Our Fathers Have Inherited Lies
Jeremiah 16:19
by Christine Egbert
Speaking to the scattered tribes of Israel, regarding that future time when the LORD (Yahweh) would regather Israel, Jeremiah prophesied that one day Gentiles would come from the ends of the earth, saying, “Surely our fathers have inherited lies, vanity, and things wherein there is no profit.” (Jeremiah 16:19)
One of the most egregious of the distortions inherited through the Roman Catholic Church came from Constantine: “Let us then have nothing in common with the detestable Jewish crowd; for we have received from our Savior a different way.” (Eusebius, Life of Constantine, Vol III Ch. XVIII).
Constantine changed God’s Sabbath to Sunday and outlawed all of God’s Feast Days to distance Gentile believers from Jewish believers that he referred to as “that detestable Jewish crowd.” Had they still been alive, this would have included men like Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, and Paul.
Emperor Constantine did not receive his “different way” from Jesus (Yeshua), Israel’s Messiah, for the Savior of Scripture never changes.
Ignatius
Ignatius Bishop of Antioch (98-117 CE) – Epistle to the Magnesians. “For if we are still practicing Judaism, we admit that we have not received God’s favor…it is wrong to talk about Jesus Christ and live like Jews. For Christianity did not believe in Judaism, but Judaism in Christianity.”
Make no mistake, by living like Jews, Ignatius meant walking according to Torah. Ignatius specifically referred to those Commandments in Torah that many Gentiles rejected: the 7th day Sabbath; Dietary laws; Circumcision; and the LORD’s (Yahweh’s) Appointed Feast Days.
Biblical Truth
Jesus (Yeshua), Israel’s promised Messiah, did not come to start a new religion called Christianity. In fact, the word Christianity is not found in Scripture, only the word Christian (Acts 11:26, 26:28, & 1 Peter 4:16). This Greek word translated as “Christian” is Strong’s G5546, khris-tee-an-os’ (Χριστιανός), a follower of “Christ”, which is Strong’s G5547, khris-tos’ (Χριστός); a word which comes from Strong’s G5548, khree’-o (χρίω), meaning “anointed”, that is, the Messiah, an epithet of Christ.
Who Were These Christians?
Acts 11:19-20, “Now they which were scattered abroad upon the persecution that arose about Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus, and Antioch, preaching the word to none but unto the Jews only. And some of them were men of Cyprus and Cyrene, which, when they came to Antioch, spoke unto the Hellenists, preaching the Lord Jesus (Yeshua).”
Now the KJV translates Hellenists as “Grecians,” but the Greek word is Strong’s G1675, hel-lay-nis-tace’ (Ἑλληνιστής)…and according to Strong’s dictionary, these were Greek-speaking Jews. Then, in Acts 11:26, the first of three (and only three) biblical uses of Christian, says this, “And when he had found him, he brought him unto Antioch. And it came to pass, that a whole year they assembled themselves with the ekklesia (a called-out congregation) and taught many people. And the disciples (these Greek-speaking Jews) were first called Christians in Antioch.”
So, these so-called Christians were not members of some new gentile religion called Christianity. They were Greek-speaking Jews who had come to faith in the very Jewish Messiah.
Jesus (Yeshua) did not start a new religion called Christianity. Israel’s Messiah, Jesus (Yeshua), came only to speak His Father’s words and to do His Father’s will.
John 12:49-50 “For I did not speak from Myself, but He who sent Me, the Father, He has commanded me what I should say and what I should speak. And I know that His commandments are everlasting life. Then what things I speak, as the Father has said to Me, so I speak.”
Before Jesus (Yeshua) ascended into heaven, He instructed His disciples to go and teach all nations to observe all that He had commanded, which were His Father’s commandments. Jesus (Yeshua) did not come to abolish the Torah. Those who break and teach others to break the least of the Commandments (Torah) will be least in the Kingdom. (Matthew 5:17-19)
Jesus (Yeshua), who said, “If you love Me, keep My commandments,” predicted that one day, He will order many who cry, “Lord, Lord” to depart from Him. Why? Because He never knew them; because they work lawlessness (they violate Torah). He was not talking about those of us who occasionally fall into sin, repent, and turn from it. Jesus (Yeshua) was talking about those who claim they are His while flouting His Father’s Torah.
