You were never meant to live cut off from the root.

 

For two thousand years, much of the Church forgot where it came from.

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It forgot that its Savior was a Jew, born under the Law, circumcised on the eighth day, reading Torah in the synagogue. It forgot the olive tree of Israel, the covenants, the promises, the Temple, the incense and the oil.

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It built traditions of its own while becoming increasingly distant from the ancient root of its faith.

But the root was never destroyed.

It was waiting.

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In Ephesians 2:15, Paul says that Messiah breaks down the dividing wall and makes Jew and Gentile one new man.

Not two cultures erased, but one new humanity in Messiah.

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Romans 11 gives us another image: the wild olive branch is grafted into the cultivated olive tree. The branch does not support the root.

The root supports the branch.

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Solomon and the Ancient World

The Bible tells us that King Solomon received extraordinary wisdom from God.

Ancient Jewish history preserves another remarkable tradition.

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Josephus, the first-century Jewish historian, records that God gave Solomon knowledge concerning the expulsion of demons. According to Josephus, Solomon composed incantations associated with healing and left methods of exorcism that continued to be practiced in Josephus's own time.

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These traditions are historical writings, not New Testament teaching. But they reveal something important about the ancient Jewish world surrounding Scripture: fragrance, plants, prayer, holiness and the unseen realm were not always understood as completely separate subjects.

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Scripture itself gives incense extraordinary imagery.

In Numbers 16, Aaron takes the ketoret (sacred incense) and runs into the midst of the assembly. He stands between the living and the dead, makes atonement for the people, and the plague is stopped.

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In the Book of Tobit, preserved as Scripture in Catholic and Orthodox Christianity, the narrative describes the odor from the heart and liver of a fish being used as the demon Asmodeus flees.

To the ancient believer, this was not merely fragrance.

It existed within a much larger world of worship, holiness, prayer and spiritual conflict.

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The Ancient World Is Being Remembered

We live in a generation searching again for mystery.

The occult. The esoteric. The New Age. Ancient spirituality presented in modern clothing.

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At the same time, believers are rediscovering the Hebrew and Jewish world of Scripture: the biblical feasts, the shofar (ram's horn), anointing, the Temple, ancient prayer and the sensory language that surrounded biblical worship.

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One New Man Culture was born from a desire to reconnect believers with the biblical and Jewish roots of their faith. Not to recreate the past.

Not as magic.

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And not as a claim that an object possesses supernatural power.

It is a new creation rooted in something ancient.

The grafted branch remembering the root.

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Kedushah (holiness) in a world of tumah (spiritual impurity).

The threshold practice: anoint on the way in and anoint on the way out as an intentional act of prayer and remembrance.

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Incense inspired by the eleven-spice tradition preserved in the Pitum HaKetoret (the compounding of the Holy Temple incense).

Anointing oils created from the botanical world of Scripture.

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The shofar.

The garments.

The fragrance.

The sound.

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The physical reminders of a biblical world in which faith engaged more than the mind alone.

These are sensory and devotional objects. Their significance comes from the biblical and historical traditions surrounding them and from the prayer and intention of the person using them. We do not claim that these products themselves heal disease, expel demons or provide supernatural protection.

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They are tools for remembrance, prayer, worship and the setting apart of sacred space.

For a generation that refuses to let the modern world erase the ancient root.

You were never meant to live cut off from the root.