You are listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon's Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

Nehemia: This is one of the things I love about you, and I love about people in general, who are listening to my teachings, is they’re following what I’m actually saying is, “Don’t take my word for it. Go check for yourself and explore different possibilities.” So, you were sharing with me how there was point in this study, I don’t know if it was this actual point but it was an important point, that you disagreed with. And you had a really good perspective I want you to share it with the people.

Benjamin Netanyahu: Le ma’an Zion lo ekhesheh, u’l’ma’an Yerushalayim lo eshkot. (For Zion’s sake I will not be silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest. Isaiah 62:1)

Nehemia: Shalom guys. I'm here with Dawn Irion, who is involved in searching for the Name in these Hebrew manuscripts. And she is now gonna talk to us about her favorite episode of Hebrew Voices. Shalom, Dawn.

Dawn: Shalom, Nehemia. Thanks for having me on today.

Nehemia: Dawn, what's your favorite Hebrew Voices? And then we're going to hear about the support team study.

Dawn: Okay, so my favorite Hebrew Voices has got to be “Saving Faith,” because of all your Hebrew Voices, that's the one that resonated most with me personally. Because I feel like my story is very similar to Mark's story, where I came out of Christian church and started keeping Torah, started testing and questioning everything that I had believed. And honestly, I'm super thankful for finding you and finding your “Torah Pearls” studies and helping me go through the Torah and understanding it from a Hebrew perspective.

Because when you come from my tradition, you have a very Greek mindset, and everything has to fit, and everything needs to check the box, one thing after another, very linear. And you can't really approach the Scriptures that way. And so, I'm really thankful for you. I feel like Yehovah led me to your studies to help me through that process and kept me away from a lot of bad teachings that are out there and protected me with some really good teachings. So, thank you, Nehemia.

Nehemia: And guys, for those who haven't seen it, “Saving Faith” is an episode I did with Dr. Mark, who was a medical doctor, but also a person with a degree in Christian theology, as he was having struggles with his faith. And he asked me one day, he said, “Nehemia, if you had to defend the faith in Yeshua, what would your arguments be on these particular types of issues?” And I gave my answer, and he told me later that actually is the reason that today he believes in Yeshua.

And I thought, “Wow, okay.” You know, a lot of times I'm accused that I'm secretly holding people in the back rooms and getting them to deny Yeshua, running secret meetings. Well, Keith makes the joke, he says, “What is Nehemia working on, the 20-year plan? He's never sprung it on me.” And here's an example of an actual meeting I had in private in someone's home, and it was the exact opposite of what I'm accused of. I wanted to share that with people, and I also thought it was an important principle in at least one way of understanding the New Testament.

Dawn: Right, and you bring out that there was a method of interpretation called the “pesher method” that was used. You explain it far better than I ever could in the Hebrew Voices with Dr. Mark. But that concept, I think, is absolutely critical for believers in Yeshua to understand the New Testament.

Nehemia: And by the way, I have a few other episodes about that. One is a support team study where I go into much more depth, that's Pesher and the Dead Sea Scrolls. And the other episode is one I did with AJ, which is called something about reading the New Testament, I forget the name of it, guys, but you can find it. It's one of the episodes I do with AJ Barnard.

Dawn: And also, your interview with Dr. Blizzard.

Nehemia: Yeah, we talked about it there.

Dawn: “Understanding the Difficult Words of Yeshua.” That's a great one.

Nehemia: Yeah, that's a really good one. Oh, so the one I did with AJ is called something like, “How the New Testament interprets the Tanakh.” So, those are some episodes where you guys can learn more about that. Tell us about your favorite support team study this year.

Dawn: So, that has got to be “Original Sin and the Tree of Life.” In that one you cover Adam's choice in the garden, Eve's choice, too, and what happened after that. And you tie that into the Torah being a tree of life, and you also cover the resurrection in the Tanakh. And this is something that me and my husband have spent a lot of time personally studying, and to hear your support team study echo our research was really satisfying.

