by Yeshayahu Heiliczer 1/4/2002

Many people have noticed the change in my web site, and have written asking if I have had a change in belief, and why. Basically the question is, "Don’t you still believe that Y’shua is the Messiah?" For the last 4 months I have been trying to write an article to explain why I no longer believe that Y'shua is the Messiah. But what I have realized in my ponderings on the subject is that it would be much easier to ask, "Why do you believe this?" What I mean is that it is difficult, if not impossible, to explain why one does not believe something. It is much easier to explain why someone does believe.

The search for truth has, in the past few years, led us to see that the Writings of the Nazarenes (better known as the "New Testament") should not be considered Scripture!  People, after all, wrote it, while G–d wrote the Torah. Even the New Testament itself doesn't say that it is divinely inspired! The "Scripture" that is being referred to as being "divinely inspired" is the only Scriptures that the followers of Y'shua had - the Tanakh (Torah, Prophets and Writings).

As we learned when we researched the origins and the canonization of the "New Testament," most, if not all, of the writings of the Netzarim were originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic, not Greek! We know absolutely, positively, and for sure that the Book of Mattityahu, or Matthew, was written in Hebrew, because the early "Church Fathers" said so! And yet, there they are, right up to this day, going on and on about how this Greek word means this, and that Greek word means that, teaching and translating from a second generation (at best) translation!

Yes, we have some versions of Matthew in Hebrew, but we have absolutely no way of knowing how much its current condition was influenced by the Greek and Roman Church! We don’t have the original, and we don’t have a documented line of possession we can look at. And what about the other books of the "New Testament?" Sure, we now have English translations of Aramaic versions of the New Testament books, but do we have any way of knowing how original they are? After all, they have been in the possession of the Syrian Church of the East for almost 2,000 years!

The search for truth led us to believe that we cannot take the New Testament as infallible, but we felt that we could use it as an historical document to understand the life and ministry of Y'shua of Nazareth. That was OK, until someone asked me how I know that the New Testament is an accurate historical document! So I set out to find some way of proving that the New Testament is an accurate historical document. I could not find any such evidence. There are no parallel writings; there are no archeological finds. In fact, there are some historical facts that disprove many of the things written in the New Testament.

What I did find during my search for evidence of the historical accuracy of the writings of the Nazarenes were two truths about the relationship between the "Church" and the New Testament. The first is that the Church readily admits that "some" things were added to the New Testament, to "clarify Church doctrine." The second is that the only real argument they have for taking the New Testament as an historical document is that the Church "always" has!

We can spend all day talking about what proves an historical document's accuracy, and even about large parts of the New Testament that should (if they were true) be supported by physical evidence or documentation, but aren't. But the main question is, if there are so many problems with the historical accuracy of the New Testament, can we trust any of its "evidence" that Y’shua is the Messiah?

In our search for accuracy and truth, can we therefore logically conclude that Y’shua is not the Messiah? We can prove that he didn’t fulfill all of the requirements of the Messiah! The only things that we can accept are that Y’shua was a Rabbi, and that his followers, especially after his death, believed that he was the Messiah. It happens to be a fact that most of the famous Rabbis throughout history had students who thought that "their Rebbe" was the Messiah. This was true before Y'shua, this was true after Y'shua, and this is true to this very day, where there are still some people in the Lubavitcher Movement who believe that Rebbe Schneerson is the Messiah.

The next important question is basic to the belief of Christianity and Messianic Judaism. And that is, "Where is it written that one of the requirements for eternal salvation is the belief that a certain person is the Messiah?" For years I have taken for granted the idea that all one must do is to believe in the correct person being the Messiah, and G–d would for some reason take mercy on them. You see, in my most vulnerable days of needing something spiritual in my life, I swallowed hook-line-and-sinker that this was necessary. But where is it written? This belief is closer to the definition of a cult! Supposedly the New Testament is a fulfillment of the Tanakh ("Old Testament"), and supposedly Y'shua fulfilled the requirements of the Messiah, but where is it written? It isn’t. It isn’t written anywhere! These things were either made up or merged into the faith of the followers of Y'shua from Pagan religions.

What Y'shua apparently taught was that the Torah, and only the Torah, is the narrow path to the Throne of Glory. Sure, He said that his students could only come to the Father through him! It is necessary for a student to go through his Rabbi, in other words, following his teachings, walking in his footsteps, to learn the Torah, to learn from him the heart of G–d. The Rabbi is the door that one must go through to find the correct path.

The search for Truth can be painful, it can make you an outcast, it can destroy a reputation, a career, whatever, but the search for the truth can never be a bad thing. It must be done, and we must follow our hearts and minds instead of our hopes and fantasies.

In these past years we have studied what the Almighty wants from us, wants in our lives. We’ve studied different aspects of the Shabbat, the Festivals, the Kosher laws, etc., but while studying these things there has always been a single, most important truth: that the Torah is the teaching of the Creator of all eternity. We have learned that all of the time that we spend trying to find loopholes, trying to find out why this commandment or that commandment doesn’t apply to us, trying to show that somehow Y’shua changed something — all that time and all that effort is nothing short of rebellion against the Creator of everything.

So what monumental theological stance does this all come down to? Nothing complicated — only that the Torah has everything in it that we need to have a correct and personal relationship with G–d. So how do we go about learning about Torah? Do we go to the Messianics, where many of their leaders were brought up and educated as Christians, and later in life "found" their (modified) Jewishness? Do we go to the Netzarim (Nazarene Judaism), where many of their leaders are basically Torah Observant, but who hold on to beliefs of paganism, Christianity, and the mystery religions? Where do we go? What do we do when the search for the truth hits a dead end because of the lack of scholarship?

How about if we could find a group of people who have been passing down the Torah letter-for-letter, passing down all of the ancient understandings of the Torah from generation to generation for at least the last 4,000 years? Wouldn’t that be a better place to learn about the Torah, learn about G–d and develop the most intimate possible relationship with Him?

That is our current journey — Teshuvah — returning to the teachings of the Creator. That is why we have moved into an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood, are attending an Orthodox Synagogue, are learning from Orthodox Rabbis. Because it is the only way which has been ordained for G–d’s chosen people.

That is the reality of the universe. All the rest is dust and illusion.

Yeshayahu Heiliczer