The very first Torah Club lesson (covering Genesis 1:1-6:8) undermines the Trinity

The comment section of my YouTube channel's videos on the First Fruits of Zion over and over contain a variation on this complaint, "I'm in a Torah Club and it isn't anything like what you've described."  This is often followed by a polite, or not so polite, accusation that I'm a fool or a liar for claiming that the First Fruits of Zion teaches unorthodox things like denying the Trinity.  Those seminar videos that are being commented upon contain primary source quote after quote, but perhaps that isn't enough.  Having already shown two powerful examples of anti-Trinitarian statements from Daniel Lancaster {The original audio version of Daniel Lancaster's Only Begotten Son is even more heretical. and The boldly heretical anti-trinitarianism of Daniel Lancaster (One of the key leaders of the FFOZ and Torah Clubs) in his own words}, now the task becomes demonstrating that these ideas are contained within the Torah Club materials themselves.  We don't have to look far, Lesson #1 of The Beginning of Wisdom, copyright 2022, contains ideas that undermine the orthodox Christian belief that Jesus was fully God and fully Man, and that he pre-existed with the Father and the Spirit as the Word of God as part of the holy Trinity (John 1).

Page 21 of Lesson 1 follows after a long discussion of the personification of Wisdom (setting up what is to come) drawn in part from the apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon, as well as the assertion of the pre-existence of the human soul before our conception (p. 13-14), "To become a human being, the spirit must leave its abode in the heavens and inhabit an earthly body."  As well as, "The spirit within you longs to return to the communion with God that it enjoyed before leaving heaven, entering a human conception, and becoming you."  

Another comment that I find about Torah Clubs is this, "The Church never taught me that!"  It is typically used with a sense of wonder at what the Torah Clubs are teaching, and/or scorn at the supposed laxity of the Church's educational efforts.  In this case, the Church certainly hasn't taught you that because the preexistence of the human soul was condemned at the Council of Chalcedon (AD 451) {For further explanation see: Could a person’s spirit have existed before their soul was created?} with this statement, "If anyone asserts the fabulous pre-existence of souls, and shall assert the monstrous restoration which follows from it: let him be anathema."  This discussion about pre-existent souls ought to raise a red flag among Bible believing Christians who are invited to participate in a Torah Club, but given that this is a secondary theological issue, perhaps for many it went unnoticed.  But what about the Trinity, surely playing fast and loose with the Trinity would send them running for the exits?

"The pre-existent, supernal wisdom of God through whom all things were created ultimately tabernacled among us in the person of the Messiah, Yeshua of Nazareth.  He is God's wisdom made flesh...Yeshua embodies God's wisdom in physical form." In the midst of this quote the Torah Club lesson cites 1 Corinthians 1:24 and 2:7, neither of which is saying that Jesus was God's personified wisdom, that's not what Paul was talking about there in either verse.  This is a oft-repeated pattern with FFOZ.  When the scriptures are quoted the citations often do not connect with how they're being used, and/or the verses are paraphrased or given with word-substitutions that change the meaning.  As to the quote itself, do you see one God with multiple modes/facets (heresy), or one God with three persons (orthodoxy)?  Wisdom isn't capitalized as it would be in English if they were writing about a person.  Also, "in the person" hints back at Lancaster's teaching (see the links above) that the man Jesus is only "indwelt" by God, he isn't directly spoken of as God.  "Yeshua embodies God's wisdom" is short of saying, "Jesus is God."  Hair-splitting?  Not at all.  Who Jesus is is a vital question.

"This concept helps us understand the prologue of the Gospel of John.  If we think of God's supernal word as the expression of His divine wisdom, we could understand the first few verses of the Gospel of John like this:

In the beginning was the Wisdom,

And the Wisdom was with God,

And the Wisdom was God.

It was in the beginning with God.

Everything was made to exist through Wisdom,

And nothing that was made to exist was made to exist except by it.

And the Wisdom became flesh,

And dwelt among us,

And we saw Wisdom's glory,

Glory as of the only begotten from the Father,

Full of grace and truth.

