Following on from the idea that the Moedim of Yah were created on day 4 (or 7), and listed in Leviticus 23, we find that pre-eminent place is given to the 7^th day; the Sabbath day.

Deu 5:12  `Observe the day of the sabbath–to sanctify it, as Jehovah thy God hath commanded thee;

Deu 5:13  six days thou dost labour, and hast done all thy work,

Deu 5:14  and the seventh day is a sabbath to Jehovah thy God; thou dost not do any work, thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy man-servant, and thy handmaid, and thine ox, and thine ass, and all thy cattle, and thy sojourner who is within thy gates; so that thy man-servant, and thy handmaid doth rest like thyself;

Deu 5:15  and thou hast remembered that a servant thou hast been in the land of Egypt, and Jehovah thy God is bringing thee out thence by a strong hand, and by a stretched-out arm; therefore hath Jehovah thy God commanded thee to keep the day of the sabbath.

Yah is quite adamant about the Sabbath and we ignore it at our peril.

Roman Catholics claim that they have the right to change Yah’s (Saturday) Sabbath to the Constantinian ‘Venerable day of the sun’; but keeping a Sunday Sabbath is a Babylonian tradition and it is a blasphemy as such to pretend that man has the authority to adapt pagan traditions as tools with which to worship Yah.

That being said, we must be careful to correctly separate Sabbath commandments from Sabbath tradition.    According to the Psalms, on Sabbath we rest, we meditate and we commune together.    Anything else is a tradition and not a commandment.

The Rabbis have made Sabbath a nightmare by mal-interpretation of the idea of not working on sabbath.    I work as a computer programmer, therefore I do not program computers on Shabbat for that is my normal work.    Rabbinical interpretation however takes the idea of work as the expenditure of energy of any kind.   It is thus (to them) ‘work’ to carry something etc. etc.

It is also forbidden for a smelter to kindle his fire, which the rabbis interpret as firstly applying to everybody, and secondly to not only lighting a fire but switching on an electric light or any appliance or even pressing the buttons on a lift/elevator.    One lady knocked on my door to request that I remove the automatic lamp on the stairs outside the apartment because it caused her to ‘sin’ as the light came on on Shabbat.

On the other hand, many business deals are made in the synagogue at the Shabbat service, which the scriptures forbid.

So how do I personally keep Sabbath?   I am in my late sixties and my family is grown up and left home.   But we usually have Shabbat dinner with other truth seekers, either on Friday evening or on Saturday evening depending upon commitments.   Often we visit my son and his family for lunch on Saturday, sometimes I write, we (my wife and I) meditate and discuss the things of Yah, and we try to rest.

In my house I take responsibility for the way I and my family keep Sabbath, within the framework that Yah supplies.   If I want to do candles, bread wine and blessings, then that is my privilage, Shabbat is made for me and I am not its slave, as long as I observe the basics, then I am at liberty to enjoy.

By keeping (Saturday) Shabbat we demonstrate that we have separated ourselves unto Yah to keep his commandments not man’s (or Satan’s) traditions.    But keeping Shabbat is not easy in those places where a Sunday (or Friday) is considered the norm and there are times when circumstance make life difficult, but do not despair Yah knows that donkeys fall into pits on Shabbat as well.

He in turn reminds us that it is He who brought us out of slavery, with the implication that He can easily put us back into slavery.    The nation that keeps a national Saturday Shabbat will indeed be great.   But the nation that keeps the Sunday of Babylon throws its godship in Yah’s face.    To keep Sunday is to tell Yah that man is greater than God!

On the fourth day of creation Yah set up His appointed times, the KJV translates the Hebrew as seasons but the word is Miqra and the miqra are explained in Leviticus 23.   I will deal with these separately.

Those appointed times are the fundamental of teaching Yah’s Torah, together they paint a picture of the Toraic life and its whole context, they are a pattern by which we can live if we understand them.

Satan does not like the Miqra and he has perverted them, substituted them and systematically eradicated or obfuscated them in people’s lives.    The Constantinian ‘church’ dropped them from its (pagan) calendar preferring to keep the winter solstice (Xmas) and Ishtar (Easter) instead.

Jews keep Purim and Hannuka which celebrate interactions between Yah and man but are not Miqra; but we find Hannuka mentioned in the NT as the “feast of dedication” which Yahushua attended

That Yah defined the Miqra  on the fourth day along with all the other heavenly bodies gives the Miqra substance, and if one stops and considers the significance of this one can understand why Satan does not want these fundamentals of Yah’s truth in man’s existance.

