comic tropes (themes in story-telling) and instead built Wonder Woman's character around classical Greek mythology and in particular the Olympian goddesses of love, Aphrodite and Athena. Today's feminists see themselves largely through fantasy lenses. You see this in the political sphere, the dating sphere (particularly in America), indeed everywhere now. Abortion is now, for example, in the Swedish constitution as a right and all doctors are required to perform them if called upon to do so else they will forfeit their licences to practice.

Now though it is nominally 'patriarchal' Mormonsm, which I have some experience with, is New Age and pagan to its core, being an outgrowth of Freemasonry. You'll know, of course, that it claims its faithful meeting- and temple-attending members will become gods in the same way they believe their supreme god was once a man as we are. Indeed (though they deny it today) they originally taught Adam was their god. Practitioners of the occult occult typically delude themselves into believing they are gods and goddesses. I have met this time and again in deliverance ministry. It is very much the spirit of the current æon or age where we find this idea being inculcated into us viâ rôle-playing computer games.

This whole dechristianisation trend viâ computer games started in the 1970's when the Dungeons & Dragons software by Garry Gygax and Dave Arneson was released. They adapted miniature wargaming concepts into a fantasy rôle-playing framework. Thousands of games based on similar concepts have been created over the past half century that have been programming our youth to think and behave anthropomorphically like pagans. Western Civilisation is being repaganised at every level of society - in politics, in education, in the work place, in sport, in entertainment - the spirit of antichrist is everywhere now which is why we are commanded most urgently - not to leave but to flee from Babylon, in several places in Scripture (Rev.18:4; cp. Is.48:20; Jer.50:8: Zech.2:7)! It is an acidic, corosive spirit that slowly eats away at your faith if you are a Christian, deceptively interculcating itself into your very spirits. You don't always see it because you are not aware of the spirit of the creators of the politics, computer games, movies and the like. And it is easy to deceive yourself into thinking you are immune because you are 'informed'. 'Information', hoever, is not enough because our hearts pick up its vibe on an entirely different 'frequency' to the mind too. We are mosly affected by what I call 'psychic osmosis' by simply being immersed in this polluted spiritual world. The longer you are around it, the more progressively you will feel oppressed by it like a frog being slowly boiled to death. So prayerfully re-evaluate what you get involved with.

One of the purposes of the festivals is to steer Torah-obedient believers in Yahweh, our Heavenly Father and His Son, Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ), away from a false, carnal, idolatrous anthropomorphic view of Elohim (God) and man. Shavu'ot (Weeks) begins that fourfold process of family and community imaging. Rightly, Shavu'ot is regarded by Christians as the spiritual birthday of the Messianic Community and it is that we must particularly focus on today, because I want to suggest to you that whilst what calls itself the 'Church' pays lip-service to the principles behind Shavu'ot, 'rebaptising' it, as it were, under a new name, 'Pentecost', it has not been shaping the Messianic Community in the way it was supposed to. And it hasn't been doing so practically since the death of the apostles. That is not to say, as many claim, that the Messianic Community is in total apostacy, for that would contradict, would it not, the Saviour's promise made at Caesarea Philippi, that though Hell would oppose it, it would not overcome it. Speaking to Peter right after he made his confession of faith, Yah'shua (Jesus) said:

"And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it" (Mt.16:18, NIV).

That's how the New International Version (NIV) translates the Greek, which is pretty representative of most English translations, with older versions like the Protestant KJV rendering the Greek 'hades' as "hell". Go to a Protestant Bible Commentary like The NIV Study Bible, which I often use, and you will be told (quite correctly) that "in the Greek, 'Peter' is petros ('detatched stone') and 'rock' is petra ('bedrock'). Several interpretations have been given to these words. The 'bedrock' on which the church is built is:

• (1) Christ;
  
• (2) Peter's confession of faith in Jesus as the Messiah (v.16);
  
• (3) Christ's teachings - one of the great emphases of Matthew's Gospel;
  
• (4) Peter himself, understood in terms of his rôle on the day of Pentecost (Ac.2), the Cornelius incident (Ac.10) and his leadership among the apostles because Ephesians 2:20 indicated that the church is 'built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets'" [1]

