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Greetings from Pastor Craig Lyons of Bet Emet Ministries.
I want you to know that when I began studying the Bible and the languages in which the Bible was written over fifteen years ago I never expected to find what I did nor was I prepared for the extent of what I would uncover in serious study of the Jewish Roots of Christianity. It is important for you to know at the outset that I was raised in a traditional “fundamentalist Baptist” home and would later, in answering the call of God in my life, attend some twenty years after obtaining a Pharmacy degree for the University of Texas, in Austin, Texas, Southwest Baptist Seminary in Ft. Worth, Texas, where I received an excellent Bible education (from a Protestant perspective). Let me tell you that while there a terrible mistake occurred ….they taught me Greek and Hebrew which only propelled me into looking deeper into the Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith. My parallel studies along with my Seminary training only intensified and enlarged the many unanswered questions which I would spend years following graduation in pursuit of answers. I was not prepared to find what I would and my whole life would change in the process.
After graduating Seminary with a Masters Degree in Divinity, instead of pastoring a traditional Baptist church where Sunday School lessons and Sermons are often prepared for you in advance, I became a staff pastor at a rather large nondenominational church in the Dallas-Ft.Worth metroplex where preformed curriculum was not provided and I studied the Bible to get the truths from the text of Scripture which I would teach and preach. Was I surprised when the original languages of the Bible taught me so differently from which my Baptist Seminary and previous religious traditions had taught me. One thing is for certain: the original ideas from the Hebrew are meant to be faithfully transmitted into the Greek and again faithfully transmitted into the English. Surprisingly I found out they had not been! This is where the problem begins; namely, with the purposeful forgery, mistranslation, misquotation and outright deception in the translation of the Hebrew Bible into the Greek. Following this is the sad fact that every English Old Testament is based off this forged Greek Old Testament and every resultant quote in the New Testament comes from this forged Christian Old Testament itself. The problem lies in that the reader of the Christian Bible, not knowing Hebrew, is at a loss to discern which of these English passages in his Christian Old Testament and quotes in the New Testament are faithful translations of the Hebrew and which are not. This means that replacement religion goes unnoticed by most of the 2.5 billion Christians in the world today. This revelation cut the legs out from under me and the soon clear understanding that I have been fed a bill of good and a bunch of untruth regarding the Jewish Messiah and the Salvation message of YHWH became critically apparent. I was devastated and in tears and could not believe that this could have happened to me, for after all, I had graduated Seminary and nobody had alluded to this sad fact to me at any time while I was there. In fact they touted the Greek over and over again and little prestige was given the Hebrew and now I understand why. Antisemitism, both explicit and inherent, permeate Christian dogmas and doctrines and there is no going back to the truth without a full repentance in one's Christian religious belief system. This would mean for many that they would have to close down the Seminaries and get a real job.
Answer for yourself: Who was right…the Jewish Bible interpreted in the original language with Biblical history and Biblical culture as verification of truth, or my Greek Bible and English translations with its traditions inherited from my Christian pastors and parents?
With the aid of a Bible computer, I used the skills shared with me in Greek and Hebrew while in Seminary to research thousands of verbs and nouns in both the Old Testament and New Testament over the next years. I read hundreds of books on related topics over these years in search for these hidden truths. My home today has two rooms devoted as personal libraries alone. You must understand, that if you only read the Bible in English, then, more often than not, you will lean upon your own understanding which is influenced by your own experience in interpreting the Bible, instead of understanding the concepts connected to the original language in which the Bible was written. Such guarantees error in interpretation.
Answer for yourself: How does living as a Gentile in the USA help me understand a Hebrew Book? In other words, if you do not study the Bible in the original languages, along with knowledge of the culture in which it was written coupled with the history of the time in which it was written, then you cannot be assured you have the accurate meaning God intended for you, and more often than not you won’t! Most Christians are relegated to reading the Bible only in English without any background of what they are reading, and more often than not, can be shown to have a erroneous belief system and corresponding obedience before God and their fellow man because of such inadequacies. Sadly, to few pastors and teachers in Christianity today have the necessary skills to “rightly divide the Word” or, if they were taught them at one time in their life, many fail to put them to use in their ministry. Sadly, their congregations are deprived of necessary truths which will have an eternal impact after we die.
Having such skills, I endeavored to be a light in a dark place when affiliated with churches in the metroplex. After several years of trying to bring repentance and share the many truths I discovered which corrected my then held religious beliefs in many areas, and would yours if only you knew, I finally realized that too many pastors in high positions considered themselves infallible, uncorrectable, and unteachable. Repentance was not in their vocabulary. I have one particularly famous pastor tell me, when shown truths from the Bible which corrected his position on tithing: “What do you want us to say to the people…that we have been wrong?” Well, that’s a start! Blinded by the false notion that a big church means God’s favor, most would not heed sound doctrine and correction from the Word of God. Sadly, there was only one thing left for me and my wife to do, resign and begin to teach the truths of God’s Word unhindered and uncorrupted, free from the compromise of man’s traditions and doctrine. Things that I discovered, and hopefully you will allow me to share with you, is that Gentile believers and followers of the Jesus in the New Testament and "the Christ" were expected and commanded by God to observe His Sabbaths, Biblical Feasts and Festivals instead of the paganized calendars we have in most churches today. We will see that we are not only expected but commanded to adhere to "the Pattern of Worship" given all mankind, both Jew and non-Jew, in hopes that as "the" one people of God that we will both, together, keep and observe the Saturday Sabbath and not the Sunday substitute, as well as the other of God's High Sabbaths and worship Him in Spirit and Truth by giving our tithes and offerings in "the" specific places designated by Scripture [poor, sick, lamb, blind, deaf, handicapped, uneducated, etc., along with financing the keeping of the Biblical Feasts and Sabbaths] and no longer allowing our gifts and offerings to be used by pastors for their personal visions and ambitions and church budgets which are to be financed with funds other than the tithe]. I realized, and I hope you will as well, that just because we have been taught to do it a certain way does not assure it is the correct way commanded by God or that it is even pleasing to Him in the first place.
It is to this pursuit that Mary and I have devoted our lives. We feel compelled to share with you these truths for your evaluation and instruction. Please understand, much of what I will share will be different from what you have heard, but understand that does not mean it is untrue. Most of you have not been told the truth by your spiritual leaders. We call upon you to judge the facts for yourself, for without them you cannot hope to make an intelligent decision on the matter.
Lastly, we at Bet Emet Ministries are devoted to understanding the Scriptures as God intended: from both a linguistical, cultural, historical, and cultural perspective. From this, and only this, can you and your family be assured you have not worshipped God in vain. Shalom.
bennoah1@airmail.net