A PERSONAL WORD FROM PASTOR CRAIG CONCERNING THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE HISTORICAL JESUS

As an ordained Pastor, as well as a follower "the Christ", my years of in-depth study has convinced me that I, as well as multitudes of other Christians, have relied upon a document, the New Testament, for our faith and practice which is, unfortunately, less than reliable in hundreds of aspects….and most are not aware of this fact. Such knowledge escapes the uninformed believer, but I assure you, if you will continue your study of the materials presented in this web site by Bet Emet Ministries, as well as others, you will quickly come to see what the Jewish people have always known and why the Jewish scholars and people have not accepted which seems, on the surface, so simple to the New Testament believer. The problems of which I speak concern the unreliability of the New Testament for one's faith and practice. Since most of the followers of Yeshua are New Testament believers, and not Old Testament believers (that is one of the major problems...our unfamiliarity with the Bible Yeshua used), their knowledge and comprehension of the Old Testament is severely lacking. This makes it all the more easy when reading the New Testament to overlook the hundreds and hundreds of purposeful misquotations from the Old Testament, the many purposeful mistranslations from the Old Testament by the writers of the New Testament, and the hundreds of verses quoted out of context by the New Testament writers on purpose.

Some will say: "but the quotes in my New Testament are just like the ones in my Old Testament for the most part. "Well, that might be, but you have failed to be told is that the Jewish Scriptures were terribly mistranslated on purpose over two thousand years ago by anti-Semitic Gentiles who wished "to have nothing in common with those despicable Jews." What my years of study have convinced me beyond any doubt, and what led to my resignation from my Pastorate, is that the Bible I was using was a "forged" translation. The Jewish people have know this since the beginning, and their scholars are quick to point this out to those who will listen. I spent years comparing what my KJV, for instance, said in the OT with the readings from the Jewish Tanakh. They were not the same to say the least in crucial points of theological diversity.

I, as a former Christian Pastor, thought I had a faithful translation. I found I did not and you will too if you find the courage to look. Many discount this outright to their ultimate sorrow, but honest evaluation will prove otherwise.

This problem alone does not even address yet the multiple copying of pagan mystery religions and their religious beliefs which are put into the mouth of a Jewish Rabbi named Yeshua by the early Gentile Church which wished to give validity to their paganism. Repentance for them was out of the question. It can be said that the early Gentile Church "wanted their cake and eat it to".

The agenda of such literary deceptions by the New Testament writers and those who put the New Testament canon together, let alone altered it over hundreds of years, escapes the masses who are unfamiliar with the history of the Gentile Christian Church along with their unfamiliarity with the Hebrew Scriptures; unfortunately called the Old Testament today.

IS THE NEW TESTAMENT REALLY THE WORD OF GOD? DON'T ANSWER TOO QUICKLY......

As Christians and sincere individuals who, seeking to know and do the will of the Almighty, come to such knowledge concerning the tampering of the New Testament and the anti-Semitic agenda of its writers, you are quickly confronted with the most significant question you'll every have to answer in this life: is the New Testament really the Word of God?

I as well as you, most likely since childhood, have been assured by our spiritual leaders that the answer is "yes;" perhaps you have even had some emotional experiences which seem to validate your leaders' assurances while in church. I did. Don't mistake the love of God for His children as an approval for one's disobedience. As you know, though, true faith is based neither upon trust in men (Ps, 146:3), nor even upon occurrences of the supernatural (Deut. 13); nor can we trust our emotions as a barometer for truth.

And so, the question remains:

After having seen the misquotations, mistranslations, and the hundreds of Old Testament passages taken and used out of context on purpose by the New Testament writers...the question is even more alarming.....How can this perversion of the Old Testament be considered as coming from God and how can we in all honesty trust it unquestioningly; let alone believe it and accept it as reliable for faith and practice in many places?

What is of even more importance is that your eternal salvation is contingent upon the answer. Without your personal knowledge about such misquotations, mistranslations, and verses used out of context as contained in the New Testament, you cannot give an intelligent answer, only an emotional one. You might be sincere, but at the same time sincerely wrong and never know it until you die. Bet Emet Ministries makes available to you in this site valuable data, research, and information about such matters; offered in an attempt to help you find the truth about these issues in hopes such knowledge will allow you to make necessary changes in your beliefs and spiritual walk; thus a life more pleasing to God. We ask that you complete these studies in a spirit of earnestness and prayer, asking God to reveal to you His truth in the quietness of your own heart. As you do so, remember that you are a member of a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (Ex.19:6), described in the Scriptures as the "apple of God's eye" (Zech.2:8) and participants in an "everlasting covenant" (Gen. 17:7). As such, rest assured that God will indeed heed your request as you sincerely seek to discover His truth.

