So How Did I Get Here...

The question that has come up a few times, has been; How did you get to this point? I looked through some of my former posts and realized that perhaps I didn't explain that part very well, if at all. I told you what I believe but not really how I got to this point. It will require a few minutes of your time for a good explanation, so make some coffee and have a seat and I will explain to you as best as I can.

To understand properly, you have to know a little of my upbringing so that will be my starting point. I was brought up in a religious environment, very conservative in nature and strict. We were a bit different though. We were Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) and as such we were very familiar with the "law" and with keeping the Sabbath. We never kept any of the holy days, but we did eat Kosher. The Law was something that I became very familiar with and in the SDA church, despite what Jesus did, we followed the teachings of the law as well. The SDA church also believed that they were the only true church and that they had all the truth because they also had their own prophetess. The Roman Catholic church, in the late 1800's even backed up some of that claim stating that because the SDA church kept the Sabbath that they were the only Christian church that was truly following the Law. So, needless to say, I knew a bit about the law. We were also taught, and this is true of most Christian denominations, that the Jews were made blind by HaShem so that they wouldn't recognize who Jesus was. There were many other strange things concerning the Day of Atonement that I won't get into here but just keep it in mind that as an SDA raised person I thought that I had a pretty good grasp on the scriptures.

Fast forward some years. I had been in and out of the SDA church for years but finally as I got to be an adult with a wife and children we finally decided to stick with the teachings of the SDA church. G-D had other plans! I reenlisted into the Marine Corp. and my family and I were stationed in NC. It was there that I was asked a question by one of my fellow Marines that started me on this road of questioning and studying. What he asked me wasn't nearly as important as was the fact that I couldn't back up what I had been taught through scripture. In fact the only way that you could believe it was if you ignored the Bible and instead went with what the SDA prophetess said. I was angry. The more I studied the Bible and the doctrines of the SDA church the more I understood that we had been lied to. This caused me to be angry with HaShem and I became an agnostic and started to learn about pagan practices. Almost left my wife and kids as well. I was angry.

Then came 9-11 and the world as we knew it came to an end. I didn't turn back to G-D at that time but I did come to understand just how important my family was to me. January of 2003 found me on board a ship heading for the Persian gulf and it was on that ship that I had, what most Christians would call, my salvation experience. I cried out to G-D that if He was real, then all I wanted Him to do was to touch me, and He did. G-D wrapped His arms around me, like it was a warm blanket and I cried and asked Him to forgive me and He did. Now some of you are going to say to me that "you see Jesus saved you!" And I will admit to thinking that at the time, but here is the real kicker, I hadn't asked Jesus to do anything I had asked G-D. It took me 6 years to realize this but that is what I had done.

I was injured twice while in Iraq and was sent home and discharged. And in the years that I was waiting to be "retired" officially I became an Ordained minister in the General Baptist Church (GB). I had questions even then, especially about keeping Sunday as opposed to Saturday but I kind of figured that eventually I would come to understand. I was a youth Pastor who watched a camp and occasionally filled in for pastors and of course very much involved with the youth and young adults that came to the camp. I thought for sure that, in all ways, we were where we were supposed to be. Again, G-D had other plans.

About 3 years ago a friend of mine started talking about something called Messianic Judaism and just how much this had changed his life. They were keeping the Sabbath and following the Holy days and it really was doing wonders for them spiritually. So my wife and I started to look into it and honestly we couldn't see anything wrong with it. What we were seeing was that this was a movement of both Jews and Gentiles that were keeping the Torah, following Jewish traditions, and still they were Christian in their belief of Jesus, whom they call Yeshua. I have to tell you that the first time we went to a Shabbat service, we couldn't believe how happy everyone was. They were singing and doing Hebraic dance, we were welcomed at the door but almost everyone and we spent the entire day with them celebrating G-D and Shabbat. It was, in all fairness a wonderful experience and it caused me to really start searching the Torah and to try and understand what it was to be Jewish. We spent 2 years studying the Torah and keeping the Holy days and it was also during this time that I discovered that some of my ancestry on both sides of the family were Jews. I am not going to get into how I found that all out because it would take too long and really isn't the point here.

What was interesting though, about this group was that they did not believe in evangelizing anyone but especially not the Jews. The reason for it was simply that they believed that the Jews already had the Torah and G-D so there was no need. During this time though, I started to ask why it is that the Jews couldn't see that Jesus was the Messiah. That question got me started on this journey and has brought me to the conclusion, that the reason that they didn't was because he didn't fulfill the Messianic prophecies. It wasn't that they were blind, but that we are blind.I have listened to many debates between Rabbi's and Christians and the Rabbi's knew the "New Testament" better then the Christians,and the evidence against him being the Messiah or the "son of G-D" was just too compelling to ignore. So I have declared publicly that I don't believe that he was either the Messiah or the son of G-D and that the Jewish people have been right all along. The rest of this is pretty much known to you, if you have been reading this blog.Let me end this by saying, as always, never take my word for anything, go and look for yourself.

The point of this was not to convince you of anything, you will have to decide that for yourself, but to simply give you an idea of the process that got me here.
Next time I write I will start talking about being a Righteous Gentile and what that means and the Noachide laws. What I learn I will simply share.

Shalom,
Ignacio