Manariwa

Religion played a major role in diluting and diverting the hearts and minds of people from the true worship that Yah taught and experienced with Adam and Eve in the Garden. No, worship is not a one-way experience that humans alone have with their Creator. For if it were so, then Yah would be the most selfish Being for wanting adoration, praise and honor from those He made without experiencing the same wonder and jubilation they derive and express at any moment of awareness of so much goodness or when cherishing the bountiful gifts of Creation and life through time. The goodness that is in Creation is the same goodness Yah had felt in having created it. (Gen. 1:31) For what else can the perfect life He gave humans produce other than true worship? And why create humans in One’s own image and not be filled with the bliss and beauty of being appreciated by those to whom you have given Your own divine image or nature?

Satan could never wrap his mind around the perfection and majesty of oneness that humans had with Yah as they walked and talked in Paradise, surveying the exquisite designs of Nature and the possibilities that opened up for them as He showed them their role in the Universe and the eternal plan He had laid out in that unlimited covenant of divine love and fellowship. Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 present but the beginning of eternal glory for humans, which we lost when our pristine experience of life worship got diverted.      

We easily forget or even do not realize, in the midst of the humdrum of daily life or in the unending drivel of devilish assaults on humans in the present times, how Yah favored our parents above everything else on the planet. Today, we surrender almost without exception all the gifts we inherited from them in response to the nonsensical global fear for a tiny organism that Yah may not have created at all, or if He had, has been tweaked or altered by demons to ultimately separate humans from serving Yah and following His ways. Satan, as he can never accept the fact that true worship belongs to Yah alone, is forcing as many humans to submit to his will to the point of taking away all that is valuable to them in order to wrest Yah’s Power and Command over humans. Since he could not cause Yahusha to kneel before Him, he now strives to force millions and millions of humans to prostrate at his feet – or die.

We have traced the devil’s plan to dilute and divert worship to Yah when fallen angels taught dark secrets to sub-human beings who ruled over the Earth before the Flood destroyed land life outside the Ark. Thus, except for Noah and his family, Yah obliterated all traces of corrupted seed upon the Earth. Although majority of people still do not believe the witness of Enoch, the record remains and will serve as part of the divine evidence against wicked angels and humans in the end. Yet, the spirits of those fallen angels remain trapped in the deepest parts of the Earth; but Satan continues to rule over demonic spirits that survived the Flood and still roam dry and dark places upon the Earth. For it seems that Yahusha and the disciples can cast out demons yet those demons remain free to roam until the Final Day of Judgment. Thus, we are still engaged in a spiritual warfare today.

The process of diluting and diverting true worship involves identifiable, calculated steps of Satan to firmly establish his dominion as he had done before the Flood. If that is the case, it means our times are quite similar to and even worse than pre-Flood times. Which means further that the final judgment by fire is fast approaching for Creation and for those who remain unfaithful and worship the devil rather than Almighty Yah. 

We have already given some idea as to how Eve’s obedience and devotion to Yah’s command not to eat the Forbidden Fruit somehow got diluted and eventually diverted by the serpent, thereby, causing her to sin. The two-step temptation process of dilution and diversion is also what magicians use for their tricks, for magic is originally of the devil. It involves disguising or minimizing the presence of a thing and then diverting the attention of people to another thing while all the while transforming or vanishing the original thing to create an illusion. It was not long before demons also used magic to perform miracles, providing a powerful tool to deceive people en masse. But we get ahead of our story.  

Let us review Eve’s temptation. She knew and stood firm on the command that she should not eat. Following the command was her corresponding willful acknowledgement of divine grace (what we call worship), the opposite of which is sin. (Gen. 3) Sin, therefore, means the absence of true worship. And when there is no true worship, there is also death. The serpent’s retort to Eve’s refusal to eat was that she would not die. Diluting or minimizing the effect of eating the fruit by blatantly saying she will not die (the dilution) but will become like Yah, knowing good and evil (the diversion), turned Eve around. It still works today for many people. Eating and violating are less grievous words, especially for those who have religion or some form of faith and still willfully engage in sinfulness (touching, looking and tasting) because they believe they will be forgiven. But death is a more fearful word to use, so Satan minimizes its effects in order to finally divert our minds from the command or the law we are violating. For often, what we are touching, seeing and tasting are things that are not meant for us to have by divine decree. Yet, we still proudly “worship Yah on Sundays” in spite of all those existing offenses. From Monday to Saturday, we merrily forget Yah’s commands.