(Paraphrase of John 1:1-3, 14)"

I didn't know the followers of Jesus needed to paraphrase John 1 to understand the Apostle.  In John's actual text, it is clear that the Word has the agency of a person, in this paraphrase, however, the Wisdom is an "it," it is an "expression" not (really or fully) a person.  This is in keeping with the unorthodox views taught by FFOZ about the nature of God that most resembles the ancient heresy of Modalism.  

Either Jesus Christ is fully God, and fully human, or he is something less.

Either the Word of God is the 2nd person of the Trinity, with full personhood and eternal preexistence, or he is something less.

The very first Torah Club lesson is undermining the traditional and orthodox understanding of the Church about Jesus Christ.

The original audio version of Daniel Lancaster's Only Begotten Son is even more heretical.

I have already responded to the outrageous heresy contained in the transcript of Daniel Lancaster's The Only Begotten Son in this post: The boldly heretical anti-trinitarianism of Daniel Lancaster (One of the key leaders of the FFOZ and Torah Clubs) in his own words.  However, multiple people who have listened to the audio file from Beth Immanuel's website have noticed differences in the audio (i.e. the transcript edited them out) that point even harder at a denial from Lancaster of the orthodox nature of Jesus Christ.  Below, then, are these more damaging statements with the timestamp so that anyone can hear for themselves what the creator of the Torah Club materials for the First Fruits of Zion believes about the nature and person of Jesus Christ.  Commentary in bold below follows each quote.

6:14  We already learned that God is the first cause that he created the whole universe and that he did it through his paintbrush, which is his word when he said, "Let there be."  And so he created a version of himself.  Like when you create a version of yourself online, what do you call that?  Yeah, an avatar, right? That's it. He created an avatar. Oh, that's the word. OK, he created an avatar of himself to enter the world. And and we called that the word, and this avatar is the is God as we know him in the world.

The additional heretical material here includes, "he created a version of himself" and "He created an avatar."  In the transcript the notion that the Word is an avatar of God that was created by God is edited out.  What we end up with here are two heretical ideas: (1) That the Word is created by God, this is the heresy of the Jehovah's Witnesses who believe that Jesus is the highest being created by God, and (2) that when we see God interacting in the world it is only a "version" of God, leaving humanity/creation without any actual connection to God. 

7:25 The word of God then divested himself, like took off his outer garment so to speak and clothed himself in a human body.  Kind of like the word would dwell in the Tabernacle or would dwell in the temple. But this time he came to dwell in a person named Yeshua Ben Yosef from Nazareth. Yes. {An audience member asks a difficult to hear question, "Is that like all of himself, or did he take a part of himself?"} Great question. No, this is still the avatar. This is still the avatar is the one divesting. So it's just like this, it's this finite version of God as we know him within the universe. 

In the transcript this reads, "the Word came to dwell within the human being named Yeshua ben Yosef of Nazarth."  The spoken version above is similar, but worse in that it clarifies that Lancaster believes that Yeshua Ben Yosef (Jesus son of Joseph) was a created human being with a separate life/spirit from that of the Word of God...The spoken question from the audience is extremely hard to hear, but as best I can tell the student wants to know if the Word is all of God (HaShem) or just a part of God?  To which Lancaster replies, incredibly, "No, this is still the avatar."  This again solidifies the charge against Lancaster of Modalism because neither the Word nor Jesus is truly God, only an avatar that God created of himself.

9:55 The human body of Yeshua is not God.  Nor is it the word of God, the avatar of God.

What then is Jesus??  To Lancaster, Jesus is NOT God, then again, neither is the Word of God, that is only an "avatar of God."  There is no hint of the hypostatic union of divinity and humanity into the one person Jesus Christ.  Athanasius would have recognized this ancient heresy about Jesus, one that was rejected at the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon.

