I want to take a moment and look at the biblical narrative with simplicity based on two principles that I believe are the major reason why some people believe The Bible says one thing and other people that is says something completely different. There are those who believe that the ultimate goal of Scripture was to “deliver us from The Law”, meaning that everything written in The Bible was to get to a point where it is no longer required to obey the commandments of God as described in the portion called The Torah. Then there are those who believe that nothing in The Bible actually does away with The Torah and followers of “Jesus”, who I will refer to for the rest of this message by His true name Yeshua, are still expected to live in obedience to the commandments of God. The two principles to which I am referring are:
1. There is a lawless one, Satan, the serpent. Revelation 12:9 says that he will deceive the whole world. In Genesis 3 he appears on the scene and convinces a couple of people that they do not have to follow something God instructed. Lawlessness is sin. 1 John 3:4 says that sin is breaking God's Law, The Torah. So, the lawless one, Satan, the serpent, is trying to convince people they do not have to follow things God instructed, that they do not have to follow all of the commandments.
2. There is a Righteous One, Yeshua, The Messiah. He constantly said things like "If you love Me, keep My commandments" (which is a direct quote from The Torah) and "If you want to enter into life, keep the commandments". Never once did he say anything that can even remotely be taken as meaning there is something in The Torah that no longer needs to be followed. Righteousness is defined in Deuteronomy 6:25 as following and living by The Torah of God. So, The Righteous One, Yeshua, The Messiah, is constantly and consistently leading people to live according to The Torah of God.
In all of the time I have spent looking at Scripture I feel these two points may be the most important in understanding what The Bible says. When reading, whether as a narrative from beginning to end or studying a particular passage—especially but certainly not limited to the writings of the apostle Paul—if we would apply these two ideas to anything and everything we read we will know who the source of anti-Torah understandings of such passages is and who the source of Torah-positive understandings of these passages is. So my first plea with the adherants of popular “Christian” theologies that oppose a Torah-keeping lifestyle is to use these two points in understanding everything you read in The Bible. This alone may well eliminate most, if not all, misunderstandings of Scripture.
The Beginning And The End
In Revelation 1:8 God says that He is the Alpha and Omega—which in Hebrew would be the Aleph and the Tav. In Revelation 21:6 He builds on this and says He is the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End. Finally in Revelation 22:13 He takes it one final step saying He is the Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. What’s most interesting about this is that the first two chapters of The Bible are all about a paradise created by God, starting with the words in the beginning, and the last two chapters of Revelation are about a paradise created by God, starting with the words then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away.
In both of these places of paradise there is a tree that is highlighted, The Tree Of Life. Yes, in Eden there was that other tree, and I will get to that. But that other tree is not mentioned in final two chapters of Revelation, only The Tree Of Life is.
Then when we look at Genesis chapter three something happens. The people God placed in The Garden found themselves at that other tree and decided to eat what God said not to eat. Again, I will talk more about that in a moment, but as a result of this humanity was no longer granted access to The Tree Of Life because the commandment of God was broken. But when we get to the last chapter in the Book of Revelation it says, in verse 14, that those who keep the commandments will be given a right to The Tree Of Life. Now, some translations of Revelation 21:14 say that those who wash their robes have a right to The Tree Of Life, and this may cause confusion without a proper explanation. The phrase wash your robes is a Hebrew idiom or slang. It is taken from what is stated in Leviticus 16:26-28 and came to mean something to the effect of: those who repented of their sin and walk in The Torah of God. So, no matter which rendering is offered, the passage still says that it will be those who live by The Torah who will be granted access to The Tree Of Life.
Tell me something: If breaking the commandments of God results in losing access to The Tree Of Life and the only way to regain access in the Eternal Kingdom of God will be to live by the commandments of God, The Torah, why do so many “Christians” feel like the message of Scripture is that they no longer have to keep the commandments of God? Does that even make sense?
