Beginning of Wisdom (Torah Club) lesson #45: Gnostic mysticism, Sabbath idolatry, and elevating heretical extra-biblical sources

There are many topics connected to our faith about which the average Christians is mostly or entirely ignorant.  Some of that is a failure of education/discipleship, but much of it is simply the breadth and the depth of ideas and concepts that touch on the faith that steers our lives.  In all honestly, even scholars who spend their whole lives in study are a long way from knowing everything.  With that in mind, we shouldn't be surprised that people in Torah Clubs don't run away as soon as Daniel Lancaster and FFOZ starts to teach them Gnostic mysticism.  Our ancestors in the faith, however, who spent generations fighting against the malign influence of that philosophy during the 2nd to 4th centuries would have recoiled in horror because they knew how dangerous it was.  FFOZ is taking advantage of our collective ignorance of Early Church history, and particularly of the heresies that the Early Church rejected.  That needs to end.

Lesson 45, page 5
"in the version of the story told in the Midrash Rabbah, the LORD explains, "If you are buried here, near those who died in the wilderness, then they will enter the land for your sake at the time of the resurrection of the dead."

The primary heretical error in this lesson is gnostic mysticism, but with FFOZ there is typically room for several other dangerous ideas.  Here we see that they are uncritically citing the Midrash Rabbah to concur with its (false) assertion that the Israelites who died in the wilderness because of unbelief will be welcomed into the Promised Land (i.e. Heaven) by God because of the faithfulness of Moses.  This isn't the first time that FFOZ has taught that human beings can share salvific merit with others, an idea utterly rejected by the Apostle Paul, particularly in Romans.  This isn't the first time they've elevated Moses' exploits to the level of hero-worship.  There is nothing wrong with citing Jewish rabbinical teaching to illustrate a point, however, the uncritical way in which Lancaster does this leads to dangerous errors like this one.

Lesson 45, page 9
"Any person who seeks the LORD with repentance, searching for Him with heart and soul, will find Him and receive the forgiveness of sins.  The LORD will gather that soul in with His people to save it from the coming day of fire."

If not for my research into FFOZ, I would probably assume that this is an orthodox statement by assuming that when they say, "seeks the LORD" they mean in this New Covenant era, "any person accepts Jesus as Savior."  But that's not what this is.  This isn't simply a statement expressing confidence in the Grace of God to ensure Gospel acceptance on the part of all who seek him.  Instead, we are once again seeing FFOZ toy with ideas of Universalism.  We've already noted the times that FFOZ has hinted that Jews don't need Jesus because they're already the Chosen People, here they are hinting at an even further extension by saying that some who will be saved won't even be a part of "His people."  Word choices matter in theology.  When the one being saved isn't spoken of as being a part of God's people, but instead as being "with" them, it raises eyebrows.  When the person/organization making such a statement is already known to subvert the Gospel, there is apt reason to be concerned.  Read the statement again, compare it to Jesus' own words, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but my me." (John 14:6).  

Lesson 45, page 14
"The early Jewish believers in Yeshua taught the same concepts.  The collection of teachings and fictionalized narratives titled Clementine Homilies."

Thus Lancaster elevates the Clementine Homilies to the level of a trusted, even authoritative source.  See how simple that was?  All he needed to do was connect it in one sentence to Jewish followers of Jesus, no further explanation needed.  Except we really need one.  The Clementine Homilies were not written by Clementine of Rome, as with many ancient manuscripts the name of someone famous is used to lend authenticity or weight.  While the original was written earlier, our only surviving version dates from the 5th century.  The Early Church historian Eusebius dismissed it in this manner, "And now some have only the other day brought forward other wordy and lengthy compositions as being Clement's, containing dialogues of Peter and Appion, of which there is absolutely no mention in the ancients." (Ecclesiastical History, 3.38)

What does this collection of writings contain?  Among other things through a gnostic and Arian influence it proclaims that Jews don't need Jesus to be saved and portrays Jesus primarily as the final prophet to the Jewish people rather than as the savior of the world.  If, then, the Clementine Homilies is an accurate reflection of what some of Jesus' followers believed in that era, it shows them to be disciples with a dangerously flawed theology, albeit one that aligns with the false teachings that FFOZ is currently selling.

