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THE RELIGION WHEEL Untrue and Out of Balance By
David Ben Yakov
Before I get to the subject of this article I feel that I have to tell you how my workplace is. Imagine being the only practicing Christian in a workplace. Imagine all of your other workers being Hindu's, Muslims, Buddhists, Taoists, and imagine the rest of the people not knowing what they are. Now, imagine that you have had two or three bad pharmacy managers; each one not wanting to manage until they actually had to in order to stop impending disaster. Also, imagine having a PIC (Pharmacist in charge) that is Iranian and doesn't have any social skills; meaning that she yells and belittles people the whole time that she's there. Finally, throw into the mix some very good and conscientious people who really want to do a good job for their employer; but they're constantly bypassed in promotions and recognition by the people who moan and complain that they (the moaners and complainers) are having to work harder than the others. That is my workplace. Frankly, it is a war zone and at the end of each day I wonder why I stay there but then I am reminded that the pharmacy tech market in Sacramento is flooded and I am then reminded that I should be happy to have a job in these tough economic times. So, when I get home I feel like I have gone two or three rounds with a psychological George Foreman. I am thankful that I have Yeshua and the Ruach Ha Kodesh to comfort me; and of course that Yahweh gave me Lourdes, who is the light of my life and for some strange reason loves me like I'm some sort of prize that she loves and adores. I am blessed for sure. Some of you probably remember that in December I was called into the Human Resources department where Diane, our representative sadly told me that I had to take down the scripture from Isaiah (no weapon formed against you...) and also the pictures of me and Lourdes that I had hanging there. It isn't easy at my workplace, but I have one great satisfaction that I really enjoy; that being that when things bother me I turn them over to Yeshua, and then I get to watch my adversaries, one by one get corrected by Yahweh. Yahweh has taught me many things at this workplace. The first one is that He has me there to teach me how to handle adversity. I have to admit that sometimes I fail because I get angry; but I am learning. He has me there to teach me to turn things over to Him and many times a day I mutter to myself "the battle is the Lord's." But, one of the main things that He has kept me there is so that I can learn about different cultures and the different religions of those cultures. Because of this I can attest that aside from what the politico's want us to believe, all religions are different and there is absolutely no way that they are all spokes in a great wheel of godly truth. Over the years I have gotten into the habit of listening to talk-radio. In my quiet little corner at work it is a friend to me and keeps me company and at the same time the talk shows allow me to keep in touch with what is going on around the world and our nation. One of the people that I like to listen to the most is named Michael Savage. While I agree with most of his thoughts, there are just some that aren't kosher; especially when it comes to religion. On the show that aired on January 13 of 2010 I found myself at odds with Mr. Savage. His show for that day concerned a variety of things, but Michael found himself belittling Pat Robertson from the 700 Club. I don't watch The 700 Club much, but I tend to be on par with the things that Pat Robertson says. Pat sees things from a spiritual perspective and that puts him at odds with people like Michael Savage who tend to look at things through physical eyes only. On that day Pat had come out with his opinion about the terrible earthquake in Haiti and in a nutshell he said that the bizarre adherence of the people to Voodoo puts them at opposition with Yahweh and that the earthquake might have been a result of Haiti's rejection of true reverence toward Yahweh. Pat was right, in that when a people walk away from reverence of Yahweh and they adhere to other creeds or religions then they in essence leave themselves without Yahweh's protection. A brief glance of the history of ancient Israel proves that to be true. But getting back to the "wheel" theory of religion one has to admit that there are a lot of problems to it in addition that it is contrary to Biblical Scripture. For instance, there is a big difference in Judaism and Christianity where Yeshua is concerned. In Christian circles we believe in Resurrection; that we die once and are resurrected only once; whereas the Buddhists and Hindu's believe in reincarnation; having to live successive lifetimes in order to reach nirvana. The big three religions; Christianity, Judaism and Islam are monotheistic religions while all others are polytheistic in one degree or another. Islam teaches conversion by any means and especially violence while Judaism and Christianity teach that witnessing through peaceful means is the lesson that leads to conversion. Now we just touched on some major differences between some of the major religions of the world. The things we touched on weren't petty differences, but they are major doctrinal differences that show that all religions aren't the same. If someone were to try to make a wheel with spokes to show any resemblances between the religions it would probably look more like the following image of a wheel.
