UrbanLegendFaith

The speaker discusses the concept of urban legends and how they often contain some truth. He gives examples of urban legends, such as the myth about needles on gas pumps and the belief that microwaving food in plastic containers causes cancer. He mentions a website called Snopes.com where people can fact-check urban legends. He then introduces the idea of "urban legend faith," which refers to religious beliefs and practices that have been separated from the true faith. He warns against blindly accepting and practicing these man-made beliefs. The speaker emphasizes the importance of examining our beliefs and ensuring they align with the true faith. Hello, this is Daniel Rendleman with Emet Ministries and welcome to our teaching today, Urban Legend Faith. I'm excited that you've decided to join us as we look at this very important subject and how it affects believers and how it affects you today. And as we begin to look at the subject today, we are going to be using the sacred name of YHVH, that's the name of Yahweh, often found in your English Bibles as L-O-R-D or G-O-D, all capitalized in your scriptures as Lord or God. It's the sacred name of Yahweh, found almost 8,000 times in the scriptures. We're also going to be calling the Savior by His true name, Yahshua or Yeshua, and that name means Yahweh is salvation. Perhaps you heard this term during the Mel Gibson film, The Passion of the Christ, that's where many people first heard His Hebrew name. And as we do talk, we'll be using the Hebrew term Elohim, which is Hebrew for Mighty One, often translated as God in your English Bibles. Now that we've cleared all that up, let's look exactly about urban legend faith. Now you know what an urban legend is, an urban legend, it's a funny or a horrifying story that may or may not be true. They spread quickly, sometimes through chain letters, through emails, through word of mouth, and they have different stories. Now most urban legends are false. Some are true, but every urban legend contains some type of truth in it. And the thing is, with many urban legends, we find that most urban legends have a little bit of truth in them. For example, there's been an urban legend that's been going around the internet, perhaps you've received an email like this, that talks about needles on the underside of gas pumps. You've received an email from a captain warning people to be careful as they go to pump gas because there might be a needle on the underside that's going to stick you in your finger and give you the AIDS virus. Well folks, that's not true, that is an urban legend. You've probably received emails like this two or three times a week, maybe you receive them in a chain letter at home. Even urban legends are reported as truth on news broadcasts that can even be read sometimes in newspapers. Here's another urban legend, Coca-Cola was once considered anti-Semitic because it refused to do business in Israel. Now actually that's an urban legend that is true, that's right, in 1966 Coca-Cola refused to do business in Israel because they understood that successfully doing business in the Middle East often meant that they would not do business in Israel. The Arab League was quick to boycott any company that did business with Israel back in the 1960s and 70s and so if you've heard that idea, that story, that's an urban legend that has some truth to it. Now I'm going to name a few, let's see if you know if these are true or false. The idea that cell phone telephone numbers are going to be available to telemarketers, that you need to put your cell phone number on the national do not call registry, is that an urban legend? Is it true or false? I don't know, well it's actually false, if you have a cell phone you do not need to put that number on a do not call list. What about this one, if you take a frog and you put it in some cool water and you begin to slowly cut up the temperature that you can actually boil that frog, the frog will collapse and die, it will stay in that water. If you change the temperature really slowly, it will kill the frog. That old wives tale is also false, that is not true, most frogs can tell the temperature changes as little as half of a degree and they will jump out of the water. How about this one, it's been said on the internet, also in newspapers that on September 11th, 2002, the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York, that the numbers selected in the New York State drawing were 9-1-1, the winning number to win millions of dollars in the New York State drawing were 9-1-1, is that true or false? It's actually an urban legend that is true, on one year past that, the numbers selected that day and it was Shirley Luck I guess, Lady Luck was there in the state lottery that day, but it is true that that year, one year later, 9-1-1 was the winning lottery ticket. Maybe some of these are coming to mind for you, perhaps you've heard that microwaving food in plastic containers releases cancer causing agents into the food, that is false. Maybe you've read that bananas are going to be extinct in 10 years, that is false. Perhaps you've heard that Disneyland used to deny admission to long-haired male guests, that is true, they used