Jesus (Yeshua) Kept The Torah
The problem Jesus (Yeshua) had with many of the Pharisees was not their keeping of the Torah, which the LORD (Yahweh) gave to Moses, but their adherence to man-made doctrines (known as the oral law) at the expense of keeping the Torah. There is nothing inherently wrong with keeping traditions, except when traditions made by men nullify God’s written instructions, and this was the problem that Jesus (Yeshua) had with many of the Scribes and Pharisees.
Scriptural Proof
In Mark 7:7-9, Jesus (Yeshua) castigated them for breaking His Father’s Torah in order to keep their man-made oral traditions: “…in vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. For forsaking the commandment of God, you hold the tradition of men…All too well do you set aside the commandment of God so that you may keep your traditions.” This still happens today when Christians keep their man-made Sunday Sabbath and reject the one Day that God set apart on the 7th Day of Creation and declared in Exodus 31:16 was to be a perpetual covenant.
In Matthew 23:23, Jesus (Yeshua) reprimanded the Pharisees, not for keeping the lesser matters of the law but for omitting the weightier matters: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought you to have done, and not left the others undone.”
In Matthew 23:2-4, Jesus (Yeshua) denounced the Scribes and Pharisees, not for sitting in Moses’ seat (an actual seat in every synagogue from which they would read the Law each Sabbath), for He instructed them to observe and do whatever the Pharisees, from the seat of Moses, bid them to do. Why? Because from that seat they read His Father’s Torah. Jesus (Yeshua) chastised them for not abiding by what they read (the Torah).
Let’s read it.
“The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat: All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do ye not after their works: for they say and do not…”
Departure From Apostolic Faith
Tragically, many of the departures from Apostolic doctrine that were enacted by Gentiles during the 2nd through the 4th centuries have been accepted by mainstream Christianity as foundational to the faith, rather than what they were: departures from Biblical truth. This reactionary, anti-Semitic trajectory severed Christianity from its original God-ordained form. Church Fathers, motivated by hatred, distanced themselves from everything they associated with being Jewish, instructions ordained by the Most High.
In spite of this, by the 4th Century, there were still many Jewish believers faithful to what Jesus (Yeshua) and the apostles taught. These Jews, known as Netzarim (Hebrew for “offshoot of a branch”) faithfully practiced the faith handed down from Jesus (Yeshua) to His original apostles. And like those apostles, they also considered themselves a sect within Judaism. Proof of this can be found in the preserved writings of Epiphanius, a 4th Century bishop of Salamis, Cyprus.
He wrote the following: “But these sectarians did not call themselves Christians, but “Nazarenes.” However, they are simply complete Jews. They use not only the New Testament, but the Old Testament as well, as do the Jews…They have no different ideas but confess everything exactly as the Law proclaims it and in the Jewish fashion–except for their belief in Messiah. For they acknowledge both the resurrection of the dead and the divine creation of all things, and declare that God is one, and that his son is Yeshua the Messiah. They are trained to a nicety in Hebrew. For among them the entire Law, the Prophets, and the Writings are read in Hebrew, as they surely are by the Jews. They are different from the Jews, and different from Christians, only in the following. They disagree with Jews because they have come to faith in Messiah; but since they are still fettered by the Law–circumcision, the Sabbath, and the rest–they are not in accord with Christians…. they are nothing but Jews…. They have the Good News (gospel) according to Matthew in its entirety in Hebrew. For it is clear that they still preserve this in the Hebrew alphabet as it was originally written. (Epiphanius; Panarin 29)
Did you catch the fact that the gospel of Matthew was originally written in Hebrew?
