Topical Beliefs | The Faithful Remnant

Our Topical Beliefs

What do we believe about the soul, the Sabbath, heaven, hell, the Trinity, the Holy Days, or the end of the age? On this page we answer forty of the questions people ask most often, each in a short section of its own. Our Core Beliefs page sets out the foundation in brief; this page goes topic by topic. For how each answer compares with seven traditional Christian and Jewish groups, see Compare Traditional Christian and Jewish Topical Beliefs. The full studies behind many of these answers are in TFR Exclusive Articles.

The forty topics:

What is the Bible?
Are Modern Bible Versions reliable?
Who & What are Christians?
Who or What is God?
Who or What is Jesus Christ?
Who or What is the Messiah?
What and Where is the true Church?
What is, and How is Baptism achieved?
What and Where is Hell?
What are traditional Religious and Jewish holidays?
What is Man?
Can Science be Wholly Reconciled with God?
What is Christmas?
What is Easter?
Is Eternal Life a Reality?
What happens When People Die? Do they go to Heaven?
Will People that Die be Resurrected, and when?
Why does the Bible Contain an “Old” and a "New Covenant?
What is the Mark of the Beast?
Who or What is the Beast of Revelation?
Who and Where are the Lost 10 Tribes?
Can the Bible be Proven?
Does the Biblical Record match with Historical Secular Records?
Have, or Will all Bible Prophecies be Fulfilled?
Does Scripture Reconcile with Secular Historical Records?
Have Bibles been Tampered With?
What and Where is Heaven and Who will Reside There?
What does the bible Reveal about British Royal Family?
What or Who is the Whore of Babylon?
What does Born Again Christian Mean?
What is Salvation?
Do Satan and Demons Exist? Why and What are they?
Has God made mistakes?
Explain the Tribulation and the Antichrist.
Does Purgatory or an Intermediary State Exist?
What is the Trinity?
Will those ignorant of God and/or Christianity have an opportunity to be Saved?
Why does God allow Violence and Suffering?
Are Christians or Jews or both God’s Chosen People?
What is the Purpose of the Lord’s Prayer?

1. What is the Bible?

We hold that none of the usual starting points — Scripture-plus-Tradition, Scripture alone, or Scripture read through rabbinic law — begins from the right foundation, because each is working from a text substantially altered from what was originally inspired and entrusted to the Israelite people. We do not read the Bible primarily as a historical record or moral guidebook, but as something closer to an owner’s manual: a document our Creator, Yahweh, wrote and inspired to explain how we are built and how we are meant to live, function, and worship in light of that design. It was never a “Jewish” book in the sense of the modern rabbinic religion of Judaism, a religion that did not exist prior to the return from Babylonian captivity; it was written by Israelite prophets and entrusted to the Israelite people, most of whom trace to tribes other than Judah. Both Covenants have suffered documented, admitted institutional alterations — the Catholic Encyclopedia’s own footnotes record 4th-century monks being instructed to insert supporting language for the Trinity doctrine at 1 John 5:7-8 — and we hold the New Covenant text was originally composed in Hebrew rather than Greek or Aramaic, with internal, manuscript, and patristic evidence pointing that direction. Because we hold our own foundational documents are drawn nearer to those uncorrected originals, we hold a congregation’s teaching should begin as close as can be reached to the unaltered original, not from a later, denominationally-shaped edition — recognizing that a text’s alteration does not become more original simply because a great many people now rely on it without knowing how it came to differ from what came before.

2. Are Modern Bible Versions reliable?

We hold that no currently circulating Bible translation — Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, or Jewish — is fully reliable, for a specific and documentable reason rather than a general suspicion: a translation must be “substantially different” from earlier versions to qualify for copyright, which by definition means each new copyrighted version is structurally required to diverge further from the source rather than converge on it. More than four hundred fifty English versions exist in significant part for this commercial reason. Layered on top of that incentive are centuries of denominational preference and documented, admitted institutional substitutions — the Catholic Encyclopedia’s own footnotes record 4th-century monks being directed to render three distinct original words uniformly as “hell,” and to translate the Hebrew nephesh and Greek soma (both meaning “body”) as “soul,” supporting a doctrine of the immortal soul borrowed from Greek Platonism rather than drawn from Scripture. We further hold Yahweh’s own personal name was removed and replaced with the generic titles “God” and “LORD” in roughly seven thousand instances. Our own translation work does not present itself as a new “translation” competing with these; we regard it instead as a work of preservation and correction, restoring documented name and word substitutions back toward the original-language terms wherever the historical record of the change itself can be shown, rather than introducing new interpretive choices of our own.

3. Who & What are Christians?

We do not use, or organize around, the label “Christian” for ourselves, for a specific historical reason: the Greek term itself likely derives from pagan usage — “Chrestos” was already an epithet applied to the worship of Mithras and Osiris before it was ever applied, only three times in the entire received Greek text, to the followers of Yah’shua at Antioch (Acts 11:26), a labeling event the text itself says happened “at first,” not a name the earliest believers chose for themselves. The New Covenant’s own name for that group was Natsarim, or Nazarenes (Acts 24:5) — a term the Church Father Epiphanius records was still applied, as a term of reproach, to a sect that kept Yahweh’s commandments and was otherwise indistinguishable from Hebrews except in believing the Messiah had already come. We hold, consistent with our own name, that we are Israelites in the faith of our forefathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not adherents of a later, Greek-labeled religion built up around Him afterward — a Congregation of the Faithful Remnant rather than a “Christian” denomination alongside the many others. What actually identifies a true follower of Yahweh, in our reading, is observable and specific: keeping Yahweh’s commandments and holding a clear, prophetically grounded testimony of Yah’shua the Messiah (Revelation 12:17; 19:10) — not which Greek-derived label a group happens to have inherited.

4. Who or What is God?

We hold that God has a specific personal name, Yahweh (from the Hebrew Tetragrammaton YHWH), occurring some 6,800 to 7,000 times in the original Hebrew text, and that “God” and “Lord” are titles, not names — comparable to calling a specific individual simply “the man” or “the woman.” We regard the wholesale replacement of that name with generic titles across nearly every English, and many Hebrew-language, Bible translation as the single most consequential alteration made to Scripture, because Yahweh’s own promise to answer prayer is, in our reading, tied to being called upon by that specific name (Zechariah 13:9; Jeremiah 29:12; Psalm 91:14-15), not by a title generic enough to belong to any of the “other gods” Scripture itself acknowledges are worshipped elsewhere. We also reject the Trinity as an extra-biblical formulation with no basis in the text itself — the word appears nowhere in Scripture — holding instead that Yahweh the Father is the one supreme God, that Yah’shua the Messiah is His literal, begotten Son, not co-eternal with Him, and that Yahweh’s Holy Spirit is His power and will in action rather than a third distinct divine person. We understand these as the founding members of a single Family of Yahweh, into which believers are ultimately being adopted as sons, rather than as three co-equal, co-eternal persons in one indivisible being.

