Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 865 | Hebrew Roots Movement & Its False Gospel | Guests: Jeremiah Roberts & Andrew Soncrant of 'Cultish' (Part One)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort.

Starting point is 00:00:19 We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. The Hebrew roots movement is gaining popularity among Christians who reject the name of Jesus for the Hebrew Yahweh or Yeshua, who reject holidays like Easter and Christmas for Jewish feasts and who largely abide by Levitical law. But while many who follow these ideas are sincere in their beliefs, the movement as a whole is contradictory to scripture and even has the tendency to diminish the saving work of Christ and his gospel. This is part one of a two-part conversation with the hosts of cultish Jeremiah Roberts and Andrew Sankrantranton on the Hebrew Roots Movement. And this episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.

Starting point is 00:01:21 Go to Good Ranchers.com. Use code Allie. Check out. That's Good Ranchers.com. Code Allie. Jeremiah, Andrew, thank so much for joining Relatable again. Today, we are going to talk about the Hebrew Roots Movement. So I'll just let you all go. Well, one of you just kind of summarize in your words, what is the Hebrew Roots Movement and how do we see it showing up within Christianity or professing Christianity? Awesome.

Starting point is 00:01:59 Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much again, Allie, for having us on. It's always a pleasure to talk to you in your audience here on relatable. The first thing I want to say is that when we even look at a movement like the Hebrew roots, it's many times when we look at different cultish movements that we kind of discuss and explore on our podcast, when you look at something, for example, like UFOs or Scientology, or some Warren Jeffs, we tend to really think of it something that's really out there that we view from afar, that we view on a Netflix documentary. However, when you look at something like the

Starting point is 00:02:32 Hebrew roots. It's something that is very much in close proximity to really all of us. More than likely, there are probably people in your audience who have had a friend or family members start talking about adhering to the Hebrew roots, talking about we need to observe the feast or talk about being Torah observance. In fact, my very first introduction to the Hebrew roots was actually at my church. My friend Gabe invited a very nice and sweet couple that came very nice and I noticed that the husband was wearing this belt that had sort of tassels attached that were sort of hanging out and it looked very odd and different in relation to just the regular clothes that he was wearing. And I felt kind of awkward. It's one of those things where you see something you don't really want to say anything.

Starting point is 00:03:23 So I pulled my friend gave aside and asked him, hey, what is going on? like what's what was he wearing and turns out he is wearing something called a tassel belt which is something in a jewish tradition is based off of the verse in the old testament what's talking about adhering to the law and also adhering to the corners of your garments so it was just something that it was an extension of what many people believe that there is a resurgence where we want to adhere to uh Torah observance and so it kind of breaks down into many different categories i have some bullet points of I'm going to pull up here in a second. But Andrew, I'm going to have an Andrew jump in here as well, too.

Starting point is 00:04:03 Andrew, we've done a couple episodes with our good friend Andrew Schumacher doing it. How would you give a very broad overview just of their beliefs? And then we're going to kind of talk about where it comes from, but also the challenge is because it's a very decentralized organization. How would you describe that, Andrew? Yeah, the Hebrew Roots movement is diverse. There's no structured statement of faith or centralized leadership. We can find a lot of teachings from the Hebrew Roots movement, particularly online or people with Facebook groups. There are some churches that do teach Hebrew Roots movement type of teachings because it's typically when a pastor, sad to say, gets converted and then their church gets that way as well. But again, there's no specific statement of faith

Starting point is 00:04:50 for what they believe. But there are some specific things that Jerry did mention, like Christians must observe the feasts. They must be obedient to the law and the Torah. Specifically, there's two different forms of theology, not forms, but two things that they adhere to. It's called one law theology and two-house theology. One law theology, it's also known as one Torah theology, but it's a theological perspective that emphasizes the unity of God's law for both Jews and non-Jews who believe in Jesus as the Messiah. It suggests that all believers, regardless of their ethnic background are called to observe the entirety of mosaic law as a way of life. So that's the commandments, of course.