Satan, therefore, uses his best tricks in diverting human minds by highlighting the desirableness or “deliciousness of the fruit”. Eve did see how desirable and good the fruit was as food and gave in to her desire. She was now accepting the false fact that she would become like Yah (she was actually already like Yah, but she needed not to know the bad) and forgot entirely the command and the consequence of violating it – that is, sinning and dying. See how the covenant of love and grace that maintained her worship to Yah was thus cunningly diluted and virtually diverted through her lust of the flesh, her lust of the eyes and her pride of life. The flesh, the eyes and the mind or heart are where temptations work to gradually dilute and divert our lives away from true worship. The spirit is willing to worship, but the flesh indeed is weak.

No, Satan does not merely cause us to change places or manner of worship from one denomination to another, one belief to another, one theory to another, or one party to another, although these, too, are some of his dirty tricks. He had long diluted and diverted the world from true devotion. Yahusha alone knew and understood true worship, aside from a few chosen forerunners who had remained in the way, from Noah up to the time He would arrive to finally perfect humans again. And He finally revealed the simple principle to a woman of Samaria, a place hated by the Yahudim, and one who was an adulteress and an idolatrous follower of Baal. (John 4:16-19) Why not? Yahusha came to heal the sick, not the whole, the blind, not those who see.

In short, the woman’s sins of adultery and idolatry were results of her lack of true worship, which came about as a result of demonic dilution and diversion. Why? She had had 5 husbands and the one she had was not her husband. Not so unlike Eve, the woman’s fleshly desires led her to be diluted in her devotion to one husband until she was completely diverted from living a life of faithfulness to a divine covenant. Nevertheless, she believed in the coming Masshiach, the One talking to her. Recognizing Yahusha as a prophet, their conversation turned to worship. Yahusha then said that although “salvation is of the Yahudim” (i.e., they had the “true religion” or the true Temple, for the temple in Samaria was of Baal), the coming true worshipers will neither worship in Samaria nor in Jerusalem. It was to be “in spirit and in truth”. (John 4:1-26)

Yahusha was now removing the devil’s dilution and diversion of worship and bringing it back to Him and to Him alone, as the sent One of the Father in Heaven. In fact, the woman came so close to having true worship at that moment by the well. Like Adam and Eve, she was talking to the Creator and learning the way back to Garden life. She went and called her town-mates who then asked Yahusha to stay a while because they were certain they had found the Masshiach. The woman had drunk of the “true, living water” by the well of Jacob. Jacob indeed drank of that water as well and was glad to see the fulfillment of his own labors. Those people had all been drinking Jacob’s water that made them thirsty again; but “living water” alone could bring back true worship – as well as forgiveness and eternal life. Yahusha not only ended up driving out demons from the woman and many other Samaritans, He also introduced true worship to those who had long forgotten how it was done. They did not have to build another temple. Somehow, they got the first simple lesson on worship many today fail to get into their minds, unable then to move up to Lesson 2 and further.

So, if idolatrous worship and even the old Yahudim religion failed to satisfy the standards of Yah, what of our religions and worship today? How did worship become adoration for saintly humans or veneration for images in the minds of people today? How did the use of idols, images or symbols become acceptable visual aids in personal worship and piety? How did the name of Mary, the mother of Yahusha, become the Mother of God, Queen of Heaven, Mediatrix and Immaculate Virgin who ascended to Heaven? All these are results of dilution and diversion of people’s true worship to Yah, plain and simple. The problem is that the history of how this happened has never been made known to people, except for the councils and decrees that imposed such ideas upon people, leading them to believe that such teachings and practices came from Yah Himself and not from someone else. For it is not hard to understand and convince ourselves that many of these teachings are not found in Scriptures, nor are they organic, natural and spiritual principles the ordinary believer can honestly claim to be pure and unadulterated truths they can live by. In reality, they are the products of magical or miraculous exhibitions of power surrounding certain men, women and angels who became diabolical tools to dilute and divert true worship away from Yah.

