OUR CHRISTIAN ROOTS ARE JEWISH, NOT BABYLONIAN OR ROMAN! OY VEY!

Our Roots are Jewish!

Not Babylonian, Not Roman!

 

 

 

      Why do we do what we do? We believe in mashiach (Messiah), gather together as a kehillah(congregation), read the Tanack and Brit Chadesha (OT and NT Holy Scriptures), worship the one true Elohim (God) by singing and darshanut (preaching/teaching), observing mikvah (baptism) and Passover (communion), we t’filah (pray), tzum (fast), give God maahseir (tenths), keep yamim qedoshim (holy days/holidays), observe the kokavim (stars), and maahmin (believe) in a mosheanu (savior) who died for our avon and pesha (sins). Where did we learn these things? They are our Jewish roots! 

    Then, why do we not keep Passover, Unleavened Bread, and First Fruits, all biblical and Godly Feasts of YHWH which foreshadow Yeshua and are fulfilled by Yeshua. However, the mostly Gentile Churches today are being taught little to nothing of their biblical Jewish roots, but rather, to observe, for example, the fertility cult of the Babylonian goddess, Ishtare, which came to called Easter? 
    Churches of Yeshua the Messiah of Israel, the congregation of the remnant, chosen out from this world for Yeshua, once-a-year, in the spring, celebrate a hodgepodge of the resurrection of Yeshua while highlighting the demonic Babylonian fertility [sex] cult of rabbits and eggs by heralding Easter? Some Christians ask, “Is there anything wrong with a good old-fashion traditional Easter egg hunt?” The ancient Anglo-Saxons (and other pagans) celebrated the return of spring with riotous fertility festivals commemorating their goddess of fertility and springtime. Eastre the term derived from the Scandinavian Ostara and the Teutonic Ostern or Eastre, both pagan goddesses. The complete month of April was once called Eostur-monath and the entire month of April was dedicated to Eostre, the pagan goddess responsible for changing a bird into a rabbit. There is an old Latin proverb that conveys the idea: Omne vivum ex ovo, "all life comes from an egg.” This is how the rabbit became the symbol of Easter! Rabbits symbolize the fertility of springtime. 

        It is apparent that there is also a pagan connection between Tammuz and Lent. Tradition says, the wife of Nimrod, the King of Babylon, had become supernaturally impregnated by the Sun god, and gave birth to Tammuz. One day while hunting, Tammuz was killed by a wild boar. His mother and her family mourned for 40 days, at the end of which Tammuz was brought back from the dead. He was resurrected! 

    The Wycliffe Bible Commentary states, "Mourning for the god was followed by a celebration of resurrection." Who was celebrating this witchcraft? Ezekiel spoke to the pagan secular people of Israel, "And He said to me, 'Turn again, and you will see greater abominations that they are doing.' So, He brought me to the door of the north gate of the LORD's house (the Temple), and to my dismay, women were sitting there weeping for Tammuz"' (Ezekiel 8:13-14). 
        Yeshua’s death and burial is commemorated with Passover, the day of His death, Unleavened Bread, the day of His burial, and First Fruits, the day of His Resurrection. Do most Christians know this? They know little to nothing of their Jewish roots. Instead, they celebrate Roman Catholic festivities, the Lenten season with Fat Tuesday, Ash Wednesday, and the 40 days, not including Sunday, established by Roman Catholic Canon Law. Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent originates from the ancient Catholic practice of public penance in Rome, where penitents would wear sackcloth and be sprinkled with ashes, a big public display. This tradition was later institutionalized by Pope Urban II in 1091. It then evolved into the current practice of receiving ashes on the forehead as a symbol of repentance and mortality.  Ash Wednesday doesn’t just smack of Popery, it is a superstitious Catholic ritual, falling between Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) and Lent, both being carnal observances at opposite extremes of the spectrum. The ritual for the “Day of Ashes” (Wednesday) is found in the earliest editions of the Gregorian Sacramentary which dates to the 8th century, and not to any Jewish origin in the 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th, 5^th, 6^th, or 7^th centuries. Its origin is Gentile Catholicism. The Lenten season was not practiced by any of the early Jewish believers in Yeshua, His disciples, nor the true biblical churches in Asia. Oy Vey!