5. Who or What is Jesus Christ?

We hold that His proper name is Yah’shua (“Yahweh’s Salvation” or “Yahweh Saves”), not “Jesus” — a name with no meaning at all in the original languages, derived by way of Greek and Latin from a name that never contained the sounds it renders, since neither Hebrew nor Greek possessed a “J” sound until many centuries after the New Covenant was written. We hold Yah’shua to be the literal, begotten Son of Yahweh, conceived when a portion of Yahweh’s own Holy Spirit — not a separate divine person, but Yahweh’s own power and will — came upon Mary; He was thus fully human in the flesh while His capacity to resist all temptation came directly from that Spirit. We reject that He pre-existed eternally as very God alongside the Father in the sense the Trinity doctrine requires; rather, He was declared, or made, the Son of Yahweh with power specifically by His resurrection from the dead (Romans 1:4), becoming the “firstborn” of Yahweh’s larger Family, of whom all faithful believers are meant to become further-adopted sons and daughters. We likewise hold He is an Israelite by lineage — of the tribe of Judah, house of David — not what the New Covenant’s Greek text calls a “Jew” in the religious-political sense of that era’s Judean establishment, which He Himself denounced (Matthew 23).

6. Who or What is the Messiah?

We hold Yah’shua is the promised Messiah, the Hebrew mashiach (“Anointed One”), of which the Greek-derived title “Christ” is simply a translation — so that, properly understood, every Israelite already awaits a “Messiah,” and calling oneself “Christian” rather than simply affirming the Messiah adds a Greek, non-scriptural label to what should be a straightforward claim. Central to our understanding is that the Messiah is an Israelite by lineage — of the tribe of Judah, house of David (Matthew 1; Luke 3) — not a member of the religious-political establishment the New Covenant’s Greek text calls “the Jews,” whom He denounced (Matthew 23); and further, that religious identity and genealogical descent are two separate things which should not be assumed to guarantee one another, whether in His era or in ours. We hold He fulfilled specific, first-coming messianic prophecy through His death and resurrection as Yahweh’s firstborn Son, and that a still-future second coming will fulfill the remaining prophecies of judgment, restoration, and the establishment of Yahweh’s Kingdom on earth — not a Church replacing Israel, but Israelites, properly understood, inheriting the promises originally made to their forefathers.

7. What and Where is the true Church?

We hold that the “church” Christ founded was never meant to be a building, denomination, or incorporated institution at all — the Greek word rendered “church,” ekklesia, simply means “called-out ones” or congregation, and we use “Congregation” in preference to “church” for that reason. Yahweh’s true Congregation consists of those He has called out from the world, first His people of the physical birthright of Israel (properly understood as thirteen tribes, not simply the tribe of Judah), and, under the New Covenant, all who respond to that same calling in faith regardless of ancestry. We hold that membership in this Congregation “is registered in heaven” rather than on any man-made denominational roll, and that any church or synagogue that incorporates itself under civil law has placed the state’s authority above Yahweh’s, submitting its governance and doctrine to a corporate charter rather than to Scripture alone — a pattern we trace to the “doctrine of the Nicolaitans” condemned in Revelation 2, the earliest form of a clergy-laity hierarchy exalting human leadership over the “called-out ones.” We accordingly do not organize as an incorporated denomination and do not use honorific religious titles (Rabbi, Priest, Pastor, Father, Reverend) for our own leadership, understanding the true Church as a natural, Yahweh-governed body rather than an artificial, state-chartered organization.

8. What is, and How is Baptism achieved?

We hold that water baptism, as practiced almost universally throughout traditional Christianity, has been carried over, unnecessarily, from the pre-Christian Hebrew ritual of mikvah, and that John the Baptist’s own recorded words describe its supersession rather than its permanence: “I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but He who is coming after me… will baptize you with His Holy Spirit and fire” (Matthew 3:11). We hold that Yah’shua Himself never performed a single water baptism (John 4:2), and that the baptism which actually matters, the one that incorporates a believer into Yahweh’s true Congregation, is baptism by His Holy Spirit — received immediately upon genuine belief, as in the case of Cornelius’s household, who received the Holy Spirit before any water was applied (Acts 10:44-48). Yah’shua’s own water baptism by John, in our reading, served to complete or fulfill the mikvah ritual once and for all on humanity’s behalf, much as His crucifixion completed the Passover and His resurrection completed the wave-sheaf offering, rather than establishing a new required rite for others. We therefore do not treat water baptism as a requirement for salvation or church membership, though it may still be practiced without harm as a voluntary symbolic act, provided it is not confused with, or substituted for, the baptism by the Holy Spirit that alone actually matters.

9. What and Where is Hell?

We hold that the traditional doctrine of hell as a place of eternal conscious torment rests on the mistranslation of three distinct words into the single English word “Hell.” Hades (and its Hebrew equivalent Sheol) simply means “the grave” — the common, unconscious state of all the dead, righteous and wicked alike, with no torment involved at all. Tartaroo, used only once in Scripture (2 Peter 2:4), refers exclusively to the restraint of certain fallen angels, never to the fate of human beings. Gehenna, the word most often behind English “hell” in the Gospels, is the Valley of Hinnom, a real ravine outside Jerusalem historically used for burning refuse and, in earlier idolatrous periods, child sacrifice to Molech — Yah’shua invoked it as a vivid image of complete and final destruction, not of unending torture. We therefore hold that the wicked, at the final judgment, are consumed and cease to exist entirely (the “second death,” Revelation 20:14) rather than being kept alive forever to suffer, since we understand man as inherently mortal (see Topic 11) with no innate immortal soul to torment eternally in the first place. We regard the doctrine of eternal conscious torment as both a mistranslation and a serious misrepresentation of Yahweh’s character, since it depicts unending cruelty where Scripture, rightly read, describes decisive and final justice.

