Dear Reader,
Whatever your spiritual
condition, I want you to know I love you very much and I hope that you will not
find my passionate tone offensive. I respect your mind and your spirit and would
love to talk these things over with you.
Proverbs teaches that
wisdom can be found on the hill top, in the marketplace, on the street and in
the doorways. Wisdom is constantly plucking at our sleeve, asking, “When will
you listen?” Thus, wisdom can be found anywhere for those who have the eyes to
see and the ears to hear. After all, we can even learn some lesson from
failures and mistakes, can’t we? You might have just the little missing piece
of wisdom I need to be closer to the Truth. I might have the key you need to
unlock that part of your life that you simply can’t seem to get right. Come, let
us reason together!
Fellow disciples, I want
to assure you that even if we disagree on the exact method needed to bring the
Church back to a right relationship with the Lord, I stand united with you in
our ultimate goal – service to the Lord Yeshua ben Adonai, Adonai’s Messiah.
Why
are you doing this? What is motivating you?
Basically, I’m fed up with
Christianity. Not Christ, but “Cultural Christianity”. It’s gotten so bad and our
reputation as “Christians” has become so demoralized that in a study
conducted by Barna, evangelical Christians ranked 10th out of 11
societal groups, beating only prostitutes in the people’s opinions. By the way,
for an excellent overview of Christianity’s image problem, consider reading “UnChristian” by David Kinnaman and Gabe
Lyons (www.bakerbooks.com).
Bad
Examples of Christianity: Why shouldn’t the world think this way about Christians
after what they’ve seen for the last century, but in particular from the 1980s
on? Amee Semple McPherson was the founder of the Foursquare Gospel
denomination. She abandoned her second husband, had affairs, faked her own
kidnapping in order to gain $500,000, lived with her lover and finally, died of
an overdose of Seconal.
Jim Bakker, an Assemblies of God
minister and the co-host of the popular PTL club, ended his ministry with a sex
scandal and divorce which resulted in revelations of accounting fraud which
brought about his imprisonment. He claimed his show was popular because he
“accepted all denominations, and refused no one regardless of race, creed,
sexual orientation or criminal record” as worthy of speaking or teaching in his
ministry.
Jimmy Swaggart was an Assemblies of God
Pentecostal preacher. In 1986, Swaggart exposed fellow
Assemblies of God minister Marvin Gorman, who was having an affair with one of
his parishioners. The following year, Swaggart exposed fellow Assemblies Of God
televangelist Jim Bakker’s sexual indiscretions. Meanwhile, Swaggart was
frequenting a prostitute by the name of Debra Murphree. On October 11, 1991,
Swaggart was found in the company of another prostitute, Rosemary Garcia.
On and on the morbid lists goes: Lonnie
Frisbee, Oral Roberts, Peter Popoff, Mike Warnke, Robert Tilton, Frank Houston,
John Paulk, Douglas Goodman, Kent Hovind, Ted Haggard, Paul Barnes, Richard
Roberts, Bishop Thomas Wesley Weeks, Bishop Earl Paulk, Phil Driscoll, Benny
Hinn, Bishop TD Jakes… These names are synonymous with hypocritical greed. It
is a morbid tale of power hunger, sexual abuse, drug addiction, and
misappropriation of funds.
Divided and Conquered: Wikipedia, in an attempt to classify and organize the
religions that their service has uncovered, carefully defined both the term
“Christian” and the term “denomination”. They determined the number of
so-called “Christian denominations” that they have classified so far to be
38,000. The vast majority of these denominations are Protestant in nature and
thus, did not exist before 1517. So basically in the last 500 years,
Christianity has exploded into 38,000 conflicting shards.
Where did
the name “Adonaism” come from?
Back in 1988, I began
struggling with this whole issue. I was struggling with the fact that
I was struggling with the
fact that the Bible over and over again commands us to observe the Passover;
that the Passover is to be a perpetual statute till heaven and earth passes
away and yet no Protestant church I knew of at the time observed it. Instead,
they choose to observe Easter, a holiday based on a pagan fertility goddess with
absolutely no ties to the date of the resurrection of the Christ.
I was struggling with the
fact that the vast majority of Christians were being taught out of barely one-third
of the Bible. I was struggling with the fact that though they would never admit
it, these Christians were anti-Semites. I was struggling with the idea that
nearly every author of the Bible was Jewish; even the parts that are in Greek
were written by Jews. Yet almost no one I knew had even the slightest clue how
to interpret biblical concepts through the Jewish culture and mindset. Those
seminarians who had learned something of the Jewish manners and customs had all
chosen to ignore them in their daily walk.
In my struggles, as I
tried to determine for myself what the Scriptures actually state without the
prejudice of a lifetime inculcated in fundamentalist Baptist KJV-only
mentality, I needed to identify the theology I was developing in contrast to
the “cultural Christianity” I was drowning in. I considered how various
denominations received their names.