Epistle of Barnabas
(Not the Barnabas of Scripture)
“Take heed to yourselves and be not like some piling up sins and saying that the covenant is theirs as well as ours. It is ours, but they lost it completely just after Moses received it.” (Epistle of Barnabas /Chapter 4vs 6-7, written between 130 CE and 138 CE) Barnabas must not have been familiar with the letter Paul wrote to the Romans, or he simply rejected it.
Romans 11:18-29 Do not boast against the branches. But if you boast, it is not you that bears the root, but the root bears you. You will say then, “the branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.” Well, because of unbelief they were broken off, and you stand by faith. Do not be high-minded, but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, fear lest He also not spare you! Behold then the kindness and the severity of God, on those having fallen, severity, but on you, kindness, if you continue in kindness. Otherwise you also will be cut off. And those also, if they do not continue in unbelief, will be grafted in. For God is able to graft them in again. For if you were cut out of the natural wild olive tree, and were grafted contrary to nature into a good olive tree, how much more those according to nature will be grafted into their own olive tree? For I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers, lest you should be wise within yourselves; that blindness in part has happened to Israel, until the fullness of the nations has come in. And so all Israel shall be saved; as it is written, “There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer, and He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob. For this is My covenant with them, when I have taken away their sins.” Indeed, as regards the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes, but as regards the election, they are beloved for the fathers’ sakes. For the free gifts and calling of God are without repentance.
Justin Martyr
Now let’s read the hate speech penned by Christian Church Father Justin Martyr. Dialogue with Trypho (138 CE–161 CE)
“We too, would observe your circumcision of the flesh, your Sabbath days, and in a word, all your festivals, if we were not aware of the reason why they were imposed upon you, namely, because of your sins and the hardness of heart. The custom of circumcising the flesh, handed down from Abraham, was given to you as a distinguishing mark, to set you off from other nations and from us Christians. The purpose of this was that you and only you might suffer the afflictions that are now justly yours; that only your land be desolated, and your cities ruined by fire, that the fruits of you land be eaten by strangers before your very eyes; that not one of you be permitted to enter your city of Jerusalem. Your circumcision of the flesh is the only mark by which you can certainly be distinguished from other men…as I stated before it was by reason of your sins and the sins of your fathers that, among other precepts, God imposed upon you the observance of the sabbath as a mark.”
Justin Martyr’s words drip not only with sarcasm and hatred but with a colossal ignorance of the Sacred Scriptures.
Circumcision
Genesis 17:11 And you shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin. And it shall be a token of the covenant between Me and you.
Genesis 17:14 And the uncircumcised male child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he has broken My covenant.
Exodus 12:48 And when a stranger shall stay with you, and desires to keep the Passover to the LORD (Yahweh), let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near and keep it. And he shall be as one that is born in the land. And no uncircumcised person shall eat of it.
Isaiah 52:1 Awake! Awake! Put on your strength, Zion; put on your beautiful robes, O Jerusalem, the holy city. For never again shall come to you uncircumcised and unclean ones.
Ezekiel 44:9 So says the Lord GOD (Yahweh): No son of an alien, uncircumcised of heart and uncircumcised of flesh, shall enter into My sanctuary, or any son of an alien among the sons of Israel.
Sabbath
Exodus 20:11 For in six days the LORD (Yahweh) made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore, the LORD (Yahweh) blessed the Sabbath day and sanctified it.
Exodus 31:13 Speak also to the sons of Israel, saying, truly you shall keep My Sabbaths. For it is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations, to know that I am the LORD (Yahweh) who sanctifies you.
Feast Days
Leviticus 23:2 Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘The feasts of the LORD (Yahweh), which you shall proclaim, holy convocations, even these are My appointed feasts.’
I could go on citing the hate-filled quotes of the men mainline Christianity calls Church Fathers, but you should do that research yourself. It will have a much greater impact. Just search for “anti-Semitic quotes of Church Fathers.”
Origen of Alexandria
I will close with some hate-filled ravings penned by Origen of Alexandria, whom the “Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy” describes as “one of the greatest Christian theologians.”
