Authentic Christianity

By Mikha'el

This work explores the history of the early church and its implications for those who seek to recapture the true nature of the early church. It details the development of the false religion of Babylon and how it has infiltrated the church. It seeks to lay out the relationship between faith and works, law and grace, the definition of sanctification and what a community of believers should look like today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Sep 27, 2011
• ISBN: 9781387478163

Book preview

Authentic Christianity

Authentic Christianity

Mikha’el

Copyright ©1996

J & M Publishing Co.

Reading, PA

All rights reserved.  No part of this book may be

reproduced in any form, except for the inclusion

of brief quotations in a review, without permission

in writing from the author or publisher.

2nd printing, 1999

3rd printing, 2011

michaelcalpino.com

Other Books by the Author

And Hashticharot Smiled

Conversations in Radical Liberty

Genesis, Zen and Quantum Physics

A New Look at the Theology and Science of Creation

An Inception of Piracy

(Historical Fiction)

Leave Me Alone

A Patriot’s Plan to Restore Pride and Prosperity to America

American Revolution

A Philosophical and Practical Guide

Memoirs of a Former American

Israel, the Goyim and

the Eternal Destiny of Man

What Happened?

How Biblical Judaism Became Christianity

Art for the Revolution

Political Writings 2000-2010

Religious Writings

Preface to the Second Printing

Shalom,

In the nearly three years since the first edition, a lot has happened, both to me personally and to the people to whom this information has been valuable.  All over the world people who love G-d are combining a love and appreciation for the written Torah with their devotion to the Living Torah, Y’shua.  G-d is at work preparing his people for His return.

When Kefa (Peter) preached his sermon on Shava’ut (Pentecost), he stated that this was the prophesied outpouring of the Spirit of G-d.  This is happening again, not necessarily with signs and wonders but in fulfillment of the vision of Ezekiel;

"A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you,

And I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you

a heart of flesh.  And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to

walk in My statutes and be careful to observe My commandments."

Ezekiel 36:26,27

G-d is recreating the community that existed in Judea in the first century, a community comprised of Jews and Gentiles who had a common vision and a commitment to Messiah and Torah.  It is an exciting time to be involved in the work of G-d and I have been truly blessed to be involved.  I want to express my appreciation to those of you who have been an encouragement and especially to those who made this second printing possible.  If you are receiving this book, it is a result of their gifts and support.

If you would like more information you can contact me in a variety of ways.

(2nd edition contact info no longer applicable)

And if you are ever in Reading, Pennsylvania, drop by Beit HaKadosh, our family would love to meet you.  I trust that you will be blessed on your journey of truth and I consider myself privileged to play this small part.

Blessings in Y’shua,

Mikha’el

September, 1999

Preface to the Third Edition

Shalom,

Having read through this work again, I am amazed at how much has changed in twelve years.  Authentic Christianity was truly just a beginning for me as I hope it has been for many of those who have read it before.  I have come to understand that any work, particularity one like this, is only a snapshot in time, it captures a moment of our imperfect knowledge and understanding.  However, this book was never meant to be a comprehensive treatise on theology, history or philosophy.  It was written to prod the average Christian to begin to think outside the box of Christendom, to begin to ask questions, to look at the Bible in a different way.  If it motivates you to begin to search on your own, to wonder why?, then it will have served its purpose.  Authentic Christianity was never really a book of answers, it is a book of questions.  If it opens the mind and the spirit and sets the feet on the journey, then it will have accomplished its purpose. 

My son, if you accept my words and

store up my Torah within you,

turning your ear to wisdom

and applying your heart to understanding,

and if you call out for insight

and cry aloud for understanding,

and if you look for it as you would silver,

and search for it like hidden treasure,

then you will understand the fear of YHWH

and find the knowledge of Adonai.