To try to make a wheel of religions using like beliefs one has to bend, shape and contort the wheel and it can never look like a wheel that can be used for a purpose. Imagine having a cart with wheels like are shown above. The wheels would not be very strong because of the weakness of the contorted spokes. The hub of the wheel would have to be out of round to accommodate the contorted spokes. Finally, the grossly out-of-round shape of the wheel would make it impossible for any animal to pull the cart and using a combustion engine to turn such a wheel would put great strain on it in that it would not last very long. And, imagine the ride in the cart. One turn of the wheel and the riders and cargo would be expelled from the cart. Trying to get such a wheel to work is impossible, yet, the people of the world keep using the analogy of the religious wheel almost like they think that if they all believe real hard they can make the wheel truly round. I am reminded of watching my young nephews playing with the little block and hammer set that most kids get when they are very young. It is a great tool for teaching children hand/eye coordination as well as shape identification. At first every kid will try to finagle the round peg through the square hole or the triangle piece through the round hole. The funny thing is that after a try or two just about every child will finally understand that each hole corresponds to a certain shape and they'll conquer that toy; and oh how proud they look when they have understood it and have triumphed. Picture if you will an adult using that toy for the first time. A normal adult would understand immediately that square goes with square, round goes with round and triangle goes with triangle. But just like the religion wheel there will be some adult that takes the child's toy and would try to round off the square or make the round peg into a square so that they could manipulate the toy to behave the way that they think it should behave, instead of doing it the simple way; the way that the learning toy was intended to be used. Humans always try to make the simple things of Yahweh into complicated things and in their attempt at it they just show their ignorant pride. They try to change the things of Yahweh so that they can say that their way is greater than Yahweh and they have in some bizarre manner beat Yahweh at His game. The practice of pride is simply titled, "I will be like the Most High." Hey, didn't Lucifer say the same thing? Well, getting back to Michael Savage, the story continues a little more. He replayed an interview that he did with Evangelist Jerry Falwell several years ago. I thought it to be a wonderful interview because although Savage asked questions of Falwell in several different ways in order to get him to trip up on his words; Falwell triumphed in the interview and he stood firm for Yeshua and the Christian Faith. At the end of the interview Savage told Falwell that he respected him, but that he had to disagree. He went on a short tirade about his thoughts about all religions being equal and the same and then went on to other things. Of course this brought all of the nuts out of of the woodwork and people did call in to agree with Savage; the sort of people that always chime in when these sort of subjects come up. As I continued my drive home it suddenly occurred to me that Savage was right and his comments were right too. All religions are the same. They all are contrary to what Yahweh intends. They all either deny the divinity of Mashiach or they warp the mission or person of Yeshua. And finally, they all try a manmade conscious effort to reach God through good works or ritual, and these things are impossible. So in essence, if you look at it in this light, all religions are the same because they are in error. Yahweh desires RELATIONSHIP, not religion. Aveinu (The Father) desires that all of mankind come to Him through His Son, Yeshua. All people who come to Him through Yeshua become Sons of Elohim and become part of the family of Yahweh, which is RELATIONSHIP. So the picture of the wheel that we saw earlier in this article is still the same. It is still contorted, disfigured and ineffective. It is still a wheel, but it cannot be used because of its out-of-true character and just like "religion," it is useless. Below are three scriptures from the Bible that show what Yahweh really wants, not religion, but a family of people who come to Him through faith in Yeshua:
And:
And:
The scriptures above ALL illustrate that Aveinu wants to have a family relationship with mankind. Imagine if you will being a father. As a father all you want is the love and respect of your son or daughter. When they are young you have such a relationship with them. But, as they get older they start to get ritualistic and they babble endless prayers asking you for something that they want. They perform every sort of good work thinking that it will make you happy with them. They don't trust you, that you love them as your children and that your love is unconditional. They would rather try to prove themselves to you, but all that sort of behavior does is alienate them from you more and more as time goes by; because although you love them, their own actions have pushed them father away from you. If we were to even attempt to describe a relationship with Yahweh then it would most probably have to be by showing a solid wheel:
