Dr Dean Alley: Alright, Chaplain Dean Alley here. I had a moment. We are going through the book of Genesis step by step. I'd like to get into Exodus as well. Why am I doing this? Number one, I was asked to do a verse-by-verse reading and Exegete what I'm seeing and providing the best of my knowledge, information on the book of Genesis. I think it's it's a I don't if you followed along with me, you would have or you've seen maybe it's been a blessing to you. there's just been some things I've learned since really tearing into it. It's been really, really, really good. And books that's what we have to do sometimes. We have to slow down, we have to read the text and let it How's it in the cooking term simmer? You gotta let it simmer. You gotta gotta put it in your your mind, your thinking. That's that meditation on the scriptures. That's that getting alone for a moment. I know give you an example, right around lunchtime I read chapter of Song of Solomon and I thought it was great. It was you know we just don't read enough of the Old Testament. And one of the things that I should mention The gospels were written in the second century, essentially. I mean they say they were written at a certain time, but they weren't published and publicly known until probably the second century. And you know, so first century it's all about what the apostles used and Jesus used to teach from to share with us. Folks, if you haven't got into the old testament It's all about the Old Testament pointing to the New Testament. It's always about Jesus is the main character, but it's about the kingdom of heaven. It's the kingdom of God. And when you read the Old Testament and you've read the New Testament, you get these little call them nu neutrons, brain neutrons that go off and say, Hey, I've heard that before. And what you'll find is most of The quotes or a lot of the quotes will reference the old testament. So where did Paul get that information? Well, it's in the old testament. Where did Matthew Peter where did Mark where did they get this information? They got it from the Old Testament. Why? That's all they had. They didn't have a gospel New Testament written, and it wasn't anything that they were quoting in that time frame. It was all Old Testament. And I think we missed that sometimes. We get so caught up into the, you know, picking it up from the Gospels into Acts. then, you know, Paul, Paul writes in his epistles, and you heard me say yesterday, it is difficult for some people to understand Paul. even if you read Second Peter, it mentions some of his things are hard. Well, think about it. Paul was a Pharisee. He was not just a Pharisee. I think he was like the attorney general of Pharisees. You've got to remember he studied under Gamelio and his pedigree and his ability, he knew all the laws and knew everything about the the Jewishness and How to communicate. Now he he was to the Gentile, but he used the Jewish terminology to explain things. He used his Jewishness to to share he never got rid of it. We say sometimes on the road to Damascus, he was converted. Folks, you show me in the Bible where where where Paul said he was a he was a Christian and he was converted. You can't find it. So he never lost his Jewishness. Matter of fact, he used it in many cases and quoted it quite a bit in his epistles. What I'm saying is you got to get into the context of who you taught who you who's writing, what time frame was it, what were they writing about, why was this written down? I mean, these are things in context you have to figure and and kind of exegete and pull out of the scripture. And I think we do a due j we we do an injustice. When we look at the Bible, sixty-six books of the Bible, better than eighty percent of them are Old Testament, right? Small New Testament, large Old Testament. Where do we spend most of our time as Gentile church believers? In the New Testament. And I think that is not fully appreciating. What these apostles were going through, what they were doing, and how they got their information and where they got it from. Obviously it was divine. Obviously, there was a lot of documentation and I mean their their writings in the scribes and all that is all divine. I believe it, and I believe it all the way. why do I say that? What does Timothy say? What did Paul write in Timothy's all scripture? Let me say it again, all scripture. Is given, right? It's profitable. Not the New Testament, Genesis to Revelations. We forget that. The other thing I think we forget sometimes as a church is we've been grafted into the seed of Abraham, right? We are grafted into the seed of Abraham and his descendants because Jesus basically. When he went to the cross and he knew what was gonna happen, and he gave the mystery. What is the mystery? The mystery is the gospel of grace. And Paul brought that to the church. And those those letters were written to the church. But you gotta remember, what was the what was the audience? Audience was Jewish, Gentile, Jewish, Gentile. It was a it was a mixture. So It would make sense to a lot of the Jewish people when they read and hear Paul, opposed to some of the Gentiles that weren't as well as they say, they were unlearned or they didn't have the pedigree of learning. So I want you to think about that. That old testament has a lot of important things that we kind of shove through. Well, that's a little hard, you know, especially the first five books of the Bible. And you you must have that foundation. You must have those first five books of the Bibles down and understand the progression. That's why we're going through this step by step with Genesis and hopefully further books. And the reason I say that is you can't figure out revelations and what is going on, or