What is the religion of Abraham? What is the true religion of the Hebrew Scriptures? Is the modern Jewish religion truly the representative of the true Hebrew faith? Is Yeshua the Hebrew Messiah prophesied in the Hebrew Scriptures? How can one know? The answer to all these questions can be found only in the writings of the Hebrew Scriptures. If you are of the seed of Abraham physically, then it is your duty to search the Hebrew Scriptures and to ask God to illuminate you and give you guidance, through His Holy Spirit, so that you might learn the truth. But, can we trust the Hebrew Scriptures to give us the same message that it contained when they were inspired so many years ago? Have they not been changed through the many years of transcribing? We have already mentioned in the Introduction that the Dead Sea Scrolls, which had been written 2,000 years ago, prove that the Hebrew Scriptures have remained preserved by God and their message remains unchanged. But, what did the Hebrew people believe about their prophesied Messiah 2,000 years ago, when the Dead Sea Scrolls were redacted?

Let us then turn to these scrolls in order to catch a glimpse of the beliefs of the Jews living in the time of the Second Temple. The Hebrew sect responsible for stashing these scrolls in the caves along the shore of the Dead Sea nearby the Qumran community was the third Jewish sect that had vied for the hearts and minds of the Jews in the era after the return from the Babylonian captivity. Most scholars believe that the Qumran community was composed of members of the sect called Essenes. These were dedicated, austere and sincere individuals, which wanted no part of the political maneuverings in which the Sadducees and the Pharisees thrived. They practiced an austere and strict moral code and rejected the many extra-biblical man-made laws invented by the Pharisees. These Pharisees, they claimed were in the business of making up these laws as a way to impress others with their false spirituality and they mockingly referred to them in these scrolls, as the ‘Flattery Seekers’.

Many Jews, on the basis of the following, five major objections, have rejected the legitimacy of Yeshua’s claim. These objections have, since the time of the Pharisees, been promoted among the Chosen People of God, keeping them from investigating their own prophets in this matter. I will list these objections first and then endeavor to answer them one by one.

1. The first of these objections is a clever twist of the truth, which, at first glance, to any rational person, seems reasonable and right. I am speaking of the truthful charge that no man could ever become God. As a matter of fact the very first sin of man, when Satan in the Garden of Eden tempted him, was precisely engineered by the Serpent to undermine the most important element of God’s revealed truth in this matter. Satan lied to Adam and Eve, when he told them that, with the eating of the forbidden fruit, they could be as God. There is but One God and no man could ever become God, of this one thing you can be eternally sure! Yeshua would be the first, to not only agree with this statement, but also to emphasize it, with more resolve, intensity and authority than any human would or could. The fact is simply that no human could ever become God, but God, on the other hand, is not bound by anything except His righteousness. Is it therefore, illogical to believe that the Omnipotent God of this Universe could, if He chose to, become man? Is it contrary to the central and primordial theological premise of the Holy Scriptures that there is but One God, the Creator of heaven and earth, to concede that He could choose to take on human form in order to accomplish His will? Is this task too great for Him?

The obvious answer is clear to any Jew that understands the omnipotence of God and the only matter that remains to be determined is whether or not God has declared in His Scriptures that it was His will to do just that. Therefore, the responsibility that is an intrinsic duty to all Jews, and for that matter any Gentile also, is to look into the Hebrew prophets in order to understand what God has said about the coming of the Hebrew Messiah. It is incumbent upon all the descendents of Abraham to know the mind of the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob and to explore the life and death of the One who claims to be the Jewish Messiah, in order to ascertain the truth of it all.

The Sadducees, the Pharisees, the Essenes, and The Way (Christianity)

The exchange of yokes, from the Greek to the Roman taskmasters, did little to alleviate the previous pressures endured during the Greek occupation. The Pharisees were once again thrust against another attempt to assimilate their culture; this time their captors attempted to “Romanize” the Hebrew culture. The inability of the Jews to gain freedom and independence in their religious beliefs lent understandably, toward a tendency of seclusionism and disdain for their Gentile captors. The Gentile captors had been accustomed to the practice of assimilating the religious beliefs of their captives and creating a syncretic union that they felt was advantageous in their struggle to consolidate and to maintain control of these nations. When confronted with the Jewish monotheistic religion, they were faced with a core group of believers that refused to create a syncretic amalgamation of pagan and Jewish beliefs. Many of the Jews knew the truth and there was no room for capitulation and compromise, to the great frustration of the Greeks and Romans.

These same pressures to conform to a satanic compromise will, once again, play out in the history of Yisra’el, for when the Prince of Darkness comes that will make Jerusalem desolate, it will be because of the abomination that Daniel has prophesied. What is this abomination? There is no doubt in my mind that it will be the desecration of the Temple by the Antichrist, claiming that he is the Messiah and God. No doubt, he will be peddling his pantheistic, occult, syncretic, One World Religion; claiming that we can all become gods, through initiation into the occult and subsequent demon possession. Of course they will not refer to it as demon possession, they will guise their sinister plot through clever phrases to misinform the masses (see “The Ancient Wisdom”, New Age, Occultism and Pantheism.).

Although Israel’s isolationist mentality, at that juncture in their history was originally motivated by their desire to disassociate, with those that were trying to water down their truths, it eventually led to an overcompensation, which went against God’s purpose to use them as ministers of the light, to the unbelieving world.