All of this ingenious exegesis does depend on one assumption, though, and it's a pretty major assumption at that. The assumption is that Matthew originally wrote his gospel in Greek. Without going into the complex business of trying to find out whether Matthew originally wrote in Hebrew (as Papias claimed) - all I'll say here is that Matthew's audience was certainly Hebrews and not Greeks or Romans (each Gospel writer had a different audience in mind, which is why we have four of them), which is why even in the Greek version it contains a certain amount of Hebrew structure and idioms...as you would expect. What's important for us to know is in which language Yah'shua (Jesus) spoke these words, and given His audience and the lingua franca and commonly spoken language of Palestine at the time, this was most certainly Aramaic. And though Greek (and to a lesser extent, Latin) were both spoken as the language of commerce, and Hebrew would have been used by the religious leaders in reading the Tanakh or Old Testament, the language spoken by the Saviour to native Judeans would have been Aramaic without a shadow of a doubt.

One day some of you younger ones may go and read some of my teachings in Norwegian and Danish because a number of my earliest publications were primarily in those languages. Swedish translations came later. All my articles and sermons were originally written in English and were then translated into Norwegian by family members or people from one of out congregations, which is why you will find different styles of Norwegian depending on their level of education and which part of Norway they came from. A Danish member translated some of my original English materials into Danish but also a great deal of Norwegian translations into Danish as this was easier for him. He even on some occasions added his own 'clarifications'! One or two of my earliest sermons in English were lost and only exist in Norwegian. Someone translating them back into English might be surprised at how different my words looked if subsequently the original English versions were to be found. You can get a certain amount of accuracy but something is always lost when you render a receptor text into another language.

It should be obvious, I hope, that someone seriously interested in my earliest teachings would naturally give the original English primary authority, not a Norwegian or Danish one. An academic would then say that 'English Primacy' is essential if my original teachings are to be accurately rendered and properly understood. The same must be true of the teachings of Yah'shua (Jesus) which is what we're looking at today. Did Yah'shua (Jesus) speak Greek or Latin? Commercially, and in daily conversation with Greeks and Romans, that seems quite likely, just as I learned to communicate in Norwegian when I moved to Norway, but His default language would have been Aramaic - His 'natural' tongue, what He spoke the most, what he heard among His own people in Galilee and when His family went up to the festivals in Judea. We would then be very wise to give 'Aramaic Primacy' to His teachings, don't you think? If we do that with Matthew 16:18, this is what we find:

"And I tell you, that you are Kefa (in Greek/Latin, Cephus = Greek Petros = English 'Peter' = rock, Aram. masculine), and upon this rock (kefa, Aram. feminine form), I will build My assembly (messianic community, 'church', Body), and the gates of takh'ti (translated by the Greeks in the Greek Septuagint/LXX as tartaroo/Tartarus [2], which refers to the lowest part of Sheol, usually wrongly translated as 'hell' in English translations which better renders the pagan Greek idea of Hades) will not prevail against you" (Mt.16:18, HRV).

Let's cut to the chase so that we don't draw this out too much. Please notice that Christ uses the same word - kefas in Aramaic (Hebrew, kefa) both of Peter (as this was his new Hebrew name which Christ changed from Shimon, 'Simon' in Greek and English) and the foundation on which the Messianic Community was to henceforth be built - kefa again, but using the masculine and feminine genders, respectively. The Greek translator has taken the cue and rendered these literally as the male petros and the female petra. 'Why these two genders?' is the main question we must answer. I'll answer that in just a second. Let's first understand why Peter's name (Kefa) was changed from Simon (meaning 'he has heard' or 'one who listens') to Cephas.