Starting point is 00:05:32 As Christians, I would say we should obey the Ten Commandments, right? But I'm not perfect by any means, but I should still obey them. Feasts, but also even some with dietary restrictions and other regulations. But again, there's no centralized statement of faith. So people may differ in this area. And then there's something called two-house theology, which people in the Hebrew movement hold to, which is a restoration movement essentially of a lost tribes of Israel, that there's scattered descendants.

Starting point is 00:06:00 This comes from the thoughts of, you know, the diaspora, which occurred prior to the coming of Christ when Israel and Judah were overthrown by foreign powers and the Jews were dispersed throughout the nations. Anyways, they believe that there's a specific role in End Times Restoration and things of that nature for the house to come back together. And part of that is through the observance of the Torah and the biblical feasts and things of that nature. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary, ground,

Starting point is 00:07:00 in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed. You can watch this D-Day Show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. But what's interesting is this movement actually prior to the Hebrew roots movement finds a lot of its roots actually coming from Armstrongism in the Worldwide Church of Odd. They have very similar familiarities between the two movements because the Armstrongism died out after Herbert Armstrong died in 1986, and they kind of repented. They had like a big repentance within Armstrongism where they started denouncing all of these

Starting point is 00:07:46 prior works, which were, you know, keeping the Sabbath on Saturday and the feasts. And a lot of people are actually upset with that. And some of the most early influential teachers, the Hebrew Roots movement actually came from the worldwide Church of God, which is a very interesting correlation there. I hadn't heard of Armstrongism. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So Herbert Armstrong, it's if you know, we've mentioned Kingdom of the Colts by Dr.

Starting point is 00:08:12 Walter Martin. This is a definitive chapter in that a cult, a non-Christian cult, an anti-Trinitarian cult that Dr. Walton Martin dealt with during his ministry. And one of the primary things is that Herbert Armstrong, he, like I said, he denied the Trinity. He had some very interesting views. But again, he had what was called restoration, a restorationist view. And what that primarily means, and it's something that, you know, we view different organizations, we get messages all the time, hey, will you look at this group, will you look at that group? The one commonality so many of these organizations have, whether it's an organization or just a charismatic figure, where they always say that, hey, somehow along the line, the church lost its message.

Starting point is 00:08:55 The true message has sort of gone away, has fallen away, but guess what? I've found the truth, or we've discovered the truth. And you can only find truth within our organization. So you must follow me because I've obtained special knowledge of what was truly lost. And you do see this with the Hebrew Roots Movement where they talk about how a lot of Christianity has sort of fallen away, has embraced Gentile pagan ways, has sort of lost its root. But this is somehow something that's new. But in reality, we believe there's nothing new under the sun.

Starting point is 00:09:28 And so when you look at something like the Hebrew Roots, the one of the chance, challenge is, is that it's decentralized. Right now, when you talk about the Hebrew Roots movement, there's not an official church headquarters, you know, there's not an official Watchtower Bible and Tract Society headquarters you can go to or official publications. It's very decentralized. So no matter what we try and do, even in this conversation, to try and articulate their beliefs, there are going to be groups, and possibly even in your audience, who adhere to

Starting point is 00:09:59 Hebrew roots theology or beliefs on some level. And they'll say, well, you're not representing us properly. Well, the problem is no matter who you do, for example, one of the major YouTube channels out there is called 119 Ministries, which you've read Psalm 119, and it talks so much about the adherence to the law, about how much that a psalmist loves God's law. But that is one example of a very large YouTube channel, but there's so many variations depending on who you talk to. You'll kind of get different interpretations of what sort of laws you should adhere to. But when you look at Herbert Armstrong, and this is where a lot of people have real, like, where is this all coming from? Because it seems to be something that's only kind of really exploded as of late in the last decade or so. And some of it just has to do with the Internet influenza era where people can sort of become their own sort of personality.