13:15 For example, when Yeshua is praying in the garden of Gethsemane, he says he prays. He's praying. You know, "Take this cup from me if you can." But he says, "Not my will but your will be done." So I mean, what does that imply? That implies that he has his own will, which is a separate will from the will of God.  Isn't that interesting? OK. And also, I mean, just the fact that he's praying is also sort of a hint, because otherwise he'd be talking to himself. {Laughter from the audience.}

The part not retained in the transcript is, "So I mean, what does that imply?  That implies that he has his own will, which is a separate will from the will of God?  Isn't that interesting."  This, then, is an even stronger indicator that Lancaster believes that the will of Jesus of Nazareth is separate from the will of God, that they can be distinguished, even in opposition.  How is this possible? (1) Lancaster believes that the Word is not God, it is his created avatar, (2) that Jesus of Nazareth is a human being that was indwelt by the Word, not that Jesus IS the Word, and (3) ultimately he is a unitarian monotheist which requires that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all lose their personhood and become instead modalistic "roles" that God plays...As it did during the Malchut conference videos, the laughter of the audience is telling, they evidently find the joke that Lancaster makes about Jesus talking to himself during the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane to be funny. 

15:41 The Word that became flesh in the person of Yeshua did something similar by divesting its identity to indwell, a man, a real human being and lived through the life of Yeshua of Nazareth. 

The transcript has, "and live a real human life through Yeshua of Nazareth."  The difference is subtle, in the audio Lancaster says, "and lived through the life of Yeshua of Nazareth."  It may be subtle, but it is significant, because it gives further weight to the charge against Lancaster that he's teaching the heresy that Jesus of Nazareth's life is a thing of its own apart from the Word of God.  He doesn't mention the Virgin Birth, but why would it be necessary if the "human body of Yeshua is not God."?

16:57  I mean, how can God be tempted? It says, "God is not tempted."  Right in the Torah. So how could, how could he have been tempted? You know, if he was aware, if he was God on an aware level?

This explosive comment is left out of the transcript altogether, and for good reason.  Lancaster is hinting here at the notion that Jesus is not aware of his own deity (an absurd claim in light of the Gospel of John).  While we do not fully understand the mystery of the Incarnation, nor are the Gospels attempting to be a theology textbook, this is yet another example of a lesser version of Jesus put forth by FFOZ or one of their teachers.

17:18  And and another thing, it wouldn't be any great accomplishment for him to be righteous. I mean, of course, HaShem isn't going to commit a sin. Of course, Hashem doesn't get points for being righteous. He is righteous. There's no, you see what I'm saying? But Yeshua on the other hand, earned God's merit and favor by doing so, by passing temptations and trials.

The change in the transcript is to largely omit this section.  The simple comment, "But Yeshua on the other hand." is Lancaster's way of reinforcing the distinction between God and the avatar/Word/Jesus that unlike HaShem is evidently capable of sin.

Conclusion: The transcript of The Only Begotten Son that Beth Immanuel (where Lancaster serves as "pastor") is bad enough, as my previous post (link at the top of this post) demonstrated, it was full of boldly heretical statements.  The original audio is worse as these seven examples show.  The notion that Daniel Lancaster is "wise" or "learned" in the scriptures is laughable given the presence of these ancient heresies, and the idea that Christians would allow this man to become their teacher by becoming a part of a Torah Club is terrifying.

6 months since October 7, there are no winners here: A response to the essay by Frida Ghitis (CNN, 4/5/24)

 

{“In war, whichever side may call itself the victor, there are no winners, but all are losers.” - Neville Chamberlain     That quote would probably be better remembered if it wasn’t from Neville Chamberlain.  The former British Prime Ministers is best remembered for appeasing the maniac Adolf Hitler before WWII started.  But Chamberlain wasn’t wrong.  He was about Hitler in particular, there was no bargaining with that evil man, but he was right about war.  Even when it is necessary, even when it could be deemed a righteous act of defending the weak against the strong, one doesn’t “win” a war, one survives it, and hopefully limits the damage.  That’s the situation that Israel has been facing since October 7^th of 2023: it can’t win, the only question is how costly will survival be both to the Israelites themselves and to the Palestinians.  The essay below is attempting to reason through to that conclusion.}

Almost exactly six months ago, Israelis awoke to a nightmare. Civilians in the southern part of the country, areas near the border with Gaza, were under a brutal, ongoing attack. It would become the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust and a prelude to unspeakable suffering on both sides of the border.