to do that. Perhaps you've heard that KFC, Kentucky Fried Chicken Restaurant, stopped using the word chicken to describe their products because they were serving meat from genetically modified animals. Now friend, I've received this email about four or five times about KFC, that's why they're going by KFC now because their chickens are genetically modified, they don't have beaks, they don't have feet, they're just chicken meat basically grown and it's just absolutely false. It's funny, but it's false, kind of like the idea that energy drink Mountain Dew contains dangerous stimulant linked to the formation of brain tumors, cell phones cause brain tumors, wax from styrofoam containers causes brain tumors, all of this and all of these are false. Maybe you've received an email or heard the story about late plug-ins causing fire hazards or Denzel Washington giving tons of money to the Fisher House Foundation. How about this one? Have you heard about Pepsi-Cola refusing to put the Pledge of Allegiance on their can? You see an email went around, this went around just a few years ago that Pepsi-Cola was going to put the Pledge of Allegiance on their can, but they were not going to put One Nation under God. They were just going to put One Nation and so there began an email going around the internet and people began signing the petition telling Pepsi they better put the term One Nation under God on their can if they were going to put the Pledge of Allegiance there. Well, Pepsi has received millions of copies of this email of people who have thought it was true, they accepted this urban legend as true and they sent Pepsi a nasty email or a nice email saying, hey, when you put the Pledge, make sure to put One Nation under God. Well, folks, Pepsi is not looking at putting the Pledge on a can and if they were, they've already come out and said they would put the term One Nation under God on their can. These are what you call urban legends and most of the time you can hear a couple of these a week. Someone once said that if you want someone to believe you, then you should just put it in writing. You put something in writing, you make a book or a brochure and people will believe you. We believe so much of what we read, so much of what we see on the internet. There is a website that I'd like to tell you about, it's www.snopes.com, that's S-N-O-P-E-S dot com. Snopes.com is a website that has been made, it's a free website to go to and it's all about urban legends. You can go there and you can look at these different emails that you may receive or urban legends that you may believe, old wives tales that have been passed down from generation to generation and you can see resources that are going to tell you whether or not these urban legends are true. However, there is one preposterous story that Snopes does not cover. I have searched and I have looked. There is one urban legend that Snopes will not talk about, perhaps it's the largest, most believed urban legend, the urban legend faith and that is why you have this CD teaching today friend, so you can learn about the urban legend religions that are out there, the urban legend faith that is perpetrated by our enemy that we need to be careful of and this faith is a religious system that has been separated from the true faith handed down by the apostles. But like so many people that repeat urban legends, urban legends like there's lead and lipstick or Andy Rooney's email about the United States, so many people that believe these urban legends, people have received urban legend faith and not double checked and not thought about it. The urban legend faith has been passed along to others without giving salt to its origin. Seriously, how many times do we stop and we think where does this belief come from that I have? Why am I doing what I do? We never take classes on how to celebrate Christmas, do we? We grow up in a culture that celebrates Christmas and so it becomes part of our heritage, part of who we are. We never stop to think why am I doing this, what is the origin of this? This is the urban legend faith that is man-made and that Yahweh, the creator, warns us against. In the book of Jeremiah, Yemi-Yahu in Hebrew, it says be astonished, O heavens, at this. Be horribly afraid, be very desolate, says Yahweh. For my people have committed two evils. How many evils? Two. They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water. That's evil number one, that we have forsaken him. And number two, they have hewn themselves cisterns or jugs. They've made for themselves a counterfeit faith, an urban legend faith, broken cisterns that can hold no water. This is Jeremiah 2, verses 12 and 13, that we have committed two great sins. The first being that we have forsaken the Almighty's true faith. The second being that we have made a man-made faith, a man-made cistern, a man-made belief system that does not hold water. Well, friend, what good is a jug that does not hold water? If you have a tea pitcher that you put your iced tea in, but it has a giant hole in the bottom, what good is that tea pitcher? What we need to be asking ourselves is what is in our life, what is in our belief system, in our worldview, in our urban legend faith that