The Saviour changed 'Shimon' to 'Kefa'. The Greeks first transliterated this to 'Cephas' and then translated it to 'Petros'. Both Kefa and Petros mean a 'stone' or a 'rock') which we Anglo-Saxons modified to 'Peter'. This would be a bit like me translating the name of the Italian Baroque composer, Antonio Vivaldi, literally into 'Anthony Green' or 'Tony Green', yet nobody does that because that means altering his name. And a name is a name. How would you feel if your name was 'John Black' and a German translated that to 'Johannes Schwarz' or a Frenchman to 'Jean Noir'? Would that be legally recognised? No. Brother Gabriel, if I announced you to my friends as Mr. Heather-Covered Beach, would you like that? Brother Herman, how about of I announed you as Mr. Rough-Terrain? Probably not. Would you approve? Or Volodymyr Zelensky to Ruler of the Word From the Green? Crazy, no? What if the Frenchman translated my name, 'Christopher Warren', to 'Christoph Terrier de Lapins' or 'Christ-Bearer Rabbit Hole'? I would be most offended. If he wanted to transliterate it to 'Christoph de Varènne' I would be quite happy because Varènne was the original Norman spelling of my family name. Transliteration is one thing, direct translation is another.

So back to my original question: why did the Saviour use the two gender forms of kefas in the Aramaic New Testament? Why did He, in effect, say that upon 'him' (Kefa), Christ would build 'she' (Kefa), the Messianic Community? In other words the Messianic Community would be built by the same means that Kefa came to know that Yah'shua (Jesus) was the Mesiah (Christ), the Son of the Living Elohim (God)? How do you and I come to know supernaturally that Yah'shua (Jesus) is our Saviour, the only begotten Son of our Heavenly Father, Yahweh? Who tells us? [...] Yes, the Holy Spirit, the Ruach haQodesh! And what is the gender of the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit)? [...] Feminine! She tells us who Yah'shua (Jesus) really is! It's that simple. We are being told who the source of the revelation is that Simon Peter - Shimon Kefa - received. And whose Word (Davar) does the Ruach (Spirit) convey to us? The Father's. The Mother is passing on the Father's Word to Their children, us, just as earthly mothers pass on their husbands' instructions to their children. That's the ever repeating divine pattern or tavnith. Meditate on this and you will find even more connections!

So from this we can learn two important points. Firstly, the Messianic Community, Assembly, Congregation, Body, Fellowship, Kehilah, Ekklesia, 'Church' (or whatever you want to call the communion of Yahweh's people) is not built on the person of Peter (as Catholics claim) but upon the revelation that Yahweh, the Heavenly Father, gave to Peter viâ the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit)! What was that revelation? That "You (Yah'shua/Jesus) are the Messiah, the Son of the living Elohim (God)" (v.16, NRSV). THAT supernaturally-given revelation (it's not something you just figure out intellectually in your own head, though you can do that too, of course) is the foundation of the corporate community of Messianic Israel represented by the Feast of Shavu'ot. That's why an outpouring of the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) was given two thousand years ago, or thereabouts, today. The Body of Christ is not a man-made institution claiming primary authority like the Roman Catholic Church, it isn't even 'Israel' in the national or political sense, but upon the revelation that Yah'shua (Jesus), whom Peter confessed, is the Messiah or Christ - a revelation that now comes to us ever since the 'Shavu'ot Birthday' of the Messiah Community - through the outpouring of the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit), and with such power that we are boldly led to proclaim it! This is the revelation that Father Yahweh gives of His Son which comes through the Heavenly Mother, not the Catholic 'Mary', who is not an intermediary to Christ and who would herself be appalled at the idea! She, the Ruach (Spirit) is the witness now, to us, just as She was from the day of the first Messianic Shavu'ot following the crucifixion and ascension. That's what this passage is all about!

Next question. Who does Paul say reveals the identity of true believers? Just so you know I am not making any of this up, let me read to you word for word what the Aramaic text says in Romans chapter 8, verse 16:

"And She, the Ruach (Spirit) gives testimony to our spirit that we are the sons [and daughters] of Elohim (God)" (Rom.8:16, Aram., cp. HRV).