Starting point is 00:10:48 So what they did in private, they can now broadcast to tens of thousands of people. But this is actually a gentleman to read from a source here of one of our research that we were doing is that Herbert Armstrong, His teachings, they hinged on the obligation to keep the Sabbath and the feasts and the festivals and kosher diet. It was British Israelism and anti-Trinitarianism. And also, Armstrong, he was already teaching that to become a converted Christian, one must become spiritually in Israelite. And I'll read it as a couple more things. And what you'll end up seeing as we unravel this, maybe in the common section, you see a striking similarity to the current beliefs in regards. regards to what Herbert Armstrong believed. In fact, this is somebody named, there's a man by the name

Starting point is 00:11:35 of Joseph Track who was very involved in the Worldwide Church of God. And he states, for those of us who are in the worldwide church of God, it was the central plank of our theology. We believe that we were a faithful remnant of the people of God. We believe that we were the true Israel. We observed the Sabbath and the feast for a very good reason. We were biological descendants of Abraham. We were not Gentiles. This doctrine formed on the basis for how we lived each day and for our view of the world and its future in prophecy. And so what you'll see, you see these tenets where people need to believe they need to follow the Torah. But one of the main emphasis that you'll see, the one that kind of sticks out specifically,

Starting point is 00:12:17 is that we need to observe the feasts that are mentioned in the Old Testament. These are something that still have to be observed today. And so what you'll end up seeing, and Allie, if you have questions, we'll definitely jump in there. But when we did the episodes on Halloween, you saw a lot of people started even in your comment section, even in our social media. We didn't even talk about Hebrew roots when we were discussing the historical origins of Halloween. Yet, though people who adhere to that, they were jumping in the common sections. Well, no, this is pagan. We need to observe the feast.

Starting point is 00:12:50 And so that's what you see a lot of times. You'll make a resurgence around Easter, around Christmas. around Halloween. In fact, we did a recent episode with our good friend Michael Jones from the YouTube channel Inspiring Philosophy who has some great content debugging pagan holiday myths. And we were talking primarily just about, hey, we should try and have integrity when we do history and seek to tell the truth as Christians. And then you had a bunch of people who just jumped on very passionately. I'm sure they're a very sweet person. If I met up with them, I'd love to say hi and have a conversation with them, but they were very passionate and adamant that this is some, the feasts are

Starting point is 00:13:28 something that are pagan. And I'm sorry, not the holidays, these holidays are something that are pagan, but the only authorized holidays that we can celebrate are these specific holidays listed in the Old Testament. In fact, one other thing that I'll just state here, and this is a quote from Herbert Armstrong, and he states, he says, there's no, there is a significant amount of open criticism of these Christian holidays in the literature of the worldwide church of God. And this is the quote. And Herbert Armstrong is saying, now that we know the pagan origin of the Easter celebration, let's clear away the web of error that covers the truth about keeping the Passover, the memorial of Christ's sake. Or take, for instance, the other, most people today do not take the command

Starting point is 00:14:11 of the Lord lightly or have no validity whatsoever and following the tradition of men in observing Christmas. So when you look at someone like Herbert Armstrong in the Worldwide Church of God, he's someone who really articulated this theology. And what's very interesting, if you follow the history, and we have an episode on the Worldwide Church of God, you can check out on our podcast. But it started to really sort of disseminate and dismantle in the 1990s. And that's almost exactly part in parts, which a lot of people who've examined this movement, that's when you start to kind of see all this fragmentation from all different areas, different spheres, of these sort of observance. to these specific aspects, selective aspects we believe of the Torah. What are your thoughts so far, Allie? What questions do you have regarding this movement?

Starting point is 00:15:10 Yeah, I'm thinking for people who are like, you know, I don't know anyone who believes this stuff. I know that I have seen it on my own Instagram with the messages and comments that I have received. So just so people can kind of understand what we're talking about and things that they've seen but maybe didn't know to link it to a whole movement, like the Hebrew Roots movement. And again, as you said, Jeremiah, this isn't necessarily indicative of every representative of everyone who is in this Hebrew roots. But what I see a lot is they refuse to say Jesus because they say that's Roman.

