Beginning of Wisdom (Torah Club) lesson #36 - Subjective Reality & Diminishing all revelation except what was given to Moses

“The mirror analogy describes our experience of life, the universe, and everything.  We think of ourselves as seeing the real world, but what are we experiencing?  Only electrical sensory inputs channeled through a bio-chemical nervous system connected to a central processing unit of tangled neurons struggling to render some sort of interpretation of those signals.  Our brains work like computers to simulate the environment around us.  No one sees reality; we see our brain’s best attempt to process sensory input.”- p. 12

“That’s part of what Paul was getting at when he said, ‘For now, we see in a mirror dimly’ (1 Corinthians 13:12).  It’s not a polished mirror.  We aren’t getting the whole picture.  We can see only in part.  The world we think of as reality exists only inside our head.  Every person creates his or her own personal reality.” – p. 12

“To be in close conversation with Absolute Reality is prophecy at the highest level: the level of Moses.  As explained above, the Hebrew world for vision also means mirror.  Numbers 12:6 could be translated to say, ‘If there is a prophet among you, I, the LORD, shall make Myself known to him in a mirror.’  But it’s not a polished mirror.  For most prophets, it’s merely a dim reflection – not the personal experience of God that Moses knew.  It’s only an imperfect reflection, many times removed.” – p. 18

“Playing on the double meaning of the word – vision and mirror – the Midrash Rabbah contrasts Moses’ exalted level of prophecy against that of the other prophets.  All other prophets saw their prophetic visions dimly through nine mirrors.” – p. 18{quoting Leviticus Rabbah 1:14}

Why do I have the feeling that Daniel Lancaster wants me to take the Red Pill?  If that Matrix reference didn’t connect with you, in that 1999 movie Keanu Reeve’s character Neo is told by a guide named Morpheus that the reality he thinks that he is living in isn’t real.  Not really real anyway, it is just a computer simulation.

It may seem like a post-modern idea to doubt that reality exists beyond our own perception of it, but in reality, apologies for that double-usage, the idea had its heyday in the 17th and 18th centuries with the Empiricist philosophers John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume.  Long before computer special effects, there were philosophers who doubted that we could have any genuine knowledge of what is real beyond our own perception of it.

The great debate between the Rationalists and the Empiricists that set the stage for modern Western thought is too big a topic for this venue, but one effect of the Empiricist’s rejection of the tenants of Rationalism speaks to the danger of what the First Fruits of Zion are teaching here: Individual realities.  If reality is an individual construction, not a thing with its own true nature and existence, notions such as Fact and Truth invariably become fuzzy, antiquated, even ridiculed.  There is no longer any Truth, just “my truth” and “your truth”.

This example reminds us of some of the deep contradictions and dissonance within the belief system that FFOZ’s leaders have constructed: On the one hand, they claim to represent 1st century Jewish Christian thought and practice, on the other hand, they embrace the individualistic mystical experience of medieval Kabbalah, which of course is full of concepts that were entirely foreign to the cultural stream of 1st century Judaism and/or Christianity.  Why is FFOZ teaching extreme individual relativism?  Where is this headed?  

The second topic in this lesson that jumps out as deeply dangerous is the insistence drawn from the Leviticus Rabbah (Midrash), that ONLY Moses had full and clear revelation from God.  The prophets Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, John the Baptist?  They only saw a dim mirror, 9 reflections of reality, not “Absolute Reality” itself.  The practical, and intended by FFOZ, effect of this foolishness is to elevate the Torah and diminish all other scriptures to a secondary status.

Why?  Because to them Torah is eternal.  Torah is the essence of God’s nature.  Torah surpasses all.  Wait a minute, what about the Word of God?  What about Jesus Christ, God of God, God dwelling among us?  Surely the Gospels have at least an equal level of clarity and wisdom as that given to Moses?  Nope, the Torah Club lesson doesn’t say that, “Our highest level of the revelation of God in this current world does not attain the level of Moses.” (p. 19)

The thing is, the Gospels don’t say any of this, FFOZ is saying it.  This is what Jesus says about what he is revealing to his followers:

John 14:6-7,9  Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”  Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?