10. What are traditional Religious and Jewish holidays?

We hold that the only religious festivals actually commanded by Yahweh for His people are the seven annual Holy Days set out in Leviticus 23: Passover, Unleavened Bread, Pentecost (Firstfruits), Trumpets, Atonement, Tabernacles, and the Last Great Day. We observe these still today, understanding them not as an abolished “Old Covenant” system but as a prophetic outline of Yahweh’s entire plan for mankind, each with meaning already fulfilled or yet to be fulfilled. The spring festivals (Passover, Unleavened Bread, Pentecost) we hold were fulfilled in the Messiah’s death, burial, and resurrection and the giving of the Holy Spirit to the early Congregation, while the autumn festivals (Trumpets, Atonement, Tabernacles, and the Last Great Day) we hold are yet future, depicting the Messiah’s return, the reconciliation of Israel, the millennial reign, and the final judgment of all mankind, respectively. We reject Christmas and Easter as later substitutions of pagan origin (see Topics 13 and 14) with no basis in apostolic practice, and likewise do not observe birthdays, Halloween, or other widely kept holidays we judge to derive from non-Scriptural or idolatrous sources. We view Yahweh’s seven Holy Days, kept in their proper season, as both a teaching calendar and a standing invitation to understand His redemptive plan for all mankind in its full, ordered scope, rather than a set of dead rituals.

11. What is Man?

We hold, from Genesis 2:7, that man became a “living soul” (nephesh chayah) only through the combination of formed body and breath of life — the soul is not a separate immortal component placed within man, but is what man is, a mortal being with no inherent immortality of his own. We hold that the “spirit in man” referenced in passages such as 1 Corinthians 2:11 refers to man’s own mind, intellect, and disposition, not the Holy Spirit and not a surviving conscious essence distinct from the body. On this understanding, man is mortal by nature, exactly as Genesis records, subject to death as the direct consequence of sin (Romans 6:23), and possesses no innate claim on eternal life. Immortality, in our reading, is instead a gift Yahweh offers, made available only through resurrection into His family at the appointed time (see Topics 15-17), not a property automatically possessed by every human being from birth or conception. We hold that this distinction is theologically significant: much of the traditional doctrine surrounding the intermediate state, purgatory, and the immediate ascent of the soul to heaven or hell depends on man already possessing an immortal soul, a premise we do not find scripturally supported once the relevant Hebrew and Greek terms are examined directly rather than through later doctrinal tradition.

12. Can Science be Wholly Reconciled with God?

We hold that true science and correctly understood Scripture cannot actually be in conflict, because Yahweh is the author of both the physical universe science studies and the Scripture that reveals His purposes. Where an apparent conflict exists, we hold the fault lies in one of two places: either in a mistranslated or misinterpreted reading of the biblical text (much traditional doctrine, in our view, rests on such errors, as with several other topics addressed on this page), or in scientific claims that go beyond what has actually been observed and tested, and are instead asserted as settled fact when they remain interpretive or theoretical. We are therefore skeptical of treating either popular religious tradition or popular scientific consensus as automatically authoritative, and instead try to weigh each specific claim on its own evidentiary merits, testing both traditional doctrine and scientific interpretation against the plain, best-attested text of Scripture and against the observable facts themselves. We do not regard this as “science versus God,” since we consider that framing itself to be largely manufactured by people on both sides who have committed themselves in advance to a particular conclusion, rather than a genuine, necessary conflict between the natural world Yahweh created and His revealed word.

13. What is Christmas?

We hold that December 25 was not the Messiah’s actual birth date and that the holiday itself traces to pre-Christian Roman celebrations — Saturnalia and the cult of Sol Invictus (the “Unconquered Sun”), whose feast day was also December 25, tied to the winter solstice and the symbolic “rebirth” of the sun. We hold that the institutional church, centuries after the apostles, adopted and renamed this existing popular festival rather than instituting a new one commanded by Scripture, and that Yah’shua’s own apostles neither observed nor commanded any such birthday commemoration. Based on the timing implied by the priestly courses mentioned in Luke 1 and the presence of shepherds “abiding in the field” (Luke 2:8, a detail inconsistent with the cold, wet Judean winter), we hold the Messiah’s actual birth more plausibly fell in the early autumn, in the general vicinity of the Feast of Tabernacles, which we find symbolically fitting given that festival’s prophetic association with Yahweh “tabernacling” among men. We do not observe December 25 as a religious holy day, keeping instead the seven Holy Days actually commanded in Leviticus 23 (see Topic 10).

14. What is Easter?

We hold that the very name “Easter” derives from Ishtar (also known as Astarte or Eostre in various regional forms), an ancient pagan fertility goddess, and that the holiday’s familiar symbols — eggs and rabbits — are inherited fertility emblems with no connection to Scripture, layered onto the Christian calendar well after the apostolic period. More significantly, we reject the traditional Good-Friday-crucifixion, Sunday-morning-resurrection chronology as mathematically impossible to reconcile with Yah’shua’s own explicit prophecy that He would be in the grave “three days and three nights” (Matthew 12:40) — a Friday afternoon to Sunday morning burial spans only about a day and a half, not three full days and nights by any reckoning. We hold instead to a Wednesday crucifixion, before a “high day” annual Sabbath (the first day of Unleavened Bread, John 19:31, not the regular weekly Sabbath), with burial beginning near Wednesday sunset and resurrection occurring precisely three days and three nights later, right at the end of the weekly Sabbath, near Saturday sunset — consistent with the women finding the tomb already empty “as it began to dawn” the first day of the week (Matthew 28:1). We affirm the resurrection itself as an absolutely essential, non-negotiable foundation of the faith; we simply hold that its true chronology, and the holiday’s true origin, have both been obscured over time.

15. Is Eternal Life a Reality?

Yes, we hold eternal life to be an absolutely real, promised future — but we hold that it is a gift to be granted, not a possession every human being already has by nature. Because we hold man to be inherently mortal, with no innate immortal soul (see Topic 11), eternal life cannot simply refer to an unbroken continuation of a life that never truly ends; it must instead be understood as something genuinely conferred, at a specific future point, on those found worthy. We hold that this gift becomes available strictly through the Messiah’s own resurrection, described in 1 Corinthians 15:20 as the “firstfruits” of a coming harvest of resurrected believers, and that no one receives it automatically at the moment of physical death. Eternal life, in our reading, is therefore a real but future and conditional reality, made certain by the Messiah’s own resurrection as proof of concept and promise, granted to the faithful at their own resurrection (see Topic 17) into full immortality as members of Yahweh’s own family, rather than a currently and universally possessed spiritual inheritance. We consider this distinction important because much confusion about the afterlife, in our view, stems from assuming eternal life is already secured the moment someone dies, rather than being the object of a still-future resurrection hope.

