The Way

A Distinction In The Messianic Perspective

Everyone in the world has a journey. If your journey puts you on the Way, The Way will lead you back to the Creator who made you. If your journey takes you to the opposite direction, you will be far away from God for all eternity. That is the central theme of the Bible. Choose this way whom you will serve. Choose Life.

The following is my journey. I heeded the call and I did an about face turnaround, I asked God to put me on The Way pointing toward Him. I had a religious upbringing in the most superficial manner. I am thankful for it because it was religious. I never quite took to Roman Catholicism. The smell of the incense was annoying. The statues were frightening. The last straw that broke the camel’s back happened in my teen years. There were those who attended church yet were poisons to my family. I got wise. No more religion.

I found religion very diluted. I would not spend my life on religion, the decision was made the day I walked out of a church in my teens. And I never went back to religion. In my early 20’s I was plunged into a vision. That was my moment of Spirit baptism. I got an opportunity to meet the Creator of heaven and earth. My knowledge of Him after the meeting was filling up by my turning to the Word, the Bible that is illuminated by the Holy Spirit.

I finished my teen years as an agnostic, scientific minded person that demanded proof before I consider a claim. Everything that I put my belief to should be supported by hard data. I do not appreciate superstition. Later, in graduate school, I had been attending as an observer in a number of sound independent Baptist churches outside of the Roman Catholic grip. I was not looking. I was just enjoying the hospitality of those people that befriended me. I was doing this since my college days. And I never confused people by telling them that I was a “Christian”. Life is stressful but in the church no one argued. It was my one day a week sanctuary. During the sermons, I did a lot of thinking, but not to do with the messages. I had nothing against the sermons but it was just people’s sermons. The guy wrote notes during Monday to Friday and then he shared his notes with a room of people. As a Thinker, it takes a lot to convince me. As a member of my personality type, we are all peers, to me. I do not hold any one person above regard. If you have my respect, you earn it. And I know that my friends were praying for me to find God. At that time in the 1980’s church people were sane, not crazy.

The turning point came one day when a new friend named David said one thing to me. He addressed me, while walking about in town, as the new kid, being shown the town, by saying. You don’t choose God, God chooses you. It took one sentence to make me a seeker. Yes, I want to know. Is God for real? If He is real, will He choose me? It was clear to me that I cannot possibly choose God. For some reason it sounded to me as unchallenged truth.

Very shortly after, in my determination to verify that claim by David, I stopped attending the local Baptist congregation. It was time for me to not be suggested to with ideas. For God to be real, He cannot be just “real in a church”. God as the Bible says He is, must be everywhere. Ironically, when it counted, I thought about the religion that I was raised in. One Sunday I wanted to attend a Catholic Mass. Maybe I needed to prove to myself that I did not miss any bread crumbs in there. Randomly I picked the biggest building because no one would have time to bother with me. I walked in. I walked out and my life was changed. In one day, thankfully, all of His doing.

No one during the entire Mass spoke to me. They were reciting Latin. I did not speak nor understand Latin. I had a vision of the Savior. I was plunged in another dimension. We had a long conversation, me in tears, on my knees, sweating bullets, feeling very, very warm. I confessed to Him. I felt His forgiveness. Joy came into my Thinker heart. My body was involuntarily responding to a gift that was given to an earnest seeker for His face. The burning bush subsided. I got up and I was a new creation. For the next so many years, I repeated this experience to every single one of my friends. They told me I became different from how I once was, that obnoxious A type guy. For many years, I offered my leadership and logistic skills to the local church. By the way, it was not the Catholics that did anything for me. None contributed to my meeting with Eashoa. He came to me. And on the same day, never once did I consider more of the Catholics. My mind was filled with all the amazement out of meeting Eashoa.

I heeded the call to join the Lord as a messianic around 2011. At that time I had been a believer and more significantly to me, a disciple going after the Lord. I am not one to follow “somebody who follows the Lord”. I follow the Lord, period. I refused to be denominational because God had saved me about 25 years before that commitment prior out of religion.

Then in 2011, after many years of serving in leadership in the Church, it was the needs of the people, those that I helped in the Church, that spurred me to go one level deeper, in order to find the suitable platform that is purified, without all the charms of traditions annually due to man and his pagan fascination, to help people also meet their Maker on this side of life. That was then that I decided to rely only on the Spirit and the Word alone to readjust by bearings. It was back to the basics. I think for everyone, you need to examine your foundation, where you build it on and what it is made of. Your whole building depends on it.

Matthew 24 ²⁴ “Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. ²⁵ And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house; and yet it did not fall, for its foundation had been built on the rock. ²⁶ Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. ²⁷ And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house; and it fell—and great was its fall.”