In addition to diminishing the portions of scripture not given to Moses directly at Sinai, this bizarre “mirror theory” of FFOZ also treats the work of the Holy Spirit in the Church Age as an inferior revelation.  How can we know Truth and Reality beyond the Torah?  Lancaster tweaks Luke 7:28 on p. 19 to emphasize our limitation in this era, the brackets are his: “Among those born of women, there is no [prophet] greater than John, yet [the prophet] who is least [in the Messianic Era will be] greater than he.”  Yes, this is more of Lancaster changing scripture through his own translations to make it fit what FFOZ is teaching, he follows it up with this conclusion: “In the Messianic Era, we will attain the level of Moses – the level of face-to-face.” (p. 19)

Lesson 36 of The Beginning of Wisdom leans heavily on extra-biblical sources {Wisdom of Solomon, Ascension of Isaiah, Talmud, Midrash, and even Irenaeus’ The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching} to sow the seeds of doubt about reality being anything greater than our own perception, and doubts about any/all revelation given by God to anyone other than Moses.   In the end, this journey of doubt will leave only one source of Truth standing, by design: the Torah of Moses.

* Note, this analysis first appeared as a YouTube video on my channel on 11/20/24: The Beginning of Wisdom, lesson #:36 Cataloging the unorthodox teachings of the Torah Club materials

Sermon Video: God rejects moral equivalence - Malachi 2:17

It has been evident throughout human history that virtue is not fully rewarded and wickedness is not fully punished; in fact, at times wickedness seems to be rewarded and virtue punished.  This state of affairs have led some to conclude that God does not exist and therefore right/wrong are simply arbitrary constructs based upon human consensus and thus open to redefinition.  Others have attempted to fix the problem by claiming that God himself (whether personal or impersonal) is not wholly good, but contains within himself both virtue and wickedness.  While both of these attempted solutions are unacceptable (especially since they're not based in reality), what is the answer to the problem of the existence of evil?
The prophet Malachi rejects the attempt by the people of Israel to embrace moral equivalence, telling them that God is wearied by willingness in their ignorance to blame him for the evil in our world.  God is holy, having no part in anything immoral or evil, that such things exist in our world is our fault, not God's.  In the end, the "success" of the wicked will probe short-lived, the justice of God will prevail, and righteousness will be rewarded.

To watch the video, click on the link below:

Avoiding a "softening of the brain"

In his book, Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton has a quote that I thought worth sharing, "Thinking in isolation and with pride ends in being an idiot.  Every man who will not have a softening of the heart must at last have a softening of the brain."  (p. 34)  At that point he was referring to the willingness of Nietzsche, and countless others like him since, to doubt everything.  Yet those who doubt everything in the end doubt themselves.  On what basis can you doubt everything?  There must be some standard, some truth, that is beyond doubt or all expressions of doubt become meaningless.  "By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything." (p. 34)  In the same way, those who say that all paths are true are equally stuck in a quagmire.  If every path is equally valid, how can any choice be made?  If no outcome is more desirable than any other, what is the point of choosing at all?  Thus the rebel who rejects everything, and the man of tolerance who accepts everything find themselves sitting at the same crossroad.  Chesterton pictured Nietzsche and Tolstoy sitting there together, our world today isn't short of others willing to join them.  "They stand at the crossroads, and one hates all the roads and the other likes all the roads.  The result is - well, some things are not hard to calculate.  They stand at the crossroads." (p. 34-35)
It is amazing that in 1908 Chesterton clearly saw that these two forces in philosophy/morality/government were on a collision course that would leave both without anything meaningful left to say.  In the last hundred years his prediction has certainly proven true.  Today our world is convulsed by rebels who hate everything and everyone and idealists who profess to love everything and everyone.  In the end neither of them is leaving that crossroad.