is man-made that we need to kick out? Because urban legend faith is kind of like the offering that Cain offered. It is not, repeat, it is not acceptable. Our worship is really obedience of doing what Yahweh expects. We have to do what he expects. We cannot assume that our intentions will serve the same results. Friend, it may work for you to give your wife a card for her birthday or for a holiday or so and tell her, you know, dear, it is a thought that counts and I really wanted to buy you that new car and your wife accepts that as a thought that counts as the intention. But the Creator, the Almighty Yahweh, does not accept the intentions. He accepts our obedience. He expects us to have intentions with good results. Do you follow me here? You see, when Cain offered his offering, it was not pleasing to Yahweh in the book of Genesis. Go back and read Genesis chapter 4 and here is what he said. He said, if you do well, shall you not be accepted? If you do well, well, if you just believe you will be accepted. If you do well, you will be accepted. Cain made up his own mind on how he was going to worship Yahweh. He made up his own mind on what his offering would be. He accepted a type of urban legend faith and said, well, my heart is in the right place. All that matters is what I believe. All that matters is that I have faith. All that matters is that, you know, I'm doing something. Friend, we need to hear the Father tell us, well done, my good and faithful servant, Matthew 25, verse 21. We don't need to be guilty of saying, well, if you do well, shall that not be accepted? Like Cain said in Genesis 4, verse 7, of such actions, we need to be careful, we need to be watchful, and we need to be looking at our faith. We need to be examining our beliefs, our worldview, and saying, what is in my life? What is in my doctrines? What is in the beliefs that I have that could be passed down from man and that do not have root in the Scriptures? Now it says in 1 Timothy 4, verses 1 and 2, now that the Spirit speaks expressively that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils, speaking lies and hypocrisy, having their conscience seared with a hot iron. And so, friend, we believe that we're in those end of days, and so we know that there's going to be a great falling away. Matthew 24, 11, many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. It says in Matthew 7, 15, the Savior said, be aware of false prophets who come into you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. You need to be careful. Take a look at 2 Thessalonians, chapter 2, verse 11 and 12, it says this, for this reason Yahweh sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness. If we have received lies, we need to be running from those lies. We need to put those lies aside, and we need to be running towards the truth. So friend, what are the lies that we have adopted, and where do these lies come from? What are the urban legends that we've received as part of our faith? Where do they come from? Well, the Scriptures say that our adversary is the father of lies, and he is a deceiver. Part of the end times that we believe that we are in right now is the prophecy of a great apostasy. The deceiver, the adversary, has cloaked the mind and the hearts of so many believers. The Scriptures say that he does not come as a devil with a pitchfork and a tail and bright red horns. The Scriptures say that our adversary comes like an angel of light. Indeed, he is tricky. The Scriptures say he was more wise than any of the other beasts. Urban legend faith is a great deception that the enemy has used. And so if we can know the schemes of our enemy, then we will be better prepared to identify if we are being deceived. Let me say that again. If we can know the schemes of our enemy, then we will be better prepared to identify if we are being deceived. So what are the schemes of our enemy? He comes as an angel of light. Indeed, the term Lucifer means, it's Latin for light bearer. And you see, the enemy comes into us and he comes in slowly. And he comes in, he's kind of like mom, who would take a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. He thinks, you know, just a little bit of air and some truth, a little bit of air will help us to swallow. And friend, we need to spit out that air. We don't need to be choked by that. We don't need to let that air make us sick. You see, the enemy knows that most people are not going to serve him consciously. He knows that, you know, most people are not going to worship the adversary, chafetan in Hebrew. We're not just going to pray to him. He knows that most people are too smart for that. So he uses tricks and schemes and devices and snares. And he attracts people to what looks good. And then he convinces us that this is what we should be doing. And let me make something very clear about the adversary. The elect of Yahweh are the target of chafetan's schemes. The elect of Yahweh, those who are destined to rule and reign with the Messiah, we are the target. We are the ones that the adversary is trying to trip up and to deceive. And he is the one who's trying to stop us. So we have to be mindful of his schemes so we can be better prepared to identify them. It