what Paul's saying, or the apostles are saying, if you don't have the basic structure of what the start of the Bible and where it was written down with. Moses and so on and so forth. So two points. We we we do not spend enough time in the Old Testament. as church believers, as Gentiles, we are grafted into them. Let me say that again. We're grafted into them. It's not the other way around. Israel's not grafted into the Gentile. It would be a different Bible. It would be a different analogy. We are privileged. We are You need to thank God that you have a self your salvation is secured in Jesus Christ because of what he did on the cross. And that's why we we preach the cross, but you gotta understand where all this came from with the history and the background and all the things. You can't really understand the New Testament until you have at least the first five books of the Old Testament, somewhat. Spend more time reading them. Read them over and over. I get it. Leviticus You know, but you'll find as you go step by step through those things, you'll pull things out and it'll be clearer and God will illuminate more for you. so instead of puffed up Gentiles like we got it going on church, we need to understand where we came from. Without Christ and the cross, we would be nothing. Without Judaism, the Jewishness. in Israel were we're grafted into, without that, where would we be? Where would we be? I don't know. But I would say this. So when we think of Jewish and we think of Gentile, I'll say this too. These churches all had that mix of Gentile and Jew. And That had audiences on both sides. Now we use the word Christian and we say Christ followers, the Messiah, the Yeshua. we say all that, you know, in the Greek because what happened? Third century we had a lot of the Roman Catholic Church, Constantine, the whole beginning, how things were changed around. Why was Jacob changed in the New Testament to James? Anybody have that answer? I happen to have it. The reason James is in the New Testament and not Jacob or Yokoff is who they would say it, is because King James wanted his name in the Bible. The last name of that king was King James. So they took that book, changed the title, and put James in. Now you say, well, that's just a small BB. No, it was a change. He changed it because he wanted his name in there. He wanted the his name in that that part of it. And there's a lot of those examples when I read it. Now I have the brand new Catholicism, their book, which Ignitas, I guess, is they live on the f the church fathers. I get it. Very important background, but we don't we don't hold our salvation on the old test. We don't hold our salvation on a church father or a saint or Mary or workspace. We don't hold any of that. We hold it on Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. And that's the important thing. So again, so understanding that. The other thing too, I would say this people get little little they don't know is okay, you got Orthodox Jew, Messianic Jew, and they go, That's it. Six hundred thirteen mit bots, that's what they follow. No, no, no. There's not one Jewish sect follows six hundred thirteen to the mitzvah. They cannot and don't. They don't even try in some aspects. They'll do what they think is whatever in the common sense side. So why I say that to you is We tend to put in two categories. Orthodox. I mean, there's ascetic Jews. The ones with the big hats that they get from Hungaria that are two thousand dollars and they wear And they wear because why? Because their rabbi had it. That's the answer. They go out and buy these ascetic hats and they're rabbis and they're big about rabbis. Their rabbis are their teachers. Just like Jesus was a was a teacher. And There's many different sects of Judaism. Christianity came from Judaism, right? Christianity in Genesis didn't start. We didn't get Christianity day one. We got the interpretation from the Jewish Israel, and it's in the progression, as you see, we're in 35. But point being is we are not sometimes we have big head threads. And we figure we know the answers and we have this, this, that folks. This is that humble pie of your brother, your brethren, your other religions and things on that line. You show Christ, you show the fruits, as Galatians says, right? So that's not new, it's in the old testament. So you know, the point being is sometimes we look at our ourselves as a church and say, We're the we're right. You're wrong. Folks, that's a dangerous place to be. And I would implore you to have more of Christ like and loving with the brother. and then especially with the Jewish Orthodox, where they don't believe, you say, Well, they don't believe that Jesus came and he died. You're you're right. They don't believe. They believe that there was a man and he was just a a decent guy. But that might be one or two sects of many that believe that. There's messianic, I mean What what is messianic and Greek? Christ, Jesus, something like that. But the point being is There's different levels of Judaism. And it's not a two two one and two, Messianic or Orthodox. It's it's many. And they have different rabbis, different sects, and follow. But I I I say that to say this. As Christian followers of Christ, who we identify with, right? P I see it all the time on on these TikToks. People are trying to convert to Messianic Jews. First of all, why? Why are you trying to convert to a Messianic Jew? If you're trying to follow some of the requirements like the Noadic covenant and you know some of the things, do it quietly. You don't have to tell anybody, you don't have to broadcast, hey, I'm I want to fit into you guys in Israel, so I'm now adjusting that's another wrong, dangerous place to be. Be who you are. You believe