Lessons in the Ladder Days

Candace Long: I'm Candace Long with Lessons in the Latter Days, offering biblical commentary to make sense of the times that we're living in. From time to time, I will share teaching segments from my three-hour program, Shabbat Shalom, which I find to be particularly outstanding and deserving of a wider audience.

Today's episode of "Ask The Rabbi" with Rabbi Michael Washer is a particularly strong one, based on an important teaching he gave on Leviticus 12 through 15. It's called "How God Will Deal with Hellenized Christianity."

Welcome to Ask The Rabbi. I'm Candace Long, discussing your questions with Rabbi Michael Washer. Rabbi, I want to answer a question from a listener who responded to our discussion about the two Jesuses: the Messiah as portrayed in the Jewish Bible, whom we call Yeshua HaMashiach, and the Hellenized god-man known as Jesus Christ, whose image you have traced throughout art history and whom the world has fully embraced. Her question is: "Wouldn't the Shroud of Turin reflect the true Yeshua HaMashiach?"

Rabbi Michael Washer: This is the simplest question I've ever been given. It says at the end of John that they wrapped him in linen strips, as is the burial custom of the Jews, in a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes. Strips, like a mummy. Every finger was wrapped individually, every toe was wrapped individually, and every body part was wrapped individually, except the head. The head was left with a cloth also dipped in myrrh and aloes, a hundred pounds of it.

Over three days, that gets very hardened and tighter, becoming basically like a cast. There is nothing in the Shroud of Turin that is even Jewish or represents the image of a Jewish man. The person on that cloth is not a Jew. He might be a Jew, but he's a completely Hellenized Jew. Everything is wrong with it. The hair is long, which a Jew is not allowed to have. It has coins on the eyes, which is a totally pagan practice. The Greeks would have a coin on the eye to pay Charon, the guy who takes you in a boat across to hell.

That is a totally Greek invention. No observant Jew would ever do that because you can't be buried in a Jewish cemetery with that. That's idolatry. Everything on there is wrong. If it's a Jew, he's certainly completely Hellenized and has nothing to do with Yeshua. It says in the book of John that he was wrapped in linen strips.

Candace Long: You have a section in your book, *Pictures*, that has that image in it. You had some dating that talked about it being dated to that era, the first century, but the scholars who were uncovering that said that it resembled the god Zeus or Jupiter.

Rabbi Michael Washer: Yes, there are 67 points of similarity between the images of Zeus from the first century and that image.

Candace Long: So there's a huge movement within Christian circles regarding this Shroud of Turin thing. Let's go back to the teaching from Leviticus 14 about the homes that show signs of leprosy. Are you suggesting that if Christian homes, churches, and cathedrals display the false image of the Messiah, this is a sign of leprosy?

Rabbi Michael Washer: The problem again is this has nothing to do with our homes; it's God's house. The picture is that all the people together who are believers are stones in God's house. It has nothing to do with our individual houses. We need to reflect in our lives what we believe. What we believe is either Jewish or it's Hellenistic. Pictures of the Last Supper or portraits of Jesus Christ in our homes are just a reflection of what we believe.

If we have in our homes a reflection of what we believe and it's proper, the stuff on our walls will be proper. That has nothing to do with leprosy in God's house. We need to think about the bigger concept.

Candace Long: Let's talk about those who are realizing that the person they thought was Jesus is not Him. What should a pastor or someone with statues in a cathedral do? It's going to take a while to purge those things, but God is looking for our individual hearts. Is that what you're saying?

Rabbi Michael Washer: Yes, and being an artist who sells art, I know people buy art to stick on their walls because it’s what they believe. If people believe in idolatry, they're going to put idolatry on their walls. It's up to us personally to rejigger our homes to reflect what we have rejiggered in our minds. It's a process. I don't know what people will do with it. Sell it on eBay, make some money, and invest in Jewish books. People get very creative about what to do with their idolatrous stuff.

Candace Long: In this last segment, I want us to walk through how to apply the "Tavnît" that you found in Leviticus 14. To sum it up, if after the priest has taken away the stones, which you say are living stones referring to each believer infected with Hellenism, and after he has scraped the house, and if the disease continues to spread, the house is deemed unclean. The priest shall tear down the house, its stones, its timber, and its plaster. This is a huge revelation that you stumbled across.

Rabbi Michael Washer: I definitely stumbled across it. It was a shock to me when I saw it. I got more and more revelation as I was teaching it on Shabbat a couple of years ago. It has grown since then and makes much more sense to me now. Back then it was very fuzzy, but now I can talk about it more clearly.

The trick is this: you must start with the overlaying template of people who are believers in Yeshua are stones in God's house. God's house is a Jewish house, which is why it's called a Temple. It's just like the Temple of God where there were sacrifices and the priest ministered. That didn't go away. God's house, just like everybody's house in Israel, could be infected with leprosy. Leprosy is a picture of Hellenism.