16. What happens When People Die? Do they go to Heaven?

We hold that the dead are entirely and literally unconscious, described repeatedly in Scripture as “asleep” (John 11:11-14; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-15) rather than continuing in some other realm of awareness. There is, in our reading, no immediate ascent to heaven, no immediate torment in hell, and no passage of subjective time experienced by the dead between death and resurrection — the next conscious moment a person experiences, from their own point of view, is their resurrection. We hold this to be consistent with Yah’shua’s own statement in John 3:13 that “no man has ascended up to heaven, but He that came down from heaven,” which we take to exclude the idea that departed believers are presently residing in heaven. We read the apparent exceptions in Scripture accordingly: Elijah’s fiery “translation” (2 Kings 2) we hold to be relocation to another place on earth rather than heaven itself; Enoch’s disappearance (Genesis 5:24) and Moses’ undiscovered grave (Deuteronomy 34:6) we hold to be genuine deaths, however unusual their circumstances; and the appearance of Moses and Elijah at the Transfiguration we note Yah’shua Himself explicitly called a “vision” (Matthew 17:9), not a literal visitation by two living men from heaven. The dead, in our understanding, simply await their bodily resurrection (see Topic 17) as their one and only future hope.

17. Will People that Die be Resurrected, and when?

We hold that resurrection is the only means by which anyone attains eternal life, since we understand man to have no innate immortal soul (see Topics 11 and 16). We hold to two resurrections, both described in Revelation 20. The first, called the “first resurrection,” occurs at the Messiah’s return, raising the faithful “firstfruits” — Yahweh’s called-out Elect — to immortality, to reign with the Messiah on earth (not in heaven) for a literal thousand-year millennium, exactly as the Messiah’s own resurrection, described as the “firstfruits” of this future harvest (1 Corinthians 15:20), guarantees and models. The second resurrection, sometimes called the “Great White Throne” judgment, occurs a thousand years later, for everyone else who has ever lived — the vast majority of humanity who never had a genuine opportunity to know Yahweh or the Messiah in this lifetime (see Topic 37). We hold this to be their first real chance at salvation, granted in fairness by a just Yahweh, rather than a moment of automatic condemnation for having died outside the faith. Those who, even then, knowingly and finally reject Yahweh’s offer face the “second death” — complete and final annihilation (see Topic 9) — rather than eternal conscious torment. We consider this two-resurrection framework central to understanding Yahweh’s entire plan for mankind, resolving what we see as the otherwise troubling question of the billions who die having never heard a fair presentation of the Gospel.

18. Why does the Bible Contain an “Old” and a "New Covenant?

We hold, per our reading of Scripture, that Yahweh’s spiritual law — summarized in the Ten Commandments — existed from creation, long before Sinai, and is eternal; Abraham himself “kept my commandments, my statutes, and my laws” (Genesis 26:5) centuries before Moses. The Old Covenant made at Sinai was not the origin of this moral law but a specific marriage agreement between Yahweh and the nation of Israel, and its later dissolution therefore could not undo a law it never created in the first place — “the dissolving of the Old Covenant could not destroy what it did not bring into existence.” We hold that the New Covenant, inaugurated by the Messiah’s blood, writes this same eternal law on the heart (Hebrews 8:10) rather than abolishing it; what actually ended was only the temporary ceremonial and sacrificial system — animal offerings and the Levitical priesthood — added later “because of transgressions” (Galatians 3:19) and fulfilled once for all by the Messiah’s own sacrifice. We hold that the civil statutes which define what sin actually is — tithing, clean and unclean foods, the weekly and annual Sabbaths, sexual morality — remain in force for the New Covenant Congregation, since Yahweh’s character, and therefore His law, never changes (Malachi 3:6). We understand the Old and New Covenants, then, not as two different laws but as the same eternal marriage covenant between Yahweh and His people, first written on stone and now renewed and written on the heart.

19. What is the Mark of the Beast?

We hold that the mark of the beast is symbolic, not a literal chip, card, or tattoo: the “hand” represents what we do (our actions) and the “forehead” represents what we believe (our mind), together showing whose commandments we actually obey in practice. We hold, further, that the specific commandment historically targeted for substitution by “the Beast” (Rome, and the church government modeled on it, see Topic 20) is the Sabbath commandment specifically, which the Roman council of Laodicea (circa 363 A.D.) formally decreed Christians must abandon in favor of Sunday observance, on pain of being “declared anathema.” We hold that Yahweh’s own parallel “sign,” commanded in Exodus 13:9 and Deuteronomy 6:8 to be kept “upon thine hand” and “between thine eyes,” identifies obedient Sabbath-keeping as the positive counterpart to the beast’s mark, since the Sabbath alone, among the Ten Commandments, directly determines whether a person will buy, sell, or work on Yahweh’s specified day of rest — making it, in our reading, the one commandment capable of functioning as a visible “test” of true allegiance. We therefore hold that the real issue behind Revelation’s mark is not a futuristic barcode, microchip, or identification card — which we regard as a deliberate satanic diversion from the actual question — but whether a person submits to Yahweh’s seventh-day Sabbath or to the Sunday observance (along with Christmas, Easter, and similar customs) historically imposed by the very institution we identify as the Beast.

20. Who or What is the Beast of Revelation?

We hold that the Beast symbolizes the series of four world-ruling Gentile empires described in Daniel 2 and 7 — Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome — culminating specifically in the Roman Empire, which we hold received its authority directly from Satan (“the dragon gave him his power,” Revelation 13:2). We identify the Beast’s “deadly wound” as Rome’s fall in 476 A.D., and its subsequent “healing” as the Byzantine “Imperial Restoration” of 554 A.D., continuing in unbroken succession through the Frankish kingdom, the Holy Roman Empire, and Napoleon’s empire, for a symbolic and, in our reading, literal period of 1260 years (554-1814 A.D., applying the day-for-a-year prophetic principle), with a future revival still to come as a federation of European nations. We calculate the number 666 not as any modern technology but as the numeric value of “Lateinos” (“Latin Man”), tying the number directly to Rome’s own founding identity via Greek letter-numeral values. We identify the “woman” who rides the Beast in Revelation 17 as the Roman Catholic Church, whose institutional, incorporated form of church government we trace to Pope Leo I (440-461 A.D.), with her “harlot daughters” representing the Protestant churches that came out of her — together constituting “Babylon the Great.” We hold this same institution enforced the Sunday-Sabbath substitution described in Topic 19 historically, at great cost in martyred lives, and that Scripture warns it will do so again in a future revival immediately preceding the Messiah’s return.