Proverbs 2:1-5

Blessing on your journey,

Mikha’el

March 2011

CHAPTER  I

INTRODUCTION

You are about to embark on a journey. And it will not be an easy journey, it has not been one for me. It is a jour­ney fraught with peril, where emphasis can be misplaced and distortion, or even heresy, can be the result. It will not be a comfortable journey. If you have no desire to grow, to understand your roots, to establish your future, to ques­tion the status quo, then this book is not for you. Because it is a challenge to recapture the essence of what it means to walk in the way of truth, to be called a follower of the Messiah, to live the life God has laid before us in the Scriptures. That way is not to make us comfortable, it is to make us holy. So intellectual and spiritual comforts and crutches must be left behind.

Perhaps at the end of our journey, you will want to go back to where you began. That will be impossible. You may try, but once God has spoken truth into your heart, as I pray He will through the pages of this book, you cannot remain the same. Sometimes I too have desired to go back. The one who said 'ignorance is bliss' was right if you are the sort of person who never wants to grow and learn.  Everything we learn requires a response and once we respond, we are never quite the same again.

I pray that your response be as mine was; repentance followed by a burning desire to find out and then live God's truth. That is the action that will bear fruit for the Kingdom of God. That is the response that will fulfill you and make you into the image of the Messiah. That is the response that will make you into a true child of God.

Before we begin our journey, we need to establish some ‘ground rules'. The first one is about history. History is the key to understanding much of what will be presented because it is in history that we discover how we came to be as we are. We are the product of a long process of social evolution, the pace of which has quickened remarkably in this century.

Now I am sure that you would agree with me when I say that the direction this evolution has taken has not always been a positive one. What 'positive' is, however, would seem to depend on the perspective of the individual, or so our society believes. That I do not accept. There is only one measure of what is good for us and our society and that is God's Word as communicated through the Scriptures and in the community of faith as it is patterned after those Scriptures. What is good or right is not based on what you or I think but on what God thinks.

With that in mind, we must not assume that everything we are doing is right in the eyes of God just because we think it's OK or we enjoy it or because it's not hurting anyone or because everyone's been doing it for 'x' number of years. Our opinion is only right when it is in line with God's revealed opinion. Practice or belief is not vali­dated by a long history but by the extent to which it con­forms to the words and principles contained in the Scriptures.

The second rule is the assumption that God cares a lot more about what we do than what we believe. Now that statement may sound heretical to some of you but I believe the Scriptures support the statement. God's language is a language of action verbs. We are to do, or not to do. We are to go, or not to go. We are to act this way and not that way. We are to do (not believe) these things and live. If we look into the Scripture we find that the only important concept we are to believe is that the Messiah, Yahushua (Jesus) is God in the flesh. Other that that, most of the authors of Scripture dealt with our behavior, not with our minds. That's because Adonai is a God of action and He expects his people to be people of action. Certainly belief and val­ues influence our action and to that extent they should be discussed. But theology that does not have practical appli­cation is merely pointless intellectual exercise.

The last rule is one of context. If we are to understand authentic Christian belief and practice, we must under­stand its original context. And that context is Jewish. This is perhaps the most difficult of all rules to grasp and apply because it affects our fundamental beliefs and values. Why, you ask? After all we read the same Scriptures and understand the same history. The problem is that those Scriptures and that history have been borrowed, not adopted. We take what we want and combine it with our culture and ideas, often distorting it in the process. Take, for example, the earlier point about the importance of action over belief. There are a minority of Scriptures that talk about belief and ideas. But in our Greek cultural con­text, which emphasizes ideas and thoughts over action we take these Scriptures and elevate them to a preeminent position. Thus the message of God is distorted and we end up with a lot of people sitting in the pews of thousands of churches content with themselves and their destiny because they have been taught that what they believe is the most important thing and what they do has little significance.