Here, then, we see not only the rôle of the Heavenly Mother in witnessing to her children (us) who Elohim (God, our Heavenly Father, Yahweh) is, but the rôle of all human mothers to reveal who their father - her husband - is: his positioning by Elohim (God) as the head of his family, to be obedient to him as she sets an example by being obedient to him herself as a wife (Eph.5:22-24; Col.3:18; 1 Pet.3:1), to teach them according to the instruction he gives to her. That is the divine order and it is theomorphic, reflecting precisely the divine order of Heaven. I prefer the earlier German word 'Ordnung' to the English 'order' as this word is a combination of 'tidiness', 'discipline' (from which we get the word 'discipleship') and 'organisation'. In other words, everything in its proper place and following rules. No better definition of Torah could be given.

This is the sense of John 5:19 which is typically glossed over by evangelicals in any literal sense:

"I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by Himself; He can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does" (John 5:19, NIV).

The Father gave all authority to the Son but only for the duration of the Messianic Æon or Age which began two millennia ago and will last one more, something you do not hear mush said from Catholics, Eastern Orthodox or Protestant Christians because the Trinity doctrine obscures this truth by claiming that all the members of the Elohimhead (Godhead) are male and co-equal. They are not! There is a Divine Order or Tavnith (Pattern), which the Father has never abrogated and never will, even though the modern feminised 'church' has. There is no such thing as 'co-headship'. The word itself is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms, because to have a head cannot mean having multiple heads. It is the demoness Hecate, beloved of occultic feminists, who has three heads, not forgetting the Greeks' multi-headed Medusa! A normal body can only have one head (Siamese twins are not natural). And here is the scripture that orthodox Christians are selectively blind to, reminding us that Christ's headship is as a temporary plenipotentiary or ambassador to the Father until all rival authority is subdued and eliminated.

Turn with me, please, to 2 Corinthians, chapter 15 and verses 20-28:

"But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits (bikkurim) of those who have fallen asleep (died physically). For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits (bikkurim); then, when He comes, those who belong to Him. Then the end [of the æon/age) will come, when He hands over the kingdom to God (Elohim) the Father (Yahweh) after He has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For He (Christ) must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For He 'has put everything under His feet.' Now when it says that 'everything' has been put under Him, it is clear that this does not include Elohim (God) himself, who put everything under Christ. When He has done this, then the Son (Yah'shua/Jesus) Himself will be made subject to Him (Yahweh, the Father) who put everything under Him, so that Elohim (God, the Father) may be ALL IN ALL" (1 Cor.15:20-28, NIV).

This you understand well because I have taught it to you for many years. Now apply this tavnith (patterning) truth to the theomorphic imaging principle. So likewise, when an earthly father dies, he places all the authority he possessed as the head of his family to his firstborn son by virtue of the firstborn blessing given prior to his death. This authority the firstborn son retains for the rest of his life. In the resurrection, when the faithful return to their inheritance on planet earth, this firstborn authority is returned to the fathers just as the authority given by Christ is returned by Him to the Father at the end of the Millennium...which you'll remember begins at Shemini Atseret. That is why the 'Trinity' doctrine, when it spouts what is essentially an egalitarian co-equality doctrine, is in violation of Father's Torah and in that respect must be rejected because it dishonours the Father. But understand also that this does not mean that Christ ceases to be Elohim (God) at the end of the Millennial Æ/Age when He returns all His delegated authority to the Father. Why? Because the Elohimhead (Godhead) is UNCREATED. There are other errors in Trinitarianism but we do not have time to go into those here today as it does not concern the Shavu'ot message. I know this doctrine scares the living daylights out of lawless orthodox Christians who have been contaminated by the so-called 'Enlightenent', liberalism and egalitarianism that began in the 17th to 18th centuries (~1685-1815), but the Heavenlies are highly structured with several layers.

Moreover, this hierarchical system in Creation isn't some alleged legalistic 'burden' that we are forced to relectantly bear but a divine necessity for the functioning of the Created Order. It's a burden to the carnal man, yes, but not to the spiritual man. Furthermore, this created system will never change because Elohim (God) cannot change, and we live in a theomorphic universe, not an anthromorphic one! He is the same "today, yesterday and forever" (Heb.13:8; cp. Mal.3:6; Num.23:19; Jas.1:17); and in the Eternities Yahweh our Heavenly Father is alone HEAD of Creation with delegated responsibilities to the Son and to the sevenfold Ruach (Spirit), the Seven Mothers. I don't know why this appears so unbearably complicated given how complicated the manmade systems we accept are - just analyse any human governmental structure, with all its quangos and overlapping departments of state, and you'll find it incomprehensibly complex with lots of redundancies, namely, superfluous, unneeded or needlessly repetitive! Yahweh's system is clean, orderly and without redundancy.