        About the year AD 1000, one named Aelfric, an Anglo-Saxon priest began preaching, “We read in the books both in the Old Law and in the New that the men who repented of their sins bestrewed themselves with ashes and clothed their bodies with sackcloth.  Now let us do this little at the beginning of our Lent that we strew ashes upon our heads to signify that we ought to repent of our sins during the Lenten fast.”  Aelfric reinforced his point by using fear, that those refusing the Ashes would be damned. He told of a man who refused to go to Church on Ash Wednesday and receive ashes, and the man was killed a few days later in a boar hunt.  Sounds like the Catholicism I know and remember as a young boy raised and living in south Louisiana for 28 years. Many of my friends were catholic - and spiritually lost!
        How then, did such a pagan ritual as Lent and Easter get inside the church? Alexander Hislop gives one answer. "To conciliate the Pagans to nominal Christianity, Rome, pursuing its usual policy, took measures to get the Christian and Pagan festivals amalgamated. By a complicated yet skillful adjustment of the calendar, it was found no difficult matter, in general, to get Paganism and Christianity—now far sunk in idolatry—in this as in so many other things, to shake hands" (The Two Babylons). 

    I (Reggie Lisemby) personally would add, that like catholic priests, protestant and Baptist clergy have sought ways to entrench parishnors to be more married, more bound to their institutional church, and religious rituals are determined to bind unlearned, yet, seeking souls who happen to be easily led. 

    It is extremely sad that the Jewish roots of the Christian faith have been disregarded even snubbed by Gentile preachers and teachers and replaced with human tradition, speculation, fabrication, fetishism, institutional rituals, Babylonianism, and Catholicism. How can that be, when all four Gospels give an account of what the Bible calls Passover, Unleavened Bread, and First Fruits. How could these come to be replaced with pagan Catholic Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday), Ash Wednesday, Lent, Palm Sunday, and Easter. Oy Vey! 

    In the Middle Ages, butter, cheese and eggs would not last for 40 days, the length of Lent. So, the Tuesday before Lent, which came to be called Fat Tuesday, it was said, “We have to eat all the butter that’s left, and the cheese that’s left, and all the eggs that's left.” Fat Tuesday started as the day to consume perishables since they wouldn’t keep for 40 days.
        The Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, also goes by another name besides Fat Tuesday. Shrove Tuesday was the day many Christians participated in confession, burning their palms from the previous Palm Sunday (the Sunday before Easter), and finalized their Lenten sacrifice or penance, they prayed more, gave [up] more, and worked harder, although a lifestyle practiced every day all year long by true believers. 

    Originally, the Tuesday before Lent was about shriving, that is, confessing your sins. But eventually it became a carnal day of carnival, because it was the final chance people had to “party” before the serious season of Lent began. Catholic countries and communities still hold large public carnivals at this time of year. Some of the most famous of these are held in Venice, Italy and Rio de Janeiro. Since Lent traditionally meant fasting from luxuries like meat, eggs, sugar and butter (except on Sundays), the day before became a time to eat up all the luxury foods in the house, sometimes in the form of pancakes. That led to the day being called Mardi Gras (French for Fat Tuesday) also called Pancake Day.
 

 
PROBLEMS WITH LENT 
 
    The forty days abstinence of Lent was borrowed from the worshippers of the Babylonian goddess, Ishtare. Such a Lent of forty days, in the spring of the year, is still observed by the Yezidis or the pagan Devil worshippers of Koordistan, who inherited it from their early masters, the Babylonians.  Lent was held by the pagan Egyptians as well. The Egyptian Lent of forty days was held expressly in commemoration of Adonis or Osiris, the great mediatorial god. Among the pagans, Lent seems to have been an indispensable preliminary to the great annual festival in commemoration of the death and resurrection of Tammuz," (Alexander Hislop, The Two Babylons, pages 104 and 105). Popular Bible commentator John MacArthur agrees, "The celebration of Lent has no basis in Scripture, but rather developed from the pagan celebration of Semiramis's mourning for 40 days over the death of Tammuz before his alleged resurrection-another of Satan's mythical counterfeits," (The MacArthur New Testament Commentary; 1 Corinthians: Moody, 1984). 

    It all smacks of Popery. In Matthew 6, Yeshua instructed His talmidim (disciples) not to fast like the masked actors or hypocrites, not to publicly deface or blemish themselves for public display to show everyone they have or are repenting. Yeshua said, instead, dress as you would working 9 to 5, a typical day, no markings, no ash, no crosses, so your fasting (if you fast) is not evident to others, but only to your Father in heaven. John Wesley himself, in the prayer book that was adopted by Methodists, did not include a season called Lent in his Calendar of Sundays and Holy Days, and Wesley retained all the readings for the Christian year used in the Church of England.

GOD'S INSPIRED CALENDAR IS NOT BEING USED!

Are we certain that we are at the end of the year? Are we sure that on January 1, a new year begins? Is this in accordance to the Christian calendar? The Julian calendar? The Gregorian calendar? The Hebrew calendar? 

