LeFors Tribe

Text By: Carmen Welker
Translated into ASL: June Ann LeFors

Shalom and welcome to Reality Check! In this segment I am going to answer a question that is foremost on the minds of many who have found their way to Torah - and that is: “Which of those “613″ commandments can we still keep today?”

Well, here’s the thing: The “numbering” of the original commandments was done by man, not by YHWH our God. Yes, the commandments were certainly given by God as we see in the first five Books of the Bible which is called Torah, but we must remember that most of them were directed at the cohens (or priests) of the day; some were only for men; some only for women, and some were only for a certain situation or timeframe. But some were meant to last FOREVER - and those are the ones we need to pay attention to because they usually include words to the effect of, “Do this forever” or “this is to be done throughout your generations.”

This wasn’t directed at “The Jews”; it was directed at ALL who were being taught by God through Moses in the desert - which included the twelve tribes and all the Gentiles who had followed the Israelites out of Egypt. Included in some of the “forever” commands are the Ten Commandments as we see Exodus 20 and 34 which were actually WRITTEN IN STONE, which means they’re not negotiable!

While YHWH had condensed His “forever” commands into just Ten, we must remember, these ten are just part of the larger picture taken from YHWH’s Torah - which is our blueprint for moral, holy living - which He said would stand forever according to passages such as 2 Chronicles 7:14-22. Many Christian denominations insist that they are exempt from even keeping the TEN Commandments anymore, let alone those “613″.

They’ve taken out of context Matthew 22: 36-40 which says the following: “Teacher, which Commandment in Torah is the greatest?” 37. And Y’shua said to him, that “You should love Master YHWH your Elohim with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might and with all your mind.” This is the first and the greatest Commandment. And the second is like it. That “You should love your neighbor as yourself.”

But they forget the very last sentence: “On these two commandments HANG Torah and the prophets.” Torah and the Prophets HANG and ARE DEPENDENT ON those two commands!

My goodness, if we were to follow just those two commands by themselves, how could we determine what SIN is? After all, we are told in 1 John 3:4 that sin is transgression of the Torah!

Another “forever” command is the Seventh Day Sabbath outlined in Genesis 2:1-3, Exodus 31:13; Exodus 31:16-17; and Leviticus 23:3). God told us that the Sabbath would forever be a sign between Him and the children of Israel (which includes every believer, grafted-in or otherwise!) In the end times (which we are in now) the seventh day Sabbath will distinguish TRUE believers from the “lukewarm” - especially when the Antichrist starts putting pressure on people to conform to his rules. Other “forever” commands include The Biblical feasts outlined in Leviticus 23 where we see statements after each feast to the effect of: “it shall be a statute for ever in all your dwellings throughout your generations.”

Keeping kosher - meaning, eating only “clean” foods was also a “forever” command. You can search the Bible through, but you will never see that command negated, although it appears that some passages seem to suggest otherwise. This particular subject merits its very own segment, which I will discuss in the near future!
The wearing of tzit-zit, the “tassels” on the four corners of our garments, is another “forever” command. Today, we don’t have “four-cornered” garments, but we can improvise by looping them through our belt loops or wearing special shirts that have tzit-tzit attached. We see this command in Numbers 15: 37-41, which says:

YHWH said to Moshe, “Speak to the people of Isra’el (notice it doesn’t say “men”; it says “people” which includes women!) … instructing them to make, through all their generations, tzitziyot on the corners of their garments, and to put with the tzitzit on each corner a blue thread. It is to be a tzitzit for you to look at and thereby remember all of YHWH’s mitzvoth (or commands) and obey them, so that you won’t go around wherever your own heart and eyes lead you to prostitute yourselves; but it will help you remember and obey all my mitzvot and be holy for your God. I am YHWH your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt in order to be your God. I am YHWH your God.”

As I mentioned earlier, 2 Chronicles 7:14-22 tells us that YHWH’s Torah would stand FOREVER, and that’s why we are to do our best to try to discern His “do’s” and “don’t’s” because they are all for good reason. YHWH only has our best interests at heart and that is why, like any good parent, He has certain rules in place. … Unfortunately Christianity teaches that His Torah, His Divine Instructions to mankind, were “only for the Jews”, and that Torah is a curse that was abolished at the cross. … Does that really make sense?

Text By: Carmen Welker of www.realitycheck.tv
Translated into ASL: June Ann LeFors

Shalom and welcome to Reality Check!

In this segment I want to address the assertion that Acts 15 suggests Christians don’t have to bother with Torah. Even some Messianic ministries have jumped on the bandwagon to suggest that God has different rules for His “adopted children.” So let’s check what Acts 15:19-21 says and, with the help of the Holy Spirit, come to our own conclusions.

Here goes:
“Therefore, my opinion is that we should not put obstacles in the way of the Goyim who are turning to God. Instead, we should write them a letter telling them to abstain from things polluted by idols, from fornication, from what is strangled and from blood. For from the earliest times, Moshe has had in every city those who proclaim him, with his words being read in the synagogues every Shabbat.”