You know, there is that other tree that was in the midst of Eden, The Tree Of The Knowledge Of Good And Evil, which I will refer to hereafter simply as The Tree Of Knowledge. This tree was set apart and God said not to eat from its fruit. We have very little information about this tree, including what kind of fruit it produced, but despite popular artistry I highly doubt it was an apple tree—or really any other known fruit today. But think about this scenario for a moment. The commandment was broken when the people ate something God said not to eat. In all likelihood, there was already a movement toward breaking God’s commandment before they even got to the tree, as the language indicates that this took place on The Sabbath Day and The Garden was the place where the man and his wife were assigned to work. It doesn’t say or even indicate that they were breaking The Sabbath, but it does stand to reason that they didn’t belong in the midst of their place of work on The Sabbath.
Isn’t it interesting that the two most rejected commandments in the entire Bible by “Christians” worldwide today are the food laws outlined in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 and commandments related to The Sabbath—both the weekly Sabbath, the seventh day of a biblical week that coincides with sunset Friday to sunset Saturday on secular calendars, and the annual High Sabbaths that are written off as “Jewish holidays” by those modern-day “Christians” who believe they do not have to obey at least some of the commandments? Doesn’t it seem more likely that the lawless one is driving these beliefs in popular “Christianity”? After all, if the lawless one, the same serpent that met the man and his wife at The Tree Of Knowledge, is the one leading people against The Torah and Yeshua, The Righteous One, leads people to live by The Torah then it stands to reason that it is Satan that the majority of “Christians” are following.
I understand that this is hard to hear, but please honestly evaluate Scripture on the two points I opened with. Read The Bible from cover to cover with these two points as the basis for understanding everything you read. If you will honestly do this, clearing your mind of the doctrines you have been taught in churches, you may be shocked with how much it opens up Scripture in a new and fresh way for you. While some passages may remain difficult until you are able to see how they are not teaching that we don’t have to follow The Torah anymore, the moment you realize that Satan is behind all anti-Torah understandings of Scripture and Yeshua is behind all Torah-positive understandings of Scripture is the moment you will begin to truly be free. And this brings me to my next point.
Freedom Through The Torah
Popular “Christian” theology says that The Torah is a burden and a curse. I have actually been told that by teaching a Torah-positive message, just the way Yeshua did, I am placing a burden on people. But for this belief to work creates a huge problem with one of the most important messages of the entire Bible.
Certainly one of the most popular stories in the whole Bible is that of Moses and the exodus from Egypt. Most people know that on the night of the first Passover the Israelites put the blood of a lamb on their doorposts and the death angel passed over their homes, sparing the death of their first born sons. From there they were released from slavery and given freedom from bondage. They were led into the wilderness and came to The Red Sea, which some contend may be better rendered The Sea of Reeds. The story says that the oppressing Pharaoh decided to pursue them, having second thoughts about releasing the Israelites from slavery. As we know, the sea opened and the Israelites crossed on dry land and when the armies of Egypt tried to cross behind them the waters came down and drowned them. A short time after that they arrived at Sinai and received The Torah straight from the hand of God.
So, here’s the problem: “Christian” beliefs would tell us that these Israelites were delivered from actual bondage through slavery in Egypt only to be put under a harsher bondage to God’s Torah and held there for thousands of years. And what happened when they broke The Torah? They were punished by God for it. So, according to what popular “Christianity” would have us believe, these Israelites were in bondage to The Torah, under the curse when they were obeying it and tormented by God’s wrath when they didn’t. Does this even make sense? But if we follow modern popular “Christian” anti-Torah theology to its logical conclusion, this is exactly where it leads.
If you don’t fully grasp the magnitude of this, it means that God took His chosen people, the apple of His eye, and put them through the worst possible torture the world has ever known. The oppression of Egypt, the captivity of Babylon, the attempts to annihilate them through the efforts of Haman, the crusades, and the holocaust, none of this could compare to the torment of being under “the bondage of The Torah” by the hand of God Himself. And this is what “Christian” theology would have us believe of The God of The Bible! How can you possibly believe this stuff? Yet this is, to some degree, what most “Christians” have to believe in order for their theology to be true. They say that God gave The Torah to “prove” that The Torah could not be kept.
