A Hiding Place in the Day of Trouble

Psa 32:7 You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance.

Psa 50:15 and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will honor me.


Humanity is about to embark on the darkest hour known to all of creation. I am talking about various trials and temptations. I am talking about the beginning of birth pains (Matt 24:8; Mark 13:8). A day in which the wrath of the enemy is going to come down to earth and test the saints. (Please note and understand that the wrath of the enemy is not the same as the wrath of God). The time of Jacob's trouble. Unparalleled sorrow in the earth.

Most people are unaware that this is even about to happen. Consumed with their love for pleasure, sin, materialism and consumerism, most living day to day to fulfill the desires of their lustful flesh. And they are marching toward eternal destruction.

If you happen to be of the chosen, of Yah's elect, then you too stand on the precipice of great trials and temptations. If you think you will escape the time to come unscathed, think again.

Am I just being "fatalistic"? A doomsday prophet? That is what they accused Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and all the prophets of being, and yet what they prophesied against Israel came to pass. But not because they woke up that morning on the wrong side of the bed. But because of Israel's gross sin. Because of God's awesome holiness (set-apartness). Because of the divine nature of Yehovah God which cannot and will not co-exist with wickedness. And yet He is merciful. He is merciful to allow us to repent. Even unto the end of the book of the Revelation Yahushua (Jesus) is longsuffering in bringing the just reward of sin into the earth, admonishing men to repent of their torahlessness and come back to Him. His ways are just and His lovingkindness is forever.

Sobering days ahead. We will see things which we could have never imagined taking place. Long-standing institutions falling to the ground. Foundations shaken to their core. Foundations of government, religion, infrastructures, and bedrock entities totally destroyed. Isa 13:13 says, "Therefore I will shake the heavens, And the earth will move out of her place, In the wrath of the LORD of hosts And in the day of His fierce anger".

And yet Yahushua tells us, His talmidim (disciples), to not let our hearts be troubled. To be not afraid nor dismayed. Even though Daniel and Revelation teach that the fury of the anti-messiah and satan will be unleashed against us, God's called-out ones, and will overcome them (Revelation 13:7), we are comforted knowing He is with us, even unto the end of the age (Matthew 28:20). YHVH promises to shelter us in the day of trouble. How can this be? Could it be because those who embrace and live in His Torah will experience that experience known to the psalmist as resting "under the shadow of the Almighty"? Even if we were to perish in the times of tribulation, if we hold to His teachings, His commandments, even unto the end, even if it costs us our lives, will it not only work toward our reward in eternity?

Rev 14:12 This calls for patient endurance on the part of the saints who obey God's commandments and remain faithful to Jesus.


Just how long is eternity? Forever and forever and forever. It's mind boggling.

I am asking these questions because I also need to know. I also need ministering to. I need strengthening. I endeavor and yet struggle to do the will of God now and I am sitting here in my nice cushy bed typing on my high tech laptop, clothed in my nice warm jammies sheltered behind my electronic security system. And yet, according to my understanding of the scriptures, events so atrocious as the Holocaust 60 plus years ago will pale in comparison to what is coming upon the world. As believers, even our own lives will be impacted and forever changed. How can I prepare myself and those whom I love for such a time as the one that is to come?

The only thing I can come up with is to trust in Yahushua. And part of trusting, truly trusting, means to keep His commands. To obey Him as revealed in the whole counsel of the Word of God, both the Tanakh and the Brit Chadashah (Renewed covenant). What a sobering task. What an awesome priveledge it is that God Almighty HAS revealed His will concerning us. Many people don't wanna hear it, they want to hear things that tickle the ears, and my sinful flesh certainly doesn't want to obey it, but there you go. Not one jot nor one tittle will pass away from His Torah until ALL be fulfilled. They are our instructions. Our survival guide in the days to come. So let us learn them. All of them and walk them out by faith.