Is this an exhaustive list of what is expected of Gentiles who choose to accept YHWH as their God? No! It’s merely a list of suggestions to get them started as they begin to learn what God expects of His people. The expectation of the non-Jewish converts in those days was that they would learn Moses - meaning, Torah, because Moses constantly proclaimed YHWH’s Divine Instructions without veering from them. After all, Moses wasn’t presenting his OPINIONS to the Israelites; He was espousing everything God told him to say.

Acts 15 doesn’t say anything about there being different rules for Gentiles - yet, many try to use it as “proof” that Christians don’t have to bother with Torah. That is mainly because, Number One, they don’t know what Torah is, and Number Two, they don’t realize that Acts 15 is referring to MAN-MADE laws and NOT the Torah itself.

Man’s made-up laws are part of what Y’shua attempted to abolish during His ministry! The opinions and ideas of the rabbis - who were deathly afraid of breaking any of YHWH’s commandments - had added so many extra instructions and guidelines to His commands, that people had become bogged down in man’s legalism to the point where God’s commandments were hardly even part of the equation anymore.

Instead of, say, simply keeping the Seventh Day Sabbath REST that YHWH had commanded, and spending the day relaxing and concentrating on God, many were afraid to get out of bed for fear of being guilty of “working” on the Sabbath because moving a muscle might be considered work. Walking across the room might be considered work. Brushing your teeth might be considered work.

The Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 was dealing with a specific issue, and that was to ask whether it was necessary for Gentiles as new converts to take on the full weight of the man-made laws of the Sages in order to be accepted within the Jewish community? The Council voiced a unified “no” to this question. Using circumcision as a shorthand designation for “the ritual of becoming a proselyte,” the Council determined that the Gentile converts would NOT need to be circumcised in order to be received into the Torah community.

There was, however, the need to assure the Jewish community that those Gentiles who had confessed Yeshua as Messiah had genuinely forsaken any form of idolatry. (Remember, the term “Gentiles” still equated with “pagans” in those days.) Since the Greek and Roman cultures were centered around idol worship with local pagan temples, it was important the Jewish community be able to receive the Gentile believers without any suspicion of remaining idolatry. The apostles, therefore, required the Gentiles to accept the extra-biblical, man-made laws regarding idolatry. These were:
• They should not participate in any meal that was even remotely connected to idol worship.
• They should not participate in any gathering or ceremony that involved the misuse of blood as a sacrificial element.
• They should not involve themselves in any ritual or ceremony that involved the strangulation of animals, and they should be careful not to eat meat from animals killed through strangulation (something not uncommon in the pagan sacrificial rituals).
• They should distance themselves from any contact with or support of the temple prostitutes and the fornication they represented in the pagan temple precincts.

While the Torah written by Moshe exactly as handed down by YHWH certainly prohibited any worship of idols, the Sages had put a good number of fences in place to distance the people from contact with idolatry. These fences were extra-biblical, yet the apostles considered them essential in showing the clear break the Gentile believers had made with idolatry.

As you’ve learned in previous segments of Reality Check, YHWH made it perfectly clear that ALL who accepted Him were to obey Him - as indicated Scripture including Exodus 12:48-49; Leviticus 17:8-9; Leviticus 24: 22; Numbers 9: 14; Deuteronomy 31:11-12, and my personal favorite, Numbers 15: 13-16 which says four times in a row that EVERYONE is expected to follow the same rules.

As “grafted in”, Christians are considered HEBREWS, which means “to cross over” and as such, they are spiritually part of Israel - which means they must do EXACTLY the same as YHWH’s “natural children.”

The Bible is perfectly clear: There ARE NO separate rules when it comes to YHWH’s Commandments.

(NOTE: “For more information on Acts 15, please check out Andrew Gabriel Roth’s Aramaic English New Testament.”)

Text by: Carmen Welker www.realitycheck.tv
Translated into ASL: June Ann LeFors

VIDEO #7

Title: A Question For Our Traditional Jewish Friends

Shalom and welcome to Reality Check. In this segment I’m going to pose a question to my Jewish brethren:

Why do you become upset when a Gentile tells you they worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? I’ve known several Jews - including the radio personality, Dr. Laura Schlesinger - to snap, “YOU’RE NOT A JEW!” or “YOU’RE NOT JEWISH!” whenever they hear a non-Jew proclaiming YHWH as their God.

If this is how you really feel, then I suggest you somehow figure out how to go back in time and tell Adam and Eve that - because they weren’t Jews. Yet we see YHWH communicating with His Creation beginning in Genesis 1! We even see Him “walking with” Adam and Eve in Genesis 3:8.

In Genesis 4 we see Cain and Abel offering sacrifices to YHWH; and they weren’t Jews…And hey, neither was Noah or his family and yet they knew the difference between “clean and unclean” animals. And Avram in Genesis 12 was a pagan Chaldean before he became a Hebrew after he obeyed YHWH’s command to leave his homeland of Ur.