DON'T MISUNDERSTAND OUR MOTIVES FOR SHARING THESE TRUTHS WITH YOU...WE SEEK ONLY THE TRUTH

Occasionally we at Bet Emet are not understood when being critical of much of what the New Testament teaches. We are not trying to say "Gentile Christianity" is wrong, but rather trying to get to the truth concerning the identity of Rome's Jesus and "the faith once given the saints" after centuries of repression of such truths along with alterations in supposedly "infallible" documents we inherited as the "New Testament". The result of our study and research dictates that we be truthful to what we have found in our research because God is watching. God desires we have faith in the truth and not in error. We understand such misunderstanding because most of our readers have not had the opportunity to read and study to the level we have over the last 15 years where we discovered much that forced us to bow our knee to truth and repent and make changes in our "religious belief system" in order that our live be more pleasing to God. Simply we found, based upon our studies, that much of the New Testament, especially in doctrinal positions, was a replacement of the actual beliefs of a Rabbi named Yeshua who lived in the first century. This should break your heart when you first see it and realize that you have been deceived by men who, over two thousand years ago, had such dislike for the Jews that their anti-Semitism was to impel them to alter the existing beliefs about "the Christ" and write into the life of an assumed historical Jesus; which events by the way parallel exactly the same events that can be found in prior myths of the Sunn-gods. Today we read such accounts in the New Testament and believe that this a faithful reproduction of the truth as handed down by the faithful followers of this "Jesus Movement". Nothing could be further from the truth!

There is no way you can be a follower of a "Jewish Jesus" as the paradigm for the non-Jew and contradict what normative Judaism both believed and practiced; no matter what Paul and the New Testament writers say which wrote much of their later theology in Paul's name. The sad fact is alarming: there is no way you can practice contemporary Christianity and be a true follower of "the Christ" or a follower of a Jewish Rabbi symbolized by Jesus in the New Testament.

A cursory reading of the New Testament does not always provide such an understanding, for most people approach and read it as if it is "inspired, infallible, and inerrant", and because of their unfamiliarity with the Old Testament as it exists in the Jewish Scriptures as opposed to the English corruption, never spot such textual problems contained within it as I have delineated above. Thus when reading the New Testament it reads like their Old Testament. They match. The problem still remains to which they have not been made aware; namely, the Jewish Scriptures from the Masoretic text (Palestinian Text) differ in hundreds of critical places which has caused many of their "beliefs and actions" to be opposite of what a Jew in the first century would have believed. Without such knowledge you never know to question anything about the New Testament. Such I found is not wise, and you will be amazed once you see it for yourself. Nothing could be farther from the truth than the "infallibility and inerrancy" of the New Testament, and this fact will become evident upon initial serious study of the New Testament. Understand such a false trust and belief in the New Testament by most Christians today is not based upon the reader’s personal and individual study of the New Testament, but rather upon the hearsay he has picked up by listening to others express such trust in the New Testament through preaching Sunday after Sunday. There should be less preaching and more teaching. The sad fact of the matter is that those who say such things have never done their homework to the depth necessary in these areas to see the problems inherent in accepting the New Testament as authoritative for faith and practice. What they miss is that in many ways the New Testament is a repudiation of what Biblical Judaism taught in the first century. The New Testament was never meant to be a replacement book for the Jewish Scriptures, the Torah, but sadly has become just that today for the vast majority of non-Jewish believers in God….the Christians. This is our legacy from the anti-Semitic Gentile Church of the earliest centuries of the Yeshua Movement within Biblical Judaism.

A Christian's religious belief system, when tested and exposed to contradictory facts from Biblical languages, Biblical history, Biblical culture, the study of Gnosticism as well as Comparative Religions, Astronomy and Astrology, and Archeology, must in the Spirit of Truth and Repentance, be flexible enough to change.

Doctrine, when found in the New Testament, to be true, must conform to the Word of God.....THE HEBREW SCRIPTURES THAT ISRAEL CHERISHED...AND NOT THE FORGED COPIES WE HAVE INHERITED FROM ROME TODAY! WE FIND SUCH AN OLD TESTAMENT IN THE JEWISH TANAKH AND NOT THE KJV OR OTHER ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS!