And, so what if it's complex to our less intelligent and typically lazy minds? Isn't He Elohim (God) and aren't we mere mortals? Just look at the complexity of a human cell which Darwin thought was just a lump of jelly! I am so grateful I trained as a Biochemist so that I could get a glimpse into the incredible complexity and beauty of His handiwork! The human body is a work of biomechanical art! I am still astonished by it because we continue to find more and more layers of complexity. In the years since I graduated from Oxford with a Masters degree the entire ground textbook we used by Albert Lehninger has had to be completely rewritten. Yet there is still no redundancy. Everything that we have learned remains true and necessary. Everything is irreducibly complex. So why do we cringe when our primitive Trinitarian creeds of necessity have to be reexamined? Because we are terrified of change. We are terrified of uncertainly. But get this, nearly everything we believe is provisional or simplifed to enable us to get a handle on life. And that's fine. Children can only cope with so much, and we are yet His children, still learning, still growing. That said, though, what does Yahweh admonish us to do? Paul put it this way:

"When I was a child I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things" (1 Cor.13:11, KJV).

Do you know what frightens me the most about our society today? We seem to be going backwards. We are losing truth at an alarming rate. Look at the speed at which flat-earthism is rising, a childish model of our world that we outgrew thousands of years ago thanks to the rise of science. It is astonishing that only 66 per cent of younger Millennials (18-24) now definitely believe the earth is a sphere, with 4 per cent definititly aligning with flatearthism. The rest - 30 per cent - aren't sure. This is in part because wicked governments have dumbed our children down in the educational system [3] to make us more compliant, slaves in their diabolical neo-feudalistic political system, but in part also because we have grown spiritually lazy, obese and flaccid. We want others to do our thinking for us in exchange for an illusiory security. Yet it seems we're never happy when we surrender our liberty that way. We rebel, and when we rebel more, our moral values and ethics are eroded away. And a more rebellious generation I don't think we have ever seen since the days of the flood, just as the apostle Paul prophesied:

"But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of Elohim (God) - having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them" (2 Tim.3:1-5, NIV).

Unless you understand and accept this, you will never understand Shavu'ot or the deeper meaning of the remaining communal festivals that follow, or the true Order that is the Millennial Kingdom reign and beyond that Æon (Age)-to-come and into eternity. The true Remnant (and don't ever suppose there aren't false ones, counterfeit remnants) - the true Remnant understands these things and knows what the Holy City or New Jerusalem community is like, because it has dawned upon them, one layer and one festival at a time. Those still strapped in modern Romanism's coheadship heresy can never understand it, because they continually seek to impose faulty man-made systems which are chaotic and anarchistic in their end. Anyone claiming intellectual understandings, spiritual manifestations or anointings of power whilst believing the lawless lie needs to know that those supernatural manifestations are counterfeit and therefore false by definition. And that is why pentecostalism and charismatic 'christianity', amongst others, are doomed to fall, for theirs is a kind of spring-festivals 'christianity' PLUS - the 'plus' replacing the summer and autumn (fall) festivals and what they stand for. They have taken the legitimate heavenly maturation 'plus' of Shavu'ot to Sukkot and have inserted their own Azuza-invented 'degenerate Plus' to make themselves appear more holy. It has taken the 'ripening for destruction' made visible that we see clearly manifested in the heresies of the charismatic movement to begin to open the eyes of the remnant seekers in pentecostalism to start discarding the false 'pluses' like battalogean tongues.