Nehemia: Yeah, and that's one of the feedbacks we've gotten on this episode, “The Original Sin and the Tree of Life,” especially from people who are coming from a New Testament perspective. They're saying, “Wow, we didn't know there was a concept of resurrection in the Tanakh.” Definitely, for most Jews, that is considered one of the principles of faith, even though there have been Jews throughout history who doubted that principle, generally interpreted those passages allegorically as referring to the national resurrection of Israel. But most Jews have taken them relatively literally, as a physical resurrection in the end times, which corresponds with the final judgement. I actually talk about that in my book, “Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence,” as well. Now, I'm sure that everything, all of my teachings, you agree with 100 percent, right, Dawn? That I am your preacher and you obey everything I say, is that right? Or am I wrong?

Dawn: I'm sorry, Nehemia, you're wrong.

Nehemia: You've broken my heart. No, no. This is one of the things I love about you, and love about people in general who are listening to my teachings, is they're following what I'm actually saying is, “Don't take my word for it. Go check for yourself and explore different possibilities.” So, you were sharing with me how there was a point in this study, I don't think it was a central point, but it was an important point that you disagreed with and you had a really good perspective. I want you to share it with the people.

Dawn: All right, so I did agree with 99 percent of your support team study, because it echoed the research that we had done. However, coming from my background in genetic research, I have a very different perspective on the tree of life.

Nehemia: Before you get to that, can you tell people what you told me recently about the whole issue of evolution, and how you changed on that view? We gotta do an episode one time about that.

Dawn: Yeah, I was in genetic research. I was a scientist at the University of California, and I believed in evolution. I published based on my belief in evolution. And when I retired from that to be a full-time mom, I started studying creation science. I learned more after leaving the university about genetics than I learned while I was there. And understanding the genetic, not just the coding, but the processes that go into reading DNA, make evolution simply impossible.

Nehemia: Say that again. I want you to repeat that.

Dawn: Okay, not just the coding of your DNA, but all the mechanisms involved in reading and making proteins out of your DNA, all of those mechanics, the complications involved in all of that, evolution simply cannot explain how that came to be. With that, evolution is impossible.

Nehemia: Is that the principle of irreducible complexity? Is that one of the concepts that we're talking about? Like you have the little guy with tail motor, and if you take off one piece, it stops working? The bacterial flagellum, is that what you're talking about?

Dawn: I wouldn't put it that way. The analogy I like to give is, say you have a blueprint for a car manufacturer facility. You have a blueprint for something that will produce a car. That's DNA. Just having the blueprint doesn't get you anywhere. You need to have a blueprint for the building. You need to have a blueprint for the robots. You need to have a blueprint for all the little things that make up a car. So, how are you gonna get from having a blueprint to have all of those mechanisms in place that are required to replicate that blueprint?

Nehemia: So, you as a biologist came to this conclusion that evolution is impossible. I love the way your brain works. Now, let's go back to original sin and the tree of life. You had this wonderful insight I want you to share with the people.

Dawn: Okay, so based on my understanding of genetics, the reason we age and get old and die is because when our cells replicate DNA, damage occurs, or errors occur in the code, and they accumulate over time. So, when we're developing in adolescence, our DNA repair mechanisms are super-efficient, and they're doing their job. So, cells are replicating, and they're being replicated faithfully. And errors are being corrected if they occur, because errors occur in your DNA all the time. It's just part of the process.

There are mechanisms that come along behind, and if it catches a repair, it repairs it. But as you age, those repair mechanisms don't work so well anymore. And over time, you accumulate damage in your cells, and you get old and die. Well, my concept of the tree of life is that in some way, it provided reparative resources to Adam's body so that whatever damage had occurred, it could go in and repair that damage, or prevent that damage from occurring. My comment on the tree of life is that it's not a once and done thing. Adam would have had to have continual access to the tree of life in order to live. Once he's lost that access, that's the day he began to die.