The Methodist denomination took its name from the “methodical” approach John Wesley used with the Scriptures. Baptists gained their name due to their emphasis on the necessity of post-conversion baptism by immersion. Presbyterians are known for their hierarchical structure based on the Greek concept of the “presbuteroi”. “Quaker” refers to the followers of that particular movement “quaking” or trembling under the influence of their ecstatic experience. Adonai is a Hebrew name of God that literally means “Lord.” Yahweh is considered not only “Lord” but actually “Adonai adonaim” or “Lord of lords.” My theology emphasizes the Sovereignty and Lordship of the Master Lord Jesus. It makes Him King and firmly establishes Him on the throne. It places a high value on demonstrating one’s love and gratitude for salvation by humbly obeying His commands. So Adonaism takes its name from its emphasis on this lordship of God.
Are
there other Adonaists or is this something new?
Whether they call
themselves Adonaists or not, I’m sure that there are others who, like me, are
frustrated with the state of the Church Universal.
The Holy Spirit gave
me the name “Adonaism” without me knowing of any other historical reference to
that term, but as we all know, “there is nothing new under the sun.” Many years
after I began my attempt to develop Adonaic theology, I discovered in a history
written by an enemy of the Lord a reference to historical Adonaists. He said…
If would indeed be
a most grave historical error to imagine that Judaism formed a singe bloc, which
has given birth to no theological, esoteric or heretical variation.
We have seen that
in his work on the formation of Christianity, Drews concluded that before the
Christian era, there already existed among the Jews a representation of the
Messiah, which would become that of Christianity. Later on, the
disciples of Jesus rightly sought to present him as having united in his life
all the circumstances which had been abundantly described by the Prophets, and
did this in order to prove his legitimacy after he had accomplished his mission.
Equally, we noted
that Drews, in agreement with B. Smith, affirmed that alongside orthodox
Judaism there existed in Israel, or at its borders, sects which had
assembled the essential elements of the Christian legend – and this long before
the birth of Christianity – around a god which they called Iesoushouah. In this
name, Drews found the name of Jesus, for the Hebraic orthography is identical.
This fact is significant: it is the first trace of the existence of the
Kabbalah, Iesoushouah being one of the “Divine Names” of the Sephira Geburah.
What we glimpse in
the doctrine of these sects puts them in rapport with a syncretistic religion,
spread across all
This syncretist
religion is based on esoteric revelation, a “gnosis” (manda is
synonymous with gnosis), brought down by a god named
All the Shemite,
Ophite, Naassenian, Cainite, Essenian, Ebionite, Peratean, Sethian and
Heliognostic people, and all the pre-Gnostic sects before our era, awaited
the mysterious Being who would descend from Heaven and be incarnated in a human
form to disperse Demons, purify the Earth and Men, and lead them to the place
of the Fortunate Souls in the “Realm of the Father”.
Historical
research reveals many Palestinian Jewish doctors in sympathetic relations with
the ideas of these sects, which were foreign to
Let us avoid being
derailed by the historical error of a strictly faithful monotheistic Judaism,
confined within a sealed vase, without any intellectual and dogmatic evolution!
Before our era,
Mandean sects with
a Jewish foundation existed, and there were those – B. Smith proved it – which
rightly gave the name of Yeshu, Yeheshuah, Yesoushouah, to a Saving God for
whom they waited.
Yesh, in Hebrew,
signifies fire; at the same time, it designates the lineage, the genealogy.
Their Saving God is thus a god of light and of fire. What does Moses tell us?
“God is a Fire which burns...”. What was the name of these sects? Iesseenes,
Nazoreans, Nazireans...
So we know that
the Jewish esoteric sects venerated a Saving God, which they named Yeshu, or
Yeheshuah, or Yehoushouah, and a papyrus preserved in the National Library
of Paris (N° 174, Greek foundation supplement) contains formulae of conjuration
such as: “...I conjure thee, by Yeheshuah Nazarean...” and later on:
“...I conjure thee, by the God of the Hebrews: Yeoushuh...”.
We
repeat: these sects were before Christianity...( From Practical Kabbalah by Robert Ambelain at Biblioteca Esoterica di
Esonet.
So well before Christ came, there were
Jews who believed the Messianic prophecies and worshiped Yeshua, and waited for
Him to descend from Heaven, incarnate in human form, disperse demons, and lead
believers to the “Realm of the Father.” These people were sometimes called
Nazireans, but because of their worship of Adon they were primarily called
Adonaists. We see the Bible’s reference to these people, these Old Covenant
saints in:
So I don’t claim to be creating
anything new. I’m calling the Church to go back, way back to the original Way.