What this means in practice is that the non-calvinistic and non-legalistic form of Protestantism is largely good up to Yom haBikkurim which is the Feast of Firstfruit - the Celebration of the Resurrection which orthodox Christianity has merged with paganism to make for the Astarte or Ishtar worship of Easter. 'Basic Christianity', if I may be permitted to call it that - the first kind of holiness 1-to-1 Christianity, has always been around, even if persecuted, and that is what Yah'shua (Jesus) meant when He said that the Body or 'Church' could never be overcome. For the witness of Peter at Caesarea Philippi - that Yah'shua (Jesus) is the Messiah (Christ), the Son of the Living (Elohim, Yahweh) - is what the Book of Revelation calls the basic or ground-level "Spirit of Prophecy" , something that all truly born-again, regenerated Christians have because it's the "testimony of Yah'shua (Jesus)" (Rev.19:10)...that's why we call ourselves 'evangelial' for in regard to the first three festivals of Messianic Israel we most definitely are, and we stand fully behind that testimony which they bear. But thereafter we part ways because the Kingdom is far more: it's the truth that lies behind Shavu'ot, Yom Teruah, Yom haKippurim, Sukkot and Shemini Atseret, the festivals that reveal the final maturation processes of the Gospel, which cannot be excised from the rest of the Story the way orthodox Christianity has done. Yes, it has elements of these festivals, but they are heavily distored because of their lawlessness and their 'extra' or 'plus' anointings, of which battalogean 'tongues' is a prime example, because their 'tongues' is not - I repeat not - the tongues of the First 'Pentecost' but a counterfeit.

Please understand too that none of this is to say that we Messianic Evangelicals are in any way claiming to be 'better' Christians than godly, holiness-pursuing, submitted evangelicals who love Yah'shua (Jesus) with their whole beings. Yah forbid we should ever claim anything like that! The spring festivals represent what the foundations of the Gospel are supposed to look like when lived by individuals, without which none of the rest really matters that much. A collective is no better than the sum of its individual parts, and if the induividual parts are defective, then the collective will be also. Speaking personally, there are so many evangelicals whom I hold in awe, who have been my mentors and who I think of as so much better Christians than I am even though I think some or much of their theology is wrong. It's in the spiritual core of the spring festivals that we are either made or broken as far as any claim to being true believers is concerned. One thing I fear for many messianics is that they unconsciously tend to elevate in importance the summer and autumn festivals whilst neglecting the spring ones. That's guaranteed to lead to real and destructive legalism. Placing the corporate above the individual is what communism has done with disastrous consequences: you can't love humanity, as they claim, without loving individuals too, whom they despise as proved by their callous disregard for life.

Another mistake many make in regard to the festivals is the belief that the spring festivals are something we must 'move on' from. Far from it! That's why we repeat all the annual festivals every year! We have to grow in all seven continually. It's in the spring festivals we learn to be true servants - shammashim (servants) or deacons and deaconesses. Messianic Evangenicals have a saying: 'Once a Deacon, Always a Deacon' because no true Elder ever ceases being a Deacon. Because without humility and a servant-heart, pride, conceit and arrogance typically grow and rule. With that right perspetive, no one can ever boast 'I am a better person than you are' because that's never true (Gal.6:14; 1 Cor.1:31) where a true vision of the Body of Christ prevails. All we can do is teach the truth and leave it with others to investigate and respond in their own way and time to according to their free agency.

The only reason the festivals are in a specific order or sequence at fixed times of the year is because as humans we have to grow or mature in this linear fashion too - it's the way Yahweh designed us to be, the 'Way of Spiritual Metamorphosis'. We have to repeat the lessons over and over again until we get them right and live whole lives in Christ properly integrated. Most evangelicals are pretty good at what the spring festivals represent, most messianics tend to be better at Shavu'ot because they are more law-conscious, with each having their 'hobby-horses' that throw the sequence off-balance. But the meaning and spiritual process behind each divine moed (appointment) matters, including the weekly sabbaths and nonthly new moons and what they in turn represent. Rather than the far too simplistic 'Romans Road' of Evangelical Christianity (in reality, five paving stones), the festivals are best viewed as a summary of the Derech or Way of the Messiah which lies at the heart of biblical tavnith (pattern) from Genesis to Revelation.