As you know, the word Hebrew doesn’t mean “Jew”; it means, “to cross over” - which is what Avram did by crossing over into YHWH’s Presence both spiritually and physically. His son Isaac wasn’t a Jew, either, and neither was Isaac’s son, Jacob.

The truth is, there were no “Jews” until our third Patriarch, Ya’akov, sired one of his 12 sons whom he named Yehudah, where the term “Jew” originated! Yes, according to Genesis 49:10 and Micah 4:2 YHWH commissioned “the Jews” to take Torah and word of Elohim into the nations but didn’t He constantly tell ALL of His people since the beginning of time to obey His Divine Instructions which became known to Moshe in Exodus 13:9 as Torah?

After all, in Genesis 12:17 YHWH said: Generation after generation, every male among you who is eight days old is to be circumcised, including slaves born within your household and those bought from a foreigner not descended from you. And in Exodus 12:49 YHWH said: The same teaching is to apply equally to the citizen and to the foreigner living among you.” In Leviticus 24: 22 we see: “You are to apply the same standard of judgment to the foreigner as to the citizen, because I am ADONAI your God.”

And Numbers 15 shows that He was willing to accept ALL who accepted Him as their God - and He made the stipulation that ALL who accepted Him as God were to do “EXACTLY AS” His people did. Don’t take my word for it; let’s take a look at Numbers 15:13-16 from the Jewish Publication Society Bible: “All that are home-born shall do these things after this manner, in presenting an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the Lord. And if a stranger sojourn with you, or whosoever may be among you, throughout your generations, and will offer an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the Lord; as ye do, so he shall do. As for the congregation, there shall be one statute both for you, and for the stranger that sojourneth with you, a statute for ever throughout your generations; as ye are, so shall the stranger be before the Lord. One law and one ordinance shall be both for you, and for the stranger that sojourneth with you.”

Deuteronomy 31:12 and 13 from the JPS says: Assemble the people, the men and the women and the little ones, and thy stranger that is within thy gates, that they may hear, and that they may learn, and fear the LORD your God, and observe to do all the words of this law; and that their children, who have not known, may hear, and learn to fear the LORD your God, as long as ye live in the land whither ye go over the Jordan to possess it.”

So, if believing Gentiles of 4,000 years ago were accepted by Elohim and told to obey His laws and teachings, then what makes YOU think He is rejecting them today? If Gentiles choose to worship YHWH, they have every right to do so - and remember, once they do, they are no longer Gentiles, they’re Hebrews! Not Jews, but Hebrews.

Yes, “the Jews” are His “chosen” - they were chosen to tell the world about their Elohim and his Torah….But they weren’t chosen to keep Him in a box all to themselves.

Shalom!

Text By: Carmen Welker www.realitycheck.tv
Translated into ASL: June Ann LeFors

Shalom and welcome to Reality Check. In this study I’m going to answer the age-old question: But…wasn’t Torah just for the Jews?

No, it wasn’t. Torah is not a “Jewish” thing; it’s a GOD thing!

If you’ll go back to beginning in Genesis 12 where we are introduced to our first Patriarch, Abraham who fathered our second Patriarch, Isaac, who fathered our Third Patriarch, Jacob - you’ll come to understand there were no “Jews” until Jacob fathered a son named Yehudah, or Judah, who became the Tribe of Judah according to Genesis 29:35 and Matthew 1:1-2!

“The Jews” has basically become a blanket description for all Israelites - but in actuality, only someone born into the Tribe of Judah can claim they are Jews - and YHWH’s Torah was never just for “the Jews.” If you’ll remember, there were 12 Tribes in the desert with Moses; not just the Tribe of Judah. And YHWH commanded Moses to present His Divine Instructions to ALL including the Gentiles who had accompanied Moses out of Egypt. Exodus 12:38 tells us Moses was accompanied by a “mixed multitude” and later, we see him sharing God’s Torah with ALL when he came down from the mountain to present the Ten Commandments. He did not send the “foreigners” away or tell them they didn’t have to obey the same rules as the Hebrews!

God never in the entire Bible suggested there would be different rules for different peoples!

As you learned in earlier segments, Torah has been around since the beginning when YHWH told Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil! In Genesis 4 we see that Cain and Abel were Torah observant when they offered sacrifices, and in Genesis 7 and 8 we see that Noah knew the difference between “clean and unclean” animals. Yet none of THEM were Jews! And guess what: Moses - whom God used to ultimately give us the Ten Commandments in written form, wasn’t a “Jew” either. He was from the Tribe of Levi as we see in Exodus chapters 1 and 2!

So, as you can see, there’s something inherently wrong with Christianity’s dogma that they are somehow exempt from obeying God’s Divine Instructions in Righteousness which includes the keeping of the SEVENTH Day Sabbath and the seven Holy Feast Days! Anyone who believes in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is to OBEY YHWH, and He even said so FOUR TIMES IN A ROW in Numbers 15:13-16, which I have mentioned several times in previous segments.