January 1 is devoid of any meaning on God’s calendar. God’s first month revealed to Israel occurs in the spring, and on the 14th day of His first month is Passover (Exodus 12:1-3). Why is today’s calender different? In 46 BC Julius Caesar gathered scholars, their genius derived heavily from Egyptian scholarship, and with the assistance of Sosigenes they corrected the calibrations of Meton of Greece. On January 1, 45 BC the Julian calendar began. This calendar measured a year as 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 45.51 seconds. The genius of this calculation was based on a measurement of the sun moving around the ecliptic or the earth around the sun. Their genius is incredibly mindboggling since this was the year 45 BC! Yet, their creation was satanic, for the calendar was based on the sun while God’s calendar is a lunar one.

The Hebrew word for month in the Tenakh or OT is chodesh and it means “moon.” God gave to Israel a 12-moon or month lunar calendar in correspondence to the twelve sons of Yaaqov (Jacob) and their twelve tribes which were and are to rule. Every moon (month) displayed the flag or banner of the corresponding tribe.

What is today called Virgo was a constellation of stars signifying a virgin and her child. Libra anciently displayed an altar (Acadian = Tulki) and revealed a cross, a victim, and a crown. Scorpio displayed the serpent assaulting man’s heel and man grasping the serpent. Sagittarius displayed a conqueror and the dragon cast down. Capricornus displayed the goat of atonement, the smitten one falling and the dead one rising. Aquarius displayed blessing and Pisces displayed the great enemy putting people in bondage. Aries displayed the captive delivered and the enemy bound. Taurus displayed the mighty one, the Messiah coming to rule. Gemini displayed the exalted redeemer, the glorious prince. Cancer displayed the sheepfold, and finally Leo is the great Lion that triumphs and signifies Messiah’s consummation. The messianic plan of God was first told by the stars to the patriarchs before it was written on papyrus, vellum, and paper to Israel. Of course, satan corrupted the Star Gospel!

YHWH added a thirteenth moon or month (Adar II) to periodically take up the accumulated slack between a sun year and the moon year. A moon year is short of a sun year by 10 days, 21 hours, and 9.51 seconds, so the insertion of the 13^th month or moon every leap year more closely balances the equation.

The Christian year was begun by the early Christians who were Jews! They continued to keep their sabbath, but also observed the first day of the week for an assemblage of believers in Yeshua to celebrate His resurrection. There is no question that Sunday was the day believers met and remains by messianic tradition the day believers continue to meet and worship. Of course, there is no NT law that we must meet on a particular day. By the 4^th century AD, Christian celebrations like Easter, Ascension Day, Epiphany, Christmas, and others came to be prominent on the “Christian” calendar. 

In AD 527 the monk Dionysus Exiguus rebelling against the pagan Roman calendar, marked off time by using the birth of Christ as the point of dating.  At first, A.C. meaning Ante Christum was used and soon became B.C. meaning before Christ. To measure years on this side of the birth of the Messiah, A.D. meaning anno Domini came to be used. Later, a secular initiative to disregard Yeshua as the center of dating, BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era) was used and is used today by those desiring to be recognized as scholars and academic writers. 

No other changes were made to the calendar until the period of the Renaissance when an astronomer named Copernicus influenced dating, based on his sun-centered calculation, correcting the ten days error of the Julian calendar. Pope Gregory XIII was stimulated by the reform and the Gregorian calendar became the norm and the name. 

In 1752, two hundred years later, England and then the American colonies adopted the Gregorian calendar. This is the calendar we still use today, 2021. In 1923 Russia authorized its adoption which officially took effect September 3, 1943.

God initiated time beginning with the “day.” The day was measured from evening until morning, since before God’s creation there was darkness of the face of the deep (Genesis 1:3). All was choshech (darkness). However, pagan Babylon measured a day from sunrise to sunrise. Today, we continue to measure our days as Babylonians, sunrise-sunset, and not as the Hebrews. 

After six days of creation God rested on the seventh day (Genesis 1). The seven days God made came to be designated as a week, and every seventh day of the week was a sabbath, but not to Adam, Seth, Enos, Canaan, Mahalalel, Jared, Enoch, Lamech, Noach, Shem, Avraham, Ytzack, Yaaqov or his dozen sons. The sabbath law was given only to Israel. 

The Jewish historian, Flavious Josephus tells that biblical astronomy was invented by Adam, Seth, and Khanoch (Enoch), yet biblical astronomy was corrupted by the time of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11:4. The ziggurat of Bavel was apparently a star museum, with the signs of the Zodiac displayed at the top of the interior of the tower, information given to humans perhaps by the fallen watchers who distributed science that God had forbidden them to share (Book of Enoch). 

From Noah’s time (Genesis) until the days of Yochanon who penned the Revelation in AD 90 a biblical month was a total of thirty (30) days. To be more precise 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, and 3 seconds was a month. The duty of the sun was to mark the boundaries for the day, which again was evening and morning. God intended His calendar of months, seasons, and years to be determined by the moon. Each month was established by the observation of the rise of the new moon which God designed to rise every 30 days. An announcement of the new moon was made by a blast of the shofar or ram’s horn, and even a feast was to be held by the Hebrews, the Feast of Rosh Chodesh, or “First Moon.” 