As you can see from the diagram, Shavu'ot is plumb in the middle and is represented by the mid-point Hebrew letter Mem, the koine Greek Mu and our Latin-English 'M'. It is the mid-point between the Alef and Taw, the Alpha and Omega, the 'A' and the 'Z' (how Yah'shua/Jesus represents Himself in the Book of Revelation - Rev.12:13; 1:8,17-18; 21:6) - it's what holds the two halves of the Way of Yahweh together because it's where covenant-love is birthed. It's for that reason it respresents our collective betrothal to Christ as well as the natural bethrothal of husband and wife - it's where relationship-building takes its first tentative steps, which begins with committment to be true and faithful to the end: whereas we learn all about faith in Yahweh and His Messiah at Pesach (Passover), we learn the same as family at Shavu'ot (Weeks), the end of which is Sukkot (Tabernacles), the full marriage festival, where betrothal is consummated and the children of the Millennium are conceived and birthed.

So it's not for nothing that Messianic Evangelicals refer to Shavu'ot as the 'Hinge Festival' because the fullness depends on its turning from the spring to the autumn (fall). It's where we begin to experience Christ as a living Body of fellow believers, like allegorical plural wives learning to love and serve one another through mutual sacrifice and giving in submission in love to their common Husband, Yah'shua (Jesus). It's why plural marriage exists at all, not as a 'temporary concession' because of sin and hard-heatedness (like easy divorce in the Mosaic Covenant which Yah'shua/Jesus set straight in Matthew 19:1-9 and Mark 10:1-12), but integral to the whole Plan of Messiah as revealed in the summer and autumn festivals themselves. Nothing is accidental or unforseen - we can never take Father by surprise but He certainly takes us by surprise when we make false assumptions about matters we know little or nothing about owing to the blindness and prejudices of the world, therefore leading us to choose to sin and remain in those sins. And that is one of many reasons orthodox Christianity grinds to a screaching halt once it has reached the third feast of Yom haBikkurim, the Day of Firstfruits, the day we mark the Firstfruits of the Resurrection, the Calvary event. And that's pretty much where the 'Romans Road' ends too. It's the same reason that Evangelical Christianity balks at the Torah and why the true Baptism of the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) is needed both to empower us to witness boldly and overcome our fears of what lies beyond the 'simplicity' of Pesach, Chag haMatzah and Yom haBikkurim. That simplicity is, in reality, childlikeness - necessary for the immature - but we are also called into maturity and perfection. We're not supposed to remain as little children even if we are supposed to retain child-like faith!

I realise that in saying these things I am being 'controversial' to many. But let's not forget that what is controversial to the childish mind is natural to the mature one, and that our Elohim (God) is only controversial to the carnal. We must stop apologising for His Derech or Way - the Messianic Way - and accept His ways too. For how many more generations will we continue to resist them? One of the reasons He permits trial and tribulation is to shake us out of our apathy and false beliefs. It's often, though of course not exclusively, to get our attention. 'Wake up! the shofar at Shavu'ot cry out, as once the heavenly trunmpet made the whole Camp of Israel shake at the foot of Mt.Sinai!

"On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, with a thick cloud over the mountain, and a very loud shofar (trumpet) blast. Everyone in the camp trembled. Then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with Elohim (God), and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because Yahweh descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, the whole mountain trembled violently, and the sound of the shofar (trumpet) grew louder and louder. Then Moses spoke and the voice of Elohim (God) answered him" (Ex.19:16-19, NIV).

Then, many generations later, in the days of tne apostles, a new shaking and awakening:

"When the day of Shavu'ot (Weeks, 'Pentecost') came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) and began to speak in other languages (tongues) as the Ruach (Spirit) enabled them" (Ac.2:1-4, NIV).