Let me ask you a question: In Jeremiah 31:32 with whom did YHWH make His “New Covenant?” The Gentiles? No. He made it with the Houses of Israel and Judah - both of whom were Torah observant!

So, why are Christians insisting the New Covenant was made with them, and that it meant they wouldn’t have to obey YHWH’s Torah anymore once Jesus came onto the scene and died on the cross?…Did Jesus EVER say that His death would negate His Father’s Divine Instructions to mankind?

No - and neither did the Apostle Paul whose writings have been taken totally out of their Hebrew context by Christian pastors who are teaching their congregations that God’s Law is a curse and that nothing else is required by Christians except to “believe in Jesus.” Take a look at what the Apostle Paul said in 2 Corinthians 6:17-18: “Wherefore, you COME OUT FROM AMONG THEM, AND BE SEPARATE from them says Master YHWH; and don’t come near the unclean thing, and I will receive you; And will be to you a Father, and you will be sons and daughters to me, says Master YHWH the Almighty.” Paul is not talking about “Jesus” here; he’s speaking about God the Father who commands us to “be separate”.

How can we be separate or holy if we’re insisting we don’t have to obey His “forever” commands - those commands that contain the words “forever” or “throughout your generations” within them, such as the Seventh Day Sabbath (which is a SIGN between God and His people according to Ezekiel 20:11) and the Feasts? Listen to this: In John 17:3 we Y’shua spoke these words: “Now this is life that is eternal, that they might KNOW YOU, that YOU are the Elohim of Truth, and he alone whom YOU have sent, the Mashiyach Y’shua.”

WOW! What is “life eternal?” That we might know YHWH our Elohim! And how can we “know” Him unless we are OBEYING His “forever” commands and doing His will? How can we possibly know exactly who Jesus is unless we have fully comprehended the first TWO-THIRDS of the Bible that show us who the FATHER is? After all, who was the Messiah?

Well….His given, Hebrew Name was Y’shua, which means “YHWH is Salvation”, and according to Isaiah 53:1, He was an ARM OF YHWH. … Does the ARM work on its own or change rules? No, of course not!

Are you beginning to understand what I’m trying to get across now? We cannot separate Y’shua from His Father. He doesn’t exist without the Father. He is ONE with the Father according to John 10:30. We must “believe” in Him because He was the Son (John 6:44 and John 14:6) who came to proclaim the Kingdom of heaven (Luke 4:43 and 8:1) and who became our Final SIN Sacrifice. He never said He came to replace His Father or change the rules.

Those who have accepted YHWH as their God MUST obey His Torah, or else, whom are they serving?

As “grafted in,” Christians are part of Israel - which means they must do EXACTLY the same as YHWH’s “natural children.” Both Yeshua and the Apostle Paul reiterated this:

In Matthew 5: 17-20 Y’shua says: “Don’t think that I have come to abolish the Torah or the Prophets. I have come not to abolish but to complete. Yes indeed! I tell you that until heaven and earth pass away, not so much as a yud or a stroke will pass from the Torah - not until everything that must happen has happened. So whoever disobeys the least of these mitzvot (words/commands) and teaches others to do so will be called the least in the Kingdom of Heaven. But whoever obeys them and so teaches will be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness is far greater than that of the Torah-teachers and P’rushim (or Pharisees), you will certainly NOT enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Have heaven and earth passed away yet? Has everything happened that must happen? NO! Therefore, it stands to reason that Torah is valid today! Paul said in Romans 10:12-13: “And in this, it discriminates neither Jews nor Gentiles. For there is one - Master YHWH - over them all, who is abundantly generous towards every one that calls on him. For everyone that will call on the name of Master YHWH, will have life.” And in Romans 3:31, he said: “Do we then nullify Torah by faith? May it never be! On the contrary, we establish Torah.”

How much clearer could it be?

Text: By Carmen Welker www.realitycheck.v
Translated into ASL: June Ann LeFors

Title: From the beginning God gave us Torah - His Divine Instructions in Righteousness!

Shalom, I’m Carmen Welker. Welcome to Reality Check. Today, I am going to answer the question: Just what exactly is this Torah you keep talking about, Carmen?

The short answer is: Torah refers to the first five Books of the Bible, which contain all of YHWH’s Divine Instructions in Righteousness - His “do’s and dont’s”

The longer answer will take a little while to explain…You see, in the first five Books of the Bible we find YHWH has certain rules for His people to follow - not unlike parents who set down rules for their children. For instance, our parents potty train us and teach us table manners, and generally teach us the basics of civilized living. They explain that we will be electrocuted if we stick our fingers into an electrical socket, and to look both ways before crossing a street…Well, YHWH has rules, too and these rules are rules for LIFE; rules that keep us safe from harm and show us how to be holy unto Him, as we saw with Adam and Eve who were told they shouldn’t eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Years later, when the earth became more and more populated, He laid down other rules to keep mankind safe from harm and remain holy: Don’t murder, don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, don’t lie, remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.

