1. My Discipleship Journey

by | Sep 3, 2012 | Biblical Meditations

A Personal History 

By John Marquez

If you’re going to ponder a man’s views of God and what that man thinks God is revealing in His written Word, it helps to know something about the man himself. Who is he? Where did he come from? How did he get to where he is today? How did he come to know God? Can you trust his views? Does he really know what he’s talking about? Do his ideas line up with God’s Word? And does he have any hidden unhealthy, self-serving or pernicious agendas we should know about?

I’ve said in other portions of this website that, without exception, no fallen flesh can be trusted or relied upon to serve as a source or resource. I firmly believe that you can only trust a man to the degree that he himself relies on and trusts entirely upon the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob…and the Power of His Holy Spirit and the perfect, Finished Work of His living Word. And there’s only one Man that has ever met God’s Perfect Standards and fulfilled His Perfect Law. And that Man is our Messiah, Yeshua of Nazareth. So Scripture directs us to place all our trust, hope and expectation upon the Living Word of God made flesh… on Him alone… and never in ourselves, or any other created thing.

 “Instruct those who are rich in this present world not to be conceited or to fix their hope on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly supplies us with ALL THINGS to enjoy.  Instruct them to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is Life indeed.” (1 Tim. 6:17-19 Emphasis added.)

I believe I owe it to you to tell you about myself so you’ll better understand what I’m saying in my writings. It will help if you know what ‘my boot camp’ training consisted of. (And by the way, my boot camp training is ongoing. In this life, for any disciple that is going to grow and keep maturing and developing… boot camp never ends!)

How did I learn about what disciples are and how they are to be trained? What lessons have I learned along the way? How did I learn them and why do I see things as I do? You need to know those things because when you do, you will  better understand what ingredients have gone into my understanding and what kind of life structure underlies my attempts to articulate and express what my interactive experiences with the Lord have ‘downloaded’ into my heart of hearts.

I pray that after you read about what happened in my past, you’ll have even more trust in our Master and much more personal hope for yourself.  And you’ll be better able to see why only one Man is to be trusted…Yeshua (Jesus), the Messiah (who also happens to be the  creative, sustaining and Living Word…of the Living God!) No other man is to be exalted or considered to be more than what all the sons of Adam really are. Apart from what they have been made and equipped to be and do by our Creator, Sustainer, Redeemer and Messiah…God’s living Word…all other men are, in themselves, even on their best day, nothing but, ‘bankrupt, helplessly dependent… dust’.

My early years…

I was born into a Mexican–American family. My four grandparents and my mother were all born in Mexico. My father was born in Texas, shortly after his parents came to America. My mother and father first met each other in Omaha, Nebraska, and were married in 1938.

I was born in Omaha in 1939, the first of three children. Our family background was Catholic. I was raised in that faith from birth. When I began sixth grade, I stopped attending public elementary school and transferred to a Catholic school. That is where I came to know some Catholic priests that belonged to a religious missionary order. I became good friends with several of them, and because of their influence, and my admiration of them, I decided to go to the seminary they had attended and study to become a priest just like them. I would be eligible to go after successfully completing eighth grade.

My parents gave me permission to apply for admission to the seminary. And when I was accepted, they provided the means for me to go. I left home when I was 13 years old and went to the state of Missouri, to begin six years of minor seminary training. I made many good friends and did well in my studies and eventually was appointed to various positions of student responsibility and leadership.

The entire course lasted 13 years – four years of high school, four years of college and four years of post-graduate studies. There was also one year of special religious training called, ‘novitiate’, which was added between our time in the minor seminary and our entry into the major seminary. It served as a sort of ‘boot camp’ preparation to prepare us to enter the monastic life of the religious order I was joining.

[Please Note This: what I am going to say about my seminary experience, and Catholicism, and the religious order and my short time as a priest, is not meant to be a statement or critique of the world wide Roman Catholic Church. It is merely an account of my personal experiences and how I saw and interpreted them at a time of life when I was  spiritually and emotionally immature and inexperienced.

This is an account of my personal relationship with God and is not meant to criticize or demean any of the dear people with whom I grew up, studied under, or interacted with, during my formative years. I grew to love, and was loved, by many of them. They were beloved and respected friends. This is not about them or their Church per se. It is about what I saw and experienced and how I interpreted it. In other words, this is only an expression of my subjective view of the world, and my experiences in it, during the very difficult, confusing and painful days of my youth.]

During my time in the seminary, I truly wanted to serve God, as we were taught to understand what that meant, and I desired to be ‘a man after God’s own heart’. I went along with everything my training required me to do, thinking that by doing that, I would be serving and pleasing Him.

But for the first twelve years of our training in that particular system, we never seriously studied the Bible. It was given passing mention, but we never had to bring a Bible to class until the beginning of our twelfth academic year. But by the end of that year, we were already scheduled to be ordained to the priesthood! So in that system, our priesthood formation was not based on Biblical revelation. It was based on Church teachings and traditions that, instead of being Biblical and Hebraic, were utterly Greco-Roman and man-made and Western European in origin. They were based on Hellenistic philosophical pillars that originated with Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas and his medieval philosophy, theology and thought patterns. And linked to that, was a set of post-Biblical, non-Hebraic, Western Church traditions that had developed within what had come to be known as ‘Christendom’, long after the deaths of the original Jewish apostles and disciples of our Messiah.

Because of the formative system’s practice of ignoring the Scriptures, I didn’t seriously begin to look into the Bible until I had to…until it was actually a part of my required course of study. But by then, I was already a young man in my middle 20’s! So throughout my earliest formative first twenty five years, I remained virtually ignorant of the written Word of God and developed the unconscious attitude that the Bible is not very important. The unspoken message I received from the system was that I could have an intimate personal knowledge of God’s living Word, simply by being well versed in the organized system and the religious teachings of the men that were admired, believed and respected by the system to which I was personally connected.

 

The beginning of the end…

But then in my twelfth year of training when I actually began to study Scripture, something happened that, even to this day, I find hard to describe or explain. Two of our Scripture professors were good at explaining the Hebrew language and the Israelite culture and their ways of seeing, thinking and expressing truth. I had never before heard or read anything that was like what they began to show us about the Hebrew world of the Bible. And so I began to realize how important knowledge of that Hebrew world had to be, since it was the ‘womb’ into which God chose to place His precious living and written Word. God chose the Hebrew world and its culture and mindset as the matrix from which He wanted to reveal Himself to us. So to me, that suddenly became a major key to gaining access to an accurate, precise and authentic understanding of what God wanted us to know about His perfect nature and its changeless ways.

When I was finally introduced to that world, I became more excited than I had ever been in my life. I loved the Scriptures and could not get enough of them. They opened up a brand new world I never knew existed. But this only seemed to happen to me. My classmates did not seem to be affected by the Bible the way I was. It seemed to be only another class to them, but to me it was a gateway to a brand new life. I was never the same after that world opened up before me.