21. Who and Where are the Lost 10 Tribes?

We hold, distinctively, that the “birthright” promise of national greatness and material wealth made to Abraham passed, not through Judah (who received instead the “sceptre,” the Messianic promise), but through Joseph’s two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, and that this promise identifies two modern nations specifically: Manasseh as the United States and Ephraim, together with the “company of nations,” as the British Commonwealth, with the other scattered tribes and part of Benjamin identified among northwestern European nations such as Holland, Belgium, France, and the Scandinavian countries. We hold that Scripture’s “Jews” and “House of Israel” are not synonymous terms — that “Jew” originally referred to Canaanite and mixed peoples living among the tribe of Judah, not to the Israelite tribes generally — a distinction we consider essential to correctly reading many prophecies. We trace, following Ezekiel 17’s “riddle and parable,” the continuous transfer of the throne of David — through Jeremiah, a surviving royal daughter, and the “Stone of Destiny” — from Jerusalem to Ireland, to Scotland, and finally to England, continuing today in the British royal line (see also Topic 28). We hold that a prophesied 2,520-year period of national “banishment” (721 B.C. to 1800 A.D., applying the day-for-a-year principle to Israel’s “seven times” punishment) explains the otherwise remarkable rise of Anglo-American global wealth and power specifically after 1800, and we hold that Scripture warns these same modern Israelite nations of a coming renewed captivity, at the hands of a revived “Assyria” (modern Central Europe), unless they repent and return to Yahweh’s commandments.

22. Can the Bible be Proven?

We hold, from article-length treatment of this question, that the Bible can be actively proven true through several distinct lines of evidence. First, historical and archaeological corroboration confirms its recorded events, and its fulfilled prophecies (which we hold have been fulfilled with total accuracy to date) confirm its predictive authority. Second, cross-confirmation between the Old and New Covenants — the Messiah and His apostles directly authenticating specific Old Covenant books and passages — provides internal verification. Third, the independent consistency of many books, written by different authors often centuries apart without collaboration, on shared topics, argues strongly against merely human authorship. We hold, distinctively, to a structural and numerical argument as well: that the original Hebrew canon of 22 Old Covenant books (per the historian Josephus) plus 27 New Covenant books totals 49 — seven times seven, a number we hold Scripture consistently uses to denote completion — a design we believe was deliberately “scattered” throughout Scripture (“line upon line,” Isaiah 28:9-11) specifically to resist tampering and to separate the diligent, called-out Elect from the merely curious reader. Ultimately, though, we hold the most convincing proof to be practical and experiential rather than purely intellectual: obedience to the Bible’s specific instructions — its Sabbath, its Holy Days, its moral commands — demonstrably “works” and produces blessing in a life that actually tests it, fulfilling the command to “prove all things” (1 Thessalonians 5:21) through lived practice rather than argument alone.

23. Does the Biblical Record match with Historical Secular Records?

We hold that wherever Scripture touches secular history it is proven accurate by archaeology and secular records — a point we consider corroborated even by prominent secular historical figures (we note, for example, Winston Churchill’s endorsement of taking Bible history “literally” as consistent with sound historical method), and we draw a firm distinction between this historical accuracy and later doctrinal or interpretive claims added by institutional religion, which we hold are a separate matter entirely (see Topic 26). We extend this same confidence in historical corroboration to our own distinctive latter-day historical claims: we hold that the documented rise of British and American global wealth and power specifically after 1800 A.D. corresponds precisely to our calculated end of Israel’s prophesied 2,520-year “seven times” punishment (see Topic 21), and we hold that specific, secular-historically documented continuities in the British monarchy’s coronation rites — the “Stone of Destiny” beneath the coronation chair in Westminster Abbey, the anointing ritual, and the traditional coronation anthem “Zadok the Priest” (drawn directly from 1 Kings 1:38-40) — provide additional, non-doctrinal historical evidence connecting Scripture’s account of David’s throne to a documented, continuously reigning modern royal line. We regard this convergence of biblical prophecy and secular historical record as mutually reinforcing rather than coincidental.

24. Have, or Will all Bible Prophecies be Fulfilled?

We hold that every Bible prophecy fulfilled to date has been fulfilled with precision, a central pillar of our confidence in Scripture’s divine authorship (see Topic 22), while a very substantial body of prophecy remains future and, in our reading, imminent. Drawing together Ezekiel’s “watchman” commission, Malachi’s “book of remembrance,” Jeremiah’s warnings to end-time Israel, Zechariah’s “flying scroll,” and the detailed seal, trumpet, and plague sequence of Revelation, we hold these unfulfilled prophecies to center on: the end-time judgment and captivity of the modern nations of Ephraim and Manasseh (see Topic 21) for their national apostasy; a coming ministry of “two witnesses”; a period of Great Tribulation and martyrdom of the faithful, which we regard as a privilege securing immediate resurrection to eternal life rather than something to fear; the sounding of the seven trumpets and the pouring out of the seven last plagues upon end-time “Babylon” (the revived Roman Empire together with its “Babylon the Great” false-church partner, see Topic 20); and culminating in the Messiah’s visible return to establish Yahweh’s Kingdom government on earth. We hold that our own generation is specifically positioned to recognize these end-time fulfillments, per Daniel’s prophecy that his book’s meaning would remain “sealed until the time of the end” (Daniel 12:4), and that essentially all of the topics addressed throughout this page are, in our understanding, threads of this single, unfolding prophetic narrative rather than isolated or unrelated predictions.

25. Does Scripture Reconcile with Secular Historical Records?

We hold that any apparent tension between Scripture and secular historical record is best explained not by an actual error in the original inspired text, but by translation error, scribal corruption, or incomplete secular record-keeping — never by an actual contradiction in what Yahweh originally caused to be written (see Topic 26). We hold our own distinctive chronological reconciliation to be a strong confirmation of this principle: applying the Bible’s own “day for a year” prophetic principle (Ezekiel 4:4-6, Numbers 14:34) to Israel’s prophesied “seven times” (2,520 years) of national punishment beginning with the House of Israel’s judgment in 721 B.C., we arrive precisely at 1800 A.D. — the exact period in which secular history records the sudden, otherwise unexplained emergence of the British Commonwealth and the United States as the wealthiest, most powerful nations in world history (see Topic 21). We regard this precise convergence of a Scripturally-derived calculation with an independently documented secular historical turning point as exactly the kind of reconciliation Scripture invites: not merely an absence of contradiction, but a positive, verifiable correspondence between the prophetic text and the secular historical record it describes in advance.