Starting point is 00:15:43 So they will say yes, we will say, yes, we do need to abide by the Old Testament laws. Because if we follow Jesus, Jesus abided by the Old Testament laws. If it's good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me. And also the same thing with not celebrating Christmas, not celebrating Christmas, not celebrating Easter because these are pagan holidays. They might even say the name of Jesus itself is pagan and that Christianity has been paganized. And so we need to go back to the roots. Actually, some would argue, to be more like Jesus and we're emulating his life by following the law to the letter. Now, if I bring up and I have before, and this was even before I knew that this was kind of a

Starting point is 00:16:26 collective thing when you bring up Galatians about not being tethered to the law anymore. And if you try to uphold one part of the law, then you've got to uphold the whole part of the law. But Jesus actually fulfilled the law. They claim that it's, that's not what Galatians means, that it's not talking about that. I'm not really sure exactly what the argument is. But that might kind of help people understand what we're talking about. Very often it's the use of Yeshua. Very often it is saying basically the everything that Christianity has kind of come up with when it comes to traditions and who Jesus was has kind of been paganized and modernized over time. And they see it as a form of like reformation going back to the Old Testament law.

Starting point is 00:17:11 Yeah. No, that's that's really good. In fact, so one of the challenges even with us as well, too, is that it's so broad that there's no way, even if we went three hours, we could encompass every nuance and again every single group will will always there's always there's so many different variants of people who disagree with each other with what gets applied but I'll just start off in bite-sized pieces so there's another movement on top of the worldwide church of God that started in the 1930s and this is something known as the sacred name movement and primarily this was a movement that taught that there's only certain ways you can address God not only in regards to name but

Starting point is 00:17:54 in pronunciation. And if almost in some cases, it was almost extreme to an extent that if you pronounced the name of God wrong, then you could lose your salvation. And it's something that's very interesting because I mean, I as a Christian, you know, I've been on world mission trips and one of the coolest things to be able to see whether it's in a Muslim country or in somewhere in Mexico or really any culture, when you see them the translation of their specific Bible, and when you see them worshipping in their specific language, it's so amazing to see. And so there's, so there's nothing wrong or taboo of referring to Jesus as Yeshua, for example. In fact, one of my favorite things, too, are seeing people, you know, testimonies of people who are Jewish,

Starting point is 00:18:46 who come to find out that Jesus is a messiah. In fact, we did an episode with our good friend, Dr. Michael Brown, who is Jewish. He is an apologist. He has done the most debates with rabbis, whether or not Jesus is the Messiah. And it's always very awesome to see. But what's interesting is that what I've seen is that they try and take something that honestly isn't a bad thing, but then they try and make this very legalistic, very tribalistic have and have not. It's like, you need to pronounce it this way.

Starting point is 00:19:19 And you've seen, I even started seeing on my social media a couple of years ago where people would start saying, like, praise the Lord, and they would take out the vows. Now, this is something that you would see in earlier traditions where people, when they translate, they have this sort of sacredness for the name of God. But as far as us as Christians, I guess if you felt in your own personal conscience, this is something I should maybe do. Okay, I'll give you that. I'll throw you a bone there. But what's concerning about this movement, and I also just want to say, too, that for the majority of people that you're dealing with, you're probably dealing with your friends, someone who genuinely loves the Lord, but in many cases are in error. And it's, and also you think about, too, even the climate today where you see a lot of churches just preaching very wishy, washy, practical sermons, but there's no deep theology being taught. And a lot of times the Old Testament is ignored. And so there's this vacuum people are genuinely curious. And then you have somebody like Andy Stanley, Andrew Stanley, who's saying that we need to

Starting point is 00:20:24 detach from the Old Testament. And all of a sudden they're just hunger to go back there. But what you see, and it's the case with everything, and you think of like purity culture and the conversations we've had with Ginger Dugger. And now people are pendulum swing from purity culture all the way into radical LGBTQ plus is a response to that. So that's overcorrection. So almost in the same way where you look at a lot of just sort of wishy-watching.