To religionise is also to monetise, and religion is a good career choice for many, but it has nothing to do with Yah and everything to do with extracting the maximum amount of money from a given audience.   I suspect that religion has always been a good form of entertainment and the monetizing of the Miqra started very early.   Thus we find Yahushua clearing the temple of the moneychangers who ran a nice little fraud selling temple coins with which to pay the temple tax due each Passover (it could only be paid in the temple coinage).

Yah gives us a lot of latitude as to how we celebrate his Miqra, He gives us the basics and it is then up to us as to how we incorporate those basics into our culture.   There is nothing wrong with a Seder as long as we understand what bits are Yah’s and what bits are man’s and why.

Here in Sderot we tend to keep it simple, there are not many of us so we tend to have a dinner together at someone’s house and we bless the bread and the wine, and we tend to discuss our latest understandings of things centred around the specific feast being celebrated.   We do not celebrate Xmas because if there were shepherds abiding in the fields watching their flocks, it was not mid-December.    The area around Jerusalem gets very cold so the flocks are brought in just after Sukkot, and if Yahushua was born on the first day of Sukkot, then he would have had his brit on the 8^th day, get the picture?

The Miqra are days where we can keep in contact, with Yah and with each other, we keep Shabbat which is the most important of the Miqra as a family, but the feasts we keep as a community; we commune together, we eat together and discuss the things of Yah together.   Each Miqra is a picture of the life of a Torah keeper, and particularly that of the Torah made flesh and dwelling amongst us.

False witness is a form of lying, particularly in the judicial sense where one is trying to bring down fellow believer.

Many see the belief in Yah as a competition to see who is the ‘best’ in the assembly, and they will lie and cheat in order to keep up appearances.    When we do this, when we create malicious gossip about each other, we forget that Yah can read our motivation easily since He can see the scars and tears it makes upon our spiritual robes.

Lying is necessary in some situations, and we must learn to discern those situations with help from the scriptures, and there appears to be such a thing as a righteous lie, usually in dire circumstances.

But Yah does not lie, His Creation is truth and for Yah to lie means that Creation, and the Torah with which He spoke Creation into existence are not the Truth that we as truth seekers are looking for.   In this context, false witness can be denying Yah’s Torah and teaching men’s fairy tales instead of Yah’s Truths.    We are allowed to get things wrong, we are starting from scratch trying to throw off the pre-conceived idea that is religion, and to substitute the truths that are the reality of Yah’s Creation and to live those truths.    This is not easy, it is much easier to live the lie (false witness) put about by religionists and become part of the acceptable community, once shown the truth we must make a judgement, live that truth, or live the lie.  We live a Torah compliant life to the best of our knowledge and ability or we live the false witness of those Rabbis and Pastors in whom we invest our very salvation.

I try not to, I try to earn my salary, I believe I pay my taxes properly (but who knows, it is all too complicated), I havn’t robbed any banks recently 🙂

Have I stolen from Yah?

Now that’s a different matter, if I believe Yah created me, intending that I live according to His laws and in harmony with His creation, If I believe that Yah made an investment in me, then who am I to refuse the return on His investment, I owe, and I should pay, and therefore the denial of that payment is theft.

Before I can become a Son of Yah I have to be humble and consider myself a servant of Yah, I have to learn not what makes me tick, but what makes Him tick.

A good servant is on hand when needed, in the right place at the right time with the right tools and the knowledge to use them.   He does not ask his master why? He does what is required to the best of his ability and is thankful for his compensation when it arrives.

The world teaches us to demand, to question and to interpret.   Yah does not need our opinions, He knows this world and this life somewhat better than we do; he made it lock, stock and bible.

When we treat Yah with contempt, and when we treat his possessions and people with distain and his scriptures with scorn then we are stealing from Him that essence of Him that has given us this whole life.   That essence which gives us a body and a consiousness with which we can enjoy it, and a life that we can give back to Him because it was never ours to begin with.

Adultery is abandoning your wife and your (young) children.

The man’s role is to provide and keep a home for his wife and children such that the wife can safely bear his children.   She is not a slave and she is not a wage earner.    She is a home and child maker.

Yah does not se ‘sex’ the way that man sees it, and Yah does not see marriage the way that man sees it.

Firstly, if you sleep with a woman then you are already married to her, and your DNA becomes part of her makeup.   It is then your duty before Yah to support her and any offspring.   Only if she then goes to another man for support and is willing to bear his children is there a let-out for the (first) man, because the woman is now in adultery.