Early on there were at least 613 commands; some were only for men, some only for women, some were meant for a certain point in time, and MOST were for the priests, once the priesthood of Levites was established…But He gave some “forever” commands and among those were the Seventh Day Sabbath and the Feasts - all of which are practice for the Millennium when Yeshua will rule and reign for a thousand years when ALL, according to Zech 14:16, will be keeping the proper Sabbath and doing the Feasts! What makes us think we don’t have to bother with those “forever” commands NOW? After all, as we see throughout the Gospels, Yeshua kept them….

The Sabbath is our WEEKLY “date” with God; and the Feasts are our ANNUAL dates with God. They are designed to help us constantly keep our eyes on Him!…When and where were ever we told that they would be abolished after Yeshua’s death? What I’m trying to say is: There’s more to having a relationship with God than “just believing in Jesus” and going to church on Sunday. Jesus is only part of the equation. As Isaiah 53:1 tells us, Y’shua was “an arm” of YHWH. According to Luke 4: 43 and John 6: 35 He was the SON who came to proclaim the Kingdom of YHWH and do everything His Father commanded: “For I came down from heaven, not to do my will, but to do the will of Him who sent me.” Yes, He ultimately died on our behalf, but that didn’t remove the need for us to OBEY God!

A true relationship is give and take. YHWH gives us everything we need to survive in this world and He even offers us eternal life with Him. All He has ever expected in return is our love and respect culminating in the form of OBEDIENCE to His Divine Instructions in Righteousness.

In John 17: 3 Yeshua Himself said: “And eternal life is this: to know you, the one true God, and him whom you sent, Yeshua the Messiah.”

How can one get to know God or become holy except by obeying His commands and conducting our lives according to His will? I mean, think about it: Would “just believing” in our parents have saved us if we decided to cross a street without looking both ways? Of course not! We have a responsibility to apply what our parents taught us if we wish to live safely in this world and make it through life. Same thing with God. We “believe in Him”; but just “believing” doesn’t save us from the fallen world in which we live. The fact that “Jesus died” does NOT absolve us of the responsibility to continue obeying YHWH.

Before we can grasp the depth of who God is and how to be holy in His eyes, we MUST delve into those first five Books. We cannot thoroughly understand the New Testament until we do that.

Remember, in earlier segments we discussed that Torah is for ANYONE who has accepted the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. YHWH reiterated this FOUR TIMES in a row in Numbers 15:13-16, where He said that those who have accepted Him MUST do as His people do - and His people, the Hebrews, were all Torah observant! His Divine Son Yeshua was Torah observant and, contrary to popular belief, so was the Apostle Paul whom many like to use to show that Torah was abolished. But the fact is, all of Y’shua’s Apostles and Disciples and all of His followers for at least one hundred years after the death of Yeshua were Torah observant.

Without Torah we would have NO blueprint for moral, holy living. As a matter of fact, in 1 John 3:4 we are told that “sin” is “transgression of the Torah.” Torah is simply God telling His people how to be holy unto Him; it is our guide for life!

Title: Mankind’s first sin and its deadly consequences

Shalom, and welcome to Reality Check.

In the previous segment we discussed the downfall of man that began with Eve’s willingness to allow the serpent to talk her into eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. As the story goes, she convinced Adam to eat it as well, and once they did, everything changed! Suddenly, the couple “knew” the difference between good and evil and they apparently also recognized the difference between the genders and, consequently, the need to “cover themselves”.

And so began the first deliberate rebellion by humans against YHWH, and the invention of the first “blame game” - the birth of the “excuse” and not being personally responsible for one’s own actions as we see in Genesis 3:11-13: “He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree from which I ordered you not to eat?” The man replied, “The woman you gave to be with me - she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate.” ADONAI, God, said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” The woman answered, “The serpent tricked me, so I ate.”

Thus began man’s downfall because they had disobeyed YHWH’s Torah - His Divine Instructions in Righteousness.

In Genesis 3:21-23 we read: “ADONAI, God, made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them (this was the first sin sacrifice). ADONAI, God, said, “See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil. Now, to prevent his putting out his hand and taking also from the tree of life, eating, and living forever -” therefore ADONAI, God, sent him out of the garden of ‘Eden to cultivate the ground from which he was taken.

I would like to bring your attention to the fact that in this particular passage we see the first SIN sacrifice taking place!

YHWH killed an innocent animal to atone for this blatant disobedience of Adam and Eve, and used its skin to cover their nakedness. This is HUGE because it reveals how adamant YHWH was about obedience to His Rules!

Can you imagine how much it must have shocked Adam and Eve to see one of their pets that they had named and played with being killed before their very eyes? A sweet animal that had been guilty of nothing whatsoever except being in the vicinity of a couple who had deliberately disobeyed YHWH.

Try to imagine if this had been you and your pet dog or cat was killed to atone for YOUR sin!

What an awful day that must have been, on several levels….But the thing is, for reasons known only to YHWH, He has always demanded the blood of an innocent animal to atone for man’s sin. Why? Leviticus 17:11 tells us: “For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for yourselves; for it is the blood that makes atonement because of the life.”