{To think and talk about the costs of the war against Hamas that followed after October 7^th is not to minimize the horror of that day.  The same is true for the tragedies of 9/11, Pearl Harbor, and the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.  In each case an act of sudden evil caught a people off-guard and led to a forceful and far greater response.  In each case, moral questions were raised by how the aggrieved party responded and by the unintended consequences of those responses.  The original moral evil in all four instances has no excuse, no justification, no sympathy.}

Six months after Hamas launched that deadly rampage, knowing that Israel’s response would be ferocious, there are only losers in this terrible war.

It’s hard now to find many winners with the death toll mounting among Gazans and hunger growing in the strip. And with Israeli hostages still held captive, perhaps in dank Hamas tunnels.

{As it was with WWI, WWII, and the War on Terror, so it has been in Israel and Gaza.  War takes on a life of its own, one action leads to another, one cost justifies another.  WWI left an entire generation decimated and cynical, it weakened institutions that were necessary for civilization leaving them unable to stop the march toward WWII.  WWII gave us not only the firebombing of entire cities, but the atomic bomb and the Holocaust as well.  The scale of the War on Terror was much smaller than WWI and WWII, but it still left us with the Patriot Act, drone strikes across the globe, seemingly endless war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the shame of Abu Ghraib.  Looking back upon history, each response appears solidly unavoidable, each war a product of choices made at the time that felt reasonable, but if that is indeed true and such death and destruction was the inevitable result of what had preceded it, we still must count the cost to both the innocent who suffered alongside the perpetrators and how fighting those wars changed us as well.  It is in this vein that All Quiet on the Western Front and Slaughterhouse Five were written, among many others.  And so, it is entirely reasonable to look at the Israel/Hamas War after six months and count the cost, to remind ourselves that history teaches us that we should not expect to find any winners.}

For Hamas, the fact that war continues may count as a victory, but thousands of Hamas’ fighters — the exact number is disputed — have been killed. Hamas may be decimated, perhaps unable to hold on to power, but that’s no victory for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is under growing global pressure and besieged by protesters at home, and whose legacy will be forever darkened.

Even US President Joe Biden has paid a price, caught in an election-year political vise between those who think he is too supportive of Israel and those who think he has been too critical.

The strife has also detonated a worldwide explosion of antisemitism, reviving a hatred that had lain lightly dormant. It’s causing anxiety across Europe, and leading some American Jews to conclude that one country where they had felt safe is no longer a haven, as they face antisemitism from the left and the right. Anti-Muslim bigotry has also increased.

This awful chapter started on October 7 last year, when Hamas terrorists breached what was supposed to be a secure border and slaughtered Israelis in their beds, in their living rooms, in their cars, at an outdoor music festival and bus shelters and parks.

They raped countless women with horrifying brutality.

Israeli security forces were nowhere to be found for hours. Hamas — the Iran-allied group that rules Gaza — killed more than 1,200 Israelis and dragged back hundreds more as hostages. The area lay in ruins. Israelis’ sense of security had been shattered.

Today, it is Gaza that lies in ruins, tens of thousands of Palestinians killed by Israel in its quest to uproot and destroy Hamas. As Israel crushes Gaza, its global reputation is getting shattered. But still the IDF believes around 100 Israeli hostages remain captive of Hamas and other militants in conditions that one shudders to imagine.

This week’s Israeli strike on a World Central Kitchen (WCK) convoy, killing seven aid workers, adds to the calamity of this convulsion in the perennially unstable crossroads of the Middle East. Amid the outrage and heartbreak, WCK’s founder, celebrity chef José Andrés, accuses Israel of targeting his staff. Israel has apologized, saying the convoy was misidentified. Israel has fired two officers and reprimanded senior commanders after an inquiry into the strike.

{The cost has been high.  Evil like that unleashed on October 7^th against innocent men, women, and children always leads to a ripple effect of costs, nearly always spirals out of control.  Inevitable?  Perhaps, but still horrific, still worthy of lament.}

There was never any question that Israel would respond to October 7. It had been attacked by a group that promised it would repeat the massacre of Israelis and is backed by Iran, a country whose leaders have vowed to destroy Israel. The attack led some there to conclude that whatever price Israel should pay for absolute victory — including in global public opinion — it is worth paying. Besides, the attackers kidnapped hundreds of its citizens, including women, children and the elderly. Israel needed to save them.