So, what is it from the Clementine Homilies that FFOZ wants its followers to embrace?

Lesson 45, page 17
"God remains the stationary point from which all things emanate and to which all return.  He is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.  Unmoving and at rest at the center.  God is outside the flow of time like the infinite world to come."
"This then is the mystery of the hebdomad.  For He Himself is the rest of the whole who grants Himself as a rest to those who imitate His greatness within their little measure. (Clementine Homilies)"

Gnostic mysticism is the answer.  Gnostic philosophy is NOT compatible with faith in Jesus Christ.  The attempt was made to meld them together by Gnostics, but we can see that combination being rejected even in its earliest form in 1 John.  Long story short, the Gnostics believed that the divine and physical realms could not touch because it is matter that is corrupted but spirit that is pure.  The result is to remove God from direct connection to this world, a real problem for those who believe in the Incarnation.

Lesson 45, page 17b
"A hebdomad is a group of seven.  The significance and hidden meaning behind all of the Bible's sequences of seven, including the seven days of creation and the seven days of the week, are explained in the idea sketched out above.  The hebdomad concept also gives us a tool to visualize the seven heavens differently."

In addition to a flawed cosmology, Gnosticism is also built upon the idea of "hidden" or "secret" knowledge available only to a select few.  You've probably never heard of a hebdomad unless you're a real math geek.  You can look in vain through the entirety of sacred scripture without finding anything like this, but that's of little concern to Gnostic mysticism.  Why?  Because those of us who follow Jesus through orthodox methods have limited ourselves to the divine revelation of scripture, and the mystics are seeking the answers within themselves.  If the answers are within, they're not coming from God.  If the answers are within, we are the ultimate authority not God.  Mysticism, Gnostic or otherwise, has never been the path to Truth given by God to humanity.  God reveals to us what we need to know, it is made plain by God, not hidden away.

Why would FFOZ embrace mysticism?  In addition to wanting to elevate the Jewish mysticism of Kabbalah (which they have done numerous times in Torah Club materials), this sort of unfettered search for Truth that is not bound by Holy Scripture has great appeal to those who have embraced answers that are contradicted by the Word of God.  When you are proclaiming that the Church was never meant to exist and that those who follow Jesus have been in gross error for 2,000 years, it helps to embrace a methodology like this one that allows for "truth" to come from new sources, particularly from yourself.

Lesson 45, page 18
"The homily says that God 'grants Himself as a rest to those who imitate His greatness within their little measure.'  That is to say, those who rest on the Sabbath do so as a small token of rest in imitation of God's perfect rest at the center point of existence.  As a reward, God grants a portion of His own presence."

Another reason beyond mysticism that FFOZ wants its followers to treat the Clementine Homilies as authoritative is that it contains the type of Sabbath idolatry that they themselves are promoting.  Sabbath theology is a too big of a topic to do justice to here, but one thing that we can know for sure: Keeping the Sabbath does not earn you a "portion" of God's "own presence."  The mysticism being promoted here leaves no room for Sabbath keeping to be optional.  It is being described as if it is the key to communion with God.

The truth is, Jesus is how we connect to God in the New Covenant, not the Sabbath.  The Holy Spirit was given to every person redeemed by the Blood of the Lamb, we have God's Spirit within us, we don't need a mystical Sabbath experience to get it.  When Paul writes of our need to be filled with the Holy Spirit, that is, our need to have an increased presence of God in our lives, he never once mentions Sabbath keeping as having anything to do with it.

Lesson 45, page 19
"Entering the Sabbath should be like entering a state of being - specifically, God's Being - in which there is nothing unfinished, nothing incomplete, no future or past, nothing but the eternal now of perfect peace and bliss.  In that respect, the celebration and observance of the Sabbath offer a taste of the transcendent peace of simple participation in the Oneness of God."