in Christ. Put your faith, hope, and trust into him. Don't change that. God loves everybody. And if you're a follower of Jesus Christ, or you're a Messianic Jew, or you're Orthodox, God still loves all of us. And it's not about, I'm right, you're wrong. I'm right, you're wrong. And I see that a lot of times. We see I see it with religions. I went down the road down here and I counted 26 churches here where I live on one strip. Why? Think about this. You had you had gosh, You had you had the the monk there. I can't think of his name off the top of my head, but he basically Luther. Luther says the Catholic Church isn't right, and he bangs over a hundred theses on the church and says, I cannot follow this because that's not what the Bible says. Okay. So he goes off and starts what? Lutherism. Well, the guy sitting in the Lutheran chair saying, I'm not really sure about this Luther thing. I think the border God says this, and this guy goes out and starts out Calvinism. Now you got another stack. So what is there, thirteen hundred different views of religion out there? There's twenty-six churches on one strip of the road out here. Every one of them think they're right. Every one of them think they got it figured out. Folks, I don't know where you are in this whole thing, but we are Christ, we are believers in Christ, and we have things that we believe in the Bible to be true. And we follow it. And I think sometimes people think, Well, I have the truth. And well, I'm right. Calvin's right. Luther's right. And then, you know, this guy Wesley says in the Calvin I don't believe in the Cal we gotta go. What j Wesley goes out and starts the Methodists. I mean, you know, and then you got you you've got the guy that starts the Mor the Mormon church there, that saw the golden plates that I don't see that into the Bible, but he goes out and starts that and bring him young and this guy they go out there and start this big thing. Folks I think a lot of the churches and I think a lot of the people in these churches are as far away from God as somebody that's never heard of Jesus, which is unlikely because everybody's heard of it. But I think they're far away, and I think that when and if when the rapture does come, I think there's still gonna be a few sitting there. My opinion. Women go to church and bring their husband. Husband goes because his wife tells him to go. And he is as far away from God as anybody in that building, but he's there because of his wife. That's just one scenario. But I'm I'm trying to explain to you why do we have so many denominations? Why do we have so many churches? And you know, what is the truth? What is not? We are, who's we? You and me, are to search the scriptures always, pray without ceasing, always. We are to help our brothers, we are to love. In faith, love in Christ, and help out the poor, the sick, the widows. Those people are the ones of the most important that I find gets lacked. Now, you've got big churches anywhere you go, and there is you say, Well, you know, chaplain, you to have order of order of service. I get it, but I want you to think about this. When you start seeing order of service, and you start seeing certain things in that order of service, I want you to ask yourself, is that in the Bible? Let me find that. Most of the time it's not. It's not in the Bible. It's man putting an order of service together that is not biblical, but they use it in some form or another, and you and people just fall into play. I want you to be a free thinker. I want you to think on your own. I believe, and and don't get me wrong, I'm not telling you to go leave your church. I'm not telling you that. I'm telling you understand why you go to that church, understand what you believe, and have that confidence. in what that is. Now it can't be just feelings. If it's feelings, then everybody's gonna be a Pentecostal because they work off feelings. And and I'm not downplaying them, there's lots of them there I think are gonna go to heaven. I really do. I've got a pastor, uncle, down in Charlotte area or down in South Carolina, he's a Pentecostal pastor, his whole family, his dad, I all these people were Pentecostal preachers. I d I d that's their belief system, but there is a lot of excitement and charismatic of getting people in their feelings and jumping up and down and getting all those things. And I I'm not so sure that that is all biblical. It's all how you interpret Acts. So anyways, but I I know I'm going off or tangent here, but I think people sometimes forget why do I go to church? What do I believe? You know? Remember, New Testament's all about doctrine, right? The doctrine of salvation, the doctrine of theology, the doctrine, it's doctrine, doctrine, doctrine, all man-made doctrine. Not saying that they're bad. I'm not saying that. But if you're following just the doctrine, if you're just following the doctrine, you're just following what everybody else has done. And not read and get into the Bible and learn what God is trying to show you and grow in that position. It's so important. And don't misconstrue me and don't think I'm trying to make anybody a stumbling block. All I'm doing is asking you to ask yourself, what is it that I believe? And how is this important? And am I honoring God? That's all I'm saying. So that's the important piece there. And I think that sometimes we get we get twisted. If how many of these 26 churches on the street all get together and work on a common denominator? What's the common denominator? Well, the common denominator is serving God, they probably have the same high-level type stuff, but let the question will come into play. are you doing those things that God wants you to do? Are you honoring? Christ? Are you honoring God?