At that time, I’m sorry to say, my primary fascination wasn’t directed to the Lord Himself…to ‘Jesus Christ’, as I called Him in those days. I was trained to apprehend everything intellectually…to start trying to ‘figure it out’, to ‘get my mind around it’, so to speak. So at first I focused on studying about the written Word…not on getting to know the Living Word Himself. So it was with my attempt to become familiar with the written Word, so that I could try to analyze it as best I could.  It began as  a fascination with matters that were merely about Him, but I was still not able to enter into an intimate personal connection WITH HIM!

So my interest in the beginning was academic, intellectual, theoretical and for the most part, abstract. If I stayed on that level, I felt a sense of control and confidence and, sorry to say, arrogant ‘smugness’. That was the best I could do at that time. Nevertheless, I began to try to learn as much as I could about this new world. And, as a result, I quickly began to lose interest in all my other subjects. Now that I knew about the world contained in the Bible, that was all I wanted to dig into. I discovered that our Heavenly Father named His Son, His living Word made flesh, ‘Yeshua’. It is a derivative of ‘Yehoshua’ (Joshua). And it means, ‘The Lord (YHWH) is Salvation’. This is the name God chose to give to His living Word when He finally sent Him to live among us, in human flesh! So now it’s important to me to use His real name. Anyone that knows Hebrew has to think, ‘God is Salvation’ when they hear His name, and link that idea to the Person of our Lord.

When I first became aware of all the revelation that is packed into the Hebrew language and culture, I was shocked and amazed to find out how much I had been missing. Since this was such a new world to me, a world about which I knew so little, I surmised that most non-Jewish people in the pews of the typical American church world, would know next to nothing! But this world that was opening up to me was so beautiful and wonderful and deep and compelling to me… because I was gradually beginning to sense that God’s mysteries were hidden within it. I began to feel as if I was being ‘nudged’ by the outer fringes of eternity and infinity! For the first time, I began to develop a sense that God was much more than a theological doctrine or proposition or an association with a man-controlled and organized religious institution. A dim awareness began to grow within that there was something much more real and mysterious and living and incomprehensible about Him that I couldn’t even begin to grasp or understand intellectually and philosophically. But it began to dawn on me that He’s not just some misty, blurry distant Being that lurks in the farthest reaches of outer space. He is a Living, Personal Someone… Someone Real and Alive and chillingly Alive and Imminent and Overwhelming! This dawning awareness of His Nearness was deliciously scary…and it filled me with a sense of awe that I had never ever felt before!

And, as Bible matters became my preoccupation, my professors, classmates and closest friends noticed great changes taking place in me. After a few months, one of those two professors that had influenced me so much, asked me if I would be interested in pursuing further studies in Europe so that I could be qualified to return to the seminary as a member of the Scripture teaching faculty. And of course, I said ‘Yes!’

So to accelerate and deepen my education and prepare me for the future studies this new direction would require, he began giving me extra things to read and study that the rest of my class were not receiving. I studied more and began to change more. But what began as something wonderful and exciting, suddenly started to take on the aspects of an enormous problem!

I could not understand why the seminary training had forced us to ignore the Word of God for so long. I could not understand why the teachings of men were given so much more importance, priority, exposure and prominence than God’s Personal Word. Why did the Living Word of God Himself, the risen Lord… and His New Covenant Realities… receive so little mention and respect by comparison? I could not reconcile what the God of Scripture required, with what the ‘gods’ of organized, man-controlled religion were emphasizing. The differences were enormous and the effect those discrepancies had on me was devastating. It made me feel as if my mind was being torn apart in two conflicting directions.

Ten months after we started Scripture study, my classmates and I were ordained as priests. Of course our families and friends were enormously proud of us. And each one of us went home to celebrate our ‘First Mass’, and receive congratulations from our families, after our long hard years of preparation. And after that, we returned to continue our studies. But I began to see a tremendous difference between what was in the Bible, and what was in my real life and in the daily life of the people of the church world I was part of, and, with which I had become so comfortable and familiar.

It is historical fact that for centuries, the Church authorities had kept common uneducated people in the dark, concerning the contents of the Bible. And now I began to realize that the same thing had been done to us…even though we were supposedly going to be spiritual leaders! And the people we were going to be leading, were preconditioned to to assume we knew what we were doing and had all the answers! And when I realized that most most certainly not the case, I became very disillusioned, confused and disturbed in my soul.

For the first time in my life, I began to doubt and mistrust the faith I had in my church and what it taught and what it was really doing. I lost confidence in my professors and text books. And I lost faith in myself and in the future work into which I had invested my entire life. Now I was beginning to realize that I really didn’t know what I was doing. I was no more qualified to be a spiritual leader to others than the man in the moon! And, if the religious order to which I belonged were to invest all the extra money it would take to prepare me to become a faculty member of the seminary system, it would be a waste. And I knew I would stir up a lot of trouble because… I was not going to be able to teach what the system and the powers that be would be expecting me to promote!

So I felt like a man that suddenly wakes up and realizes he’s on the wrong train, speeding in the wrong direction and the sooner he gets off, the better it will be for everyone concerned. But I had just recently been ordained a priest! And I’d taken perpetual vows of poverty, chastity and obedience as a member of my religious order! I was already totally committed for life! But nevertheless, all the doubts that were plaguing me made it impossible to function in those roles. My motivation  evaporated. I was undergoing something weird…a sort of spiritual, mental and emotional ‘meltdown’. And finally, in the middle of a sleepless night, I suddenly admitted to myself that I no longer believed or trusted in anything I was doing. I couldn’t even trust in what I thought I was seeing in the Bible! And that’s when I realized that I was going to have to admit, first to myself…and then to the world…that I was losing my grip on what I had believed was Reality… and I truly did not have what was required to do the job I had vowed to God to do for the rest of my life… with anything that would come close to wholehearted integrity. I had signed up to do it; but I no longer had the heart or the will or the emotional steam with which to back up what I knew would be expected of me.

When I realized that we were not teaching the Word of God, but the ideas and conclusions of men, I shut down, emotionally. And I began to believe that it would be criminal for me to allow the  order to invest any more money in my education. Suddenly I was a total misfit. I no longer belonged. I began to be regarded by my friends and colleagues as a ‘total stranger’. And that is also how I felt. And that intensified the pressure I was feeling…pressure to make a decision and declare my intentions as soon as possible, before I did any more damage to all concerned. I was amazed and appalled! How could the Holy Spirit have allowed the world I was in and had inherited and believed in…to stray so far away from God’s written Word! As this enormous discrepancy sank into my awareness, my personal little world suddenly imploded. I lost all faith in everything, even in my understanding of God and of what I thought Reality was.

In a few months I had changed so drastically that my life as I had always known it was completely destroyed. My professors and fellow seminary students began to question my sanity. And that is when I felt compelled to leave the order, the priesthood and the church of my youth. I was afraid to do it. I had no desire and was not at all prepared, to try to be a man of the world. I knew nothing about functioning in that ‘dog-eat-dog’ atmosphere. The thought of doing it frightened me very much. But the thought of staying where I was and doing what I no longer believed in, frightened me even more. So I saw no other realistic alternative. I had to leave… or go mad!