Nehemia: Wow. I've heard this concept before, because it comes from Ezekiel. I want to read the verse for people. Ezekiel 47:12 is speaking about the end times, and it says, “On the banks on both sides of the river…” And this is a river that comes out of the Temple, “there will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither, nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the Sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food and their leaves for healing.” This is describing the end times.

We have this idea that in the end times we're going to have eternal life. That's from Daniel 12, for example. Guys who listen to the study, I talked about that. We have this idea of eternal life. Well, why do we need these for healing if we have eternal life? And so, there's definitely this concept, no question about it, in the Tanakh that there's a tree of life that you continually eat from. And you had pointed to a verse in Revelation, which I hadn't really thought about, Revelation 22:2. Can you read us that verse?

Dawn: Right, and this is post-new Jerusalem. This is post-resurrection, post-Judgment Day. And it says, Revelation 22:2, “Between the main street and the river was the tree of life, producing 12 kinds of fruit, a different kind every month. And the leaves of the tree were for healing of the nations, or healing the nation.”

Nehemia: Right, so there's no question that Ezekiel 47 is being referenced there, or the same concept, in Revelation 22.

Dawn: Right.

Nehemia: And the point is that there's two ways of looking at the tree of life. And the way I presented it in the study is that you eat once from this tree, and you live forever. And then, the Torah comes as a way of eating once again from that tree of life. But if you think about it, the Torah isn't something like, “I kept the Torah once, now I'm done. Now I could live my life as it is.” No, it's an ongoing thing where it constantly sustains me.

I love that image, so I think you might have convinced me here. There's definitely something to think about. And this is one of the things that I encourage people to do is, don't just blindly accept everything I say, but go and think for yourselves. Hear what I have to say and explore the Scriptures, and find out for yourselves. And in this case, you explored the Scriptures and you raised this possibility, which I had considered, but I kind of sidelined it. But you raised a really good point. What I love about this is it kind of echoes a debate that happened much later in Christian history, which was the debate between John Calvin and Arminius. The debate between Calvin and Arminius was over... You know, Calvin had what's called “TULIP,” the five points of reformed theology. And the P stands for Preservation of the saints, which in popular parlance is what people call, “once saved, always saved.” And Arminius said, “No, you're not once saved, always saved. You could be saved and then lose your salvation if you sin, if you do various things.” But if you doubt, I'm not an expert in Armenian theology, guys. Go look it up for yourselves. But the point is, we say in Hebrew, “lehavdil,” to separate completely from what we're saying here from Arminius and John Calvin, but there's an analogy there. There's two ways of looking at the tree of life. You eat from it once and you live forever, or it's an ongoing process.

And definitely, no question, the Torah reflects the ongoing process. It's not that you keep the Torah one time. “I'm now a Torah keeper, I am saved, woo. I'm good and I've got nothing to worry about.” And it's not anything to worry about, actually. It is a blessing, but it’s an ongoing blessing and it takes some discipline, and sometimes we sin, and we have to ask for repentance. And that is something that Jews are constantly doing is asking for repentance, ‘cause we know there's no man alive who doesn't sin. And it really is this concept of this ongoing relationship with God, rather than… And I like to liken it to a wedding, to a marriage.

You get married and then you're done, and you never see your wife again. That's one way of looking at it, because now you're married, right? No, it's an ongoing relationship. Sometimes you mess up. It's a relationship with the Creator of the Universe that you have to maintain over time by being loyal to the Creator of the Universe. And if you sin, He's actually much more forgiving than any spouse. That's the beauty of it. Guys, go listen to my study, “Original Sin and the Tree of Life” support team study, and Hebrew Voices, “Saving Faith.”

Thank you, Dawn, for joining us. Shalom.

Dawn: Shalom, Nehemia.

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