The traditions of pagan sun god worship that were established in Babylon long before the Tower of Babel incident have been spread throughout the earth by the vestiges of Nimrod's religious system. Israel as a nation was chosen by the Almighty to be his representative, a kingdom of priests to reconcile the world back to the worship of the one true God. But Israel ended up inventing its own religion with thousands of of commandments added to the simple commandments of the Almighty.
In spite of its explicit instructions that no one is ever allowed to add one single commandment to or subtract one single commandment from, the word shouted down from Sinai by the lawgiver himself, the God of Israel. This is the greatest story never told. It's all about Yeshua, the prophet, the promised Messiah.
Join me here in the Land of Israel as we take a chronological and archaeological journey through the Gospels. You have never seen anything like this before. I'm Michael Rood. Prepare for a Rood Awakening. Rood Awakening I was 17, standing in a field of waving wheat near my home in Michigan, passionately preaching the Sermon on the Mount to the multitude that populated my imagination.
I was attempting to rephrase King James English into my own vocabulary, trying to understand what Jesus was saying to those who climbed the mountain to hear his first recorded teaching. When I came to the phrase, The gospel of the kingdom, I stopped cold. I stood gazing into that field, searching my mind, but realizing that I really did not understand those words.
I knew gospel meant good news, but that was no help. I had read that phrase hundreds of times, but for the first time in my life, I knew the gospel of the kingdom was important. I started church life at Calvary Baptist in Greenville, Michigan.
That's where I was born. When I was in kindergarten, I won a King James version of the Bible as the award for bringing the most children to vacation Bible school. My mother packed a carload of children I had never met before into our 55 Chevy station wagon.
She was a real evangelist. I was just along for the ride in Mom's 55. I was in second grade when I knelt at my bed and, with tears, asked God to use me as a servant. That is the day I gave my heart and my life to Jesus. And that began the adventure that I'm on today. That year, my father committed his life to God.
He later became Sunday school superintendent and went on to Grand Rapids Baptist Bible Seminary to learn Hebrew. Though neither my grandfather nor his brothers and sisters ever darkened the doorstep of either church or synagogue, the Roode family came from Holland, where my great-great-great-great-grandfather, the Jewish cantor Anshul Roode, started the first Ashkenazi synagogue in his home in Amsterdam. It would be nearly a decade before I began to understand the significance of my Jewish roots, but I grew up in a Gentile church.
attending six services a week. As a young teen, we competed against other church groups in Bible tournaments, which compelled me to memorize hundreds of verses, even entire chapters of the Bible. I was raised a Baptist Jew, completely outside the religion of my ancestors, yet competently versed as a Bible-believing Christian. As a teen, church became laboriously boring.
I fell sound asleep during the services just like most of the deacons and elders, but at 17 everything changed. The son of my Sunday school teacher joined the US Marines and volunteered as a door gunner on a medevac helicopter. Dennis wanted to help save lives.
Another Marine from our congregation, Yeshi Reinhart, was recovering from near fatal combat wounds. When he limped back into the church our pastor resigned. joined the Army Chaplain Corps and was on his way to Vietnam. Schoolmates were coming back from the war wounded.
In both mind and body, some in body bags. Thousands of Americans fled across the Canadian border seeking political asylum from the draft. My draft number was just weeks from coming up. Life, death, and Vietnam were constant topics among my friends as we sat night after night on the lawn of the public library and debated. One night, I was alone.
Looking across the library lawn, I saw words of fire burning in front of me. Thy word is truth. It was not just a Bible verse. I'd memorized it years before, but it was now a revelation that changed my life. I began reading entire books of the Bible non-stop.
I was reading a screenplay of a story that I had never seen before. It was the greatest story never told. I read the Acts of the Apostles, and it changed everything.
These first century believers were not telling stale stories about Jesus. They were actually doing what he told them to do. He said, teach the things that I taught you.
And these Jewish followers of the Jewish Messiah were living it with signs, miracles, and wonders that I had never witnessed in my 17 years of Gentile church. I knew that somehow, somewhere, The power of the living God had to be evident today. But after 17 years of Wednesday night prayer meetings, I had to admit, I never saw one person miraculously healed until I walked out on religion and began searching for truth. I made a potentially dangerous commitment. I baptized myself in the waters of the local gravel pit and I swore upon the altar of Almighty God that I would put myself in a place where miracles could take place, where the dead could be raised.
I joined the Marine Corps. My contract guaranteed that I would be sent to Parris Island for boot camp and on to advanced infantry training at Camp Pelton. From there, I expected my next stop to be Vietnam.
