Sermon Video: Sing and Make Music to the Lord - Ephesians 5:15-20

After warning disciples of Jesus that they need to make "the most of every opportunity" through wise living because the "days are evil," the Apostle Paul transitions naturally to our need to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

How then do we embrace our connection to the Spirit of God?  One key way is through worship, particularly worship through music and song.  So, whether you like to sing or not, whether you can carry a tune or not, sing to the Lord!

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.

Sermon Video: Children of Light - Ephesians 5:8-14

Light vs. Dark imagery is very common in the Bible.  In fact, when seeing a vision of God, or meeting an angel, the text typically describes the scene by reference to dazzlingly bright light.  The Apostle Paul utilizes this analogy often, telling us that we were in darkness but now have seen the Light of Christ.  Here in Ephesians, however, Paul goes a step further.  He proclaims that we WERE darkness but now in the Lord we ARE light.  It isn't about the place, but the person.  God's power not only transforms this world, it transforms human beings.

As Children of the Light, we now must embrace goodness, righteousness, and truth.  Additionally, we cannot have anything to do with the deeds of our former darkness, instead we must expose such deeds that the light may continue to overcome evil.

Beginning of Wisdom (Torah Club) lesson #41: More disparaging of grace and using a folktale to interpret scripture

 I'll admit, I'm a fan of God's grace.  That isn't a hot-take, nor should it raise anyone's eyebrows.  If there are a few folks down through the years who have misunderstood grace, or who have tried to take advantage of God's grace, throwing it overboard in response would be ludicrous in the extreme...

Lesson 41 page 6: "The church's loud and predominant teachings about God's grace also make it difficult for people to believe in God's wrath.  Ever since the Protestant Reformation, the emphasis on grace has tipped the scale so severely off balance that many Christians anticipate no consequences for sin whatsoever.  That's a good recipe for neutralizing the fear of the LORD, neutering the gospel message, and storing up wrath."

It turns out that First Fruits of Zion has a problem with grace.  Technically, they have a problem with the Protestant Church's emphasis on grace because they think it undermines God's wrath.  Once again in this Torah Club lesson we have the Straw Man brought out to tell us that "many" Protestants think that there are no consequences, at all, to sin.  Why would Protestants think something so foolish?  Apparently because they spend to much time praising God's grace.  

Set aside for the moment that this is patently false.  There is no substantial part of the Protestant Church that teaches that believers are free to sin because grace has "neutered" God's wrath.  Given that there are hundreds of thousands of pastors worldwide, I'm sure FFOZ could trot out a few examples of crackpots in defense of their spurious claim, but to claim that this is so widespread that it needs a correction (that's coming) is ridiculous.  This is a logical fallacy known as argumentum ad absurdum.  If you claim that your opponent (and FFOZ's opponent is most assuredly the Church) believes something so foolish, those listening to you will be more likely to believe your "cure" for the non-existent disease.

What then is the point?  Why would FFOZ make such an explosive claim, attacking the fundamental viewpoint about the Gospel of 1/3 of the Church?  What are they trying to put in the place of grace?

Lesson 41,page 7: "It's important to remember that the New Testament Greek word translated as grace (charis) is the Greek equivalent to the Biblical Hebrew word we see translated as 'favor.'  It's the same concept and should be translated consistently to avoid confusion." 

First Fruits of Zion wants to redefine grace.  Redefine it how??  In a way that contradicts what the Church, particularly Protestantism, has long celebrated about God's grace.  Why would it matter if FFOZ wants to equate grace in the NT with favor in the Old?  The 2023 edition of HaYesod lays forth the whole plan {HaYesod's 2023 edition (First Fruits of Zion, Torah Club) heretically redefines grace: "grace is earned" and claims humans can atone for sins by suffering}:  Grace = favor = earned.

FFOZ has built its false teaching on the foundation of an eternal, perfect, and unchanging Torah that must be observed by all peoples, in all places, for all time.  When rule keeping is the heart and soul of what you say and do, the natural result is to drift ever further into legalism.  This is human nature, it happens every time.  Conveniently, then, FFOZ now teaches that because Moses earned God's favor, and favor equals grace, we too can earn God's grace.  Not only that, the HaYesod chapter proclaims that human beings can share their extra grace (earned by unjust suffering) with others.

In case you're wondering, grace in the NT and favor in the OT are not one and the same.  Word usage determines word meaning, context is king.  The argument that FFOZ is making doesn't hold water, to simply proclaim that two words in different languages from texts written many generations apart are equal does not make it so.  However, FFOZ must proclaim absolute continuity between the testaments on even things like word definitions because they are viewing all of scripture through the lens of Torah, but that's not how communication, and certainly now how translation, works.

Nobody is earning the grace connected to the Gospel that is proclaimed in the NT.  God chooses to whom he will give it, and God freely gives it.  To say otherwise is an abomination.

Lesson 41 page 9: 'The name of the daughter of Asher was Serah' (Numbers 26:46)...The census mentions a woman named Serah, the daughter of Asher.  She's the granddaughter of the patriarch Jacob, and she also appears in the list of Jacob's seventy children who entered Egypt about three hundred years earlier: 'The sons of Asher: Imnah and Ishvah and Ishvi and Beriah and their sister Serah' (Genesis 46:17)"

To warn about the disparagement of grace in this Torah Club lesson is the proper focus.  That's one of the most dangerous ideas that FFOZ has ever put forth (tough competition there).  So, why am I also highlighting this odd embrace of Jewish folklore as the means of interpreting Genesis 46:17, Numbers 26:46, and 1 Chronicles 7:30?  The answer is simple enough: poor hermeneutical methods result in foolish teachings, or worse.  Why is FFOZ telling Torah Club members that the Serah in Jacob's day was still alive during King David's reign?  Jewish folklore says so.

Lesson 41, page 10: "At the very least, she must have had longevity comparable to that of the earliest generations recorded in the Bible.  Jewish folklore depicts her...According to one legend, she lived into the days of King David, and it was she who saved the inhabitants of Abel from the king's wrath. You certainly don't need to take that literally or believe it all, but, for the record, there really was..."

I've seen this type of caveat many times in FFOZ materials.  A bold claim is made that is pulled from extra-biblical literature, the lesson says "you don't have to believe it," and then the lesson moves ahead with that bold claim assumed as fact.  The "but, for the record" reveals where the heart of the author of this chapter lies.  In case you are wondering, there are plenty of names in the Bible that occur a few times over spans of generations.  To assume that it is the same human being who is still alive solely on the basis of the name is NOT a normal exegetical conclusion.

If the interpretation is just a folktale, and whether Serah lived the normal spans of years or 600 doesn't have any real theological significance, why should we care?  We should care because FFOZ is using these extra-biblical sources to interpret holy scripture.  The other times they use this method are much more consequential.  It is part of a dangerous pattern of treating God's Word as if it is putty to be molded and shaped as needed.  Do other teachers and ministries also selectively utilize and interpret God's Word to suit their viewpoint?  Absolutely, it is sadly far too common.  "What about..." is no excuse.  All who treat God's Word in this manner should be held accountable.

In the end, Lesson #41 of the Beginning of Wisdom is yet another reminder of why no follower of Jesus Christ ought to entrust his or her discipleship to FFOZ.