Starting point is 00:20:48 theology the church has. The church does have their responsibility in some sense for this movement. It's filled with a vacuum. It's a pendulum swing and it's an overcorrection. Andrew, what thought, what other things could you talk about the sacred name movement and some of the errors and concerns we would have concerning that movement? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Sacred name movement in relation to Hebrew roots. I think there's a biblical precedence for this that we, that's shown to us in the book of Acts. We can go to Acts chapter 19 with the sons of Sceva. When Paul is in Ephesus and he's performing miracles and he's casting out demons in the name of Jesus, right? Or let's say Yeshua, if I'm even pronouncing that correctly. But what happens is there's these sons of Sceva who are

Starting point is 00:21:34 essentially Jewish exorcists and what they do is they travel around performing exorcisms or incantations. Josephus actually notes in his Jewish antiquities, he says there's people who invoked even Solomon's name in expelling demons. So this form of Jewish mysticism was going around during this time. And they saw that Paul was casting out demons in the name of Jesus and performing miracles. And so what did they try to do? They followed him into Ephesus and they tried to do the same thing. They saw these demons and they tried to invoke the name of Jesus.

Starting point is 00:22:02 And if someone can actually speak Hebrew very well, it would probably be people that are Jewish in dissent, if the sons of Skiva even were. But what actually shows happening in Acts chapter 19 is they were overpowered by. the demons. They said the name, right? But that had no power in it. They actually were driven out, butt naked, derrobed. These quoting priests were de-robed by the demons and overpowered. They said, I know, I know Jesus. I know Paul, but I don't know you, right? So in terms of the sacred name movement, does the name really have power? Is that what, is that what we're being shown in Acts chapter 19? No, it's the fact that Paul through apostolic authority as a messenger on behalf of Jesus had a spiritual authority given to him to cast out the demons through the name

Starting point is 00:22:45 of Jesus. It's not the actual name that had power, but it's the Holy Spirit that was working in throughout with him, you know? And so in terms of a sacred name movement, of course, there's things that you may find important, but really ask yourself, are you, do you really think you're saying it correctly? By what other than the grace of God, do we know I am that I am? Right? God had to graciously give that to us as a form to even grasp the concept of the eternal God. Does that name in itself actually capture the eternality of God in his omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience? No. No, it doesn't. So it's something that if we've got to think logically, consistently, and actually go back to the Bible to see if we see a precedence of these things occurring within time. And in early church history in Acts chapter 19, we see the very same thing. And the Bible demonstrates it wasn't the name.

Starting point is 00:23:37 It was the power of the Holy Spirit and the gifting that Paul had. And that's important too. So I think in terms of even thinking biblically about feasts or keeping the Sabbath, like we got to understand it's important to us as Christians to want to obey God in his commands. And that's where we can fall into some certain traps, right? Because someone can come along and say, well, you worship on Sunday. That's not on Sabbath. If you really want to be worshiping God correctly, you must worship on Saturday.

Starting point is 00:24:05 And you're going to go, wow, you know, I, I love God. I want to worship God in spirit and in truth. You know, I really want to worship him the right way. So you start falling into some of these teachings by by certain, you know, aspects within our being that want to worship God the correct way. Yeah. But when we do that, we start, you know, throwing out some historical precedents we have through the, through the Bible. I mean, Hebrews chapter 4, you can go in and read it on how Jesus is our Sabbath rest, right? And there's other scriptures that say that there was worship. on the Lord's Day, the resurrection on a Sunday that was occurring. I mean, we have rest, perfect rest fulfilled in Jesus. And we can think about the feasts in the same way.

Starting point is 00:24:47 Jesus, he is such an awesome guy. Go read the book of John. Go read John 8 through 10. And we have Jesus standing up during these feasts proclaiming, I am the living water in front of everybody, right? And then he says, I am the light of the world during the feast. I think it is a boost in John chapter 8. referring to that this, that these feasts were a shadow of the Messiah who was to come.