Six months later, while awaiting orders, the commandant announced that no more Marines would be sent to Vietnam. That interruption in my military career facilitated the adventure on which I continue to this very day. I invite you to take a 50-year shortcut with me, a path that cuts directly to and through the land of Israel, where I've made my home for the past 20 years. Join me on this journey of discovery if you desire to understand the real gospel of the kingdom that both Jesus and his disciples were teaching here in the Galilee.
More than six months before his crucifixion, both Jesus and his disciples were preaching the gospel of the kingdom in the synagogues throughout the Galilee. The gospel they taught had nothing to do with either his crucifixion or his resurrection, but tradition has turned a deaf ear to what Jesus both said and did, an unwarranted deference to the imaginative stories that have been made up by men. Where do we get the idea of three wise men following a hovering star through the desert that led them to a Bethlehem manger just in time to present gifts to the baby Jesus on the night he was born? It is not in the Bible.
In fact, the entire nativity scenario that we inherited in the West is in direct contradiction to the Gospel record. That tradition can only be found in the opening pages of the book Ben-Hur, a novel written by an American Civil War general, Lou Wallace. Ben-Hur was the best-selling novel in America for more than 50 years, second only to the King James version of the Bible. So far-reaching was Wallace's novel, even the olive wood manger scenes, produced by the Arabs in Bethlehem, depict three wise men at the manger.
When the Bible tells a completely different story. If you want to believe in Tinkerbell, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, or Santa Claus, you may want to change the channel. I've been on a search for the truth for more than 50 years.
I am not interested in protecting erroneous traditions. What about October 31st? All Saints Day?
This was originally the day of Samween, the god of death. Even though the scriptures strictly forbid the adoption of pagan practices and renaming them to suit a purportedly spiritual purpose, Rome Christianized this day of death by renaming Samween All Hallows Eve, which became more commonly known as Hallowe'en or Holy Ween, Holy... God of death.
Now we can see how Christian this celebration has really become. It is a living illustration of why God gave such specific commandments concerning the adoption of paganism. In Deuteronomy 1230, Moses instructed, take heed to yourselves, that you are not snared by following the practices of these pagan nations.
Do not inquire concerning their gods, saying, how did these nations serve their gods? Even so, I will do likewise. Thou shalt not do so to Yehovah thy God, for every abomination to Yehovah, which he hates, they have done to honor their gods.
So, how about Dagon Friday, the day the Assyrian fish goddess worshiped? Why, I grew up eating fish every Friday in public school in Michigan. And Easter Sunday, when Samorimus, the wife of Nimrod, was proclaimed by the gods the queen of heaven and sent back to the earth on the first Sunday after the vernal equinox in a giant egg, which plummeted into the Euphrates River, broke open, and out emerged Semiramis, reincarnated as Easter, the bare-breasted sex goddess who turned a bird into an egg-laying rabbit to demonstrate her divinity. Why is it that the Roman religions mourn the death of Jesus on...
on Dagon the fish god Friday, and celebrate his resurrection on Easter, the sex goddess Sunday. Jesus was Jewish, not Babylonian. My Bible says that it was Passover when the lamb of God was sacrificed.
In Yom HaBikurim, the day the firstfruits were reaped from the earth. And December 25th, the birthday of Jesus? December 25th was the winter solstice on the ancient Babylonian calendar that marked the reincarnation of Nimrod as little baby Tammuz. You remember the record in the 8th chapter of Ezekiel, women weeping for Tammuz?
It was an abomination going on in the Jerusalem temple that the prophet denounced as a stench in the nostrils of the Almighty. Why is it that all the pagan sun gods were said to be born on December 25th? Why did Constantine declare this date as the day Jesus was born?
The most repeated prophecy in the entirety of scripture is the prophecy of Jesus. He said that there would be one and only one sign of his authenticity. Just one sign that he was the prophet of whom Moses prophesied.
One sign that he was the Messiah who would eventually sit on the throne of his father David and rule over all the earth. It would be the sign of the prophet Jonah. Just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so Jesus prophesied that he would be in the grave three days and three nights and raised on the third day.
Yet, we have inherited countless pagan traditions surrounding Dagon's Good Friday and Easter's Reincarnation Sunday. Ladies and gentlemen, Einstein could not get three days and three nights between daggone Friday and Easter Sunday. But because of our inherited traditions rooted in Babylonian Sun worship, we cannot even count to three to verify the one and only sign of the true Messiah.