Ezekiel 18:20 says, “The person who sins will die”; and Romans 6:23 shows, “what one earns for sinning is death.”

God never told Adam and Eve they would die immediately after sinning; and Scripture doesn’t say we will die immediately for our sins. In fact, the original nature of man was that he would not die. God told man he would die only if he ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:17). Adam and Eve disobeyed, sinned, and in Genesis 3:19, God tells them they will return to the earth from where they came.

Thus you see that death for eating the forbidden fruit was not immediate death, but that where man was intended to live forever, “he will now die due to sin”. Thus, in the moral government of God, He ordained that physical and eternal death be the just penalty for sin.

People usually chafe against God’s decree, thinking it is unfair or extreme, but these protests only reveal how sin has blinded them to sin’s true nature. The fact that God requires such a drastic penalty reveals NOT that God is brutal, but that sin is heinous!”

Eventually, out of sheer love and because people kept “falling short of the glory of God”, He gave us a “FINAL sin sacrifice” via His “Son” Yeshua HaMashiyach, whom Christians call Jesus. Yeshua’s death completely eliminated the need for any more animal sin sacrifices.

Ephesians 2:8-10 tells us: “For you have been delivered by grace through trusting, and even this is not your accomplishment but God’s gift. 9 You were not delivered by your own actions; therefore no one should boast. 10 For we are God’s making, created in union with the Messiah Yeshua for a life of good actions already prepared by God for us to do.”

One more thing: YHWH could have put Adam and Eve to death after they sinned, but He didn’t - which is evidence that the “Old Testament God” was showing mercy and grace! Mercy and grace, as I have mentioned before, didn’t begin with Jesus in the New Testament as Christianity suggests! It has ALWAYS been around, since the very beginning.

So, after just the first three chapters of Genesis we’ve discovered that YHWH was the Creator, that all creation obeyed Him and the universe came into being simply because He told it to, and that He had some rules for mankind to follow for their own good. Because Adam and Eve CHOSE to disobey by going against God’s command to NOT eat the fruit of the tree of good and evil, they were banned from ever again partaking from the Tree of Life….YHWH He kicked them out of the Garden, thus permanently removing access to eternal life - which was restored only after the death of Yeshua, some four thousand years later!

Text credits: Carmen Welker via www.realitycheck.tv
Translated into ASL: June Ann LeFors

VIDEO #3

Title: In the beginning…God commanded that the Seventh Day be set apart!

Shalom and welcome to Reality Check. In the first couple of segments we discussed how the entire universe came into being because it obeyed YHWH’s commands. How the earth was formed, how the seas parted and the land and the animals and every living being came to be…And how He commanded in Genesis 2:1-2 that the Seventh Day be set apart as His day of REST for mankind.

Before we move on to the deeper things of Torah - YHWH’s Divine Instructions in Righteousness - let’s discuss that seventh day rest; let’s take a closer look at that Shabbat - or Sabbath - command, because it’s very, very important. As a matter of fact, it is so important that He called it a SIGN between Him and His people!

In Ezekiel 20:11-12 we read: “I gave them my laws and showed them my rulings; if a person obeys them, he will have life through them. I gave them my shabbats AS A SIGN between me and them, so that they would know that I, ADONAI, am the one who makes them holy.”

Exodus 20:8-11 says: “Remember the day, Shabbat, to set it apart for God. You have six days to labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Shabbat for ADONAI your God. On it, you are not to do any kind of work -not you, your son or your daughter, not your male or female slave, not your livestock, and not the foreigner staying with you inside the gates to your property. For in six days, ADONAI made heaven and earth, the sea and everything in them; but on the seventh day he rested. This is why ADONAI blessed the day, Shabbat, and separated it for himself.”

This is reiterated in Isaiah 58:13-14 which says: “If you hold back your foot on Shabbat from pursuing your own interests on my holy day; if you call Shabbat a delight, ADONAI’S holy day, worth honoring; then honor it by not doing your usual things or pursuing your interests or speaking about them. If you do, you will find delight in ADONAI - I will make you ride on the heights of the land and feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Ya’akov, for the mouth of ADONAI has spoken.”

Who was God talking to? The Jews? No! There were no “Jews” until Jacob fathered a son named Yehudah - or Judah - in Genesis 29:35, who ultimately became the Tribe of Judah where the term “Jew” originated….We’ll talk about that a little more in later segments.

Right now, let’s continue examining the first few of chapters in Genesis where we see YHWH giving some commands to the first humans, Adam and Eve in Genesis 2: 4-9: “Here is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created. On the day when ADONAI, God, made earth and heaven, there was as yet no wild bush on the earth, and no wild plant had as yet sprung up; for ADONAI, God, had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no one to cultivate the ground. Rather, a mist went up from the earth which watered the entire surface of the ground.