Yah is not interested in nuances, His aim is to ensure the survival of mankind by making the family structure stable, adultery makes the family structure insecure.

Marriage too is likened to Yah’s relationship with us, we too can go to other gods for succour and support, but He does not commit adultery, and what is more, He will welcome us when and if we return to Him.

If you fail to support your wife and children you are in adultery, make no mistake.

Yah wants to provide for us too, but only if we trust and rely on him;

“Oh Lord won’t you buy me, a Mercedes Benz” as the song goes, and do you know what, the words are absolutely correct (if you want a Merc that is).   We should be taking our needs, all of them, to Yah, as He is our provider.    That is a hard one, the few times that I have taken Him at His word He has faithfully provided, but I still find it very difficult to live in His provision, not because it is a problem for Him, but because it goes against everything the world has ever taught me about life and manhood and providing…..

Thou shalt not kill is a difficult one; the Hebrew word ‘ratzach’ is connected to ‘murder’ rather than to ‘killing’, but if one translates the commandment as “thou shalt not kill” one is creating a contradiction.

Yah kills, but he does not murder, Torah authorises judicial execution under exceptional circumstances, and whilst this is killing, it is not murder.

But we also have to understand that out lives belong to our Creator anyway, and He does not have to ask our permission to obey His Torah (which He ALWAYS does),  death belongs to Adam and Yah has no truck with the things of men.

Yah can take my life or preserve it as He deems fit, and I trust in Him to get it right, and if I walk according to His Laws and statutes, judgements and advices, then I have nothing to fear from death itself.

The death of Adam is a separation from Yah, and when the flesh dies, the spirit becomes unlaced from it and goes to Hades, there the spirit is ‘judged’ and gets what it deserved according to its spiritual state, Torah compliant or Torah rejecting.   Those who believe in demonic entities will be harvested by those same entities, and those who believe in nihilism will probably be annihilated.

Lazarus was taken to the bosom of Abraham, and probably raised as a first fruit when liberated by Yahushua.   Salvation is not “believing in Jesus”  so much as believing in “Torah made flesh and dwelling amongst us”.   Above all, we cannot attain Righteousness before Yah if we  reject His Torah because if we reject Torah, we reject Torah made flesh too, and that is Yahushua.

The child-parent situation should reflect the believer-Yah situation, such that the child learns to accept that the parent is to be obeyed whether right or wrong in the opinion of the child, a child obeys his parents as we obey Jah, or not as the case may be.

We should be able to trust our parents to do what is best for ourselves, and disobedience starts a slippery slope of doubt and mistrust.

Same with Yah, if we think we know better then we do things our own way and the harmony of our relationship with Yah’s creation is shattered.

We may not like what we read in the TORAH of Moses, but we should think twice about disobeying it because it is based on a knowledge far superior to ours.

When a man and a woman start a sexual relationship, the woman receives the man’s DNA material into her body, and her immune system takes note of it as non-hostile.   Thus when she becomes pregnant, the developing Foetus is recognised and not attacked, not so when the woman has had many partners.

Likewise foreign DNA matter entering through the back passage is attacked, when that matter is semen, designed to penetrate cell walls, then there is a mighty battle at the cellular level where T-cells and seminal fluid battle it out, too much of this leads to exhaustion if the immune system, we call this AIDS and pretend that it is caused by a virus.

Vaginas are designed to accept active sperm cells, anuses are not and damage is done.

Torah handles these situations, even if it is only recently that this knowledge has come to modern science.

Father (and Mother) know best, they may not be perfect but we should respect them, teenagers rebel because they do not understand their own ignorance. Are we teenagers before Yah?

What can I say about Sabbath, it is the most abused of the directly understood commandments; thou shall keep the seventh day ‘set apart’ for rest, meditation and meeting together.

That’s all, no stupid do’s and don’ts, and no alternative days.

The popes decided to change their sabbath to Sunday in honour of their sun god Mithra, but Yah did not change His Sabbath, his Sabbath is still the seventh day starting Friday evening at sunset and ending on Saturday evening at subset.

On that day we do not do our normal daily work, we REST! (to an old crow like me that means that I actually rest, but to the young it can mean play not work)

But there is more:

“For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.”

This is about compliance with creation, if we keep the seventh day Shabbat the we are acknowledging that “In the beginning Yah created”  if we don’t then we are saying “in the beginning man created”.   To keep the seventh day Shabbat is to take the first step in becoming creation compliant, the first step back to the garden of Eden.