I choose to generally disassociate myself from the term Christian because it
has become a liability in my personal witness. I continue to associate with and
love those who choose to continue calling themselves Christians and who seek to
reform that brand of religion from the inside out. But just as Martin Luther
chose finally to pull out of the Catholic Church and begin the Protestant
Reformation, I think the time has come to pull out and have another
Reformation.
Do
you think that changing what we call ourselves will make a difference?
Changing names shouldn’t change true
believers, but it will allow us to avoid the preconceptions of unbelievers when
we identify ourselves. What I believe and the Pope (supposedly a fellow
Christian) believe are two very different things. My view of the future and
that of Mormons (who are selling themselves as Christians) are two very
different things. There is no clear commandment to call ourselves Christians.
It was simply a name that was ascribed to us after
However, there is power in a name both
for good and ill. The term Christianity no longer has the ability to evoke good
meanings in the minds of our potential audience. In fact, research and personal
experience indicate it has become harmful to our testimony. So let’s adapt and
overcome. Let’s hit “Ctl-Alt-Delete” and reboot, getting back to the basics of
faith and to the reality of changed lives and identify it as Adonaism so that
the old preconceptions are not in our listener’s way.
There is also real power for good in a
name. Why do you think Adonai was constantly changing people’s names? He
changed Jacob (usurper) to Israel (prince). He changed Abram to Abraham. He
changed Saul to Paul. Even Adonai Himself presented Himself with different
names at different times.
When I
adopted him, my oldest son’s name was Rito. He had been named after his
biological father. However, that man was a scoundrel and my son hated being
associated with that name. When the adoption was being formalized, he insisted
on changing his first name as well as his last name. He chose the name
“Alexander” because it means “protector”. That is what he wants to be, so he
chose a name that would help him remember that.
Changing
our name can help us mentally disassociate with the accumulated errors of two
thousand years of Christian history. It can help us remember what we actually
want to be.
Won’t
calling yourself “Adonaist” open you up to the accusation of being a cult?
Changing the term that I
call myself is not likely to be well received. It will, in fact, be
misinterpreted by many as a disloyalty to Jesus the Christ. I want to be as
clear as I can be on that issue. I love Yeshua ben Adonai more than life
itself. I am His slave, to do with as He wishes. I believe His death to be
fully sufficient for my salvation and a compelling argument for a life
dedicated to grateful and humble service to both Him and His Bride. My goal in
developing Adonaic theology is to bring people back into a relationship with a
Person, rather than a religion or a denomination.
I know that changing a name may seem
strange, but think of the persecution that Martin Luther went through and yet
Lutherans are considered a “mainline” denomination today. Remember that there
was a day when “Baptist” was a strange and new name and they were (at first)
considered a cult. That particular denomination found its origins in the
English Separatist movement of the 16th century. Methodism (now
considered one of the stodgiest of the Christian denominations) was not created
until the British Awakening of the 18th century.
Many will probably mistake what I am
doing and I will likely take some hits on the issue. I’m trying to get ahead of
the curve on that by trying to make sure - a) that people don’t bandy the word “cult”
around without having a good understanding of what a cult actually is, and b) that
people understand that I’m certainly not alone in this movement back toward the
Church’s Jewish roots. In fact, careful research reveals that there is an incredible
explosion of congregations with Jewish or Messianic tendencies!
To help you as you try to determine
whether or not this is a cult, I’ve included some characteristics of a cult. A
cult is not simply “that which is different than I’m used to” which
unfortunately seems to be the working definition for many people.
Theological
Characteristics of a Cult:
1. Devaluation of the Bible.
2. Devaluation of the nature of God.
3. Denial of the Trinity.
4. Devaluation of the Person of Christ.
5. Devaluation of the life and work of
Christ.
6. Non-biblical teachings about the
Holy Spirit.
7. Exalted view of human nature.
8. False basis of salvation.
9. Non-biblical teachings about the
after-life.
10. Demonic activity denied or
overemphasized.
Sociological
Characteristics of a Cult:
1. Deceptive recruiting practices.
2. Dynamic and authoritarian
leadership.
3. Elitism.
4. Cultic vocabulary.
5. Alienation from family and friends.
6. Legalism.
7. Induced fatigue.
8. Sanction oriented.
9. Anti-intellectual.
10. Thought stopping.
11. No professional clergy.
12. Doctrine in flux/ false prophesies.
13. Financial exploitation.
14. Mind control.
What
is the difference between Adonaism and Christianity? Is it just another
“label”?