Start With the Basics


I have people who are starting to wake up to the truth and toss out the man-made doctrines they've been taught come up to me and ask about the Hebrew root of their faith. They now know and understand that the "Law" (Torah) is holy, just, and good (Romans 7:12), they know they are not SAVED by keeping the "Law" (Torah), that they are saved by the Blood of the Lamb of God (Yahushua) and NONE of their so-called righteous deeds can get them in to Heaven (for Yah says they are as filthy rags to Him), they have come to apply Messiah's sacrifice to their lives for the forgiveness of sins, now they want to repent and FOLLOW HIM. Now what? What does that look like?

That looks like Torah. Jesus lived Torah. He IS the Torah clothed in flesh (John 1:14). He did every word of the scriptures, not the traditions of men when they contradicted the scriptures (such as certain dictates of the Oral Torah, one of the foundational pillars of modern-day Judaism.)

I won't go into all the details here, but in a very brief and much-paraphrased explanation, the church teaches a man-made tradition called "we are under grace, not under law". Yes, this is true. You are freed from the Law. You are no longer under "the Law", but which law are you no longer under? The Law of sin and death (Romans 8:2). How do you get under THAT LAW? By transgressing God's Law, the Torah and by being carried into the captivity of satan. Torah means "instructions" or "teaching" in Hebrew and carries the idea with it to "hit the mark". What is sin? Sin means to transgress the Torah, or to "miss the mark". There is much misunderstanding of Paul's writings because many western gentile Christians do not yet understand: 1)That Paul, a former pharisee, continued to keep true Torah, the written Word which Jesus taught in it's Hebrew context, including keeping the Sabbath and Feast days, circumcision, etc in their fullest joy as revealed in the Messiah making them full 2)the political fallings out in the first century of non-Jewish-born believers and those who wanted to push the traditions of the Oral Torah on them, 3) the Tanakh (which includes the Torah, prophets and the writings) in it's proper context and 4) That there has been some meanings lost in the translation of the New Testament from the Hebrew to the Greek, during which some of the Greek does not allow for the dileneation of the various meanings of the word "law" in their contexts (either written nomos or oral tradition).


The Image of Messiah Formed in You


How can we "dwell in the secret place?" By producing fruit in keeping with repentance? Repentance, teshuvah, means to turn away from sin. Repentance back to what? Back to Torah. Jesus lived, fulfilled, and exalted it, Paul taught and magnified it, said it was our schoolmaster. Many men who were influenced by the devil have tried to pervert it.

What will YOU do with it? How will I live in it?

It is one thing to be growing in Torah during the good times, the blessing times. It is another to cling to it during times of duress. The only conclusion I can come to is that it is during those times of difficulties when Torah is formed, rooted, and established in us. Until the Messiah be formed in us (Gal 4:19).

Like gold in the refiner's fire, may the dross (impurities) rise to the top as our faith is purified. It will be a rare, precious thing in the earth in the days to come for those who allow the fire of trials, adversity, and persecution to burn out the sin in our hearts and lives. Also, remember the warnings of Messiah to not fall away:

"But take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that Day come on you unexpectedly" (Luke 21:34).

The whole nature of deception is that the one who is being deceived is not aware that he is. Whether we are deceived by our own cares for the things of this life, or by "any man" (Matthew 24:4) or by vain and empty traditions, it does not matter. It is all still deception. And all deception's ultimate destination is into a ditch (metaphor for hell). Even religious theological structures will fall when they are not built upon the sure foundation of Torah:

See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Messiah. Colossians 2:8.

1Cr 3:11-14: For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Yahushua the Messiah. If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man's work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. (emphasis by the writer).


To know and understand the Messiah as He is, understanding He is a Hebrew of the tribe of Judah, a son of David and the Torah made flesh, one must understand the foundation of Hebrew thought, belief, and deed: the Torah of God. And thus we must understand Yahushua in His full Hebrew context in order to understand His message. Everything else is hollow and deceptive philosophy.


And so the problem remains, many deceptive philosophies based on human tradition abound in the church today where we are supposed to be learning the truth. Since churches teach a Christ and convert people to following Him, yet do not do or hold to what THE CHRIST SAYS, it begs the question, are many teaching a false christ? If that is the case, many churches are priming and grooming their congregants to embrace THE false christ, the anti-christ, the son of perdition, or lawless (Torahless) one when he is revealed.