The solid wheel, like the one shown above is solid, sure and all encompassing. The wagon wheel that we saw above, even if it were perfectly round (which it is not) would be subject to failure. There are too many pieces and where intricacy exists so does the potential for failure. When a part of a bicycle fails it is easier to repair than when a part of an automobile fails; and that in turn is easier to fix then when a helicopter breaks and that is easier to fix than when the space shuttle has a failure; and so on and so forth. With the religious wheel, the hub, the spokes and the outer rim are faulty right from the start because there is no integrity within the structure. For instance, if you were to stick one member from each "religion" in the same room and they were forced to live with each other for any length of time at least two of them would get into some sort of altercation. If you put the room into some sort of stress situation things would get even worse. Sure, in an attempt to be the most politically correct person each would make themselves act correctly, but their differences would come out somehow. We see this around the world today. The Protestants and Roman Catholics in Ireland live in a fragile peace that could come apart at any time. The Sikhs and Hindu's in India shed blood from time to time. The Shiite and Sunni Muslims detest each other and live under a weak truce in the nations where they coexist. IF they all existed in a religion wheel then there would be six fractured spokes in that wheel right at the start which would weaken the wheel considerably; and we didn't even touch on the other religious groups around the world; all thinking that they have the edge over the other but trying to keep a fragile peace in the name of peaceful coexistence. That is why the New World Order is pushing for a centralized religion that can find the similarities in each religion and meld them together using those similarities. Unfortunately, they'll be united in one thing; their hatred for our Christian relationship with Yeshua and their hatred for Him. The solid wheel however has no flaws. It is simple by design, rugged and durable. That is the way that our relationship with Aveinu is through Yeshua. Remember that Yeshua told us to:
With Yahweh everything is easy; nothing is difficult. The problem was that mankind inherited the sin nature from the fall of Adam and Chava. Yahweh's cure was to send His Son to be a sacrifice for us. We don't have to do anything except to have faith in the sacrificed Lamb of Elohim and then all is right. He did all of the work and all we have to do is believe in Him. We ask Him to give us a New Birth by His Ruach Ha Kodesh (Holy Spirit) and He brings us a new life and He even fixes us over time of our bad habits and rebellious ways. As I mentioned earlier, mankind just cannot seem to grasp the simplicity of Yahweh's remedy. They cannot see El Elyon in the person of a servant, which is who Yeshua was. Mankind can't come to the terms that a servant can bring salvation and they see this as being a foolish thing. Yahweh knew that and He had Paul write:
Almost all of the religions of the world were birthed in the mistaken belief that a simple trust in God is not possible. The majority of the people on earth believe in reincarnation. This stems from their belief that mankind must find a way to appease a god in order to attain everlasting peace (nirvana). They live thinking that they will live many successive lifetimes trying to become perfect by good works and paying horribly for past mistakes. In Islam there is no belief in a personal savior. They spend their lives praying to Mecca five times a day and trying to appease a deity that cannot be appeased. They can only hope that Allah will be merciful after they die and some of the more fanatical ones think that they can appease Allah by killing as many non-Muslims as possible. Many pseudo-Christian religions are based on the same premise. Jehovah's Witnesses believe that they will get to heaven via "good works." Mormons believe in a similar fashion but they are also required to advance in their church and visit the temple for ritual events. Catholics believe in things like penance, confession to a priest, repetitive prayers and good works are necessary, as well as being faithful, not so much to Yahweh, but to the R.C. Church which has set itself as Yahweh's representative on the earth. Even many Protestant sects feel that certain rituals must be done before a person can please Yahweh. Methodists got their name because they had "methods" as their ways of worship and serving Yahweh. Episcopalians held to many of the rituals when they broke away from Catholicism. If you take a serious look at all of the mainline Christian denominations and their histories, you can see that they almost always started out with a fresh revelation from Yahweh but as time progressed they became "religious" and stagnated, causing Yahweh to start a fresh and new revelation with a new group, and this has repeated time and time again. So it can be said most assuredly that relationship and religion are two different things. Relationship is what Yahweh desires. He wants to be our Father and for us to be a family. He has offered this to all of the peoples of the world; and because most of the countries of the world have been visited by missionaries, Yahweh's message of wanting to be a family with them has been told to them. Many have accepted His offer and are living blessed lives, free from religion. Many have died and left their earthly bodies to be in the presence of Yahweh because they trusted Him. Yet, many have a hard time and cannot accept the New and Living Way that Yahweh offers. For them the difficult way of wearing the heavy yoke of religion makes more sense to them. They'd rather labor day and night with guilt and sorrow than to accept Yeshua's light yoke, forgiveness and freedom. And finally, there is no wheel of religion. No, the religions are rather like a wind chime, whose tubes hang around each other when things are placid, but whose tubes beat against each other rather violently when a tempest arises. My wife and I; our friends and family would rather live and echo the words of David in the Psalms who said:
And the words of Yehoshua (Joshua), when he said:
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