tells us in Deuteronomy chapter 12, verse 30 and 31, that we are forbidden to worship Yahweh in the way that the nations do. We are forbidden to worship in the way that the nations worship. We are forbidden to worship in pagan ways or processes or patterns. We are to come out and be separate. We are to know who we are worshiping and we are to worship him as he tells us to, in spirit and in truth. Now, the question is, friend, who are we worshiping? It says in Romans 6, 16, Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves, servants for obedience, you are servant of the one whom you obey? Whether of sin to death or of obedience to righteousness. Who are you worshiping? Are you worshiping an angel of light who has disguised himself and put some truth around him with some error? Or are you worshiping Yahweh, the creator of the spirit and truth in spirit and in truth? We have to be able to know the scriptures. We've got to become not just believers, but Bereans. We need to take that step from being a believer and just having faith to being a Berean and being a student. It says in Acts chapter 17, 11, The Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the scriptures every day to see if what the rabbi Saul said was true. How many times have you gone back to the scriptures to research what your preacher told you, what your pastor told you, what your teacher told you, what you heard on the radio, what you read on the internet? How many times have you gone to your own Snopes.com called the scriptures from Genesis to Revelation and researched what you were taught? You see, it tells us that all scripture is Yahweh breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness so that the man of Yahweh may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. However, we've got to go to these scriptures. We've got to read these scriptures and be a student of these scriptures to test and to prove what Yahweh's good will is. When we hear something, when we read something in a book, whether it's from a Christian or a Jew or a Kabbalist or whoever that we read it from, we need to line it up with the scriptures of the Word. Does it line up with Genesis to Revelation? Does it line up with Yeshua, our Master's teachings? Or is it an urban legend? Is it urban legend faith? When did the urban legend faith start? Where does the strong delusion have its origin? How have the lies of the enemy affected us today? These are a few questions that we need to examine over the next few minutes. And looking at the urban legend faith, there's a big thing here that we really need to do a little backtracking to understand, to try to get the forest for the trees. If we can see that our faith in the Old Testament, if we just had the Old Testament, that we would see that the Old Testament was... You know, many people say it was Judaism that was the Old Testament. Well, in the Old Testament faith, the Messiah, the King of the Jews, came. His name is Yeshua. And He came as our path to salvation and deliverance. Well, He came to seek and save the lost sheep of the house of Israel. After Yeshua's death and resurrection and ascension, the new believers felt like they should make everyone convert to Judaism in order to be saved. And this was a big issue in the early believers. They pretty much felt that everyone needed to convert to Judaism. However, the early apostles, who were all Jewish rabbis, deliberated the issue. They took it before their group, and they came to the conclusion through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, that since the act of circumcision did not play a role in the salvation process of Abraham, it was not required as an initial conversion process. And so if you go back and you read, read in Acts chapter 15, you'll find out that it was going to be too much of a culture shock to make new believers, basically lost sheep of the house of Israel, or you could call them Gentiles, people of the nation, who were coming into the commonwealth of Israel through faith in Yeshua, our Messiah, the converts, it would be too much of a culture shock to make them fully, immediately Torah observant. So they gradually were to teach them to walk according to the Torah and the Spirit. And as they participated in the synagogue life, they were to learn the scriptures. There were a few commandments they were to go ahead and do. And it tells us this in Acts chapter 15, verse 13 through 21. I encourage you to go back and read this. But what it says here is that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles, or those of the nations, those lost sheep in the nations, who are turning to Yahweh. Instead, we should write to them telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, which they're telling them to eat kosher. They are to abstain from sexual immorality. They are to be moral, live a clean life. They are to abstain from meat strangled animals and from blood. And then the very next verse is the most important. For Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath. You see, they gave them a few rules. They were to, you know, basically they were to eat kosher. They were to be moral. They were to stay away from blood and from idolatry. And they were to go