We must learn to identify the history of our values, beliefs and practices and measure them objectively against the Word of God. If they are found wanting, we must change. And the change will not be easy because some of those beliefs and practices have settled deep in our minds and hearts and their extraction will be difficult and, at times, painful. But through a lot of prayer and study, we can learn, we can grow. We can become con­formed to the image of the Messiah, grafted into the root of Israel, and become true children of the King.

It will be helpful to have a definition of several impor­tant terms to ward off any unnecessary confusion. Perhaps the two most crucial are  Israel and Church. These two words are used in a lot of different ways by a lot of people so I will describe to you the way this author is going to use them.

When I use the term Israel I am referring to the peo­ple of the promise, the Jewish people. I will never use this term in reference to the Church or Christians. Gentiles may be a part of Israel through the grafting in process described by Paul in Romans 11. When referring to Jewish and/or Gentile people who believe in the Messiah I will use one of the following terms: Messianic community, ecclesia (used in the Septuagint as the Greek word for congrega­tion) or the believing remnant of Israel. For those that will have a part in the world to come (are saved) but are not part of the nation of Israel I will use the term Salvation Community.

The church will be used in the common sense of the term. Whether it be in the Roman Catholic, Protestant, Fundamentalist, Evangelical or any other Christian tra­dition this set of religious values and practices defines the Church. The people that adhere to these traditions are called Christians.

I will also use several Hebrew names or terms that the reader may not be familiar with. The Jewish Messiah, the Son of God Whose blood cleanses all from sin is Yahushua. The books in the Bible from Genesis to Deuteronomy are the Torah or Law. The books in the Bible from Genesis to Malachi (Or II Chronicles if you have a Bible with the tra­ditional order of books) are referred to as the Tanakh.

There are important reasons for using these particular terms and they will become apparent as you read on. I hope that as you join me on this journey that you will have your Bible open and your heart and mind prayerfully attuned to the Ruach haKodesh (Holy Spirit). May God richly bless you as you seek the truth and serve Him wholeheartedly.

CHAPTER II

HISTORY

To understand why we are where we are, we need to understand from where it is we have come. The question of 'why' is a question of history. So we will begin at the beginning, at least of this present civilization. We are going back to the post-flood world of the sons of Noah and his children and their children.

Before we begin, we need to understand that it is a dif­ficult task to reconstruct much of the history we are deal­ing with. To do so, we will be relying on both archeology and mythology. However, the accuracy of specific events in that history is not crucial. That may sound strange but I will tell you why that is so. It is not so much the specific ‘facts' of the events that concern us. It is what the ancients and the people throughout history made the events into, how they interpreted them.  It is in their interpre­tation that they attached religious and philosophical meaning to them and it is the religion and the ideas that grew up around the events that is our concern because it is in the areas of religion and morality where God has spoken most authoritatively.

We begin with Cush, the firstborn son of Ham, whose brother was the accursed Canaan. In Babylonian mythol­ogy, he is identified as ‘Bel', the confounder. In Egypt, and later Greece, he was known as 'Hermes' or the one who interprets language, from which we get the word hermeneutics. Both of these titles indicate he had a sig­nificant, if not central role in the construction of the Tower of Babel and was credited, or blamed, for the confusion of languages. A quick look at Genesis 10 will also show that 101 years after the flood Eber, great grandson of Shem, named his son Peleg, because in his days the earth was divided, which happened after the Tower of Babel. We must keep in mind the significance of this building project. The tower was to keep the people united, instead of spreading themselves over the earth  as God had commanded. And it was to 'reach unto Heaven'. Now I don't think that they thought they could build a tower high enough to literally get to heaven. What they were doing was developing a new system of theology and salvation, symbolized by the tower, in which they could achieve sal­vation and immortality their own way apart from God. So we see that Cush was the leader of the first great aposta­sy and the founder of Babel.

His son, Nimrod, took that apostasy and spread it far and wide through military conquest. Known as Ninus and Kronos in Assyria, Osiris in Egypt, Saturn and father of the gods in Rome, he was the first king of Babylon and the first military leader. Because