Starting point is 00:25:13 And Jesus says, I am here. Look to me. Don't look to the feast. Look to me. He stands up in front of everyone and says it. And then the question you got to ask yourself, too, is can you actually celebrate the feasts like they did back then? And this is what I mean by it. Those feasts required sacrifices. They did. And God says you must sacrifice in specific locations. Can you do that? Can you do that? No. Can you sacrifice where God said that they were to perform these sacrifices? No. And then the other question you got to ask yourself is, can you only celebrate the Levitical holidays? Is that what it is? Can you not celebrate anything outside the Levitical holidays? Well, there's holidays Jesus celebrated that are in the Bible, John chapter 10. He was there during Hanukkah. That's not a

Starting point is 00:25:56 Levitical holiday. Jesus celebrated it. Right. So we got to think consistently. We got to use all of scripture when we're making some convictions before we try to place those convictions on others, I'd say if you want to go ahead and say Jesus fulfilled the feats of booths. So I'm going to celebrate it my own way with my family in the backyard pointing to Christ. That's fine. Go ahead. You have the freedom in Christ to do those things. But the line gets drawn when you look at somebody else and you say to them, you must do X, Y, and Z. And if that's the case, right, Galatians, you brought it up earlier, Allie, it says, those who seek to be justified by the law, the grace of Christ has no effect on you. We really, we really have to be careful when we're starting to create manmade traditions

Starting point is 00:26:42 that Paul warns about in Colossians chapter two, because they have an appearance of promoting self-made religion, but there is no value in stopping indulgence of the flesh. So that's, so it's real stuff. I'll say one of the things regarding the feast is that we, I think the feasts are a beautiful thing. Like one of my favorite experiences, if I can recollect, I was at a church event, at a church I used to attend, and there was a man by the name of Neil Pitchell, who is Jewish. And it was right around Easter. And what he did is he had us all participate in a Passover sater dinner. He did a very strict, traditional Jewish way.

Starting point is 00:27:32 But then he kind of broke it down line by line, really item by item, how the whole feast works and how people that during that time were really looking forward to the Messiah that was to come. And in it, he's telling his testimony. And so for me, in that experience, like, I walked away with such a deeper appreciation for what I have as somebody who's non-Jewish, really experiencing in the blessings of the covenant. Even the church that we attend, there's such a broad variety of different backgrounds, ethnicities. You know, you think about even some of the woke churches where they try and just like, hey, we need to have this race or over another. It just when you see, though, when you see the broad variety of cultures and backgrounds, who, now are reveling in the blessings of this Jewish Messiah, it's amazing to see. The area of error of where this comes from speaking very broadly is that when you start

Starting point is 00:28:26 utilizing the feast that you have to celebrate this as in a have and have nots, then you have an issue of concern because now all of a sudden you're creating divisions, you're creating tribalism. And so it's not just something you have an appreciation for that makes you get a better understanding, appreciation for Christ and what he did. Now this becomes part of your tribal identity, and you start to look down and shun upon others who don't see the same. And there's a lot of very different, and it's very similar, almost in a sense, to a lot of

Starting point is 00:28:57 the sort of nuanced debates, sometimes within the Twitterverse and on Christendown, for example, like head coverings, right? So that's something that I've noticed a lot of, has taken a conversation as of late. And even in the church I attend, I've noticed there's been a couple of women in like, oh, there's someone wearing head covering. Okay, okay. That's interesting. And it would be in a situation where, okay, well, that's how you genuinely feel, if you genuinely feel convicted about how this, you should present yourself in worship, then great.

Starting point is 00:29:28 I'm not going to, I don't have a bone to pick with you. I think where the difference is when you start making a have and have not and say you start looking down upon and shunning those who don't have head coverings, that's where we would take issue. But it would be very similar with Hebrew roots. And again, there may be different variations of Hebrew roots would also differ on women in head coverings, but that's another small aspect of it. Have you found in what you do know about the movement that salvation for those who follow this is tied up in keeping the feasts and keeping the law? that it's actually, you know, going to heaven being saved is dependent upon keeping Levitical law as much as possible. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:30:20 I think one way to think. Go ahead, Andrew. Yeah, I think one way to think about it, since it is such a diverse movement, there are people who adhere to some forms of Hebrew roots movement teachings, but they do believe that the grace of Christ is what saves them. But there are different parts of the group that are also anti-Trinitarian. they're anti-trinitarian. And there's also ones where it's like, well, Jesus says also, if you love me,