to the synagogues on Sabbath and learn the Torah of Moses. And this is so that they could have one kind of law for the foreigner as well as a native-born Israelite, as it says in Leviticus 24, 22. Well, friend, what happened very soon after this, especially around the time of the death of the apostles, is that the Gentiles, or the lost sheep of Israel, who did not know their Hebraic roots, did not know their Hebraic identity, they became the ethnic majority in the movement. And due to the repression of Rome, these Roman converts who came in brought a lot of their paganism. A lot of these Gentiles came in having these pagan ways and they brought these pagan ways into the true faith. And they began to mix what was holy and what was profane. The government of Rome aided these believers and aided some of these renegades that Galatians 1 talks about by trying to stamp out the early faith and then realizing it couldn't stamp out the true faith, it decided, well, if you can't beat them, then we'll join them. And at the Council of Nicaea in 365 CE, the Roman Emperor Constantine organized the Holy Roman Catholic Church and he unified the doctrines. He called the faith Christianity, made it the state religion, and he changed the true faith into a faith full of paganism. And you can go back and read encyclopedias, go to different websites, look up Constantine the Great, they called him. Look and see how he changed the day of worship from Saturday to Sunday because he believed and he worshipped the venerable day of the sun. He outlawed people from worshipping on the quote-unquote Jewish or seventh day Sabbath. He appointed the first pope and he split away the true faith. After this occurred, of course, we know that the true faith went into what we call the Dark Ages where people were not allowed to study scriptures or even have scriptures because the Catholic Church was the only body that was able to interpret the scriptures for the people. Well, there was a lot of theologies that were taught during that time. One of the biggest theologies that was taught during that time was that with the birth of Yeshua and the coming of Yeshua and the Jews killed Yeshua, and Yeshua, because he started the church, that Yahweh, Yeshua, was done with the Jews and that they needed to be obliterated and that's where the Crusades come in and all the Jews needed to be killed and that Yahweh was done with them and that they had been replaced. Judaism had been replaced by Christianity and the Jewish people had been replaced by spiritual Israel. Friend, this is urban legend faith and I guarantee you, you've got it in your life, you've got it in your belief system, in your worldview. It's ingrained in Western thinkers. It's ingrained in Baptists and Methodists and Pentecostals and Catholics. It's ingrained in Christians. It's ingrained in Muslims. It's ingrained in even some Jews as we're going to see. Let me ask you. Do most Christians view themselves as having replaced the outmoded religion of Judaism? Or do they view themselves as part of the commonwealth of Israel worshipping the God or the Elohim of Israel? Interesting, huh? If we look to church history, we will see that there has been a root growing of replacement theology, the idea that the church replaced Israel, that centuries of Christian anti-Semitism and anti-Hebraic and anti-Torah replacement theology has now resulted in a religion that pretty much says, well, you Jews, God is done with you until the rapture. He's put you on the shelf until the rapture. Then he'll deal with you and 144,000 of you will get saved. Where does this idea come from? What is replacement theology? A quick review of what replacement theology is, friend. Replacement theology was introduced to the church shortly after the Gentile leadership took over from the Jewish leadership. Here's what it says. That Israel or the Jewish people in the land has been replaced by the Christian church and the purposes of God and that the Christian church centered in Rome has taken over the Jewish believers to break Saul, to break worship centered in Jerusalem. Replacement theology teaches that Jewish people are no longer the chosen people. They are no different than any other group. They're no different than the Spanish or Africans or English. Replacement theology teaches that or Acts chapter 2, the term Israel in the Bible refers to the church. That because of what happened in Acts chapter 2 that the promises made to Israel, the blessings made to Israel have now been transferred to the church. The promises, the covenants, and the blessings ascribed to Israel in the Bible have been taken away from the Jews and given to the church. However, many people, many pastors, many preachers still say that the Jews are subject to the curses found in the Bible because they rejected Yahshua. They rejected our Savior. And I'm sure some of this is ringing a bell right now. We can thank the Christian leader Marcion for bringing a lot of this to fruition. In 85 CE, Marcion was born and he was raised to be a Jew hater, basically. He taught that the entire Hebrew Scripture should be rejected because it belonged to the evil, inferior deity who we call Yahweh and not to the gracious, redeemer