{I remember the days after 9/11.  There was never any doubt that wherever these terrorists were hiding, American bombs and bullets would find them.  That day’s shock and horror gave rise quickly to songs and slogans about stomping on terrorists, and to a sudden rise in anti-Islamic sentiment among a people who previously had spent little time thinking about Islam.  Likewise, Israel was going to respond, and with much greater force than Hamas had employed (because of the limits of Hamas’ resources, not a limit on its hatred, they’ve stated many times their desire to kill all Jews).

This is not the response envisioned by Jesus when he commanded us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.  Even if a government needs to respond with war to protect its citizens, the hatred that war gives birth to in the hearts of the people who were attacked is a tragedy.  Few times in Church history has the response to evil been forgiveness and mercy.  Individuals have responded to their own suffering, even martyrdom, with Christ-like forgiveness, but rarely has this translated to a whole people.  Sadly, when our nation experienced tragedy similar to what Israel has just lived through, the Church in America wasn’t able (much of it wasn't willing) to be a voice of reconciliation after 9/11, myself included.  The desire for justice, even messy justice that says, “Kill them all, let God sort them out” is a powerful enticement.  The path of peace after injustice is brutally hard, for this reason we are in awe of those like Nelson Mandela who choose it instead of vengeance.}

In the immediate aftermath, world leaders expressed support for Israel. But when the death toll in Gaza starting climbing, as Hamas knew it would, international support for Israel turned to withering criticism. In the most painful irony of all, Israel — the country that became home to Holocaust survivors, under attack by a group whose original charter outlined a genocidal ideology and a vow to destroy Israel — was itself perversely accused of genocide.

{Entirely predictable.  The initial support followed by eventual criticism as the death and destruction continued is the exact same pattern that America experienced after 9/11.  The primary difference between the two stories is that the reality of global antisemitism gave Israel a shorter runway between sympathy and criticism, i.e. a much briefer window to respond to terrorism before criticism, justifiable or not, began to mount.}

As always, the greatest suffering, the biggest losers, have been civilians on both sides. Palestinians in Gaza are enduring a living nightmare. The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says more than 30,000 have been killed in the conflict. The figures don’t distinguish between combatants and civilians, but there’s little doubt that horrifyingly large numbers of them, including children, have been killed. The territory is a wasteland.

Gazans are caught between the cynicism of Hamas, the geopolitical concerns of their Arab neighbors and Israel’s determination to win at any cost. Hamas leaders, comfortable in exile, proclaimed early on that they are “proud to sacrifice martyrs.” Hamas fighters embedded themselves in Gaza’s population, including in hospitals, essentially daring Israel to kill civilians to get to them.

In most wars, civilians would have been allowed to flee the fighting, but the people of Gaza were not allowed to leave the territory whether they wanted to or not. Hamas urged them to stay. Egypt, worried about whether Israel would allow the people to return and concerned about instability on its soil, closed its border to all but a small number of Palestinian civilians.

The cruel fact is that the lives of Palestinians have not been the highest priority for anyone in this war.

{It has always been this way in human history, innocent civilians always pay the highest price in war.  It has also always been true that the evil men who sow the seeds of war rarely are the ones who pay the consequences, that’s one of the reasons why they’re willing to start down that path in the first place.}

Complicating the situation is the political crisis in Israel, which preceded the October 7 attack. Netanyahu — a political survivor who faces corruption charges — already presided over the most right-wing government in Israel’s history. Before the war, tens of thousands of Israelis took to the streets in nearly 10 months of weekly protests against a plan that would have severely weakened Israeli democracy by stripping the Supreme Court of much of its power.

Netanyahu was, in my view and others’, already the worst prime minister in Israel’s history even before October 7.

Polls have found that most Israelis want him gone. Now Benny Gantz, a member of the war cabinet but also the leading opposition figure before the war, has called for new elections in September. Recent polling says say he’s Netanyahu’s most likely successor.