26. Have Bibles been Tampered With?

Yes — we hold that deliberate, documented tampering has occurred, and we point to specific, traceable examples rather than a vague general suspicion. We cite the Catholic Encyclopedia’s own supplemental footnotes, in which fourth-century Monks admit to translation directives they were given for the early Latin Vulgate, including the addition of the explicitly Trinitarian language now found at 1 John 5:7-8 (the “Comma Johanneum”), a passage absent from the oldest manuscripts and from the Dead Sea Scrolls’ textual family; the substitution of “natural” for the more correct “carnal,” fostering dependence on the institutional church; the personification of the Holy Spirit as “He” rather than “it,” supporting Trinitarian doctrine; “fornication” substituted for the more correct “adultery” in passages actually addressing spiritual unfaithfulness; and, most significantly for several other topics on this page, the rendering of “nephesh” (properly “body”) as “soul,” importing Platonic Greek philosophy (via early theologians such as Tertullian and Augustine, both explicitly influenced by Plato) into the text to support belief in an inherently immortal soul (see Topics 11 and 16). We hold that a punctuation choice at Luke 23:43 — a comma inserted centuries after the original, unpunctuated manuscripts — likewise manufactures apparent support for immediate conscious afterlife where none was originally intended. We further object, on principle, to the very practice of copyrighting Bible translations, holding that a copyright legally requires a translation to be “substantially different” from the source text to qualify for protection, which we take as an admission, built into copyright law itself, that copyrighted Bibles are, by legal definition, altered from the original. We do not claim every existing translation is worthless — genuine truth remains discoverable in all of them by a diligent student comparing them against the original languages — but we do hold that specific, identifiable, and documented alterations have shaped, and continue to shape, mainstream Christian doctrine on several of the topics addressed on this page.

27. What and Where is Heaven and Who will Reside There?

We hold, distinctively, that no human being — living, dead, or resurrected — will ever reside in heaven in the sense of Yahweh’s own personal dwelling place, based directly on Yah’shua’s own statement that “no man has ascended up to heaven, but He that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man” (John 3:13). We distinguish three “heavens” in Scripture: the atmosphere immediately above the earth, outer space and the celestial bodies, and, distinct from both, Yahweh’s own throne and personal dwelling — and we hold that only the Messiah has ever entered this third heaven. We read the famous exceptions accordingly (see also Topic 16): Elijah’s fiery “translation” (2 Kings 2) as relocation to another location on earth, not heaven; Enoch’s disappearance and Moses’ death as genuine deaths despite their unusual circumstances; and the Mount of Transfiguration appearance of Moses and Elijah as an explicitly labeled “vision” (Matthew 17:9), not literal visitors from heaven. We hold instead that the reward of the faithful is to be resurrected to reign with the Messiah on this earth (Revelation 5:10, “they shall reign on earth”) during the millennium, and ultimately to inherit Yahweh’s Kingdom government as it is established here, rather than to depart the earth for a disembodied heavenly existence. We regard the popular expectation that the saved simply “go to heaven” as a significant and consequential departure from what we hold Scripture actually teaches about mankind’s resurrected future.

28. What does the bible Reveal about British Royal Family?

As set out more fully under Topic 21, we hold that the unconditional Davidic covenant (2 Samuel 7:12-16; Jeremiah 33:20-21) required that David’s throne never lack an heir, and we trace, through Jeremiah’s documented commission to “root out” and then “build and plant” (Jeremiah 1:10) — accomplished, in our reading, by escorting a surviving daughter of Judah’s royal line, together with the “Stone of Destiny” (Jacob’s Pillar-Stone, Genesis 28:18), to a new land — the continuous, unbroken transfer of that same throne from Jerusalem to Ireland, to Scotland, and finally to England, where, we hold, it remains today in the reigning British royal line. We point to specific claimed points of continuity as supporting evidence: the twelve-pointed crowns historically worn by Irish kings, the Stone of Destiny itself resting beneath the coronation chair in Westminster Abbey, the anointing ritual performed at coronation exactly as prescribed in Scripture, and the traditional coronation anthem “Zadok the Priest,” drawn directly from 1 Kings 1:38-40, describing the anointing of Solomon by the priest Zadok. We hold this to be the specific fulfillment of Yahweh’s promise that David’s dynasty would continue forever, identifying the modern British monarchy as its living, present-day continuation — while distinguishing this national birthright inheritance (through Ephraim, see Topic 21) from the separate Messianic “sceptre” promise, which passed through Judah to the Messiah Himself.

29. What or Who is the Whore of Babylon?

We hold that “Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots” (Revelation 17:5) specifically identifies the Roman Catholic Church, depicted riding and controlling the Beast — the revived Roman Empire (see Topic 20) — with her “harlot daughters” representing the Protestant churches that came out of her in historical protest yet, in our assessment, retained her same essential incorporated, man-made church-government model and her same pagan-derived traditions (Sunday observance, Christmas, Easter — see Topics 13, 14, and 19). We hold this identification is corroborated by the historical record of martyrdom described as this woman being “drunken with the blood of the saints” (Revelation 17:6) — an estimated 50 million believers killed during the medieval persecutions of those who kept Yahweh’s true Sabbath and commandments rather than submitting to Rome’s imposed authority. We understand “Babylon” in the broader sense (Revelation 18:4, “Come out of her, my people”) as Yahweh’s urgent call for His true Congregation to separate itself entirely from this whole pagan-corrupted religious system — Catholic and Protestant alike — before the onset of the coming Great Tribulation and the seven last plagues that Scripture describes as Babylon’s ultimate judgment.

30. What does Born Again Christian Mean?

We hold, from Yah’shua’s own explanation to Nicodemus, that being “born again” or “born from above” (John 3:3,5) requires two specific actions: genuine repentance (a complete change of mind and life, turning away from transgression of Yahweh’s law) and belief — specifically, believing the actual Gospel of the Kingdom of Yahweh that the Messiah preached (Mark 1:14-15), not merely believing facts about His life, death, and resurrection. We hold this is followed by receiving Yahweh’s Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38), not by water baptism itself, which we hold is not required (see Topic 8). Being “born again,” in our understanding, describes entry into Yahweh’s own family as a literal begotten child (1 John 3:1-3), the beginning of a lifelong process of purification that culminates in full “birth” into immortality only at the future resurrection — this present life functioning, in effect, as an engagement period prior to the Messiah’s return and marriage supper (see Topic 17). We hold that being “born again” is therefore not merely an emotional experience or a one-time verbal profession of faith, but a genuine, obedience-tested transformation, and we hold, pointedly, that “faith without works is dead” (James 2:26) — that many who identify as “born-again Christians” in the popular modern sense may mistake a profession of belief, unaccompanied by obedience to Yahweh’s actual commandments, for the genuine new birth Scripture describes.