I had previously told my superiors that I was undergoing major difficulties. But now I asked them to help me request permission from Rome to leave the priesthood and the religious life so that I could become a lay person once more. But they assumed it was not a matter of faith, but a matter of character and morals…that I was being assailed by demonic temptations. So they kept encouraging me to ‘hang in there’. But it only got worse. And when their efforts to change my mind didn’t succeed, my major superior refused to help me. In fact he ordered me to stay where I was. And when I told him I could not do that and intended to leave whether I had his permission and help, or not, he pointed his finger at me and said:

“You are a Judas! You are going to drive your parents to an early grave. And thousands of people are going to Hell because you’re deserting them. And, if you should ever try to get married, it won’t last five years. And when you come to your senses and realize what you’ve done…that you walked out on Jesus Christ…you too will probably commit suicide!”

 

Into the wilderness…

After he said that… I felt as if I had been pushed over the edge of a cliff. That finished it for me. So I left without permission…in total disgrace. That of course shamed, devastated and disgraced my family in the eyes of our friends. No one could understand what had happened to me. And I could not explain it – not even to myself. I just knew I had to leave. And when I did, I was penniless and had no idea of what I was going to do next. I staggered out of that highly-sheltered world, and into the jungle of the world system, like a drunk man hoping he could manage to stay on his feet.

The shock, disillusionment, shame and pain I was feeling were so great that I decided I would never have anything more to do with God or Jesus, or Christianity and the Church. I lost all faith in those things as I understood and knew them at that time. And because all the pain and shame I was now feeling was linked to the Bible and Israel and that awesome Hebrew world that had briefly opened up before me, I felt compelled to walk out on that too. I turned my back on all of it and left it behind, determined never to have anything more to do with it for the rest of my life. Now that my life was nothing but charred ruins, I saw no reason to pursue it, nor did I have any realistic reason to even try to salvage any of it. Everything that my mind linked to this experience became like a red hot griddle on which my soul had been placed. And because of the pain that caused, I determined that ‘once was enough’, and never again would I  allow myself to ever come close to such a painful thing ever again!

So, taking what seemed at the time to be the ‘path of least resistance’, the lesser of two evils, I went out into the dog-eat-dog world and did my best to find a job and make a new beginning. One of my professors had introduced me to Mary and her daughter Katie in the past. I had been assigned to teach Katie and help her prepare for her first communion. That is how I first got to know them. Mary’s former husband (Katie’s father) had been unfaithful and had deserted them several years before. So after I made my decision to leave, I called Mary and told her that I was leaving and was planning to move to California. And in the most awkward way imaginable, I asked her if she would consider going to California with me. And she said… “Yes!”

So Mary came with me. And when we saved enough money to do it, we were married in Tijuana, Mexico in 1967 by a Mexican lawyer. And Mary, Katie and I settled in Southern California.

When I asked the seminary to send the transcripts containing my grades and degrees, they ignored my request. I assumed they wanted to pressure me into a change of mind so I would return to the order and the priesthood. So because of that, I couldn’t prove that I had any education. And several months later, when they finally did send my transcript, the state of California’s educational system informed me that, during the time I was a student, the schools I attended had not been properly accredited. So, according to the secular world, I had no legitimate, credible education, and no viable academic credentials. And thus, I also did not have a credible history or track record to show to prospective employers. And so of course, that made it impossible for me to get a ‘decent’ (well-paying) job.

So I began ‘from scratch’. I began by getting a job as a laborer in a tree nursery…and later I worked in a hospital as an X-ray orderly. Then I enrolled in a barber college because no high school diploma was required. And I studied barbering by day, and worked as a machine operator in a greeting card factory by night. I did that until I graduated from the barber school, passed my examination and received a barber license. After that I worked as a barber in Southern California for three years and also worked part time for a large moving and storage company hauling the furniture of people that were moving from one place to another.

A few months after I left the priesthood and began to live in California, I began having a recurring bad dream that in America we call a ‘nightmare’. It was always the same dream, over and over. It would come three, four or five times a week. I was afraid to go to sleep because of it. In the dream I would be with my classmates in the middle of our ordination ceremony. And suddenly I would realize that I had left the priesthood and could no longer function in it. And I could not understand why I was back there, surrealistically repeating the ordination ceremony over and over in an endless loop. And I would panic when I realized I was back there…being forced again to to do what I did not believe in and had already left behind. And at that point I would stop the ceremony and walk out once more, deserting my classmates and devastating my parents and family and friends…over and over and over again. And then, as I would awaken…I’d hear that superior’s voice in my head, saying, ‘you are a Judas…you are a Judas…you are a Judas…’

I’d wake up in a cold sweat. And after that, it would be impossible to go back to sleep. So I’d get up and drink whiskey to make myself sleepy enough to pass out. Sometimes during those excruciatingly dark times, I would think seriously about committing suicide. And at times, during the day, I would feel waves of irrational, ‘agoraphobic’ terror… panic attacks… that filled me with an unspeakable fear at the mere thought of stepping out of my door onto the sidewalk, or having to go to a grocery store in broad daylight. Thankfully that only came occasionally in waves… and then it would subside and allow me to keep functioning.

That dream made me feel what Judas must have felt, and what Peter felt as soon as he heard the cock crow at the dawning of that fateful day when His Lord would be executed. And the level of desolation and despair that would engulf my soul is impossible to describe or convey. At those times, I found that whiskey enabled me to disconnect my brain from the pain and overwhelming sense of desolation I would always feel. And, at least for a short time, I would find relief in the numb oblivion the alcohol would briefly impart. I would drink until I could pass out…so that I could get a little sleep before having to get up and get ready to face another day.

I’d wake up, go to work, and try to distract myself by keeping my mind busy… I tried to outrun my life… until the next time the dream caught up with me. That wretched routine continued for 15 years. And during that time, whenever anyone tried to tell me about God or show me the Gospel, a  burning rage and fury, coming from the profound shame and pain I felt and was continually trying to freeze and numb and forget about, would activate once again and self-protective hostility would well up within me. So I’d play mind games with those people. I’d let them begin their evangelism routine and then suddenly, as they were warming up and getting well into it, I would suddenly interrupt them and begin to ask questions about the Bible that I knew they wouldn’t be able to answer. And then they’d give up and leave me alone. And they’d promise to bring me books that would answer my questions, but they would never return. So I would feel justified and vindicated for a while… until the next time I had that dream.

Only later did I realize what I was really doing during those years. Unconsciously, I was desperately trying to prove that Yeshua and the Bible were not real… so that I would not have to be His Judas! By trying to erase Yeshua, I felt that I could erase the Judas inside of me. The truth was… that the thought of betraying my Lord and being cut off from Him was more than I could bear. So I tried to ‘erase’ Him with my denials, thinking that would also ‘erase’ the Judas curse that was murdering my soul. That incessant dream filled me with so much despair and desolation that I lost all hope.  I couldn’t stand how that felt. So I developed the habits of using denial and mind games and busyness and alcohol, pornography and tobacco to try to numb and disconnect my brain from that Judas identity and all the unspeakable feelings that always came with it.