Devastation in Gaza as Israel wages war on Hamas

The fact that Netanyahu is heading the government during one of the most dangerous, most damaging times in Israel’s history only adds to the disturbing nature of this conflict. Israel is not in good hands.

Would another leader, a different government, have been able to conduct the war with fewer civilian deaths, with less damage to Israel’s global standing, without eroding the vital relationship between Israel and the United States? I suspect the answer is yes.

{Few leaders are up to the task of shepherding their people through a time of war and at the same time minimizing the cost that it exacts from both their own people and the civilians on the other side.  While it is true that Netanyahu has numerous critics both in Israel and beyond, I think the essay strays in this section away from the salient and necessary conversation about the cost of war itself.}

If there’s any glimmer of hope in this dispiriting landscape it is that the young Abraham Accords — which normalized relations between Israel and some of its Arab neighbors — have survived the toughest of stress tests. That augurs well for the long run, for more stability of the region, eventually.

{What lies on the other side of this war?  None know for certain.  If there is a path to a wider peace between Israel and its neighbors, it will feel like a miracle.  We can hope that the horrors of this war will make it harder to start the next one.}

It opens the door to the possibility that once this war is over, once the post-war phase — whatever that looks like — also comes to an end, there could be a new architecture that leads to peace. For that to happen, however, two of the many losing protagonists in this conflict, Hamas and Netanyahu, cannot remain in power.

{We have set aside time in our worship services each Sunday since October 7^th to pray for Israel and Gaza, for the Jews and the Palestinians, for Christians, Muslims, and followers of Judaism in the Holy Land.  As I lead these prayers, my focus is primarily upon those suffering from the war, on both sides, pleading to God to protect them.  I also pray for a just and lasting peace, admitting in my prayers that I don’t know how we get from here to there.  Which leaders would it require and what choices would they need to make?  That answer is in God’s hands alone.  I don’t know if peace is possible with Netanyahu as the Prime Minister of Israel, because nobody really knows the answer to that question.  And so, rather than calling for specific steps, my prayers leave the “how” in the hands of God, and focus instead on the ordinary people whose lives have been forever changed by this violence, may they be protected, comforted, and healed, and may peace prevail even after the horrors of war.}

{Lastly, talking to my Bible Study group and leading FB Live prayers just after October 7^th, I said, “There are no good choices left.”  I then explained that whatever the government of Israel did next, the choices would all be bad, and the cost high.  The same calculus existed for the Palestinians, they would only have bad choices left to them after what Hamas had done.  That wasn’t prophecy, simply an awareness of history because humanity has seen this cycle play out over and over again.  Unfortunately, this time hasn’t been an exception to the rule, this war has been like so many others that preceded it.  Whatever happens next, let us pray for those in need, let us hope for justice and peace.}

Sermon Video: In the beginning God - Genesis 1:1-2

Why did Moses write Genesis 1-3, and why did the Holy Spirit inspire him to do so?  The answer to that question isn't to satisfy modern Western reader's desires to know how and when God created, but rather to speak to the Ancient Near Eastern culture's thirst for the answer to the questions of who and why.  In the end, that's what Genesis will give us because it is about the relationship between God and humanity, and ultimately between God and his chosen people.  For them, the who was the same God who had led them up out of Egypt to Sinai, and the why they already were experiencing as God laid forth his covenant with them, building on the covenant with Abraham.

Is the earth 6,000 years old or 6 billion?  That's not a question Genesis is trying to answer.  Did God use evolutionary processes or not?  That's not on its radar either.  What we do find in Genesis 1-3 is the foundation to answer the most important questions of life: Who am I?  Why am I here?

Sermon Video: With Jesus on the road to Emmaus - Luke 24:13-35

What did Jesus do on the afternoon of Easter Sunday?  As it turns out, he took a walk with two of his disciples and spent a few hours explaining to them how the Hebrew prophets of old had predicted everything that would happen to the Messiah, including his suffering and death.  As we celebrate Easter, let us remember our need to share this Good News with those who need it most.

Our video feed wasn't ended as usual when the sermon concluded, so this video also includes my prayer for Israel and Gaza and our final hymn.