Either something is wrong with our paganized religious systems or there is something desperately wrong. The Apostles'Creed was crafted by Constantine's religious leaders as the defining statement of faith for his empire's new religion. Jesus was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of a virgin, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried, and the third day he rose from the dead. Wait!
Where is this entire ministry? Born of a virgin and suffered under Pilate? What kind of faith would exclude everything he did and taught? Think about it.
Is this the true gospel? In Matthew, chapter 4, verse 23, summarizes Yeshua's ministry in the Galilee. Jesus went about all the Galilee. teaching in their synagogues declaring the gospel of the kingdom and healing all manner of sickness and disease among the people. To understand what Jesus was teaching in the Pharisee synagogues, we must diligently study every incident the gospel authors record and ask, what did Jesus do in their synagogues?
What he did is the gospel of the kingdom. What did he say in the heat of battle with the religious leaders? What he said is the gospel of the kingdom.
Everything he said and did was an illustration, a living example of the gospel of the kingdom in word and deed. Heaven endorsed his gospel with signs and wonders, yet miracles are no proof in themselves. The words of a prophet must be in accordance with the instructions from Moses. Jesus always corroborated and clarified, but never contradicted or countermanded the revelation God gave to Moses at Mount Sinai.
Moses states in Deuteronomy chapter 13, verse one, if a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you with a sign or wonder that comes to pass, and then they entice you to serve and follow other gods that you have already been instructed not to do, you shall not heed the words of that prophet. Yehovah will use this to test you, to know whether you really love Yehovah with all your heart and with all your soul. Remember, you shall follow Yehovah your God and fear him and keep his commandments and obey his voice.
and serve him and cleave to him. Jesus'adherence to the commandments of Moses passed the test of authenticity for a true prophet. The miracles he did and his clarification of the commandments authenticated him as the prophet of whom Moses prophesied in Deuteronomy 18, verse 15 and following.
Yehovah thy God will raise up a prophet from the midst of thee, From among thy brethren like unto me. Unto him you shall shema. You shall hear and obey. Whosoever will not hear and obey my words, which he shall speak in my name, diligent inquiry will be made, and he will be judged.
Of all the words recorded in the scriptures, the ones to which we must be particularly attentive and obedient, are the words which are, by far, the most important to translate correctly. They are the words of the prophet we must hear and obey. The Torah instructs in Deuteronomy 4, verse 2, You shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall you diminish aught from it, that you may keep the commandments of Yehovah your God which I command you.
If we either add to or subtract from the commandments, we no longer have the commandments of God. We have a man-made religion. If we keep His commandments, we pass the test. If we break His commandments by adding to, subtracting from, or completely ignoring the teachings of the prophet, we fail the test.
Grace is never either permission or excuse for violating the commandments of the Almighty. Grace is the divine empowerment to live a godly, holy, and a righteous life in the midst of a sick, twisted, and perverse world. It was 10 months before Jesus'crucifixion that he selected 12 of his disciples to be his sent ones, but he sent them nowhere until he had trained them through the summer. And Luke, Chapter 9, verse 6, we are told that at the beginning of the sixth month, the six teams of disciples departed and went through the towns preaching the gospel. and healing everywhere.
It is profoundly clear that the gospel of the kingdom is not the death, burial, and resurrection. These 12 apostles were preaching the same good news that Yeshua taught them. Heaven authenticated their message by miracles of healing everywhere they went.
When they returned at the end of the month, the apostles reported to Jesus everything that they had done and all. that they had taught. It was two days before his crucifixion when Jesus took three of his disciples over to the Mount of Olives and instructed them, this gospel shall be preached in the entire world for a witness to all nations.
The gospel he preached is the one and only gospel that Jesus authorized to be preached to the whole world. Not a story about sweet, virgin-born baby Jesus who suffered under Pilate and rose on the Babylonian goddess of fertility Sunday. The Gospels record some of Jesus'final instructions.
Matthew 28, Go and teach all nations to observe everything I have commanded you. Mark, go into... all the world and preach the gospel to every individual. He that believes and is baptized shall be saved.
He that does not believe, does not shema, does not hear and obey, shall be judged. And Luke, in the Acts, you shall manifest power after the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and then you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and even to the uttermost. part of the earth.
Join me here in the land of Israel as we explore the life and teachings of Jesus, Yeshua of Nazareth, the prophet that we must hear and obey, for it is he who will return as a messiah to establish his kingdom upon the earth.