Yeah, I'm going to pass on the idea that Sabbath keeping is the path to "participation in the Oneness of God."  The mysticism is so thick here in this description that it makes Sabbath keeping sound like a drug trip in which those who participate lose themselves entirely for a while.  "Just say, 'No!'" sounds appropriate here.

Lesson 45, page 20
Incidentally, the paradoxical concept of God as both resting point and source of all action helps explain an extremely cryptic and otherwise incomprehensibly esoteric passage in the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas."

It was a good thing that I wasn't eating while I read this page or I might have choked on my food.  The Gospel of Thomas????  Did FFOZ really just drop that deeply heretical fake Gospel into a lesson as if it too deserves to be given respect?  Once again, FFOZ is hoping that Christians are ignorant, it is the only explanation that makes sense.  The Gospel of Thomas was found buried in the Egyptian desert in 1945.  It was written by unknown Gnostics a couple of centuries after Christ, who attached the name of the Apostle Thomas to it.  To say that it is heretical is an understatement.  The Jesus portrayed in this abomination of a gospel is NOT the Jesus whom we worship as Lord and Savior.  The only value that this document has are the insights we can gain from it into the heresies that the Early Church resoundingly rejected through the Ecumenical Councils.  To drop it into a lesson, without explanation, is the height of careless toying with heretical teachings.

In the end, this Torah Club lesson contains new errors when it leans heavily upon the Clementine Homilies and name-drops the Gospel of Thomas, but it is built upon the same error we have seen so many times from FFOZ: A willingness to elevate any source or method that supports the conclusions they've already proclaimed.  

Beginning of Wisdom (Torah Club) lesson #42-43: Afterlife uncertainty and more mysticism

Lesson 42-43, page 13
"God has ordered things so that 'man will not discover anything' about his fate in the next life.  We are only granted glimpses of Gehenna and Paradise.  It's impossible to construe those glimpses into a single and universal doctrine of eternal destinies."

One of the challenging things that I have found in my efforts to expose the false teachings of First Fruits of Zion is that there continue to be more dominoes that get knocked over by their abandonment of orthodoxy.  In this case, the orthodox belief that is now being cast aside by FFOZ is what is known as eternal security.  Since the Apostles, the followers of Jesus Christ have operated with the understanding that we have all the knowledge about the Afterlife that is necessary for faith and practice.  We don't know everything we want to know, in particular that whole "day and hour" piece of the puzzle, but we know everything we need to know to live with the certainty of faith in the here and now.  Using an unsound (non-contextual) interpretation of Ecclesiastes 7:14, FFOZ is proclaiming in this lesson that faithful certainty about what the future holds must be replaced with "glimpses" that cannot be pulled together to form an understanding that is true for all of us.

The implications of this sentence are far-reaching, unbiblical, and deeply dangerous: "It's impossible to construe those glimpses into a single and universal doctrine of eternal destinies."  The Word of God tells us otherwise.  There are only two kinds of people: Those who have been saved by the Blood of the Lamb who are safe in the Father's hands, and those who remain Lost who will perish apart from a relationship with God.

John 10:28-30 I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. 30 I and the Father are one.”

John 14:6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come:[a] The old has gone, the new is here!

1 John 5:12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.

God has given us sufficient clarity about the Afterlife.  God has given us the rubric that applies to every single human being who has ever lived.  By proclaiming that this certainty is impossible to have, FFOZ is sowing seeds of doubt that will harm the faith of many.  Why would they do this?  What profit can they hope to reap from blurring lines that were clearly laid out by Jesus himself?

Lesson 42-43, page 19
"The soul forgets nothing.  It carries with it the record of every event, every deed and misdeed, every mitzvah and every sin.  Acquiring these memories is the reason the soul descends into a body and lives life as a human being in the first place.  The soul enters the world of concealment to attain merit through the free will to choose good or evil.  In this world, the soul learns to seek God, and through its many experiences in the body, it becomes uniquely you.  With those memories intact, the soul will one day be returned to the body for the resurrection of the dead and the final judgment.  The memories create continuity between the old you and the new you." {emphasis mine}

Did God create you so that you could obtain memories?? Is that why you were born?  My friends, we have a higher purpose than this.  We were created to love.  To love God and love each other.  To overcome evil with good. To live self-sacrificially in this life in the hope of God's justice in the next.  What FFOZ is teaching here is built on a false premise (the pre-existence of the human soul), and far too shallow to reflect God's glorious purpose in Creation.