How can we combat this? By learning the truth, living it, and teaching it as we learn it. If we want to return to Torah, and we are learning what pleases God and what does NOT please Him, we can start to get overwhelmed when we see how much our lives do not follow His plan. It does not mean the plan is bad. We learned from Romans 7:12 that the Torah is holy, good, and just and from the psalms that King David, a man after God's own heart, loved it and meditated on it day and night (Psalm 119). So what to do?



START WITH THIS ONE THING


In the book of Acts, we see a problem arise. The gentiles wanted to follow the Messiah. Many were saved and in the process of repentance. However, there were some who held to the Orah Torah who were telling the gentiles that they had to 1) be circumcised in order to follow the Messiah and 2) Hold all the teachings of Oral Torah in order to be saved. This was the main crux of Paul's railing against the "judaizers" (note: Paul was NOT against the fact that these men were culturally Jewish or the fact that they were teaching Torah, but rather the fact that they had added a bunch of extra-biblical commands which had nothing to do with Torah, against the explicit instruction not to add to Torah nor take away from it Deut.4:2)

So what did the apostles do in response to this problem? They gathered at what is now known as the Council of Jerusalem and came to a decision and sent word to the gentiles of their decision. In Acts chapter 15, the gentiles were admonished by the apostles to do FOUR things: to abstain from fornication (sexual immorality), things strangled, from blood, and from idolatry. This was so that Hebrew and gentile believers could have table fellowship together (remember that Yah taught the Israelites not to sup with idolaters). But this was a BEGINNING POINT the gentiles were to start with. They were not to stop there in their learning of Torah and repentance. They were to continue hearing the Torah and repenting, as it says in Act 15:21, "For Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath."

The followers of Jesus today would do well to follow the advice given by the apostles. Since the Almighty punished Israel for the transgression of idolatry by sending them into captivity not once but twice and it is a commandment that is reverberated throughout the Tanakh, I would tend to think that would be a good place to start. Get rid of the idols in the church. As I have stated in previous posts, I am not talking about our own conception of idolatrous ideas such as materialism, addiction, and the like although THOSE ARE A PART OF IDOLATRY, I am taking biblical cues to defining idolatry as the worship of Asherah (Easter, replete with sunrise services, eggs, bunnies, and the like), Tammuz and Ba'al (Christmas) and throw those things out FIRST. The modern-day practices built around these pagan idols. After all, it was the zenith of repentance when a righteous king of Israel would arise and DESTORY THE HIGH PLACES OF IDOLATRY. Today, those "high places" are Christmas and Easter, since history bears out that these practices are rooted in the pagan idolatry Yah told His children to have NOTHING to do with.

But you may be wondering: what would I tell my family, my friends, my coworkers? My children? How can I go against the grain and appear so "weird". Let me tell you, if you cannot stand for Yahushua, and take a stand for righteousness NOW, when things are cushy, what will you do in the day of persecution?? What will you do when the persecution fires are engulfing (some of) you, as they did with the martyrs of the Dark Ages who refused to bow down to their generation's anti-christ, the Catholic Church? It seems to me the lines in the sand are being drawn now. And those who seek to do righteously will only continue to grow more righteous, and likewise, those who are growing more wicked, will only continue to grow more twisted.

But consider this: it is a very real event when Jesus the Messiah will have "MANY" come to Him on that Day saying, "Lord, Lord...did we not prophesy in your name?...." (paraphrasing). But what will be His response? He will say the three words which will be the saddest words in all of history. He will say, "Depart from me, you workers of iniquity. For I never knew you" (Matthew 7:23). That phrase "workers of iniquity" means "transgressors of the Law (Torah)". And these were those who had operated in the "gifts of the Spirit".

That is a sobering thought!


What about me? Everyday I wake up and ask myself that question. "Self, are you going to carry your cross today? Are you going to stand for righteousness' sake and proclaim the truth, especially to your children?"

This, my friend, is the question of the hour. May YHVH assist you and me in answering faithfully in action and in deed until the end.

SHALOM!

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