In 1970, while all of this was going on, and I became better and better at numbing and distracting my inner being in order to be able to function, I saw an opportunity to start a business of my own in my hometown of Omaha. So in June of 1971, we moved from California to Nebraska. A family friend who was an expert in repairing musical instruments wanted to retire and leave his business to my father who was a very good musician and teacher of music. My father was like a son to that man and he wanted to leave his business to someone he knew and loved and trusted. But at that time, my father was too busy to do it. And that created an opportunity for me. So I called the man and asked if he would be willing to train me, and he agreed to do it. That’s why we relocated to Omaha. And that family friend taught me his business and helped me to get started until I was well established in it.

 

Revelation and Reconnection…

In 1978 Mary and I adopted our son Frank. He was eight years old when he came to live with us. By then Katie had grown up and was married. And from 1971 to 1981 the music business grew and became solidly established. By this time my father had joined me in it, and it had become a ‘family business’.

But without warning, at the end of 1981, something happened that took me, and everyone that knew me, completely by surprise. One day when Mary and Frank were out shopping, and I was home alone…I began to feel so much pain in my chest that I was not able to stand. I fell to my knees and doubled over until I was face down on the floor. At first I thought I was having a heart attack. But it wasn’t heart trouble. It was grief…years and years of un-admitted, unresolved grief that I had swallowed and had kept stuffed inside of my heart for years and years. Suddenly it erupted; I could not hold in the pain of all those wounds and losses any longer. It suddenly exploded and spewed out of me. I fell face down on the carpet and began to weep and sob and vent all of the emotional energy that I had been holding inside for so long. I couldn’t stop; I cried and cried until there were no more tears left.

When the weeping finally stopped, a strange peace and quiet descended on me… and suddenly I knew that Someone was in that room with me. And I knew immediately who it was. It was Yeshua… the one I had not spoken to for years… the one I had tried to deny and erase. He was there, and I knew it. And all I could think of saying to Him at that time was:

“If it’s really You Lord; if You are really here with me, I want you to know that I can’t stand the thought of living one more day…  without You…  I would rather die right now and go to hell and get it over with.

“But… if there is anything left of this mess I have become that You would want, Lord… would You please… would You please… take me back? If you take me back, I’ll do anything You say. You can do whatever You want with me…  Lord, if You’ll just… please… take me back!”

And the next thing I knew, it was as if I was directly under Victoria Falls and it was crashing down on me with the loudest roar imaginable. Only it wasn’t water cascading over me… it was the Love of God… taking me back… cleansing… forgiving… and accepting the miserable mess that I had become.

At that moment, my beloved Lord and Master took me back. And He let me know that although I had walked out on the organized religious system to which I had vowed my obedience… He had never rejected or forsaken me. He had never regarded me as a ‘Judas’. I was able to see and know Him that day as I had never been able to do before… And now I KNEW that He is REAL, and I also know that He is  EVERYTHING to me! And, without Him, I can’t be or have or do… anything!

And that day, when He revealed Himself to me in this way,  He disconnected that terrible dream and lifted the Judas curse off of me. Never again, since that moment, has that dream ever returned! And that day, He also set me free from the addiction habits of alcohol, pornography, tobacco and bad language that I had developed to try to numb my fear, shame, and pain. He did it instantaneously, to let me know that what was happening between Him and me was real! It wasn’t a hallucination or wishful thinking, or a vivid imagination. He gave me tangible proof that He is real… and that He truly is raised from the dead… and that He really was, and always is, right here with each one of us… waiting for the moment when we finally cry out to Him and entrust ourselves to Him instead of clinging to a variety of things that He created. He is The only Lord and He is here with us always and forever… to be whatever we will ever need Him to be, or do! At that time I finally realized that He is Life itself, and to be apart from Him is actually ‘living death’!

And I began to sense the bottomless depths of Almighty God’s forgiving redemptive heart for those who, despite their fallen and very flawed human condition, desire to be His own possession.

“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded to sift you men like wheat;  but I have prayed for you, that your faith will not fail; and you, when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”  But he said to Him, “Lord, I am ready to go with You both to prison and to death!”  But He said, “I tell you, Peter, the rooster will not crow today until you have denied three times that you know Me.” (Luke 22:31-34)

After the Lord came back for me on that unforgettable day, I was like Lazarus. My Lord and Master had brought me back to life and I came forth from the tomb…confused, disoriented, and still wrapped in my grave wrappings. He still had a lot of work to do in me. And so, a few months later, He showed me which congregation He wanted me to join. And I really did not want to obey. I did not want to go back to that hot griddle of ecclesiastical confusion, divisive suspicion and back-biting criticism with which the world of Christendom is so infected! I wanted none of that… but I went anyway… because that’s what I sensed My Lord and Master was telling me to do. And I had sworn to Him that I would do whatever He asked of me.

Well, as it turned out, He directed me to the congregation to which the executive director of the local Teen Challenge Ministry (Teen Challenge of the Midlands) belonged. And that is how Roger Helle and I happened to meet. And a few weeks after our first meeting, he felt led to ask me to join his staff. And I was sensing that through this, God was beginning to open the door to the  purpose He had in mind that had prompted Him to send His Son and Holy Spirit to come after me and seek me out of hiding… to rescue me from the human scrap heap… even though at the time, I wanted nothing to do with Him and was avoiding Him like I would avoid a plague.

So I accepted Roger’s offer; and made arrangements with Mary, my family, and especially with my father and music company staff, to make this enormous transition. And, effective October 1, 1984, I officially became part of the Teen Challenge ministry staff in Omaha and worked with them for the next sixteen years.

The curses my former superior pronounced over me have not come to pass or born their noxious fruit. I didn’t drive my parents to an early grave. They both encountered the Lord as I had. My mother passed away when she was 90. My father is approaching his 95th birthday as I update this account in 2012. And Mary and I have been married since 1967… and, oh yes…I am not about to commit suicide! In 2007, on our 40th anniversary, Mary and I renewed our vows. This time we did it before Almighty God… Jewish style… in the presence of our Adat HaTikvah Tzion (The Hope of Zion) Messianic congregation.

(Footnote: My Mary passed away in September of 2019. I was blessed to be with her for 53 years. I was with her at the moment of her death, and as she slept, I was watching over her. Then she suddenly opened her eyes, looked up to one side, as if to look at someone standing beside her. And she looked intently for a few seconds, as if she was listening to something that was being said to her… and then she closed her eyes and passed into eternity… So I was left with the distinct impression that the Lord Himself came to take her Home.)

 

Teach them My Ways…

Since that awesome day when the Lord came looking for me and took me back, He has rigorously been correcting, disciplining, and ‘pruning’ me. He has worked on me and in me. And by His mercy He has also worked through me, including me in many things that He was doing in the lives of many other people.

After I joined the staff of Teen Challenge, Father gave me what I needed to be able to allow Him to develop the support group ministry called The Christ-Life Solution. At first it was part of the Teen Challenge Ministry but then the Lord began to take it into local churches of various Bible-believing denominations. After a few years, it became clear that Christ-Life was going to become a separate ministry in its own right, because local churches throughout the midwest began to ask me to help establish it within their congregations.

