Biblical Heritage Center Blog

Learn about the Real Yeshua , the Jewish Jesus . His teachings are just as relative to lives today as they were to the lives of his disciples almost 2,000 years ago . However, they are also very different from what many of us were taught in churches about their beliefs about Jesus. Rediscovering the Real Yeshua transforms our not only our Belief Systems, but our Realities too . We created the Real Yeshua Handbook to be a tool that will help people study and engage in group discussions. The Real Yeshua Handbook is an ongoing project of the Biblical Heritage Center and is continually being upgraded and updated. Check out the current sections that are now online: ● Introduction ● The Language of Yeshua ● Yeshua: Teacher of Jewish Scriptures ● Yeshua on TZEDAQAH (righteousness) ● Rediscovering the Power of The Lord’s Prayer ● Bible Study Tools Click Here to go to the Real Yeshua Handbook . Share it with others who might be interested too. ___________...

This is the third blog in the series on The Lord’s Prayer . The previous blog are Rediscovering the Power of The Lord’s Prayer , Our Father in Heaven and May Your Name Be Sanctified . Now we will continue to the third line of the prayer: May your Kingdom come Your will shall be done in heaven and on earth . Comments and Cultural Insights 1. “ Your Kingdom come ” does not mean that God is going to set up some kind of universal throne in Jerusalem or any other place on earth . 1 2. “ Your Kingdom come ” means that a movement is arising in which increasing numbers of people are taking on “the yoke of God’s Kingdom” and doing God’s will on the earth. 3. People will recognize the presence of God’s Kingdom as they witness members of the Kingdom of Heaven doing good works – acts of righteousness and TOV. 4. The Kingdom of Heaven isn’t a Kingdom in Heaven. It is a kingdom on earth. “ Heaven ” in the phrase “ Kingdom of Heaven ” is a euphemism for the “ name of ...

When Rabbi Leynor and I (Jim Myers) met, we never dreamed we were beginning the journey that has now lasted over a quarter of a century -- or that we would now be talking about realities, genes and memes . It is unbelievable that the most important things we now know about realities, genes and meme were not discovered until the 21 st century. Our focus back then was on understanding belief systems and searching for ancient meanings of the Hebrew and Greek words of our Scriptures. I had been engaged in research about the Jewish Jesus for about six years before I met Jeffrey. During that time I created two guidelines that helped me stay on track in my work and help members of my Bible study groups resolve conflicts that often involved differences in beliefs. Belief Systems Guideline My Belief System will be large enough to include all of the Facts, it will be open enough to be examined and questioned, and it will be flexible enough to change if errors or new facts are disc...

This is the third blog in the series on The Lord’s Prayer . The first blog -- Rediscovering the Power of The Lord’s Prayer – is about understanding what prayer was in Yeshua’s (the Jewish Jesus) culture. The second blog – Our Father in Heaven – is about the first line of The Lord’s Prayer . This blog is about the second line: “May your name sanctified .” Comments and Cultural Insights 1. To sanctify “our Father’s name” means to honor, praise and glorify Him through our words and actions. 2. T o sanctify “our Father’s name” is to revere Him, to fear Him, to stand in awe of Him as holy.   3. To sanctify “our Father’s name” is also to imitate Him.  4. Jesus taught the same idea in another teaching – “ Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in Heaven .” (Matthew 5:16) 5. “Our Father” is known for His “good works.” Seven times in the First Creation Account, the Creator measured His “...

Have you noticed that the world seems to have gone noticeably crazy? A couple of days ago I turned on a news channel and the first reports were these: ● Litchfield Park, AZ – 11 year-old boy murdered his grandmother by shooting her in the back of the head and then committed suicide. Why? She had been telling him to clean up his room. 1 ● Daytona Beach, FL – 15 year-old boy strangles mother to death. Why? They had an argument over his grades. 2 ● Chippewa Falls, WI – 10 year-old girl charged with murder for stomping head of 6 month-old baby boy. 3 ● Rowan County, NC – 11 year-old boy charged with putting sewing needles in Halloween candy. 4    The next day there was the shooting at the bar in California 5 – the 307 th mass shooting in America this year . 6 Even though these things seem “crazy” to most of us, our work at the TOV Center suggests that there is a factor that we need to consider. A growing number of Americans value other things above huma...

This is the second blog in a series on The Lord’s Prayer. In the first blog -- Rediscovering the Power of The Lord’s Prayer – the focus was on understanding prayer in Yeshua’s (the Jewish Jesus) culture. A key point we learned about the way Jesus and his disciples prayed is that the ultimate purpose of prayer is to “ bring people closer to God so they may more faithfully perform his will.” 1 Now let’s consider the first line of The Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father in heaven.” Comments & Cultural Insights 1. We all pray to “Our Father.” 2. In the Jewish culture the father’s role in the family included providing for the needs of and protecting the family – and teaching his children. 3. “ Our Father” is the “ Creator of the Heavens and Earth.” In the First Creation Account in Genesis He provided for the needs of all the creatures He created, created barriers to protect those creatures, revealed basic instructions for all humans to follow in their lives and teach t...

The way Jesus and his disciples prayed and how they understood their roles in praying The Lord’s Prayer are very different from the ways we pray today. We must learn our role in prayer before learning about the meanings of the Hebrew words Jesus taught his disciples to pray. Below are some key insights about prayer in Jesus’s Jewish culture. 1. Prayer is the human side of an unending dialogue between God and humans . 2. God speaks to people through the grandeur of nature, the drama of history and the Jewish Scriptures. 3. God speaks to humans of his love for them, of his purposes for creating them, and of the ultimate goodness of all existence. 4. Humans speak to God through prayer – ongoing personal dialogues and collective (community) prayers. The Lord’s Prayer is a collective prayer -- our Father, our daily bread, forgive us , our sins, we forgive, do not bring us , and protect us . 1 The entire prayer uses the plural. It’s not a prayer about me and my...