Messiah who we call Yahshua. Now Marcion became one of the greatest leaders in church history. You can actually look him up in encyclopedias. You'll see that he also said we Christians worship an entirely different God than that of the Jews. Marcion said we have absolutely nothing in common with Jews. Their scriptures bear witness to a completely different divinity. Indeed, he says, our Christian religion was founded with the purpose of putting the Jewish heritage to rest once and for all. And so, this teaching, this idea began to become popular in the church. The Roman Catholic Church began to see it as replacing the Hebraic or Jewish believers. And many replacement theologians argue their case. Let me give you an example. It says in Galatians 3.29 That to be a son of Abraham or Abraham is to have faith in Messiah. It says, if you are Messiah's then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. So what they tell us is that, well, all you have to do is have faith in the Savior. And that makes you spiritual Israel. Well, friend, if you go to the Greek of that verse, of Galatians 3.29 it actually says, if you are Messiah's or Christ's then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. That word for seed is the Greek word sperma. It's the word that we get the word sperm from. The physical seed. It does not talk about a spiritual seed but a physical seed. So it's an urban legend. If you believe that the church is spiritual Israel it's an urban legend just like believing that internet users can cash in from Microsoft and AOL by forwarding some email to everybody. If you believe that the church is spiritual Israel that's all that matters then it's just like basically believing that Microsoft and AOL is giving away a bunch of money or that Applebee's is giving away free gift certificates for forwarding an email to people. Those are urban legends that are just not true. Here's another urban legend. It's the idea that the nation of Israel was only a seed of the future church which would later arise and incorporate all people. This is just not true. The Jewish people and the Hebraic people that Israel, the nation of Israel has been called to be a light to all nations. This does not mean that Galway is done with the Hebrews. This does not mean that. It says in Romans chapter 2 verse 28 and this is a very important verse when you deal with replacement theology. For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly or by, you know, you could say by having Jewish parents neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh but he is a true Jew who is one inwardly and the circumcision is that of the heart in the spirit and not in the letter whose praise is not of men but of Yahweh. This just reinforces the idea that the qualifications to be an Israelite or a person in the commonwealth of Israel is to follow Yahweh or the Elohim of Israel. Not just by following the letter of the law but by the spirit of the law in the true heart. The promises made to Israel in the Old Testament are still withstanding even if the church accepts them all. In the first century AD the early believers, what we call the early church was well connected to its Jewish roots. Yeshua came as the king of the Jews. He came to seek and save the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Those Israelites scattered all around the world. You and me scattered everywhere. However, after Yeshua ascended a lot of changes occurred. After the first Jewish revolt in AD 66 or 66 CE the belief was basically our belief system was basically another sect of Judaism. There were the Sadducees, the Athenes, the Pharisees and there were the Nezirene which is what we are as believers in Yeshua from Nazareth. But as the separation between Judaism and Christianity began as a result of social and religious differences as those coming into the faith began to change and pollute it the faith began to change and it began to be polluted. Just one bad apple spoils the bunch. And what happened here was that many Gentile Christians or what we would say many early believers from different religions interpreted the destruction of the temple they interpreted the Catholic church talk the early church talk that the destruction of the temple was a sign that Yahweh had abandoned Judaism. Yahweh had abandoned the Hebraic people and the Hebrew people and that he had provided Gentiles freedom to develop their own Christian theology in a setting free from Jerusalem. And that's it in a nutshell. That Christianity was to be totally disconnected from its Jewish roots. Friend, it's an urban legend. It is an urban legend. But it has been propagated it has been taught by the church for hundreds actually thousands of years and it's ingrained in many, many people. We don't even realize it. Irenaeus, the Bishop of Lyon in A.D. 177 said that the scriptures are not yours you Jews but ours. He declared that Jews are disinherited from the grace of Yahweh from the grace of Yahweh. Tertullian in 230 C.E. he said that God had rejected the Jews in favor of the Christians. And in the early 4th century Eusebius wrote that the promises of the Hebrew scriptures were for Christians and not Jews while the curses remained for the