What’s most absurd about this is that Scripture says the exact opposite of The Torah. “Christians” love to say that The Torah is a curse. But what does The Bible say?
Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the Torah of Adonai.
—Psalm 119:1 (TLV)
Where there is no divine vision people cast off restraint, but blessed is the one who keeps Torah.
—Proverbs 29:18 (TLV)
But the one who looks intently into the perfect Torah, the Torah that gives freedom, and continues in it, not becoming a hearer who forgets but a doer who acts—he shall be blessed in what he does.
—James 1:25 (TLV)
On top of this, Deuteronomy 30:11-14 tells us that it is easy to follow The Torah and 1 John 5:3 says that the commandments of God are not burdensome. It may be a hard pill to swallow, but it seems that popular “Christianity” is completely wrong in its view of The Torah.
The Walk
Another perfect example of how completely wrong “Christians” are in what they believe The Bible teaches can be found in who they are walking with. 1 John 2:4-6 says: “The one who says, ‘I have come to know Him,’ and does not keep His commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God is truly made perfect. We know that we are in Him by this—whoever claims to abide in Him must walk just as He walked.”
Yeshua was a Torah-keeping Jewish Rabbi who taught His followers to live by The Torah, constantly and consistently saying things like, “If you love Me, keep My commandments,” (John 14:15) and, “If you want to enter into life, keep the commandments” (Matthew 19:17). That first one, about keeping the commandments if you love Him, is a phrase used a whopping eighteen times in The Bible and the first several of those times in The Torah itself, making it undeniably clear what commandments are being spoken of.
In contrast with this, Psalm 1:1 tells us not to walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the way of sinners. 1 John 3:4 gives us the only definition of sin in The Bible: breaking, transgressing, violating The Torah. So then by default a sinner has to be someone who breaks, transgresses, violates The Torah. This means that the overwhelming majority of “Christians” today, no matter how often they say they “believe in Jesus” or how sincerely they believe that declaration to be true when they say it, are according to The Bible sinners who follow the lawless one, Satan, who leads people to break, violate, transgress The Torah.
Yeshua was a Torah-keeping Rabbi who always told people to follow The Torah. He was not a lawless “Christian” pastor telling people that demonic lie that as a follower of “Jesus” you do not have to follow The Torah. That lie started with the serpent in Genesis 3 and if you believe it you are not a follower of the biblical Messiah, you are a follower of Satan. I am appealing with you, “Christian” man or woman, do you not see how simple this is and how The Bible completely and radically opposes your beliefs?
The Spirit-Filled Believer
There are a lot of ideas about what it means to be filled with The Spirit in popular “Christianity”. But are any of them truly biblical? While there are certainly things that manifest where The Spirit of God is present, often times these are things that can be imitated by Satan. There is only one thing that The Bible says about being Spirit-Filled that can be called the true evidence of being Spirit-Filled.
Moreover I will give you a new heart. I will put a new spirit within you. I will remove the stony heart from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.I will put My Ruach within you. Then I will cause you to walk in My laws, so you will keep My rulings and do them.
—Ezekiel 36:26-27 (TLV)
When The Spirit of God truly fills a person’s life they will be caused to walk in God’s Laws, which of course is The Torah. This is the only thing in The Bible that Satan cannot counterfeit, because according to The Bible he is the lawless one. This tells us that it’s impossible for him to create a fully Torah-positive expression of faith. Since we know that the Holy Spirit of God causes people to walk in The Torah and the one thing in The Bible that Satan cannot imitate is full Torah-obedience this too is an important key to evaluating both what The Bible actually says and what popular “Christianity” believes, the two so often being the complete opposite.
People talk to me about various “revivals” and often want to say that Satan will not do this, that, or the other. Let me assure you, Satan can and will do practically everything I have observed in modern-day “revivals” as well as the many I have studied from generations past. This “Christian” concept is not found in Scripture. The closest thing may be the reforms under the Israelite kings Hezekiah and Josiah, but in those examples there were two characteristics that are absent from most “Christian revivals”—the smashing of idols and a return to Torah-keeping covenant faith.