The focus on miraculous, mysterious or magical manifestations of divine favor upon “venerated saintly“ individuals and all the steps taken to prove such miracles and declaring their heavenly provenance through “canonization” by ecclesiastical authorities lead many people astray from true worship. For such practices have no precedence and authority from either Scriptures or Yahusha Himself. There is no less respectful or less hurtful way to say this to those who sincerely and piously believe what they have long accepted as the proper way to worship. Unlike Yahusha, we cannot read people’s minds and show them we truly understand their hearts, their burdens and their pains in life, as He did to the Samaritan woman. Nevertheless, we can say with absolute certainty that true worship is “in spirit and in truth” – that it is neither in Jerusalem nor Samaria, neither of Yahudim nor of Samaritans, neither of any religion nor of any form of human teaching or conception.  

Yet today, worship has become so complex and so diversified, as many as there are religions or churches or denominations. As in the time of the Pharisees, true worship rarely exists for “in vain, they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men”. (Matt 15:3-9) How these teachings and traditions came about, many are familiar with; but most of us are too lazy to undilute and undivert our minds by finding out the real truth. Why? Because we have placed our lives and our own prerogative to choose what is right to people we believe to have the authority or power to decide for us. And so, in almost any religion or faith-system today, too much power, wealth, command and honor for one person, has allowed Satan and his demons to dilute and divert the minds of people away from true worship. All those attributes belong only to Yah and are His alone to dispense with according to truth and justice. The record of religion speaks otherwise. We speak of impure and defiled religion, not true worship which Yahusha established for eternity in the hearts of humans and angels.

True worship, therefore, belonged to the Yahudim for it was to them that Yah revealed Himself and His Word. But even that statement was subject to change, for He prophesied of a coming time when worship would be perfected. Yes, He gave a foretaste of that New and Living Way to the Samaritans, prior to the shedding of His blood and His resurrection. But He did heal, renew, set free and forgive people as well, for He deserved honor, glory and worship as Immanuel. While Satan sought to tempt Him to kneel down and worship him, Yahusha went about teaching people that He, being the Son of Yah, deserved the honor, glory and worship as He was and as He is. Killing Him on the cross was the pinnacle of the demonic act of diluting and diverting true worship from Yahusha Masshiach. The One they should have worshipped, they killed as if He were a criminal. Our lack of true worship comes close to putting Him back on the cross over and over again, as many seem to do obsessively today. Ironically, it was the Yahudim, His own people, who failed to give Yahusha true worship. The adulterous Samaritan woman turned out to be much holier than the Yahudim leaders and citizens. Repentance and submission lead us to the path of true worship.    

What did Satan use to divert the Yahudim from true worship? The Law of Moses. The worship in the Jerusalem Temple was provided for by law. True, it was a religion based on divine law but a temporary one. When Yah finally wrote the law in the heart, through Yahusha’s ministry and sacrifice, worship went back to its original organic source and exclusive place, the heart. (Jer. 31:31-33) Not in or through the temple, the church, the rituals, the services, the offerings and the songs and praises in the assembly. For what is the summation of the law? Love Yah and others. So love fulfills the law and worship as well. For the aim of the law is obedience and peace. And violation of the law is sin and death. So, love is obedience, peace and life.

Worship in spirit and truth, as Yahusha defines it, is not in idolatry or religion or law-keeping, not in Samaria, Jerusalem or anywhere else, and not in being an Israelite, a Muslim, Catholic, Baptist or Buddhist. It is simply following the word of Yahusha. As long as the law or any human law exists, sin remains. For the love of Yahusha alone fulfills the law and sets us free from sin and, hence, free to worship in spirit and in truth. Freedom from the law requires knowing and having love. And having love means fulfilling the requirement of the law which is love itself. It is not freedom to sin again. Yahusha fulfilled the law by dying; and having done so, His love grants us liberty from sin and death through faith (true worship) in Him. For the law required His ultimate death and sacrifice, that is, divine love offered to humans. Only in receiving it and having the same love for Yah (worship) “in spirit and in truth” can we also fulfill the liberating law or demand of true worship.  

Our spiritual warfare reaches that stage when the offering of our life, in true worship, determines the value we place on our commitment to love and serve Yah onward. If it comes to that point when the fight requires giving up all that we have, then we need to measure and test the limits of our love and devotion to Yah at any moment to fully establish our inheritance in the Kingdom.

(Next: Why Divine Love is Abominable to Demons and Why they Promote Human Love Instead)