So Teen Challenge helped me and Jim and Kathie Hobson, the two Teen Challenge staff members that had been helping me, and who are my life-long beloved Covenant friends, to develop Christ-Life, to build it up until it was able to survive on its own. And so, effective October 1, 2000, with Teen Challenge’s assistance and blessing, we were released to begin operating independently. You can read about the Christ-Life ministry as it has developed over the years at this website: www.ultimatejourney.org

When the Lord gave me the original Christ-Life material in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, I believe He told me to model it according to the Exodus pattern as it is found in the Bible. So I did the best I could to obey, using what I understood at that time. And God blessed the ministry, which was meant to help people to outgrow and recover from life-destroying issues and problems that retard spiritual development and emotional growth and prevent the development of healthy  family and social relationships. The ministry spread throughout the United States. And today it can be found in a variety of local Bible-believing church congregations from coast to coast (New York state to California), and from border to border (Texas to Minnesota). And now it’s starting to go international and is being translated and made available through the Internet. Thousands of people, and their marriages and families and congregations have benefited from it and it thanks to the wise leadership of Jim and Kathie Hobson and their staff, it continues to prosper. Through it, the Lord teaches, liberates, heals, blesses and gives peace and new purpose to wounded hearts, fractured marriages, and mis-firing families.

After Christ-Life became independent, Jim, Kathie and I established its headquarters where they were going to live, in Des Moines, Iowa. I continued to live in Omaha, So I would travel to Des Moines every week, driving two hours each way to continue to help Christ-Life spread and become established. But after three years of doing that, the Lord suddenly interrupted me again.

 

Whatever you do to the least of these my brothers…

One day, in September, 2003,  a man sent a short email message to our headquarters. When our Jim saw it, he decided that I should be the one to handle it. So he forwarded it to me in Omaha. The subject line read: “Where do we fit in?” And this is what the email said:

“How does a Jew, a lifelong Jew, fit into this organization? I do have struggles with life and the challenges it presents, however, I feel that I will always be a Jew, and organizations such as this seem to be only for Christians. Please let me know your thoughts… Thank you… (Signature)”

As I read the message sent to us by this unknown, ‘lifelong Jew’, I felt as if I’d just been harpooned through the chest. Deep pain and remorse welled up inside of me. I knew the Lord was forcefully reintroducing a shameful reality that I had studiously been avoiding. I had not thought about that gateway or portal to the Biblical/Hebrew world for a long time… not since those early days when I first began to delve into the Scriptures in the seminary. But suddenly there it was again, thirty eight years later — opening up once more an ugly, blatant truth that was suddenly being thrust back in my face. And I knew the Lord was doing it… bringing up this unfinished business… and letting me know He wasn’t going to let me run away from it again. This time, I knew He was going to take me all the way into it and continue until He got me across the God-appointed ‘Finish Line’.

What was that truth? It was that for the last 38 years, I had been ignoring the awesome Hebrew world that had opened before me in my seminary days. And because of the pain associated with it, instead of going through that Portal, I had walked away from it. And over the years, I continued to ignore it and anything connected with it… including its people. None of that had a part in my current lifestyle, nor was any of it connected to the Christ-Life ministry. I did not even personally know or interact with any Jewish people. I never thought about Israel. I only thought about myself and my world and the Jewish people had no place in it. And yet, the Lord I served was, is, and always will be, the most famous and profoundly influential Jew in all of human history… and… according to God’s written Word, He is: ‘The Seed of Abraham, The Son of David, The Messiah of Israel… and the ‘King of the Jews!’

I had not deliberately or purposely ignored Israel or excluded Jewish people. It was more of a mindless, ignorant ‘path of least resistance’ issue caused by the way most Christians in the western, Greco-Roman, European-influenced world are conditioned and taught to be from birth. Most of us are born into a ‘Jewless Christendom’ that began to develop as early as the 2nd. century and took deep root in the 3rd and 4th centuries! So this, ‘where do we fit in’ issue, that this ‘lifelong Jew’ brought up to me in his email, was not only something the Christ-Life Ministry had to face and deal with, it was something that almost all of Western Christendom has to face and deal with!

That email suddenly brought this scandalous state of affairs within the whole of Christianity to my attention! How could Jews fit into the Christ-Life Family when we never even gave them a thought? God was making me aware of a dismal state of things to which I and my colleagues had previously been insensitive. And He was letting me know that He is not at all pleased with it. He was determined to begin to do something about it—immediately…starting with me!

 

Weighed and found wanting…

God loves His Chosen People with an endless, divine passion and He always will. He is and has always been faithful to the Eternal Blood Covenant He had made with Abraham and his family. I had been claiming for years to love God. But if I truly did love Him, then why was I not deeply concerned about His Covenant friends, His Chosen People over whom He agonizes? If I am in covenant with God, am I not also to care about His heart’s most intimate concerns? Am I not to love the people He loves, even though the world continually tries to exterminate and eliminate them from the earth? Why did I not care for what My God cares for? Why were the things that are so important to Him, not important to me? How can I not be involved in the Covenant bonds that My Covenant God is involved in?

The lightning bolt of awareness that hit me…that I was still so emotionally and mentally disconnected from the Hebrew/Biblical roots of our Faith began to create deep internal changes in me that I found to be very disconcerting and scary. Questions emerged that I had to try to answer:

  • Why had I not paid attention to Romans 9, 10 and 11 prior to this moment?
  • Why hadn’t Ephesians 2 jumped out at me before this happened?
  • Haven’t non-Jewish believers in Christ been grafted into the Olive Tree of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? Why is this not important to most of Christendom?
  • Do Christians not depend on that Root that God’s living Word created with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to support them and give them the Eternal Life that only comes from the God of Israel?
  • Has not the Holy Spirit made the two groups into one Holy Nation and Royal Priesthood that is supposed to fulfill the promises of the New Covenant that He made with Israel through Yeshua our Messiah?
  • Did God not make The New Covenant with the very same people that He had become one with, in what we call, ‘The Old Covenant’?
  • Are Christians going to be loyal, obedient subjects of ‘The Messiah-King of the Jews’?
  • If they are, then why do so many maintain such gross alienation and disconnectedness from His Chosen People?
  • How can ‘followers of Jesus’ remain silent and look the other way, when vicious Godless people do their best to exterminate and wipe them off the face of the earth?
  • If Yeshua is King of the Jews and the King of Christians too, why won’t the two groups of believing Jewish and non-Jewish disciples join their minds, hearts and lives to each other and to the Root of His beloved Israel? Why do they avoid each other so studiously and disobediently?
  • Why don’t the two groups of believers allow themselves to be grafted together…into the one New Man in Messiah that Father desires them to become?
  • Did Christianity really replace Israel in God’s plans? If that is true…if the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob actually did forsake and turn His back on Israel His chosen Blood Covenant Betrothed One, if it’s really true that she can’t trust Him to be ever-faithful to her, regardless of her inadequate performance, then what about the Gentiles? What grounds do they have to trust this God…since, after He cut a Covenant with Abraham, He never again made a Covenant with the non-Jewish world? And, given their equally inadequate, Sin-laden performance over the centuries…on what basis will they be able to trust and rely upon this Covenant-violating God to be mercifully faithful to them? There has to be something deeply flawed and untrue about that attitude and the theology that comes out of it!
  • Isn’t God really trying to teach the whole world that, if Israel, despite her many infidelities and betrayals, can trust God to be ever-faithful…then the rest of the human race, even pagan Gentiles, can and must, trust Him too? Isn’t that the whole point? That all sons of Adam have blown it…Jews and Gentiles alike… and that God is showing utter mercy and amazing grace to us all, through what He does to, with, through and for, Israel, through His living Word made flesh…who is Israel’s Messiah?
  • And now that we’re already into the Last Days Era ‘Birth Pangs’ Era… and we’re running out of time… isn’t it about time that we who claim to love and serve God begin paying close attention to the imminent Fulfillment of the Promises our God made to Israel and how we’re going to fit into all of that?