Adonaists believe that what is important is neither intellectual methodology, nor external rites, nor hierarchical ecclesiology nor ecstatic experience. We believe that nothing is more important than a person’s redemption from the consequences of sin and the restoration of the human/divine relationship. Adonaists believe that this redemption is dependent on our humble acquiescence to the sovereignty of God in our lives. Adonaists claim the carpenter, Jesus of Nazareth, was the only begotten Son of God, God in Flesh. As such He is our Messiah and rightful King. We believe that those who not only profess but actually live this truth are granted admittance into the Kingdom of God.[1] God’s merciful act of paying the wages of our sin and liberating us from Satan’s dark kingdom[2] often drives the Adonaist to refer to God as the Redeemer (in Hebrew Ga’al) and to the believers as the Ransomed.Like the infamous Prodigal Son, the Adonaist recognizes the futility of his pursuits and resolves to return to the father, honestly admits the error of his ways, humbly accedes to being nothing more than a household servant and throws himself upon the Father’s mercy. Adonaism teaches that like the godly father in the story of the Prodigal Son, when we draw near to God, humbly confessing our sins and repenting of them, the Lord not only forgives, but actually adopts us into His family, turning us into Jews, as He did our spiritual ancestor, Abraham, (a concept referred to as “ezrach’”[3] or “native”).[4] This emphasis on the grafting of the believer into the House of Israel strongly characterizes the culture of Adonaism. A profound interest in the Hebrew language, culture and mindset heavily influences the interpretation and application of the Scriptures. Many Jewish terms are used simply because there are no counterparts for the concepts in our modern languages. The Hebrew names of God are also heavily referred to, especially in the devotional life of Adonaists.Finally, Adonaic theology is built upon three pillars: Imrah Mussar TzedekahWhat we believe What we are What we doBiblical Doctrine Character development Right living Is
Adonaism another denomination?
Frankly, I don’t know
what this will end up being. I think right now a “coalition of like-minded
people” is probably a better term. There is no a rigid hierarchy or desire to
build a centralized and subsidized base (and there are no plans do to so). I
believe in the power and authority of the local congregation. I find nothing in
Scripture that even remotely resembles a denomination (as in some overarching
ecclesiastical structure that supersedes the authority of the local
congregation). Though individuals or congregations may choose to team up to
tackle specific challenges, Adonaic material is open source and free for the
taking. Deciding to use our materials or to associate with us will not entail
any loss of independence. All we ask is that you let us know who you are and to
what degree you use our material so that we can take encouragement in that and
so we can better tailor our efforts in the future.
Obviously, for us to
be “like-minded”, we need to have at least a basic grasp of the fundamental
proclamations of biblical theology. However, we believe that there are two
kinds of theological statements: d’var mishnah (which is clear settled
law) and shikul ha da’at (which are matters which are unclear and left
for to the judgment of either the individual or a congregation’s elders). Allowances
will be made for the shikul ha da’at issues of life - such as the timing
of the Rapture.
Does
it matter what I call myself as long as I’m honestly “living the Christian
life”?
Language and
identification is critical. I find it interesting that the first task humanity
was given (other than “go forth and multiply”) was to identify and classify
nature. Throughout history, Yahweh has revealed Himself by many names,
depending on the current situation and which divine aspect He wanted to reveal.
Doesn’t
the Bible teach that we are to identify ourselves by Christ’s name?
Christians make a big
deal about their name, saying that they are following passages like:
First, the meaning here is not that we are to name ourselves
after His specific name, but to associate with the Master and to do mitzvah’s
for His sake.
Second, even if you hold to specifically using His name as an
identifier, why the English version? Are believers of other languages out of
luck because the set of consonants and vowels that form the sound “Christ”
different? I’m being facetious, but I’ve got a point I’d like to make. Why
“Christ” and not “Christos” or “Messiah” or “Yeshua” or whatever? I think that
it’s informative that those who tend to consider Adonaism a cult based on this
point, also tend to think that the English King James Version was a
particularly inspired text. Was that text superior to the French Louis Segonde?
Third, Christ is not our Master’s name. It is one of His
titles and it’s the Gentile one at that. Christ is the Gentile version of
Messiah. If we truly wanted to identify ourselves specifically with His name,
we would have to be “Jesuits” or “Yeshuaites” or something.
Adonai is one of many names God has given us. Its meaning
enunciates the emphasis of the doctrine I teach. Like Hagar who identified
Yawheh as “Yahweh Rohi” or “God who sees me” in her time of need, I choose to
identify the Messiah as “my Lord” and thus, my beliefs as Adonaism.
In what ways should Adonaism influence society? As a
community what do you value?
i.
Simplicity
of dress and personal appearance (1 Timothy 2:9-10; 1 Peter 3:3-4)
ii.
Simplicity
of speech (James 5:12)
iii.
Simplicity
of lifestyle (1 Thessalonians 4:10-12; 2 Thessalonians 3:12)
i.
Less
centralization of power (1 Peter 2:9)
ii.
Slower
paced (2 Chronicles 20:17; Psalm 46:10)