Our months today are not identical with the biblical moons/months because our calendar of days are in accordance to the solar year, not the lunar. We have 30-day months, 31-day months, and February often shifts its number. And, again, the distraction from the moon to the sun was a satanic ploy from God’s prescription. The Babylonians had their calendarers, as did the Greeks, the Romans, the Popes, the Chinese, the Mohammedans, Mussolini attempted to supplant the world-accepted calendar as did Adolf Hitler. 

As I write this, I think of the soon-to-occur festive all-night dinner, fireworks, clamor of “Happy New Year,” some toasting a serpent-in-a-glass (alcoholic drink), and many then driving home happy to begin a new year. WRONG! 

The new year does not begin until the season of Passover, and Passover always occurs on the first full-moon following the spring equinox. God’s calendar begins with spring.

January 1 is not the new year, and January is not the month of a new year. January was named after the pagan god Janurus,the pagan god of opening and shutting, the pagan god of beginnings. In fact, the name of all the months of the pagan solar year are pagan in origin, as are the festivals of the solar year and its months. The names nor the pagan celebrations honor our Lord God and His Son and Messiah, Yeshua. We should be looking to God’s beginnings, to the month of Passover, to the spring. We should be informed of God’s reckoning of time, His calendar, for it speaks intently of Yeshua (Luke 24:27,44) and His will be the calendar of the coming millennial kingdom. There will be NO January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, or December in the Kingdom of Yeshua!

 

 

FIRSTFRUITS: He Arose A Victor From the Dark Domain!

    The resurrection of Yeshua is the very heart of the Gospel. The resurrection of Yeshua is the hallmark of the WORD! The resurrection of Yeshua is the one truth upon which every other truth in the Holy Scriptures including salvation depends. If He had not risen, our hope would be in vain! Every law from the Torah, every messianic prophecy, every hope from the writings, and every principle of morality of how God wants us to live, even the truth that God exists, hinges on the resurrection of Yeshua!

    Can you take your Holy Scriptures this very moment in the middle of eternity and show someone [Jewish] that the resurrection of the Messiah was prophesied or foretold in the Tanakh or the Old Testament, and was fulfilled in Yeshua? If you cannot, it is unlikely you will convince them that Yeshua is Messiah. The Resurrection is the zenith power-point of His Gospel!
    How do we as believers answer the swoon theory, that Yeshua swooned and did not die but was helped out of the tomb and hidden? How do we answer the hallucination theory, that those who saw Him hallucinated they saw Him? How do we answer the objective vision theory, that Yeshua was raised, but not bodily, rather in spirit. After all, His ghost was encountered at Pentecost, Acts 2? Was His resurrection a bodily resurrection? Can you prove it? You must! I wrote this book to help you!
    Do we have historical facts and historical evidences of Yeshua’s resurrection, or are we preaching a blind leap of faith people must take to believe and be saved? Oy Vey! That’s a colossally lame excuse for believing. Natural man’s default faith is unbelief. We had better have more than a story passed down two millennia to cause someone who is spiritually lost to obtain eternal life. Are we not enlightened?What are the claims of the Prophets? What are the claims of biblical Judaism? What are the claims of those who encountered Him after He arose? What is the claim that Jerusalem has upon Yeshua? What is the claim of a congregation that has lasted over two thousand years? What claim does 1948 have on the resurrection of Yeshua? How much evidence do we have to preach the Gospel of Yeshua to Israel and cause blinded eyes to see. NO blind leap of faith for me. I preach the glorious light of the Gospel!

    Yeshua has risen! From where has He risen? Was He asleep for three days? He told the thief on the tree “today, you will be with me in paradise!” Where did they rendezvous? Matthew records in His Gospel that dead saints arose and walked through Jerusalem on First-Fruits (we call Easter). Who were they, but more interesting, where did they come from? Sheol? Paradise?Had they been asleep?

    In the Tanakh (OT) the witch of Endor performed a séance for Saul, and to her utter dismay Shmuel appeared. From where did Shmuel come and return? The netherworld?

    Yeshua raised Lazarus from the dead; did Lazarus return from heaven to earth? Didn’t Lazarus have to die again? Yeshua was indeed, as Shaul (Paul) wrote, the firstfruits of the dead (1 Corinthians 15:20). Yeshua had to be raised FIRST, and, after having preached to the spirits in prison, He then moved paradise on high, where later Shaul (Paul) was caught up and saw unutterable things. The devil, demons, evil and dark powers all roam the earth. So, how bad are those caged in Tartarus, underneath hell?

Of the eleven books I have written, this one is the most evangelistic. It is not a scary read, but a very sobering one. I personally recommend this read and I value your review!