There must be priests who can examine God's house. That means they have to know the Torah. They have to know what Hellenism looks like and how to scrape the house, which means removing the Hellenistic beliefs from the stones themselves. This means re-teaching believers to think Jewishly instead of Hellenistically. That's a hard thing to do, and that's the job of the priests.

If they do that and the stone is pulled out of the house, and if the stone repents and changes, that stone can be put back in the house. But what if the Hellenism grows in that stone even though it's out of the house? That means God's going to get rid of that stone entirely. It's never going back in the house.

Candace Long: What are the implications of that?

Rabbi Michael Washer: The implications are that you have no relationship with God and you never will. The generation that wandered in the wilderness for 38 years—the Talmud says over and over again that they will never enter the Kingdom. It also says this in Hebrews chapters three and four. That generation would never enter the Kingdom; they're cut off from God forever. That will be the same group that a stone pulled from the house will be in, because that's God's house.

Candace Long: When Leviticus was written, someone might say Hellenism wasn't even there yet. How do you say this is what it means now in our culture? You were just talking about what you found in the Sanhedrin.

Rabbi Michael Washer: This gets complicated, so you have to know the connection: Esau equals Rome. Rome is Hellenism. The Greco-Roman Empire is called that because the Hellenism of Greece morphed into the Roman Empire. Greece and Rome represent the same beliefs and words, just with a slightly different face. That became the Holy Roman Empire, which is Christianity. If you can follow and trace Esau, who has been around since before Leviticus, you’ll see that Esau is Rome, and Rome is Hellenism.

Hellenism is the foundation of Christianity. That's why I say what I say. This is a story that has been going on since Genesis 36 with Jacob and Esau. In Sanhedrin 97a, lines 9 through 10, it says that the entire Gentile monarchy will be converted to the heresy of Christianity, and there will be no inclination among the people to accept rebuke. That really is Hellenism. The pride of Christianity is that you are not going to rebuke me to turn away from Hellenism. That is becoming bigger and bigger.

This Baraita supports the opinion of Rabbi Yitzchak, because he would say the Son of David will not come until the entire kingdom is converted to heresy. You can see this in the scripture in the verse about leprosy: "It is all turned white; he is ritually pure" (Leviticus 13:13). One is a leper and ritually impure only if he has a leprous mark, however small, but not if his skin goes completely leprous. Then he's pronounced clean.

That sounds backwards, doesn't it? But what that means is it has completely been overrun by Hellenism, and then the Messiah comes and the body then becomes clean. Similarly, the world will be redeemed only when the Jewish people reach their lowest point. The sages taught the verse states, "For the Lord shall judge his people and atone for his servants when he sees that their power is gone and there is nobody to help" (Deuteronomy 32).

What it's saying is Hellenism has to spread. In fact, it has to spread through Judaism, through all the Jewish people. It calls it the heresy of Christianity, which, by the way, I've rarely seen in Jewish writings. But that's completely clear. It says Christianity is leprosy.

Candace Long: That is amazing to me. As a Latter Days one-trick pony, I see that happening. I read about revivals happening where people are coming to the Lord, but it's in a Hellenistic situation. I find it hard as a Torah-observant baby Jew to know how to pray. You don't want to say, "Yes, Lord, bring about this Hellenistic revival," but many countries in Europe are having revivals and coming to the Hellenistic Jesus. We're seeing that more and more.

Rabbi Michael Washer: I just came up with a phrase that helped me. The phrase is "package deal." Hellenism comes in a package deal. When people come to Yeshua, they're not coming to Yeshua; they're coming to Jesus. It's a package deal that 100% of the time comes with Hellenism. It is a package deal that people are being sold: Jesus along with the culture of Hellenism.

I have never seen somebody come to Yeshua the Messiah in a situation completely stripped of Hellenism. I've been a believer for almost 50 years and I've never seen it. I was able to do it a couple of times, but only a couple of times where it was a pure Jewish situation and an understanding of Yeshua the Messiah with no Hellenism attached to it at all. It's very rare because of this package deal.

Revival, what people call revival, is just the package deal. Bring us more Hellenism, bring us more Jesus Christ. People fall into it, they love it, and it spreads like fire. But what's spreading is Hellenism. The real revival is going to be when people turn to Judaism.

Candace Long: But that probably will not happen until some bad stuff happens in a full way. We're going to creep toward it and there will be pockets of people who are really revived and turning their hearts toward God and Judaism. I'm hearing from listeners of Shabbat Shalom, and they're saying they wouldn't miss the program because it is so rich and they are studying hours after the program ends. This is part of the movement of pulling away and the separation we've talked about concerning the 20% who chose to follow Moses.

Let's go back now and let me list some things so we can help people understand how to break out a "Tavnît." You saw a powerful pattern. We've got the pieces: the house is the house of God, the stones are individual people, and the priest in the story is God who is examining. Correct?