There is yet more-

Deu 5:15  and thou hast remembered that a servant thou hast been in the land of Egypt, and Jehovah thy God is bringing thee out thence by a strong hand, and by a stretched-out arm; therefore hath Jehovah thy God commanded thee to keep the day of the sabbath.

Folks, if you want to be a slave in the land of Egypt then don’t keep Yah’s sabbath, its as easy as that!

The first step in leaving the pigsty is to start keeping Yah’s sabbath, in doing so you are accepting Yah as creator, rather than the pope, Darwin or Allah.

But we also have to be sensible about sabbath as well, the Rabbis go overboard and inflict all sorts of petty rules on their flocks, they make Yah’s sabbath a day of tortures.   They have no understanding and have locked Yah in a cupboard like a Torah scroll, only to be wheeled out and patted on the head, as a virtue signal to their followers (those who give them money).

Sabbath was made for me, so that I have a day to call my own, and which I can share with family and friends, and with Yah himself, away from distractions.

Israel is the only country which keeps Sabbath as a nation, and it is prospering despite the other difficulties.   The European and American nations that are departing from the ways of Yah are being slowly diminished and are being invaded and will soon be reduced to rubble.

Yah has warned us, the writing is on the wall!

Sabbath, the seventh day, is special, it is blessed and hallowed by Yah himself, it is, keep it and prosper, break it and your life will be all the more poor, you will live the life of Egypt, life with the pigs.

But in the end, we keep Sabbath because we love and respect Yah and wish to live according to His commandments, His Statutes, His Judgements and His Testimonies. There is nothing that is more important.

How do we take the ‘Lord’s’ name in vain? By calling Him ‘Lord’ (Hebrew Ba’al)?

What is Yah’s name, is it God? Is it HaShem or Adonai or LORD

He requires that we call him by His name Yahovah (short form Yah) but we do not, so what is in a name?   (see Exodus 3)

In Hebrew, a name describes a thing,   It is not just a label as in Western culture, it is a sort of signature, a character reference, and by not obeying Yah’s command to use his name we are throwing our own godship in Yah’s face.

יהוה  the tetragrammaton means ‘I was, I am’ and by implication, ‘I will be’.    That is, I am outside of time.

If we are to humble ourselves before Yah, then we must use this name – He IS the great ‘I AM’!

If we call Him ‘God’ or ‘Lord’ we are actually invoking other gods, if we call Him HaShem or Adonai we are actually  denying his role as Creator, at the behest of those charlatans who set themselves up as ‘sages’.

His name is Yahovah, or a variant of it, it really does not matter if we get the pronunciation of it wrong, after all it was Yah himself who confused language at Babel, and to Yah ALL languages are valid!

In John 18, Yahushua uses the Yah’s name (‘I am’) to demonstrate Yah’s power, and the soldiers are bowled over, He does this to demonstrate that it is HE who is actually in control and that he goes with them of His own (and Yah’s) accord.

This is obvious to anyone who understands Yahovah, but to someone not versed in the Old Testament it is obscure.    We are to use Yah’s name because in so doing we are stating Yah’s nature and character as Creator.   If we use an alternative then we are denying that Yah is the Creator and reducing Him to the level of man’s godship.

So what is a graven image? It is any physical object upon which we bestow godlike attributes, a personal shrine that substitutes for a personal heart-felt relationship with Yahovah our personal Elohim.

As such, the graven image might be the television pumping out worldly propaganda or the smartphone constantly demanding our attention.

Yah means us to become part of His kingdom, part of His creation, and we cannot drag the world into Eden with us.   To be in the presence of Yah means to be wholly immersed in Yah, we cannot bring our iPhone in with us.

We have many distractions, and before the electronic ones, we had churches, pews and kneelers, sermons and sermonizers, choirs and hymns, cantors and stained glass with stars and crosses.

All these things are graven images to try and make us have a physical relationship with the gods (and their priests and rabbis) instead of seeking Yahovah with all our heart.

First we have to acknowledge that Yah actually exists, many down the ages have expected a physical relationship with god and have thus sought to prepare their disciples for a physical encounter.   But we must worship Yah in spirit and in truth not in bricks and mortar, not in glitzy plastic ikons or fine statuary.

We communicate with Yah through and with our hearts, anything else is a graven image and is forbidden.

Yah equates the worship of graven images as hatred, and the consequences are dire and last for generations.   Rather seek FIRST the Kingdom of Yahovah and His Righteousness.