 

UNDONE – again!

In terms of theological, Biblically-based revealed truth, I found the true answer to these questions to be very disturbing and convicting. I said I was a servant of Israel’s King but in terms of my real life history, habitual attitudes and actual current life style, the facts belied my claims! If I had sent an honest answer to the sender of that email it would have looked similar to this:

“I’m sorry Mr. Lifelong Jew, right now there is no place for you in our organization, because there is no real place for your people at this time, within that fragmented, confused rabble of religious groups that we call, ‘Christendom’, even though we glibly claim to observe the Scriptures and worship and serve Israel’s Messiah!”

Since that email arrived, I noticed things in me—attitudes, conditioning, theological nuances and lifestyle—of which I was not proud. And I knew that, for the Lord’s sake, I had to repent of it. But at that point, my question was, ‘How do I do that? What does God require of me? I think I’m willing to repent of whatever inherited, unconscious disobedience I’m guilty of. At least, I wanted to be ‘willing!’ But at that time, I had no idea of what form that repentance was going to have to take. I only knew that my Master was requiring me to change course. And so now…I had to learn how to allow the Holy Spirit to guide me and show me the way Almighty God wanted me to go.

After the email came, I began to pray and weep and read whatever relevant information I could get my hands on. I surfed through a lot of website material. Some of it was not worthwhile, but some of it was profound and penetrating and convicting.

After about five months of that, I was blessed with a totally unexpected, all expenses paid trip to Israel in late February and early March of 2004. My generous benefactor knew nothing of what had been happening to me. I hadn’t heard from him in months. But suddenly he called and asked if I had a passport. He offered to take me to Israel as his guest if I would be willing to be the twelfth person in a tour group that was forming! So I knew that God was orchestrating all of this. I knew He was going to show me something that I had to know…and that my life was going to change drastically in the near future.

I went to Israel with Mary’s permission and at her insistence. And the Lord saw to it that I did experience what I needed to see, hear and know. When I returned home, I knew I needed to speak with a Jewish person that was a believer in Yeshua. Since I didn’t know any Jewish people, I asked my precious friends Babe and Doris, if they knew anyone I could approach. And they told me about a man, Nate Seitelbach, who was the leader of a Messianic congregation in Omaha. So I called and made an appointment to see him.

 

Coming home…

When I met this Messianic Jew…Nate…it was my first truly deep, interactive connection I had ever had with a Jewish person. It was unlike any other meeting I can ever remember having with any other ‘spiritual leader’ of any persuasion. There was an instant rapport. We didn’t know each other from Adam. And I had just recently learned in Israel, from a rabbi in Jerusalem with whom I had spent an entire afternoon, that, “Jews don’t trust anybody…unless they really, really, REALLY get to know you.”

But for some reason, although we were total strangers, this man, Nate, trusted me. And I felt an instant rapport, a connection between us that neither of us can explain to this day. And yet, although we knew nothing about each other, we trusted each other and connected…from the first moment. Ordinarily speaking…that is supernatural! And it reminds me of something that is  expressed by Joel Chernoff in a praise song that he once wrote:

‘Jew and Gentile one in Messiah…one in Yeshua…one in The Olive Tree…Jew and Gentile one in Messiah…one in Yeshua’s Love…’

Within a month after that meeting, Christ-Life…the ministry I represented, began to operate within Nate’s Messianic congregation, where it continues to bless people to this day. I started and conducted the first Christ-Life group in which Nate and several other Jewish and non-Jewish members of the congregation signed up to participate. It was a historic event…the first Christ-Life/Ultimate Journey group…in which Jewish and non-Jewish disciples of Yeshua, participated together, as one!

So, now I had an answer for that Jewish man that had emailed me a few months before. ‘Where do we fit in?’…you asked? Well, Mr. Lifelong Jew…we’ve created a place for you in our midst! Any time you’re ready, you can come and we will welcome you with open hearts and arms. We will learn to make the Exodus transition, from Darkness to Light… together…we’ll learn to make the transition to Eternal Life with God without the ‘wall of partition’ that the fears and selfishness of fallen human Jewish and Christian flesh have been rebuilding and maintaining for millennia! We can learn to adapt to you and your needs and you can learn to adapt to us and together we can learn God’s Blood Covenant ways and create something new within this sad, broken, brutal ‘dog-eat-dog’ world that He has always had His mind and heart set on having. It will be new to us…but to God…it will be what He has always had in mind, since the fall of Adam.

God never wanted Jews and Gentiles to live at odds with each other. He wanted to redeem, reclaim and restore His human image and likeness! He wanted a living Temple, made up of disciples of His living Word, within whom His Holy Spirit could permanently abide. He wanted all men to be one with Him and one with each other (See John 17).

But that will only happen when we first become one with His living Word, Yeshua the Messiah of Israel. Then, we can learn to be completely at home with each other! You belong with us and we belong with you…in the living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob…and in His living Word and Holy Spirit (See Gen. 12:3).’

As that first Christ-Life group was completing the three phase course, someone asked Nate what he, as a Jew, thought of my material. And he said, “Not bad for a Goy! (Gentile) It’s a little Gentile-rough around the edges, but John and I can work on that. But basically…it’s a perfect fit!”

It was a ‘perfect fit’ from the perspective of Torah-submissive, Messianic Jewish people because the Lord had told me in the very beginning to model and structure the material after the pattern of the Exodus, as found in the Torah of Moses. And so I realized that even from the very beginning, before I knew anything about what was going to happen, the Lord was even then, making plans to bring Jewish people into what He had given me to do…and to take me back through that Portal he made me aware of when I was a young man in my 20’s…back and into His Biblical, Hebraic world. He had been planning this since long before my seminary days.

When my Master came after me and apprehended me after I had spent fifteen years trying to run away from Him, He gently, but relentlessly, brought me back to…that Gateway or Portal that He showed to Abram, the Chaldean/Sumerian moon worshipper. He showed it to me…in my seminary days…the Portal that leads into that awesome Biblical/Hebraic Blood Covenant world that links Eternity with Time and Space, and Heaven with Earth. It is the Gateway connecting Heaven and Earth, the Opening through which He has chosen to reveal Himself to us. His  relationship with me, or with any other human is not to be predicated on whether or not I will be willing to ask Him into MY life! It is predicated on whether or not I and anyone else He summons to follow Him, will be willing to ‘drop everything’ and follow Him into HIS ETERNAL RESURRECTED MESSIAH-LIFE!