They call his treatise “On First Principles” a seminal work of Christian Neoplatonism. But Origen forgot (or more than likely never knew) that God’s call is without repentance to Israel. (Romans 11:29)
Origen of Alexandria (185-254 A.D.) “We may thus assert in utter confidence that the Jews will not return to their earlier situation, for they have committed the most abominable of crimes, in forming this conspiracy against the Savior of the human race…hence the city where Jesus suffered was necessarily destroyed, the Jewish nation was driven from its country, and another people was called by God to the blessed election.”
My Rebuttal to Replacement Theologians
Psalms 89:30-37 If his sons (Israel) forsake My Law, and do not walk in My judgments; if they profane My statutes and do not keep My commandments; then I will visit their transgressions with the rod, and their sins with stripes. But I will not annul My mercy from him, and I will not be false in My faithfulness. I will not profane My covenant, nor change what goes from My lips. Once I have sworn by My holiness; I will not lie to David. His Seed (Israel) shall be forever, and his throne as the sun before Me. Like the moon, it shall be forever and a faithful witness in the sky.
Jeremiah 30:24 & 31:1-10 The glow of the LORD’s (Yahweh’s) anger will not turn back until He has executed, and until He has established the purposes of His heart. In latter days you will understand it. At that time, says the LORD (Yahweh), I will be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall be My people. So says the LORD (Yahweh), Israel, the people, the survivors of the sword, have found grace in the wilderness, I will go to give rest to him. the LORD (Yahweh) has appeared to me from far away, saying, Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love! On account of this, with loving kindness I have drawn you. Again, I will build you, and you shall again be built, O virgin of Israel. You will again put on your tambourines and go forth in the dance of those making merry. You shall yet plant vineyards on the mountains of Samaria, the planters shall plant and shall treat them as common. For there shall be a day when the watchmen on Ephraim’s hills shall call out, Arise and let us go up to Zion, to the LORD (Yahweh) our God.
For so says the LORD (Yahweh), ‘Sing with gladness for Jacob, and shout among the head of the nations. Cry out, give praise and say, O LORD (Yahweh), save Your people, the remnant of Israel.’ Behold! I will bring them from the north country and gather them from the recesses of the earth. Among them the blind, and the lame, the pregnant one, and the travailing one together, a great company shall return here. They shall come with weeping, and I will lead them with prayers. I will cause them to walk by rivers of waters, in a right way; they will not stumble in it.
For I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is My firstborn. Hear the Word of the LORD (Yahweh), O nations, and declare in the coastlands far away, and say, ‘He Who scattered Israel will gather him and keep him, as a shepherd keeps his flock. For the LORD (Yahweh) has redeemed Jacob and ransomed him from the hand of the one stronger than him.’
Hosea 5:14-15 For I am to Ephraim as the lion, and as the young lion to the house of Judah; I, even I, tear and go; I take away, and no one rescues. I will go; I will return to My place until they confess their guilt and seek My face. In their affliction, they will seek Me diligently.
Isaiah 11:10-13 And in that Day, there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be glorious. And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of His people (Israel)…And He shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth. The envy also of Ephraim shall depart, and the adversaries of Judah shall be cut off: Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Ephraim.
Jeremiah 31:33-37 But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, says the LORD (Yahweh), I will put My law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be My people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD (Yahweh): for they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD (Yahweh): for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. Thus saith the LORD (Yahweh), who gives the sun for a light by day and the moon and of the stars for a light by night, who divides the sea when the waves roar; The LORD (Yahweh) of hosts is His name: If those ordinances depart from before Me, says the LORD (Yahweh), then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before Me forever. Thus, says the LORD (Yahweh); If heaven above can be measured and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, then I will cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, says the LORD (Yahweh).”
Jeremiah 16:19 Gentiles shall come unto thee from the ends of the earth, and shall say, ‘Surely our (Church) fathers have inherited lies, vanity, and things wherein there is no profit.’” And to that, all I can add is: “Amen!”