And just as Christ, "Remaining what He was (Elohim/God), becoming what He was not (a man)" [4], the incarnation, so we, being born again, in our turn, yet "remaining what we are (humans), becoming what we are not (part of the Divine Royal Family as sons and daughters of Christ)". This is where our mystery 'takes on metaphorical flesh', as it were, as we begin to learn what a corporate Elohimhead (Godhead) actually looks like, experiencing it for ourselves, becoming what we are not just as Christ became what He was not...the greatest nystery of the universe. For Messiah that began at Aviv 1, for us at Shavu'ot. For today, brethren and sisters, is the Day of the New Birth, becoming what we are not - Divine - not what we were not, but what we continue not to be. For we are not gods, we are not God, and never can be. We can only become begotten, just as He was uniquely begotten to become one of us.

The journey we are on is truly extraordinary, a long, yet short journey with so much crammed into one lifespan if we trust Him fully. "Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of Yahweh revealed?" (Is.53:1, KJV). Yah'shua (Jesus) never said that the gospel would be easy, just that it would be worth it. Indeed, the harder it is to walk with Him, as it becomes the further you go, the more pure and true His followers will become. Holiness comes about only in this way. My youngest son and I were having a deep discussion last week and he remarked on how it was only in retrospect - looking back past the cloud of darkness - that he could understand why pain and suffering is permitted because we can never understand why Yahweh allowes it when it is happening - only afterwards, only with hindsight.

There are wise purposes at work even in the things we don't like. Nothing is wasted. But time is fast running out for the whole human race, and many are now understanding that that is so from the world events currently unfolding around us. Father Yahweh has allowed us to dally and dither for millennia, giving us plenty of time to "work out our salvation with fear and trembling" (Phil.2:12-13) - collectively, as a species. But the unfolding of the times and seasons being what they are now, does not allow for His apparently endless grace to continue for very much longer. Our Heavenly Father is so very patient, kind and long-suffering (1 Cor.13:4-7; Gal.5:22-23; Eph.4:2; Col.3:12) but the current Æon or Age had to come to an end sometime, and my children's generation just happens to be the historical time period in which it will. Yahweh's historical agenda was fixed from the beginning. And it is for this reason that He has reserved their time to be the time of the greatest number of births of His most faithful servants than ever before, whose training and mentoring has been my privilege, and the privilege of many others, to give. It has been an honour. Though I did not know it at first, that was always my calling. It never was my task to effect the Final Gatheringg, but it will be theirs. What a privilege to be recorded as the central players in the Final Exodus, an epic like none other that will be spoken of each year for a millennium! There are also, inevitably, things that I have left undone instruction-wise, for I can only do so much, which they will have to fill in themselves for which they will be more than adequately endowed to do. They will complete the Final (Messianic) Sukkot just as two thousand years ago the first talmidim (disciples) inugurated the Final (Messianic) Shavu'ot.

This has been a very deep message, not easy to grasp, and that's alright. I am planting seeds for future germination just in case I don't get the opportunity to do so again. For me this has been a Thomas à Kempis moment. We see but "through a glass, darkly" for now, "but then face to face". For "now I know in part; but then I shall know even as also I am known" (1 Cor.13:12). Right now we see only the outer crust of the rock, but then - on that wonderful day - we shall see the inside. We shall see things as they really are, and be filled with wonderment. And we will see that no suffering was ultimately in vain: Grace and peace to you in our Master Yah'shua the Messiah, Jesus Christ. Amen,

Endnotes

[1] The NIV Study Bible, 10th Anniversary Edition (Zondervan: 1995), p.1463)
[2] The word 'Tartarus' appears exactly once in the New Testament, in 1 Peter 2:4, using the Greek verb tartaroò, a Greek word that describes a deep abyss or prison where, in this context, Peter tells us this is where Yahweh confines the fallen watcher malakim (angels) who sinned, confining them in darkness to await their final judgment. It's a word commonly used in Greek mythology (like the Iliad or Theogony), the lowest abyss under Hades used to imprison the Titans, who may well be a distorted memory of these fallen malakim.
[3] See, for example, Charlotte Thomson Isebyt, The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America - Revised & Abridged Edition (Conscience Press, Parkman, Ohio: 2011).
[4] St. Leo the Great's brilliant theological description of the Incarnation that would otherwise have required an entire library to explain, is one of the finest summaries of the mystery of the Messiah ever written.