So now, thanks to that email that came out of nowhere, I knew that the time had come for me to allow my Master to lead me back to that portal, and through it and far beyond it…into His world and His Life…on HIS terms. I had turned my back on His world when I began to run away from  Him; but He had never turned His back on me. He came after me…just like He came for Adam and Eve when they were hiding from Him in the Garden of Eden…just like He came for Noah…and Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and Moses and the prophets and the New Covenant apostles! He, the living creative Word of God who became flesh in order to represent us in God’s Eternal Covenant, comes after us all, to restore whatever the Serpent has destroyed or stolen from us when he brought about our corporate fall into Sin. He was, and is, and always will be, the promised Messiah, The Salvation of God. And He is here…to BE Salvation and full Restoration to me, and to Nate…and to all of the other Jewish and non-Jewish people on Earth that the two of us represent.

Christ-Life has since been renamed ‘The Ultimate Journey’ (for the Exodus). And, the Lord has also brought Jim and Kathie and the rest of the Christ-Life leadership back to the Biblical roots of the Faith.  And when the Lord told me to resign my position at Christ-Life and come away with Him so that He could show me what we were going to do next, I discussed it with Nate. And he took the initiative of volunteering to lend his vast experience and skills to assist me in bringing the new Follow Me Ministry into existence. He brought it under the legal corporate entity of the congregation so that now, together, Jews and Gentiles can begin to serve as a disciple-training ministry for our congregation and for our surrounding community…and, as we are now realizing…for many people from around the world that are familiar with this website and are now part of our ever-growing, world-wide Follow Me Ministry Family. And together, we will continue to explore what it means and what it will require of us to heed our Master’s call and know what to expect when He says to us:

“FOLLOW ME!”

When I wrote the original Christ-Life material in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, I knew nothing about what the Lord would be doing today in the twenty first century. I also had no idea how drastically the world was going to change in that time span. I simply started with what I knew. At that time, the main emphasis in my original material focused on ‘Leaving Egypt’… making the changes that were sure to follow as we follow our Master into ‘The Exodus Wilderness of Transition’.

But now, the Lord is directing our attention and focus to the other end of the Exodus Journey – “Entering and taking full possession of The Land of Promise”.  Egypt is the starting point; but Israel is the destination! It’s not enough merely to begin to make your Exodus from the Serpent, and Sin and the world system that is spawned by rebellion against God’s living and written Word. You also have to FINISH IT! You’ve got to go all the way… across the Jordan… into full-fledged citizenship… and mastery of our Master’s Mindset and Attitudes and Lifestyle… FROM WITHIN THE LAND (according to the personal relationship with) GOD THAT HE PROMISED TO MAKE REAL BETWEEN HIMSELF AND HIS BLOOD COVENANT FRIENDS!

There is an obvious fact that many people of today continue to miss or refuse to face and consider: the more progress you make on your Exodus… the closer you get to the Land of Promise… and the more you identify in your heart with the Land of Promise… the more Biblically authentic and ‘Hebraic’, or ‘Jewish’ the scenery, climate and atmosphere start to become! And in truth, we, the people that the Lord leads out of ‘Egypt’, are the ones that should really be asking the question:

“WHERE DO WE FIT IN?”

If the people of the world are truly going to become the Messiah’s image and likeness, and actually operate as living members of His New Covenant Body… how could we ever think that it could be otherwise? He’s not kidding or playing games. We have to learn to accept our Lord and Master as He really is! God is really serious and He means everything He has revealed and commanded through His living and written Word. You can take His claims and promises to the bank! What God inspired Moses and the others to put in His written Word… our Lord, the Living Word… is here to explain and fulfill and demonstrate every bit of what they wrote about Him in the Torah and the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures… in and through His New Covenant Jewish and non-Jewish disciples! Just as they had to learn to live and grow and worship God together, as One New Man in Messiah starting in Acts 10, so does God intend to graft all the families of the earth into that original Root of Salvation that He first offered to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and their natural offspring. Now it’s time for the rest of the world to catch up with them and ‘become part of the Family!’

So of course we need ‘Boot Camp’ training! Of course we must be trained and drilled until we really and truly have allowed ourselves to be grafted into the New Covenant Olive Tree of Israel (Rom. 11:17). And of course we must be willing to be transformed until we become ‘One New Man in Messiah’ with His Chosen People (John 17; Ephesians 2: 14-16). We will all, Jews and non-Jews alike, be taken into brand new, totally unexplored territory in the Last Days. It will be the Territory of Fulfillment! And then we will all be what God has always desired us to be! So we will all have to ‘deny ourselves and pick up our crosses and follow our Messiah into ‘The Great Unknown’!

We must all be trained and prepared to give the proper authentic Last Days disciple testimony our Father will expect us to render to His eternal Glory (Revelation 12:13-17). At first Christendom assumed it had arrived, and it was the Jews that would have to do all of the changing. And of course, when the pendulum begins to swing in the opposite direction the Jewish people assume the same thing: ‘We’ve arrived; but you Gentiles have to do all of the changing.’

But of course, neither of those two extremes is correct. The Truth is that as far as God is concerned, what will happen in the Last Days will not be a Jewish thing, or a Gentile thing… IT WILL BE A GOD THING! And in that case, we will all have to undergo enormous, radical changes so that God’s Spirit will be able to transform the lot of us, who currently love to be rebellious and individualistic, into One New Man in Messiah!

In that case, we will all need to be rigorously and thoroughly trained to embody the Ultimate Fulfillment of the New Covenant, as well as the earlier Covenant God made with Israel. And now, the Holy Spirit is waiting to do what He will have to do to prepare us all, to completely transform into a new and unprecedented Reality.

As I said… it’s not enough to begin our Exodus… we must finish it… exactly as God wants it to be done. We must be prepared to be a true part of His New Jerusalem and His Revelation 21 New Heaven and New Earth… as His perfect, totally fulfilled, One New Man in Messiah (Eph. 2). And because only God knows how His Story with us is going to end, we must now press into Him… personally, directly and intimately… so that His Living Word and Holy Spirit will be free to prune and refine and purify us and as He leads us into that Awesome Last Days New Territory that He began to reveal, command and promise to lead us into… throughout Genesis… leading up to and through… the book of Revelation.

So the new disciple-training material that this ministry will share, will focus on getting to know…and embody… our Lord and Master who called us to follow Him, with much more personal, Biblically-based authenticity and at a deeper level of personal interactive intimacy with our indwelling Lord. I believe He wants us to get to know Him as He really is… the Messiah King of Israel… just as His Father’s Holy Spirit revealed Him… starting in the Torah (Pentateuch) and throughout all the other books of the Bible. We must get to know and embody Him as He really is… so that our testimony of Him can be authentic… and so we can be equipped and readily able to present the real Messiah, as revealed in Scripture, so that by God’s Awesome Supernatural Power manifesting His Glory in our midst… our Messiah can become unmistakably recognizable to His own people! It will only be after His Jewish brethren recognize and embrace and proclaim Him as their Messiah, that the rest of the world, the non-Jewish world, will be able to enter into ‘The Fullness of the Gentiles’… the Fullness of the Eternal Blessing and Inheritance He has waiting to bestow upon us all, from all of  Eternity!