In addition to the heresy of the pre-existence of the human soul, we once again see FFOZ teaching that merit is earned and combining it with the idea that human beings are capable of seeking God on their own {which is consistent with their embrace of legalism in the form of Torah idolatry}.  They need to teach that human effort on its own can bear fruit because they've staked their entire organizational existence on the belief that the key to pleasing God is properly obeying a set of rules.  

Here's the thing, the Apostle Paul knew better.  The book of Romans more than sufficiently debunks this wishful thinking.  Humanity apart from God cannot please him, has no hope of earning any measure of merit, and in fact is not seeking God anyway.  Without God's grace and the calling of the Holy Spirit we are dead in the water, period.

Lesson 42-43, page 19b
"This aspect of the life review can be considered the spiritual objective behind the commandment, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'  In the end, you will live your neighbor's experience as yourself."

Lesson 42-43, page 20
"one day, we will experience what we did unto others as if it was done unto us."

Lastly, one more new false teaching from FFOZ is introduced in this lesson, the "life review."  Borrowing from the testimonies of those who have been through Near Death Experiences, FFOZ is teaching that as you die you will actually experience your life over again, and on top of that, you will experience your life through the view of everyone else you have every interacted with.  They are saying that you will, literally, experience the impact of every good and bad choice you ever made in life by having that action done to you.

Aside from being a bizarre speculation into mysticism that has ZERO biblical basis, what is the harm of teaching what is assuredly unknowable and unprovable in this life?  It fits a pattern.  A pattern of embracing mysticism and teaching it as fact that is akin to FFOZ's uplifting of rabbinical teaching and even Jewish folklore as fact (rather than opinion).  A teaching ministry needs to be able to distinguish fact from fiction, truth from opinion, and what is known from what is only guessed at.  FFOZ has shown many times over that they lack this basic skill.

Autistic telepathy and visits to heaven to talk to God? - First Fruits of Zion endorses The Telepathy Tapes

 

Until today I have never heard of the Telepathy Tapes, given that I don't listen to podcasts that aren't on ESPN, and certainly not to Joe Rogen, that isn't surprising.  How did I learn about The Telepathy Tapes?  First Fruits of Zion's Messiah Podcast in Februrary of 2025 hosted by Daniel Lancaster endorsed them and a concerned former Torah Club member shared the link with me.

The Telepathy Tapes A popular podcast reveals the existence of divine revelation through non-verbal autistic people. Author BY: D. Thomas Lancaster 18 February 2025

What are The Telepathy Tapes?  This review was the best one I could find: The Dangerous Charm of The Telepathy Tapes January 27, 2025 by Chloe Walker.  In short, The Telepathy Tapes claim that autistic children, with the help of a parent 'facilitating' "demonstrated his ability to read thoughts, and reported spiritual insights and messages from God." (to quote Daniel Lancaster).

Wait a minute, why is a pro-Torah keeping organization endorsing the idea that autistic children all have miraculous spiritual powers?  The answer, it turns out, is simple: They believe this idea will support Jewish mysticism / Kabbalah.  Given that FFOZ leans heavily into mystical interpretations of scripture, anything that seems to support that idea is good news.  "If the claims presented in The Telepathy Tapes (TTT) are true, they have major implications for science, philosophy, education, psychology, neurology, anthropology, theology, religion, and faith.  They also have compelling parallels to both Jewish mysticism and apocalyptic Jewish texts like the New Testament." - Daniel Lancaster (emphasis mine).