31. What is Salvation?

We hold that salvation is the “good news” that man, separated from Yahweh by sin (Isaiah 59:2), can be reconciled to Him through the Messiah’s sacrifice, which pays the death penalty sin incurs (Romans 6:23), opening the possibility of a genuine relationship with Yahweh the Father Himself — not merely with the Messiah. We hold that the Gospel which saves is not simply belief in facts about the Messiah’s life, death, and resurrection, but belief in the actual Gospel message He preached: “the Gospel of the Kingdom of Yahweh” (Mark 1:14-15), a real, future government with real laws, to be established on this earth at His return (see Topic 27). We hold salvation requires two things: genuine repentance and belief, followed by receiving Yahweh’s Holy Spirit — and that it is properly understood as an ongoing process rather than a single completed transaction, since “faith without works is dead” (James 2:26). Obedience to Yahweh’s commandments, in our reading, is the necessary evidence, and arguably the necessary condition, of authentic saving faith, standing in explicit contrast to what we characterize as a popular “faith alone” teaching that we regard as a serious and consequential distortion — one that we hold Satan has used effectively to secure the false assurance of millions who believe themselves saved while remaining in ongoing, comfortable disobedience to Yahweh’s actual commandments (see Topic 32).

32. Do Satan and Demons Exist? Why and What are they?

Yes, we hold Satan and demons to be entirely real, personal beings, not metaphors for human evil or psychological forces. We hold that Satan, originally Lucifer, was the archangel created to lead praise and worship directed toward Yahweh, but rebelled by desiring that worship for himself; along with a following of fallen angels (“demons”), he is now, by Yahweh’s own current permission, “the ruler of this age” and “the god of this age” (2 Corinthians 4:4), holding sway over deceived nations and individuals. We hold his central strategy is not crude, obvious evil but sophisticated religious counterfeit: he transforms himself, and his human agents, into convincing “ministers of righteousness” (2 Corinthians 11:13-15), producing genuinely miraculous-seeming “signs and wonders” — healings, ecstatic experiences, and the like — that lead the great majority into comfortable disobedience of Yahweh’s actual commandments (particularly the Sabbath, see Topic 19) while sincerely believing themselves faithful and Spirit-led. We hold this deception operates chiefly, though not exclusively, through traditional Christianity itself, as well as through other world religions and secular ideologies, and that Satan is properly understood as the ultimate source and “father” of every false Messiah and false gospel described throughout Scripture. We hold this deception will end only with Satan’s binding during the millennium and his final destruction, and we regard clear-eyed recognition of his real, ongoing, and specifically religious activity as essential to avoiding the very deception Scripture warns of most frequently of any single subject.

33. Has God made mistakes?

We hold that Yahweh’s character and moral perfection are unchanging — “I am Yahweh, I change not” (Malachi 3:6) — and that Yahweh does not make mistakes in the sense of moral error or miscalculation. We hold, however, that Scripture’s repeated language of Yahweh “repenting” (as in Genesis 6:6, over the wickedness that developed after He granted both angels and mankind a genuine, uncompelled free will) reflects real divine responsiveness to the actual, sometimes painful results of that granted freedom, rather than error on Yahweh’s part. We hold this reflects the authentic, costly risk built into Yahweh’s deliberate decision to create beings capable of real moral choice — capable of freely loving and obeying Him — rather than “mindless automatons” incapable of genuine character (see Topic 38). We hold that Yahweh anticipated this risk, having already directly witnessed the consequences of the same free-will choice in the angels’ prior rebellion, and that He built a complete redemptive plan — the entire prophetic sweep addressed throughout this page, from the Messiah’s sacrifice to the final restoration of all things — to fully and justly resolve the consequences of both angelic and human rebellion, rather than being caught by surprise or forced into damage control. We therefore hold that the “mistakes” evident throughout human history are the responsibility of the free agents, human and angelic, who make them — not of Yahweh, who foresaw the possibility and prepared, from the beginning, a just and complete answer to it.

34. Explain the Tribulation and the Antichrist.

We hold the Tribulation to be a definite, still-future seven-year period, tied to Daniel’s “seventy weeks” prophecy, marked by the rise to power of the “Beast” (the revived Roman Empire, see Topic 20) and an escalating sequence of seals, trumpets, and plagues (see Topic 24), including the martyrdom of the faithful, which we regard as a privileged, guaranteed path to immediate resurrection rather than a fate to fear, and a ministry of “two witnesses” who confirm the Messiah’s New Covenant testimony over a final three-and-a-half years before being martyred and then resurrected themselves. We hold that “the Antichrist” is best understood not as a single future human individual to be watched for, but as the combined institutional system of the Beast (corrupt political power) together with the “image of the beast” and “false prophet” (the corrupted, institutionalized church system, “Babylon the Great,” see Topic 29) — a counterfeit of Christ’s true government that has, in our reading, operated throughout the church age and will reach a climactic final expression in the last days. We hold the Tribulation is specifically directed as corrective national judgment against the modern, apostate nations descended from Ephraim and Manasseh (see Topic 21) for their disobedience, rather than indiscriminate global catastrophe, and that it will be followed immediately by the “Day of Yahweh” — the seven last plagues — and then by the Messiah’s visible return to establish His millennial Kingdom government on earth.

35. Does Purgatory or an Intermediary State Exist?

We reject Purgatory, and any conscious intermediate state, entirely. Consistent with our understanding of death as complete unconsciousness (see Topics 9 and 16), we hold the dead experience no purification process, no “toll houses,” no conscious waiting of any kind, and no passage of subjective time between death and resurrection. We hold that Purgatory, like the doctrines of an immediately conscious heaven or hell (see Topics 9, 16, and 27), depends entirely on the premise that man possesses an inherently immortal soul that survives death in a conscious state — a premise we reject outright (see Topic 11). We hold that whatever genuine spiritual “purification” a person requires occurs either during this present mortal lifetime, through the lifelong process of growth and overcoming described under Topic 30, or, for the great majority who never had a fair opportunity to know Yahweh, during the future judgment period following the second resurrection (see Topics 17 and 37), when they will for the first time be given a genuine opportunity to learn the truth and respond to it. There is, in our reading, no purgative “third state” between death and resurrection at all — death is simply sleep, and the next event any person experiences, from their own perspective, is one of the two appointed resurrections.