Then ADONAI, God, formed a person [Hebrew: adam] from the dust of the ground [Hebrew: adamah] and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, so that he became a living being. ADONAI, God, planted a garden toward the east, in ‘Eden, and there he put the person whom he had formed. Out of the ground ADONAI, God, caused to grow every tree pleasing in appearance and good for food, including the tree of life in the middle of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”

In Genesis 2:16-17 We see YHWH giving the first human a clear Torah command: “You may freely eat from every tree in the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. You are not to eat from it, because on the day that you eat from it, it will become certain that you will die.”

Now, why would YHWH put a tree in the Garden that Adam wasn’t supposed to eat from? Only HE knows the answer to that, but…perhaps it was to test man’s free will? He has, after all, given us the CHOICE to obey or not. Those who do, belong to Him; those who refuse…well, whom are they really serving?

Regardless, YHWH warned Adam not to eat from that particular tree because it would completely change life as he knew it. It would open the door to spiritual things that Adam - a mere human - was simply not ready for. And so Adam obeyed. However, Eve, the woman YHWH made for him, did not. As you know, Eve allowed herself to be tempted by the serpent who was satan - whose ultimate goal was and still is to destroy YHWH’s Creation, ever since he was kicked out of heaven for rebelling against YHWH, as we see in Isaiah 14:12-15 and Ezekiel 28:12-19.

So, because this couple, Adam and Eve, CHOSE to disobey YHWH they, in effect, “lost their lives.” This is the first time we see that disobedience has severe consequences! Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden after they had “tasted of good and evil” and they consequently lost their right to eat any more from the Tree of Life - which resulted in the end of their “eternal life” in Utopia. Yes, they continued living, but they now faced hardship, illness and death.

Thanks to YHWH’s grace and mercy (which, contrary to popular belief, has been around since the beginning and didn’t just start with “Jesus” and the New Testament), He ultimately sent us His Son to be our Final SIN Sacrifice, which restored our access to eternal life!

VIDEO #2

Text Credit: Carmen Welker
Translated into ASL: June Ann LeFors

Title: In the beginning…God commanded that the Seventh Day be set apart!

Shalom and welcome to Reality Check.

My goal in this series of videos is to explain what Torah is. As I mentioned in my initial video, Torah is God’s Divine Instruction in Righteousness as found in the first five Books of the Bible, Genesis through Deuteronomy.

Our Creator- whose is Name YHWH - gave the very first Torah command in Genesis 1:28 when He created Adam and Eve and commanded them to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.” Very simple and to the point!

Up until then the universe itself had obeyed His command to “be” - as we see in Genesis 1: 1-5: “In the beginning YHWH created the heavens and the earth. The earth was unformed and void, darkness was on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God hovered over the surface of the water. Then YHWH said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. He saw that the light was good, and He divided the light from the darkness. YHWH called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. So there was evening, and there was morning, one day. “

Note that evening is mentioned first. This reveals that God’s “day” begins at sunset. His day is from sunset to sunset, not sunrise to sunrise. In Genesis 1: 6-11 we read: “God said, ‘Let there be a dome in the middle of the water; let it divide the water from the water.’ God made the dome and divided the water under the dome from the water above the dome; that is how it was, and God called the dome Sky. So there was evening, and there was morning, a second day. God said, ‘Let the water under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let dry land appear,’ and that is how it was. God called the dry land Earth, the gathering together of the water he called Seas, and God saw that it was good. God said, ‘Let the earth put forth grass, seed-producing plants, and fruit trees, each yielding its own kind of seed-bearing fruit, on the earth’; and that is how it was.”

YHWH then went on to place the sun, moon and stars, and in verse 20, we see that God made swarms of living creatures, and He blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful, multiply and fill the water of the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” Then, in verse 26 -30 we see He created mankind to rule over all the living creatures. And in verse 31 we read “YHWH saw everything that he had made, and indeed it was very good. So there was evening, and there was morning, a sixth day.”

Now, watch what happened next as we read Genesis 2: 1-3: “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, along with everything in them. On the seventh day God was finished with his work which he had made, so he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. God blessed the seventh day and separated it as holy; because on that day God rested from all his work which he had created, so that it itself could produce.”

Note that He RESTED on the SEVENTH day and separated it as holy. “Holy” means to be set apart, separate from everything else. “Holy” is what He calls US to be. And how can we be holy? Through obedience to the One who created us!

Now let’s stop for a moment and think about this: Where in the entire Bible did God ever tell us to CHANGE the command to keep His SEVENTH Day holy, or to change His Sabbath to Sunday, which is the first day of the week on our Gregorian calendars?

The answer is: Nowhere!

God never said the Seventh Day rest was to be changed to Sunday; MAN did - People like Roman Emperor Constantine who forbade the Christians to adhere to anything “Jewish.” Constantine was a sun worshipper who became a famous Christian, advancing pagan Christianity throughout the Roman Empire. His version of “Christianity” included many pagan rituals, including “Sun-day” and Tammuz and Ishtar worship we today we know as Christmas and Easter.