Starting point is 00:30:42 you'll obey my commands, right? So if you're not obeying Christ's commands and you're not ignorant to the fact that these feasts are mandatory and you're willing, willfully disobeying according to them, then salvation would be dependent upon that. But again, not all of them hold to these forms of teachings, but it is something that is definitely out there and you need to be worried about. I mean, we're told about it. 2 Corinthians 11 verse 4 different Jesus different gospel different spirits so if we start messing with the gospel

Starting point is 00:31:10 Jesus is going to get toyed with right all of these things are going to start changing and the rabbit hole is is not seeing the perfect fulfillment of old testament typology in Jesus Christ in Jesus Christ he fulfilled those things the feasts the sacrifice from the old testament they were looking forward to the promise who was to come. And if you start blurring the lines on those things, you can fall into a trap. And by God's grace, I hope it doesn't happen to anybody. Yeah. But then you'll go running back to the feast to justify.

Starting point is 00:31:46 You read the book of Hebrews. It's all throughout Hebrews, the author of Hebrews, keep saying to them, look, today is the day of salvation. Don't be like the Israelites who harden their hearts in the wilderness and turned back. He says, you have heard the gospel. Don't turn back to Judaism. Yeah. Stay strong because Jerusalem is going to be destroyed.

Starting point is 00:32:03 It's in the book of Hebrews. Really read that, pray about that. Yeah. Yeah. I would say also, just to capitalize on what Andrew is saying is that for the majority, I believe, of our friends in the Hebrew roots movement, is that the majority of them, I would say, are born again. They love Jesus. They love the Lord. And they want to be pleasing in his sight.

Starting point is 00:32:23 But because of their misunderstanding of the difference between the law and the gospel, they're putting on themselves a yoke and a burden that's unnecessary. However, it is some of a nuanced bag of wolves and sheep in the sense that one of the primary views of underlying within the majority of Hebrew roots practitioners is that you need to adhere to, on some level the Torah or Jewishness, depending on how you interpret it. But the more Gentile that you get, that's where you start deviating into paganism. And so what you end up seeing is that throughout the majority of church history, the majority of church fathers are non-Jewish. It just happens to be the people that God raised up. So when you look it up, for example, Herbert Armstrong, one of the things that he, his arguments against the Trinity was against St. Athanasius, who in the first century, if you read a book on the incarnation, or even the statement of Athanasius contramundum, he was the only church father who was standing up really against all these heresies, against Arianism. But Herbert Armstrong's primary argument is that he was Gentile. And so therefore, just because of that nature of him being non-Jewish, well, he was adopting pagan ideals and he kind of wrapped it into the Trinity.

Starting point is 00:33:38 And you see the same thing with Jehovah's Witnesses, for example. They make the same argument of the Trinity being pagan, invented at the Council of Nicaea. So if you start adopting a worldview that says that the more Gentile you get, the more you are to adopting being pagan, then you start to question everything. And the reality is when you look at the whole central point of church history, and again, there's people who are probably who are way more knowledge with an Andrew and I when it comes to church history. The primary thing that the creeds have done is that they've really had protected the doctrinal integrity of the essentials of the faith, namely the Trinity and salvation by grace through faith alone and most importantly, the DD of Jesus. But when you start going down this rabbit trail in many different ways and you start taking it, for some people, they follow this, the logical conclusion is to complete. completely derail and almost deconstruct in a sense where you then deny the Trinity, the deity of Jesus, and then your whole identity is literally the Torah almost becomes your Lord and Savior.

Starting point is 00:34:39 And Jesus is just a means default. The identity is Torah observed. It's not necessarily your identity in Christ. All right, guys, that was part one of our two-part conversation. Make sure that you tune in tomorrow for part two. We will be diving into this even more, comparing it to what scripture actually says, and then also just looking at different reactions that Christians tend to have toward culture that aren't necessarily biblical. All right, thanks so much for listening. We will be back here tomorrow. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Alley, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe

Starting point is 00:35:36 is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth. truth and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 865 | Hebrew Roots Movement & Its False Gospel | Guests: Jeremiah Roberts & Andrew Soncrant of 'Cultish' (Part One)

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.