Jews. And at the beginning of the 4th century as we said in 321 A.D. when the church triumphed when the Protestant vanquished out Israel when the Roman Catholic Church established itself over the Hebraic Israeli faith things went downhill from there. It got so bad in 305 C.E. that declarations were made to keep Jews and Christians apart. They could not marry each other. They could not use Jews to bless their fields. Christians could not observe the Jewish Sabbath. In A.D. of 313 or C.E. 313 that Imperial Rome issued the Edict of Milan which granted favor to Christianity making it the national religion and it outlawed synagogues. In 315 there was another edict passed and it allowed the burning of Jews if they were convicted of breaking the law. As Christianity became the new religion of the state further laws were passed. Jews were excluded from holding high office in military. Rabbinical jurisdiction was abolished and the ancient privileges granted to the Hebrews were withdrawn. Church councils over the next 1,000 years prevailed. The Roman Church prevailed over the Hebraic Church. And I could go on and on with quotes. Martin Luther is guilty of it. The Bishop of Antioch, John Christianson is guilty of it. St. Augustine, even St. Augustine tackled this issue in a documented sermon he gave called the Sermon Against the Jews. He said that though the Jews deserve the most severe punishment for having put the Savior to death, they have been kept alive by divine providence to serve together with the Scriptures as witnesses to the truth of Christianity. St. Augustine said that the Jews' existence was further justified by the service they rendered to the Christian truth and the testing. Get this. St. Augustine said that the Jews were here to attest through their humiliation the triumph of the Church over the synagogue. This is an embracement theology. It is an urban legend. It is a cancer that has spread throughout church history and it has caused many believers to fall and not understand their place. Friend, the Scriptures are very clear. I encourage you to study the Scriptures. Study the two basic teachings of who is Israel. Study the idea of Abraham having a physical seed that passed along from generation to generation. Go back and read your Scriptures and see that Yeshua came to seek and save the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Replacement theology is very deadly and it can be found all throughout Christianity. So as we read Christian books, as we listen to Christian preachers, as we have any fellowship, we need to be careful and we need to kick out any replacement theology, any urban legend ideas and replace it with the truth of who is Israel. I encourage you to receive from the Met Ministries our CD teaching Identity Crisis. We have a PowerPoint presentation and an audio CD that we can send you for free. However, though, the urban legend faith is not just in Christianity. It is also in Islam. And you say, well, I'm not, I don't worship, you know, Muhammad. I don't worry about Islam. Well, friend, urban legend faith has also perpetrated into Islam. Instead of seeing Isaac as the promised son, Islam has substituted or replaced Isaac with Ishmael. And this is how the Muslims have believed a lie. That the adversary has convinced these people that Ishmael, the first born son of Abraham, is the promised son. This is just not true. And when you begin to talk to maybe your Muslim friends or you begin to talk to someone on the internet about Islam, you can show them in the scriptures that it says specifically in Exodus 3.13 that Isaac is the promised son. This is Exodus 3.13. It says over and over again, actually over 12 times in the scriptures that Isaac is the promised son, not Ishmael. Isaac was born to Sarah. Ishmael was born to Hagar, Sarah's maid. And so what Islam has done is it has replaced the promises given to Israel. It has replaced the covenant given to Israel with Ishmael and it is very dangerous. The Muslims believe that they own Israel and Jerusalem. Islam claims to respect the Torah, the prophets. They even call Jesus a prophet. They say, however, their jihad tells us differently. And of course, the Islamic jihad is their most dangerous doctrine. It's to exert the utmost effort and force to expand the rule of Islam. What the radical Muslims want to do and what the Koran teaches is that by expanding the territories where the Muslim rule is, they can expand their religion by force. Now Sir Arafat once said, when we finish killing the Saturday people, we will kill the Sunday people too. And just recently the president of Iran said that we need to wipe Jerusalem off the face of the earth. The rightful heir to the land is not the Muslims. Islam is an urban legend faith that does not need to be believed. It does not need to be trusted. You need to be careful around it. The scriptures call Yahweh. He says, I am the Elohim or the God of Abraham, the Elohim of Isaac, the Elohim of Jacob. This is my name forever. This is my memorial unto all generations. He did not say, I am the Elohim of Ishmael. Don't believe the urban legend faith of Islam. I need to warn you about another urban legend faith that is out there friends. And it's the urban