"To the law and to the testimony; if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them." (Isaiah 8:20)

Listen to what Isaiah said! Thus, if we find doctrines in the New Testament which contradict the Jewish Scriptures in the Hebrew (and not the mistranslated ones we inherited in English)...such doctrines are to be understood as fables and lies. To fail to acknowledge such contradictions when shown them means that you stand in opposition to the Prophets and that you contradict not only Isaiah the Prophet who is quoted above, but Moses and those in the earliest "Jesus Movement" in Israel

Answer for yourself: Can we trust the early anti-Semitic Gentile Catholics to have been led into all truth by the Holy Spirit (just look at their doctrines and you know God did not give them such lies), and should we trust these same people and their collection of writings called the New Testament Canon when their writings, in many places, contradict Moses and what Israel taught in the first century?

We at Bet Emet cannot, and we offer no man apologies. Just understand that when you read the New Testament, with all its additions, purposeful misquotes and mistranslations of the Jewish Scriptures, changes, additions, deletions and various doctrinal creationism over the early centuries of the Gentile Church, that the doctrines behind the men who did it are expressed in Roman Catholicism today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If you read this and are not Catholic, then you have need to be very concerned about what I say. My friends, I hope to stimulate your interest and study as a thinking believer in hopes that you begin to give serious attention to studying the document you have trusted your whole life as "infallible, inerrant, and inspired"….the New Testament. We must realize that one’s behavior and conduct before God or one’s fellow man is determined by what he believes. If we have a forged document, and we do, then our conduct, behavior, and beliefs are often wrong and much of what we do is considered "sin" by God and we never know it.

Answer for yourself: What will you do when you discover that much of what you have been taught from the New Testament, which has influenced your conduct and behavior, is in error and opposed by Moses and "the mind of Christ"; and in reality has even led you into sin because of your ignorance of the Old Testament and what it teaches?

Answer for yourself: What of other errors in the New Testament which can be shown to be false teachings created by the non-Jewish Gentile Church which have caused you to depart from what Yeshua would have you do; thus having a conduct, belief, or attitude contrary to what God and Israel originally desired you have?

Answer for yourself: Are you aware of the glaring mistakes and untruths recorded in the New Testament passed off as truth, which can upon examination and comparison with the Jewish Scriptures, history, Archeology, Biblical culture, and Biblical Language, be shown to be outright errors and deceptions?

Answer for yourself: What will you do after having allowed yourself to be shown that many cherished doctrines of the Christian faith are in reality sin when compared with the Jewish Scriptures and the faith of first century Israel? "I hope you said repent".

Answer for yourself: Would you want to know of these which I speak before you die?

I hope you would and this web page is decided to the defense of God and enlightenment of His people.

HOW IT WAS DONE….A BRIEF SYNOPSIS

The New Testament writers are guilty of mishandling and abuse of the Jewish Scripture in order to create a new religion which opposes the faith of Yeshua. Let me give you the mechanics involved in textual manipulation whereby we end up with something different in meaning that the original author intended and what the earliest church both believed and practiced.

• Jewish texts and phrases are lifted out of their places in the Hebrew Scriptures and given meanings in the New Testament which, at best, are forced.
• Preceding many of the prophetic verses which are misquoted, mistranslated, and taken out of context in the New Testament is the assertion, "What was said through the prophet was thus fulfilled." In this way the writers of the Christian Scriptures endeavored to show that the Tanakh anticipated and predicted the events recorded in the New Testament. Such is not the case the the vast majority of cases!
• Those happenings, then, are presented as the fulfillment of the Hebrew Scriptures and are considered proof texts. Such is not the case! You will come to see this when we study them.
• The techniques employed to establish proof include citation of verses out of context, mistranslation, and misquotation. These abound in the New Testament and are overlooked by the vast majority of Christians today due to their unfamiliarity with the Old Testament.
• Sometimes a figurative or poetic phrase is mistaken for a straightforward statement and vice versa.
• Sometimes sayings of different writers, living in different places, and in different centuries are run together in such a way to destroy the intended meanings of the original writers.
• Often two or more of these methods are used in a single quotation.

SO..... DOES KNOWING THIS MATTER TO YOU?

Besides the quest for truth and an obedient life before God, there are numerous verses contained within the New Testament, which in and of themselves are not anti-Semitic but are used to substantiate certain beliefs held by the early Gentile Church which have anti-Jewish implications. Carried out to the end-result these verses influence one’s beliefs and conduct. We beg of you: Don't throw away the opportunity God has placed before you to study His Word in such a way whereby you can see the discrepancies for yourself. What you do then is up to you, but you need to see them in order to make an intelligent decision. Remember God has instructed us to be "holy, for He is holy." Let that be the impetus for your quest for God and truth. It has been mine. Shalom.

Are you ready for the most important study of your life?