²⁸ Now when Yeshua had finished these words, the crowds were astounded at His teaching

It was around this time that I examined all the things that I learned through Sunday. If I took away all the Sunday sermons that came through the filter of professionally trained individuals, I wanted to know what would remain of my beliefs. Will it make me burnished as the day I met the Lord? Will it make me disillusioned about it all? It was not even close. I knew my calling at the beginning had wonderful promises ahead of me. I needed to follow through. My Lord is faithful.

The result of my journey is a harvest of the absolute truth and it led me back to the early movement that the locals in the first century called The Way after the Resurrection. That Resurrection re-energized the following of the Savior.

Shortly after my Spirit baptism, I was in love with the Lord. My love for Eashoa has always remained. It was always very clear to me there was Eashoa and there was a bunch of people who identified themselves as “Christians”. A label does not tell you what is inside. It is superficial. I do not mix them together. That would be discouraging. The Lord never, ever once failed me. I serve Him. I serve His people, in that order and for the right motives. It got me emotional to ponder the price He paid for my pardon. If you believe that He is “real”, congratulations on reaching level 1. Aspire to seek Him continually.

The Way – Ha Derekh

Eashoa declared Himself to be the fulfillment of various passages in the Old Testament. He was the Way that was shut off to Adam to the tree of life, Etz Chayim, which was in the garden of Eden. Adam was expelled as an under-performer against one commandment that was all he was instructed to do. 4,000 years later at the appointed time, the son of man came. Eashoa is ha Derekh. The Word of Elohim came as prophesied. He offers the way back to Eden, through Himself. Eden is ayden in Hebrew. The pastor that I love much AW Tozer was named after Eden. A is for Aiden. In Genesis 2 we are told that the adam (man) was made outside of the garden. Then the Maker placed him in the garden. Details count. Get an HD picture from the Word.

Eashoa is ha Derekh

Genesis 2 ⁷ Then Adonai Elohim (the Lord God) formed the man out of the dust from the ground and He breathed into his nostrils a breath of life—so the man became a living being. ⁸ Then Adonai Elohim planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there He put the man whom He had formed. ⁹ Then Adonai Elohim (the Lord God) caused to sprout from the ground every tree that was desirable to look at and good for food.

Gan in Hebrew simply means garden. Later we found after adam became a rebel, and deliberately, as opposed to accidentally, it was the Gan, the garden that he was expelled from. He was not expelled from the land of Ayden (Eden). You may have heard this verbiage: “Adam was driven out of Eden”. True of false? The Word can test that proverb and the Word will say it is false. It was this kind of vernacular that is bandied around in a church building that I needed to get myself away from. That is what I call diluting the Word. It is unfair to me. It is correct to say Adam was driven out from the garden of Eden. Rely on the Word, not hearsay. A friend of mine opens the Bible to wherever the preacher makes his citation. He is only being a “Berean”. We all need to be diligent students of the Word.

Genesis 3|24 And He expelled the man; and at the east of “the Garden of Eden” He had cheruvim dwell along, with the whirling sword of flame, to guard the way 1870  to the Tree of Life.

The early movement of people who followed Him after His resurrection was called The Way. People then realized that Eashoa is the only way that gives access to the Tree of Life. For He promises eternal life and He is the way. Adam was guarded from the Tree of Life. He was disqualified from getting on the way. It was all grace that God grants those who want to love Him alone the way to the Tree. And we need to accept the accursed tree where our Savior was crucified on that He tool our places. One tree leads to the ultimate tree.

Acts 9|2 He requested letters of introduction from him to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any men or women belonging to the Way, he might bring them as prisoners to Jerusalem.

The Way movement was a stark contrast to many today in the Laodicean Age. For the object of worship finds Himself standing outside of the door to their building. While the people on the other side of the door are working on a way of life, the Way is barred from their gathering.

Revelation 3 ¹⁷ For you say, ‘I am rich, I have made myself wealthy, and I need nothing.’^[f] But you do not know that you are miserable and pitiable and poor and blind and naked. ¹⁸ I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich, and white clothes so that you may dress yourself and so the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed, and eye salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. ¹⁹ Those whom I love, I rebuke and discipline. Therefore, be zealous and repent.

²⁰ Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me. ²¹ To the one who overcomes I will grant the right to sit with Me on My throne

In closing, I encourage each reader to get honest with God, seek Him only, seek His kingdom. For you will find a King in the middle of the Kingdom. If you crown Him your own King, the King will receive you into His kingdom and appoint you a place of honor.

Shalom aleykhem.