legend faith of Kabbalah. The urban legend faith of the religion of Kabbalah. Now, Kabbalah is a Hebraic term. It's a Hebrew term. It means to receive. And Kabbalah is the reception of the deeper esoteric teachings of Torah, the scriptures. Kabbalah is based upon the book of the Zohar, the book of Yathira, different texts that are very ancient, believed to have been written, maybe even by Abraham. And Kabbalah as a religion is an urban legend. Now, why is that? Kabbalah as a religion is nothing but the New Age rise repackaged and remasked. And you need to be real careful around teachers or around those who are going to teach the religion of Kabbalah. Because friends, I'm going to tell you that there's good Kabbalah and there's bad Kabbalah. The religion of Kabbalah will lead you down the slippery slope of the New Age. The good Kabbalah, what we would call Torah Kabbalah, has been passed down from generation to generation as part of teachings of the rabbis as good Kabbalah being what we would say the esoteric meaning of the scriptures. What we can learn in the sowed level, if you believe in the different interpretations of scriptures in Tardis, the Peshat, the Ramez, the Drash, and the Sowed. It's the sowed level of teachings. And there's a lot of this that is very good, very told, that can help us understand Yahweh. However, there's also a lot in Kabbalah that we need to be careful of. And what we need to be careful of, friend, what you need to be watchful of is the religion of Kabbalah. Because a half-truth is a whole lie. You see, Kabbalah teaches that Israel doesn't matter. That everything is spiritual. That everything you read in the Bible is spiritual. That keeping the feast or the religion of Kabbalah says that wearing zoop-zeed or eating kosher doesn't matter because these were all symbols. They were all pictures. It's all spiritual. The religion of Kabbalah promises a death of death. It promises reincarnation through Gnostic knowledge. The religion of Kabbalah teaches that one can defeat the ego by being good. Friend, the problem with Kabbalah is that it is ancient wisdom that has been perverted. It's clothed behind New Age promises. And what the religion of Kabbalah teaches is that you can learn the mystical side of Torah without applying its basic teachings. And it's centered around amulets and candles and water and Hebrew text and strings and all these things raised above the Torah, raised above Yahshua. It's a form of godliness, but it denies the power thereof. Kabbalah is an ancient truth passed down for millenniums. You can read about what I would say is some good Kabbalah. Go to the Emet Ministries website at findemet.com and you can read Yahweh's Top Ten. It's the basics of what we would say Torah-based Kabbalah. But the religion of Kabbalah is more replacement theology that says it doesn't matter who you are or what you believe. Do these things or say these things or meditate on this and you can be reincarnated or you can have peace or you can be this. And we need to be careful of the urban legend of the religion of Kabbalah. The Jews say that you need to be so well versed in Torah that you need to study Torah for 40 years before you even look to the Kabbalistic teachings of Torah. They say that to look to the religion of Kabbalah without having a firm foundation of Torah is to kill yourself. So we need to be careful. And finally friend, there's an urban legend faith in Judaism and so we need to be careful even as we look to Judaism to understand our Jewish roots or our Hebraic roots because Judaism as a whole the urban legend faith that it receives is the replacement. Number one it believes that it's all there is of Israel. It does not accept as a you know speaking for the whole Judaism does not accept the two houses. That we are returning Ephraim that we are their brothers and their sisters. But we are. So that's an urban legend that they have. That they're all that there is. Friend, you might live in America but that does not make you a person that does not make you a Texan. You might live in America but it does not make you a Californian. You might live in America but it doesn't make you a South Carolinian. You are an Israelite. You are a believer. You are a Hebrew but it does not make you a Jew. You are an Israelite. There's more to Israel than just the tribe of Judah. There's more to the faith than just Judaism. So we need to be careful of the urban legend faith of Judaism that will tell us that they are all that's out there. The other urban legend faith of Judaism that we need to be careful of is how that they reject Yeshua our Messiah that he came in the flesh and how they say that you cannot trust the B'rit Hadashah or the New Testament. They tell us, the Jews have written it and they say that you cannot trust the New Testament because it was not written by eye witnesses. Well friend, this is just not true. It is documented that the Gospel of Matthew was first written in Hebrew. It was written in 130 CE by a Papias, a bishop of Heropolis that Matthew collected the scrolls of the Hebrew language and interpreted each of them the best that he could. Arrhenius has written that Matthew had also issued a written gospel among the Hebrews.