We will all come together as one, after we all come to Yeshua, and become living members of His Body on Earth! And that is why, knowing Him at that level of precise, personal intimacy and embodying Him as He really is, is the focus revealed in and by the ‘Original Marching Orders’ that are listed elsewhere in this website. Oneness with Him will lead to oneness with each other. And that is what our Marching Orders are all about.

 

Seeing the Son as revealed in Scripture…

Over the centuries, Jews and Christians alike, have taken great liberties with what God revealed to us in Scripture about His Son. It is as if we are daring to ‘edit’ God and refashion Him into our own image and likeness. Thus we keep changing our Messiah’s name and nationality, and continue to ignore the background, cultural matrix out of which He actually emerged. We ignore or distort His Israelite background and Torah-fulfilling teachings and commands. And we replace what He was and what He did and commanded, with ‘cute’ homemade substitutes, things that people derive from their own inherited, more modern, Jewish and non-Jewish, ethnic  traditions, and medieval rabbinic and Gentile theologies which flow out of non-Biblical ecclesiastical cultural traditions. Countless Jewish and non-Jewish people have ignored and shunned each other. And many Christians that claim to love and serve God continually ignore and exclude God’s Chosen People. Thus they continue to disregard and exempt themselves from honoring the unbreakable Covenant promises that God made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We have excluded the very people through whom God gave us the Bible and our Messiah and our faith. We even exclude and remain divorced from, the Messianic Jews that worship the Lord Yeshua right along with us! We forget that in the beginning, throughout the first 9 chapters of Acts, Messianic Jews and Gentile proselytes to Judaism made up 100% of what Christians call, ‘the Church’. And we also forget that Jewish, Torah-observing apostles and disciples… wrote the majority of the New Testament!

Those Messianic Jews that clustered around the apostles and learned, by watching them, to abide with their risen, Spirit-imparted Messiah, were the beautiful New Covenant Fulfillment of what God had revealed and required in what we now arrogantly call, ‘The Old Covenant’! How could we have forgotten that for the first 10 chapters of Acts, which cover a period of several years after the Lord’s Ascension, what we call, ‘The Church’, was virtually entirely Jewish! Only after chapter 10 did God begin to allow Gentiles, in large numbers, to be grafted into the ranks of His New Covenant Israelites!

So now it is time for non-Jewish believers that want to be numbered among the Lord’s serious Last Days disciples, to repent as individuals (whether the denominations they belong to are willing to do it officially, or not!) We must all die, Jews and Gentiles alike, to all of our past and current corporate and ethnic religious selfishness, arrogance and disobedience to God…so that God can unite and blend and transform us into His authentic New Covenant ‘Jewtiles’! It’s time to learn to follow our Master in what Paul called, ‘the obedience of faith’ (Romans 1:5: 16:26. See also Matthew 7:13-27; Luke 4:44). All of those temporary traditions, customs and bad habits are going to be so shaken, that only what is really and truly and eternally from God is going to remain! So, by the grace of God, and the Authority of His Living and written Word, and the Power of His Holy Spirit, we must allow our Master to train, discipline and equip us to transform into His image and likeness, in Spirit and in Truth… on His terms…just the way He wants us to become.

I am only a man… a weak, sinful, foolish, extremely limited man. Many are more intelligent and far better educated and more skilled in scholastic, academic ways, than I will ever be. Many know much more about the Scriptures and the Hebrew language and Jewish cultural ways than I will ever know. Many  serve God with much more love and devotion than I. And many deserve much more of a Heavenly reward than I ever will. But as you can see from my story…I am not at all the important element in this story. The only one that is important in any man’s story is God’s living Word, our Lord and Master, Yeshua.

It is to Him that I owe everything. It is from Him that I receive anything that is real, true and good. He is my Everything! And He is the one to whom I will give a full account of all that I have chosen to do, and not do, in this life. So, by God’s grace, it is to Him that I give all my allegiance. It is upon Him alone that I place all of my faith, hope, trust and expectations. And it is only upon Him that I will continue to direct the attention and focus of all my teaching and example. He alone is worthy of such Preeminence. So I invite you to learn to render to Him, along with me, what is His rightful due.

Our Focus Must Be Fixed upon God and His living Word and Holy Spirit!

I believe that Yeshua, the Uncreated Word of God, must increase in the minds and hearts of all of us and everything else that is created must decrease. I believe that Yeshua must (and eventually, will, become Preeminent over all Creation just as the prophets and apostles, specifically Peter, Paul and John, have prophesied. And, just as we see in Ephesians and Colossians, and Peter’s letters and the Book of Revelation, our risen Lord will increase progressively, and everyone and everything that stands in the way of His Total Takeover as the Living Word of the Living God, will progressively dim out and decrease to nothingness. He alone is the Way and the Truth and the Life by which we can be bonded and united to our awesome God. And so He, just as His Father revealed Him, starting with Genesis, will properly interpret and fulfill every jot and tittle of what was written about Him by Moses, and by the prophets, the wisdom writers and…the New Covenant Jewish apostles of Israel.

We will see everything fulfilled to Perfection, by the time God’s Exodus love story with the human race reaches the Last Days conclusion and fulfillment that will take place in the Last Days, according to what we are told in the Book of Revelation. The awesome, overwhelming risen Lord that appeared to the apostle John in Revelation 1, is the one that the Follow Me Ministry will focus on and talk about and prepare to receive. He is the one we will prepare ourselves to obey and serve…and interact with…now and forever. We must get to know Him as He is really going to be… not as He was earlier, in His period of atoning, redemptive suffering and abasement and humiliation, but in all of His glorious and overwhelming Resurrection Fullness… the Fullness that is contained in the Eternal Living Word of God… for all of eternity!

“When I saw Him, I fell at His feet like a dead man. And He placed His right hand on me, saying, “Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last, and the Living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and of Hades. Therefore write the things which you have seen, and the things which are, and the things which will take place after these things.” (Rev. 1:17-18)

If what I have told you in my story about what I believe my God-given assignment is, touches your heart and prompts you to want to know more and continue your association with the Follow Me Ministry, I welcome you with all my heart and invite you to share the adventures that lie ahead as an active participating member of our ever-growing, world wide, Follow Me disciple Family.

I have no authority over anyone. I have no title, I hold no official position. Nor do I desire them. We are not in this to start a business, or a personal empire. We are not here to seek to generate careers for ourselves, and amass financial gains or to try to control and manipulate anyone else’s life. We are here only because we believe that God’s living Word and Holy Spirit are the True Authority over all of us. And because of that, you and I and the others in the Follow Me Family are always equal before God and subject only to Him. And it is our job to proclaim and live out His Truth, on His terms, to God’s everlasting Glory.

For as long as my ability, time, health and energy will allow, I will offer articles for your consideration. If the Lord tells me to stop; I will stop. If He continues to give me more to share; I will share. And you are always free to accept or reject what I say, as the Lord leads you to do it. Only the Lord Himself can and will build His Congregation of those whom He calls out to follow and serve Him. No man, or group of men, can replace Him and no one has the right to try to make himself out to be something special. We are all our Master’s bond slaves… created, selected and purchased by His infinitely precious, Covenant-fulfilling, sacrificial Life’s Blood. To Him alone must all of our individual and corporate praise, glory and obedience be given…  eternally… Amen!