36. What is the Trinity?

We reject the Trinity as a later ecclesiastical formulation without genuine basis in the original inspired text. We hold, as discussed under Topic 26, that a key proof-text long cited for the doctrine — 1 John 5:7-8, the so-called “Comma Johanneum” — was a fourth-century scribal insertion, absent from the earliest manuscripts, added specifically to support Trinitarian doctrine rather than part of the original apostolic writing. We hold that Yahweh the Father alone is the one supreme God; that the Messiah, Yah’shua, is Yahweh’s literal, begotten Son, pre-existent as the divine “Word” but distinct from, and submissive to, the Father — citing Yah’shua’s own statement, “My Father is greater than I” (John 14:28) — rather than co-equal or co-eternal with Him in the Nicene sense; and that the Holy Spirit is Yahweh’s own active power and presence extended into the world and into believers, not a separate, distinct divine “person” alongside the Father and Son. We hold this three-into-one formulation, developed and formally imposed centuries after the apostles at councils convened under imperial Roman political authority (beginning at Nicaea, 325 A.D.), represents precisely the kind of institutional doctrinal development, disconnected from original apostolic teaching, that this page identifies repeatedly across other topics (see also Topics 4 and 26).

37. Will those ignorant of God and/or Christianity have an opportunity to be Saved?

Yes, decisively — we hold this question is answered specifically by the doctrine of the second resurrection, the “Great White Throne” judgment of Revelation 20:11-15 (see Topic 17), which we understand as providing every person who ever lived without a genuine, fair opportunity to know Yahweh and the Messiah — the overwhelming majority of humanity throughout history, including those born before the Messiah’s first coming, those in regions the Gospel never reached, and those who only ever encountered corrupted or misrepresented versions of Christianity — a first real, uncoerced chance to learn the truth and respond to it, resurrected specifically for that purpose one thousand years after the first resurrection of the faithful Elect. We regard this teaching as resolving what we see as a serious and consequential problem in much mainstream Christian theology: the implication that billions of people are eternally condemned for failing to accept a message they never had a genuine, fair chance to hear or evaluate. We hold that those who reject Yahweh’s offer even after this fair opportunity face the “second death” — final annihilation, not eternal torment (see Topic 9) — while those who respond receive full salvation into Yahweh’s family, joining, though in a distinct capacity from, the “firstfruits” Elect raised at the first resurrection.

38. Why does God allow Violence and Suffering?

We hold that suffering originates from the free-will choice Yahweh gave both angels and mankind to determine right and wrong for themselves rather than accepting His own definition — symbolized by Adam and Eve’s choice of the forbidden tree. We hold Yahweh does not desire human suffering and is not to be blamed for the greed, hypocrisy, dishonesty, corruption, and false religion that humanity’s own wrong choices have produced; rather, Yahweh is responsible for the resulting discipline — the natural, built-in consequences of wrong choices (“we reap what we sow”) — through which mankind learns, by hard and often bitter experience, the real and lasting difference between Yahweh’s ways and humanly-devised alternatives. We hold Yahweh deliberately withholds intervention, “keeping hands off” to allow this learning process to run its full course, specifically until humanity’s continued sin would otherwise bring about total self-destruction (Matthew 24:22) — at which precise point the Messiah returns to end human self-rule and establish Yahweh’s Kingdom government, inaugurating a thousand years of peace, health, and prosperity in which “nation shall not lift up sword against nation” (Micah 4:3). We hold this entire, sometimes painful process serves the ultimate purpose of producing genuine sons and daughters of Yahweh who have freely chosen righteousness, having learned experientially the true cost of rejecting it — rather than “mindless automatons” incapable of authentic love, character, or moral choice.

39. Are Christians or Jews or both God’s Chosen People?

We draw a sharp distinction between “Israelites” — a covenant people defined by descent from Jacob (Israel) through all thirteen tribes, including the “Lost Ten Tribes” we identify with the modern nations of Ephraim and Manasseh (see Topic 21) — and “Jews,” a narrower term we hold, based on our sourced historical and etymological research, refers most precisely to the tribe of Judah together with an admixture of other peoples historically settled among them, and to practitioners of Judaism, a later religious development we hold to be historically and doctrinally distinct from the “Hebrewism” of the Old Covenant (a distinction we note a former Chief Rabbi of the United States himself drew, contrasting the religion of the Old Covenant with the later Babylonian-Talmud-based Judaism that emerged after the Babylonian captivity). We hold that “chosen-ness,” in its fullest sense, belongs to the “Israel of Yahweh” (Galatians 6:16) — all thirteen tribes, and by adoption, anyone who responds in genuine faith and obedience under the New Covenant — rather than to the ethnic and religious group known today as “Jews” specifically, or exclusively to “Christians” as commonly understood, since we hold most institutional Christianity has similarly departed from Yahweh’s actual commandments (see Topics 19, 20, 26, 29, and 36). We hold, per Hosea’s warning (see Topic 21), that this chosen status carries primarily responsibility and accountability rather than favoritism, with the modern descendants of Ephraim and Manasseh specifically facing heightened, not lessened, judgment for their disobedience precisely because of their unique calling. We hold all people not currently part of this chosen line retain a fair future opportunity for full inclusion into Yahweh’s family through the second resurrection (see Topic 37), so that “chosen-ness” in this present age is a matter of current calling and responsibility, not a final verdict on any individual’s ultimate salvation.

40. What is the Purpose of the Lord’s Prayer?

We hold, based on Yah’shua’s own introduction of it — “in this manner, therefore, pray” (Matthew 6:9) and “when ye pray, say…” (Luke 11:2) — that the Lord’s Prayer was given specifically as a teaching outline or pattern for the proper content and priorities of prayer, not as a fixed liturgical formula meant to be recited verbatim or repetitively; we note that Yah’shua Himself, in giving these words to His disciples, was not Himself praying but instructing them on how to structure their own. We hold the prayer’s specific content establishes a correct order of priority for petition: first, reverence for Yahweh’s name; second, genuine longing for the actual, future arrival of Yahweh’s Kingdom government on earth (see Topics 27 and 31); third, submission to Yahweh’s will; and only after these, practical requests for daily provision, forgiveness (explicitly conditioned on our own forgiving of others), and protection from temptation and evil. We hold that genuine, effective prayer more broadly must be heartfelt, persistent, and offered by someone in an actual, obedient relationship with Yahweh — “if our heart does not condemn us… whatever we ask we receive… because we keep His commandments” (1 John 3:21-22) — rather than a matter of ritual repetition, and that the Lord’s Prayer’s ultimate purpose is to train believers in Yahweh’s actual priorities, above all the coming of His Kingdom, rather than to function as a magical or liturgically sufficient formula in itself.