The fact is, YHWH established the SEVENTH DAY as holy and set it apart as a SIGN between Himself and His people, as we see in Ezekiel 20: 11-12 which reads: “I gave them my laws and showed them my rulings; if a person obeys them, he will have life through them. I gave them my shabbats (or SABBATHS) as a SIGN between me and them, so that they would know that I, YHWH, am the one who makes them holy.”

This Sabbath issue was actually the turning point that caused ME to first realize there was something amiss in our churches. How dare we ignore the command to keep the Seventh Day, especially since neither YHWH nor His Son ever said to change it to some other day?

Take a look at Daniel 7:25 which refers to the coming Antichrist: “He will speak words against the Most High and try to exhaust the holy ones of the Most High. He will attempt to ALTER THE SEASONS AND THE LAW; and [the holy ones] will be handed over to him for a time, times and half a time.”

Who are the “holy ones?” Are they the ones who reject YHWH’s Divine Commands known as Torah, and those who refuse to keep His commanded Seventh Day? NO! Holy people OBEY God! The entire universe obeyed YHWH, so what makes us think we don’t have to?

As hard as this might be to hear and digest, Christianity has changed His laws, His Sabbath and His appointed times…His Seventh Day Sabbath and the feasts! Please think about that very long and hard, and we’ll discuss this a little more in future segments.

Carmen Welker of has a Reality Check video (spoken in English) posted on This is an ASL translation of her videos that are posted up.

Text below: Credit goes to Carmen Welker
Translated into ASL: by June Ann LeFors

Carmen Welker is a Netzarim (Messianic) Torah teacher and webmaster of The Refiner’s Fire: http://therefinersfire.org/ who has written several books designed to explain Torah (God’s Divine Instructions in Righteousness) to the world: http://betorahobservant.com/

She recently began producing some YouTube videos entitled, “Reality Check” which are designed to help Christians understand why they should be Torah observant: http://realitycheck.tv/

This site was created by June Ann LeFors who translated Carmen’s teachings for our deaf friends around the world.

VIDEO #1 Title: In the beginning…the entire universe obeyed the Creator!

Hello, I’m Carmen Welker, webmaster of The Refiner’s Fire and author of “Should Christians be Torah Observant?”

Welcome to Reality Check - the first in a series of short, concise teachings designed to show you some biblical facts you’ll never hear in a church setting.

If you’re among the many who has felt there is “something missing” in your church, but you just can’t quite figure out what it is, then please join me as I reveal some simple, yet startling facts about God and the Bible in each successive video. For instance, you’ll learn that God is just a title, and that the Father actually has a Name: Yahweh; the Name some knew right from the beginning.

For instance, in Genesis 4:26 it says: “And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enosh. That is when people began to call upon the name of YHWH.”

In Genesis 12:8 we see: “He (Avram) left that place, went to the hill east of Beit-El and pitched his tent. With Beit-El to the west and ‘Ai to the east, he built an altar there and called on the name of YHWH.”

And in Genesis 21:33 we read: ” Avraham planted a tamarisk tree in Be’er-Sheva, and there he called on the name of YHWH, the everlasting God.”

Now listen to this!

In Exodus 3:13-15 we read that He provided His actual Name to Moshe, or Moses: “Moshe said to God, “Look, when I appear before the people of Isra’el and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you’; and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what am I to tell them?” God said to Moshe, “Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh [I am/will be what I am/will be],” and added, “Here is what to say to the people of Isra’el: ‘Ehyeh [I Am or I Will Be] has sent me to you.’”

God said further to Moshe, “Say this to the people of Isra’el: ‘Yud-Heh-Vav-Heh [Yahweh], the God of your fathers, the God of Avraham, the God of Yitz’chak and the God of Ya’akov, has sent me to you.’ This is MY NAME FOREVER; this is how I am to be remembered generation after generation.”

You’ll also discover that Jesus, the Son, had a another Name as well: His given, Hebrew Name was Y’shua, which means “YHWH is Salvation.”

Yes, in English He is referred to as Jesus, but consider this: Our Messiah never heard the name “Jesus” in His entire life. His mother called Him Y’shua!

It’s not that hard to say. To call Him by anything else except His given Name actually detracts from who He was!

Y’shua has the Father’s Name within Him. The angels, on the other hand, did not. Their names all contain the TITLE of God - Elohim, or more specifically, the shortened “EL” in their name. For instance, the angels Michael, Gabriel, Uriel and Raphael all end with the letters E.L.; not one has YAH in his name; only Messiah Y’shua - who comes IN the NAME, and therefore in the POWER, of his Father YHWH. When we call upon YHWH in Y’shua’s name, we are calling on YHWH Himself for Salvation.

In this series of videos you will discover many interesting things that some of you have already figured out but were afraid to admit or discuss with anyone. Among them is that YHWH gave mankind some rules to follow and that there is more to having a relationship with God than just “believing in Jesus.” Those rules are called Torah which means, “Divine Instruction in Righteousness.” Without these instructions - which can be found throughout the first five Books of the Bible - Genesis through Deuteronomy - we would have NO blueprint for moral, holy living.

Please join me in this awesome adventure as we travel through the Bible together!