In his article, it is clear that Daniel Lancaster buys into The Telepathy Tapes premise all the way: "the existence of telepathy is only the beginning.  The listener is quickly catapulted into a world of spiritual revelations reported by the non-speakers.  We hear about the pre-incarnate existence of the soul, spiritual beings like angels and demons, revelations from heaven, revelations about heaven, trips to heaven, conversations with God, conversations with Jesus, conversations with departed souls in heaven, visions of the future, precognitive declarations, clairvoyance, divine healings, and many of the spiritual elements typical of reports from those who suffer the classic Near Death Experience." - Daniel Lancaster

As someone who has met Don Piper (Author of 90 Minutes in Heaven), and who hosted him at my church to share his Gospel message, the key issue at hand here is not the possibility of spiritual insights, but that the particular insights Lancaster is so excited about are ones that confirm his pre-existing belief in Jewish mysticism {See: Beginning of Wisdom (Torah Club) lesson #37: More Gnostic Dualism, pre-existence of the soul, and extra-biblical reliance} and is doing so by using vulnerable non-verbal children and their parents as props.

A brief explanation as to why this particular false teaching from FFOZ bothers me so much.  When I was in middle school an autistic two-year-old first came to my house after school.  My mother ran a daycare and this boy was displaying the signs of severe autism.  In the beginning, he was non-verbal and prone to violent fits.  Until he graduated high school (the school workers who helped him over the years were amazing), he was at my parents' house five days a week.  I taught him how to swim in our pool, holding him through his initial terror at the water, and celebrating when he quickly learned to love swimming.  He and his older brother were ushers at my wedding.  I'm a better person for having known him, and I love this man who now is in his late 30's.

Children with disabilities, and their often desperate parents just trying to find hope and comfort, are NOT to be used to further economic, political, or religious agendas.  These are children of God, and they deserve better.  What The Telepathy Tapes is doing is morally unacceptable, and First Fruits of Zion piggybacking off of its popularity is grotesque. 

I'll end with another couple of quotes from Lancaster that highlight just how dangerous it is to follow the First Fruits of Zion down their unorthodox path, "Christians will also find the content of TTT troubling, albeit for different reasons.  Some non-speakers openly discuss spooky and off-limits subjects like reincarnation, communication with the deceased, and other ideas that invoke New Age mysticism." - Daniel Lancaster.  

Yep, we have a problem with elevating the supposed authority of these "spiritual communications" when they are just as likely to promote Eastern Religious beliefs like reincarnation (which apparently doesn't bother Daniel?  No idea what he's thinking there by mocking those who find it to be "spooky and off-limits").  That's what set Don Piper apart, whether or not you or I believe that his vision was genuine, his words about it were 100% orthodox in support of the Gospel.  By their fruit you will know them.  Daniel doesn't appear to be much concerned that some of the fruit of supposed autistic "telepathy" is rotten.

"In view of the sharp as-yet unexplained rise in autism rates, we should be asking, what is God doing in these last days?" - Daniel Lancaster

Well, at least he isn't blaming autism on vaccines.  Instead, Daniel offers up the explanation that autism is a sign of the End Times.  {And Boaz Michael wonders why I don't just drop my work exposing their teachings.  Answer: This!  This right here.}

"The Telepathy Tapes...get to the core of what is means to be a spiritual being here on earth, existing in a physical body while in relationship with God and one another." - Daniel Lancaster

Beware of the guy who tells you that a hoax that takes advantage of autistic kids and their parents is at the core of understanding life here on earth.

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

Beginning of Wisdom (Torah Club) lesson #16: Explaining salvation through the lens of Hasidic Judaism

There is much that we, as disciples of Jesus gathered together in the Church can learn from both ancient and modern Judaism.  The scriptures themselves contain many of these truths and lessons, but when and where other sources connected to Judaism contain Truth, we should not allow pride or prejudice to stand in the way of embracing it.  To an extent, this same principle applies to every other philosophy and religion on the basis of the general revelation that the Apostle Paul describes in Romans 1.  Truth is Truth even when those who hold it have only a small piece of the whole.  With respect to Judaism there is an added layer because the descendants of Abraham were chosen by God to be his covenantal people and given ongoing insight through special revelation from the time of Moses through the time of their greatest prophet, Jesus of Nazareth.  It is useful, then, for Christians to consider Truth when it is found in the Talmud (for example), for many of its rabbinic sources were men of faith looking forward to the Messiah (Hebrews 11).  Given that these oral traditions were not codified until the 4th century (Jerusalem Talmud) or the 5th century (Babylonian Talmud), the influence of the editors/compilers who rejected Jesus as the Messiah is also to be expected.  Nevertheless, texts like these retain some value for the Christian study of the Hebrew Scriptures in particular, offering us insights into how the text was interpreted in ancient times by the Jewish people.  