Rabbi Michael Washer: It's also a priest. It's Jewish people who know the pictures. They have to know the Torah.

Candace Long: We know the leprosy is the red and the green that relates to Hellenism, the ways of Edom, Esau, and the flesh. What does it mean to examine the house?

Rabbi Michael Washer: Again, most people can't examine. They are a stone. How are they going to examine their own plaster and stone when they are a stone? It has to come from an outside source. The trick is to not say, "Lord, examine me," and then think you know what God is saying to you. In most churches, they're taught to pray and to hear God's voice, and that He'll examine you and tell you how to fix things. That's not how it works. God already gave us the Torah. The Torah is what gives the prescription of what to do and how to fix the problem, and Torah only.

Candace Long: The Torah is the plumb line that lines us up. There has to be an outside source, a teacher, who will do that examination and make the rebuke. That's what we're doing here with Ask The Rabbi. What does it mean then to scrape the house?

Rabbi Michael Washer: The priest is the one who does the scraping. To scrape the plaster off from around the stone and the stone itself means to scrape the belief system. I say this because there's a verse in Matthew and Mark where Yeshua is talking to his brother Pharisees—because he was a Pharisee—and he tells them they're like tombs that people walk over and become unclean. It's all plastered on the outside real pretty with white plaster, but inside are dead men's bones, which is what's supposed to be inside of a tomb.

He's not saying this is all wrong. He's saying that the outside is hypocrisy. He says you need to change the outside of that tomb. It needs to be scraped and replastered. These are our belief systems.

Candace Long: We talked about taking away the stones. If there's still leprosy there after the priest has scraped, like you did with the Shroud of Turin—you took it apart and scraped away the Hellenistic parts—they take away the stones. Is that when we have a certain amount of time to get it together before the stones go back?

Rabbi Michael Washer: Exactly right. You’re given seven days, and the priest checks the stone again. It's out by itself, and just like it happens in the clothing and in the body after the house, he goes and he checks it seven days later. It can still spread in the clothing and in the body. If it does, bad things will happen and there will be judgment.

Candace Long: I'm a timeline person, so when the Bible says over and over seven days, I'm thinking birth pangs.

Rabbi Michael Washer: That's what it is. Every seven-day period of being put outside the camp is a picture of the birth pangs.

Candace Long: So if a stone is loaded with Hellenism, is this telling us that those who are laden with Hellenism and totally leprous would not go in at the resurrection and would have to remain during those seven years in order to get it together?

Rabbi Michael Washer: There's no way they're going in the resurrection. The resurrection is called the resurrection of the righteous.

Candace Long: Of the clean stone.

Rabbi Michael Washer: Yes, of course. In the past, only righteous Jews got leprosy. But that was in the past when there was an actual miracle mark of leprosy. This is not that. This is what leprosy is a picture of. This is the actual sin, and that is a person who is not righteous even though they were in the house. They are taken from the house and cast out of the camp.

The camp is our covenant; it's our community; it's the commonwealth of Israel. They're outside that. It's done. In Christian terminology, would they call that losing your salvation? I don't know because we don't even think like that.

Candace Long: The implications are extremely serious here. If we do not deal with this Hellenism—because that's part of what the delusion is in Second Thessalonians 2:3—if it's completely Hellenized, delusion will set in and they will not be able to see.

You're saying the stones will be pulled out and put aside for seven days during the birth pangs. That's when I think the prophecy will be fulfilled that then they will know that they didn't know something. They will turn to the Jew and look for whoever has a tzitzit on and cling to that, because that's the only one that's a real Jew.

Rabbi Michael Washer: That's exactly right. The whole purpose of the birth pangs is to bring the Messiah, to birth the Messiah through the Jews, through Israel, and through nobody else. Israel gives birth to the Messiah, and it's horrible and painful.

What about the Christians? They think they're all taken in the rapture and the Jews are left behind. That's not reality. Reality is we're awaiting the resurrection of the righteous, and the righteous is Israel. If you are cut off from Israel, you are cut off from the resurrection. Even Sha'ul, Paul, says, "I hope to attain to the resurrection. That's what I'm shooting for." This is not like "once saved, always saved." The bottom line is: did Yeshua make your spirit alive? That's it. If your spirit's alive, it's alive, and you are righteous in God's sight.

Candace Long: To share this episode, go to candacelong.com/podcast and look for "Ask The Rabbi: How God Will Deal with Hellenized Christianity." I will provide a link to the teaching that Rabbi gave on Leviticus 12 through 15, along with information about our weekly program, Shabbat Shalom.

If you'd like to study the Torah with us each week, Ask The Rabbi is a regular segment. You can check our website for details at shabbatshalomradio.com. I'm Candace Long. I want to thank you so much for listening to Lessons in the Latter Days. God bless.