All this is what the First Fruits of Zion purports to be doing, and if this was all there was to it, I'd be supportive of their work as it would mirror my own educational efforts with respect to the original authors and audience of God's Word.  But that's not where it ends.

When utilizing sources from those who do not believe in Jesus, if they are those who believed in the God of Abraham, as is the case here, or those who did not, like the Greek philosophers that have influenced Church history, it is necessary that we proceed with caution especially when the topic at hand relates to the message of the Gospel.

For example, what the Talmud says about Isaiah 53 is of interest to the Church {For a useful discussion: Isaiah 53: The Forbidden Chapter - by R.L. Solberg} but ultimately this prophecy is about Jesus of Nazareth and those voices within Judaism which point in a different direction (that Israel itself is the Suffering Servant) have historical but not theological authority for Christians.  Let us treat these voices within Judaism, both ancient and modern, with respect and dignity, but they have no authority over those who claim Jesus as Lord and Savior.

Which brings us to this example from the Torah Club lesson The Beginning of Wisdom #16 published in 2022 by FFOZ.  It is of historic significance for the Church to understand how various voices within the diverse opinions that constitute Judaism through the centuries have discussed the issue of salvation.  This is a worthwhile topic of study.  What did they believe that mankind needed to be saved from?  What did they think God's role in this salvation was and what was the role of human beings?  What is the role of faith, works, and grace in their view?  Answers to these questions have value and are worthy of study by Christian writers, theologians, and teachers.  But at the same time, we must recognize that if the source we're studying doesn't accept Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, neither the foundation nor the conclusions offered by that source can have any theological authority for followers of Jesus.

If Jesus isn't the heart and soul of your explanation of God's offer of salvation to humanity, what you have to say at best is helpful so that I might properly share the Gospel with those who believe as you do, but at worst your ideas are, to use Paul's term, a "stumbling block."  Again, this is true whether that source comes from Judaism, Greek Philosophy, Islam, Rationalism, Hinduism, or any other.  As Acts 4:12 makes abundantly clear, "Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.”

So when FFOZ shares one of the ways in which Hasidic Judaism (they spell it Chasidic) defines the cause of the human condition and God's response to it, it has historic value, but it cannot be presented by any orthodox understanding of Christianity as divine Truth.  On page 10, Daniel Lancaster prefaces this forthcoming tale of the preexistent soul's journey by saying, "Its an incredible journey."  On page 11, there is an attempt to connect this idea of the preexistent human soul to the Gospel message of repentance, Christ's atonement, faith, and forgiveness, which is a good thing, but the yeast has already been mixed in with the dough.  If FFOZ wanted to present this material as something to take note of, but not something it expects Torah Club members to believe, they would need to say so loud and clear, but they fail in this particular case and reinforce that failure by using the study questions #2 and #3 (see picture above) to reinforce the teaching that they took from Paul Philip Levertoff whom they say borrowed the ideas from Hasidic Judaism.  This is not a one-off bit of sloppiness where admiration for an early Messianic Jewish leader got the better of Lancaster who has taught over and over again in this series that he believes that accepting that our souls existed in paradise with God before we were born is a foundational teaching, one that has come up in roughly every other lesson, each time with a stamp of approval.

And this ultimately is the danger of not exercising discernment about the sources that are trusted to teach Christians about theology.  It isn't that FFOZ doesn't teach the Truth at all, at times they sound like an evangelical organization, but this Truth is always mixed with a wide variety of errors that were condemned by the Early Church (such as Subordinationism and Modalism), or as is the case here, come from modern Jewish mysticism.  The resulting mish-mash is something that neither Judaism nor Christianity can stomach as it attempts to shoe-horn Jesus into categories and concepts that were made by those who rejected Jesus as Messiah, all the while telling Gentile Christians who don't know better that this is the "authentic" and "original" belief of those who first followed Jesus.  The end result isn't pretty.

Beginning of Wisdom (Torah Club) lesson #8: Leaning into the mysticism of Kabbalah

Note the terms: World of Concealment and World of Truth

Note Lancaster's description of demons and angels contending over the souls of the dead

One of the things that jumps out if you read The Beginning of Wisdom Torah Club series one after another (as I've done in order to point out the concrete examples of extra-biblical and unorthodox teachings they contain) is how much Daniel Lancaster relies upon the Wisdom of Solomon.  The Wisdom of Solomon was likely written by someone in the Alexandrian Jewish community in the generations leading up to the birth of Jesus, and it was subsequently included in the Greek translation of the Jewish scriptures known as the Septuagint (or LXX).  As a text, it contains ideas derived both from Jewish thought and Greek Platonic philosophy, which isn't surprising given that Alexandria was a renowned center of Greek philosophical thought for centuries.  In addition to this influence, which is something the Early Church would have been very familiar with, for it both embraced Greek philosophy on some matters, and contended against it in others {Gnostic Dualism being the most famous antagonist}, Lancaster also weaves into the Torah Club materials medieval Jewish mysticism in the form of Kabbalah.

Now, I'll be the first to tell you that Jewish medieval mysticism is not a topic that has ever been on my list of things that I need to study as a disciple of Jesus, then again, neither has Islamic Sufism or the various forms of mysticism that have operated under the guise of Christianity.  The idea that the path to divine knowledge is through mystical experience is foreign to those of us who embrace the Reformation's proclamation of Sola Scriptura (Scripture Alone).  Why?  Because it cannot be replicated, it cannot be evaluated, and it cannot be questioned.  If someone tells you they had a mystical experience where God told them that the human soul is protected from demons trying to take it to hell after death by an angelic force {as Lancaster does in this Torah Club lesson}, what is the rebuttal?  Mystical knowledge is, by definition, only available to those who experience it, and at the same time due to its dream-like nature, open to broad interpretation.

In this case Daniel Lancaster is teaching that the "insights" of Jewish mysticism are in fact true, more than that, that these ideas can be used as the rubric that explains holy scripture.  Therein lies the growing danger, "because the Jewish mystics say so" is not any safer a path to follow for a disciple of Jesus than, "because the Christian mystics say so."  In the end, God's Word has never required mystical experience to be understood.  Whenever people, well meaning or otherwise, have tried to impose upon it allegorical interpretation or mystical knowledge, the results have been to take those who listen to them away from the plain meaning of the text.  If the plain meaning of the text, that available to the educated and uneducated alike, to the novice as well as to the veteran, was what this path desired, there would be no need for arbitrary allegorical or mystical insights.  Where does it stop?  If the "sages" that Lancaster likes to cite (but never seems to actually quote) deny the resurrection of Jesus, is that out-of-bounds?  Is that a bride-too-far, or are these supposed wise men to be followed wherever they lead?  We've already seen a willingness from Lancaster and FFOZ to abandon the Trinity because it doesn't fit their new "gospel," is there reason to believe that any of the truths that our ancestors in the faith were willing to die for aren't also up for grabs?

In case you are wondering, if you are a follower of Jesus Christ, someone who has been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb and given the new birth of the Holy Spirit, NOTHING can separate you from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8), so there is a zero percent chance that demonic forces would need to be thwarted by angels to allow your soul to ascend to heaven.  That's utter nonsense because Jesus has already conquered sin and death, therefore the spiritual forces of evil do not contend with Jesus, they flee from him.

Note: This entire premise of Lancaster is once again built upon the assumption of a pre-existent human soul, an idea repeated as if it were fact in this Torah Club lesson as well, and an idea that was condemned as heresy at the Second Council of Constantinople AD 553.