If the real Spirit of Yah were present at these so-called “revivals” then there would be a full abandoning of the idolatrous ways of “Christianity” and a leading to Torah-keeping covenant faith. People tend to be hesitant to say what they feel might blaspheme The Spirit, and with good reason—this is the one thing our Messiah said would not be forgiven. But when the whole counsel of Scripture tells us, without contradiction, that The Spirit works to cause people to walk in The Torah and Satan works to deceive people into thinking they can “believe in Jesus” apart from following The Torah, it is well within reason to say that God’s Spirit may not actually be the driving force behind so many of these “revivals”.
The Bible really does not speak about the “Christian” concept of “revival”, but it does speak a lot about a remnant, people who are among the few that completely sell out to God and His Torah.
Consider The Millennium
Something else that needs to be brought up before bringing this message toward a close is the fact that The Torah was undeniably the way of life for all Believers up until the resurrection and will be the way of life in The Millennium. I am unaware of any “Christian” who would claim that prior to the cross people were permitted to live against The Torah, and Scripture clearly indicates that in The Millennium following the return of The Messiah all of these contested parts of The Torah will be followed. Consider the following:
• According to Isaiah 66:22-23, following the creation of the new heaven and new earth, all people will keep The Sabbath Day, bowing down before God.
• According to Ezekiel 45:21-25, a portion of the Millennium Temple narrative, everyone will be keeping The Passover events and the Fall Feast Days.
• According to Zechariah 14:16-19 all of the inhabitants on earth in The Millennium will be required to keep the Feast of Tabernacles and whoever may dare not to will be punished with no rain for their crops.
• According to Isaiah 66:17 when Messiah returns those who do not follow the food laws, eating swine flesh, rodents, and all that is called unclean abomination, will be annihilated and Revelation 18:2 also indicates that in the yet to come future unclean beasts and unclean birds are still regarded as unclean.
So, if everyone before the cross had to keep The Torah, and everyone after the Second Coming of Messiah will have to keep The Torah, what makes “Christians” think we live in some magic window of time where they don’t have to live by The Torah of God? If God, as Scripture declares, is no respecter of persons—shows no partiality or favoritism from person to person or generation to generation—then how can this belief of a so-called “age of grace” where The Torah can be rejected even be justified? It seems, once again, that this belief comes not from The Bible but from the lawless one, that ancient serpent called Satan who is on a mission to cause you to believe that you don’t have to follow The Torah.
Two Christian Faiths
I want to propose to you that there is a false or counterfeit “Christianity” and a true and biblical Christianity. After all, the fact is that in order for there to be a counterfeit of anything there must be something authentic to pattern the imitation after. Consider the following passages, as I feel they accurately describe the majority of popular “Christianity”—the counterfeit—today.
There is a conspiracy of her prophets in her midst, like a roaring lion tearing prey. They have devoured lives, they take wealth and valuables, they multiply widows in her midst. Her kohanim have done violence to My Torah and have profaned My holy things; they have made no distinction between the holy and the profane, nor have they taught the difference between the unclean and the clean. They shut their eyes to My Shabbatot. So I am profaned among them.
—Ezekiel 22:25-26 (TLV)
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord!’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in Your name, and drive out demons in Your name, and perform many miracles in Your name?’ Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you. Get away from Me, you workers of lawlessness!’”
—Matthew 7:21-23 (TLV)
You seem so gullible: you believe whatever anyone tells you even if he is preaching about another Jesus than the one we preach, or a different spirit than the Holy Spirit you received, or shows you a different way to be saved. You swallow it all.
—2 Corinthians 11:4 (TLB)
In contrast to this, perhaps the most accurate summary of true biblical faith can be found in these two passages:
So the dragon became enraged at the woman and went off to make war with the rest of her offspring—those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Yeshua.
—Revelation 12:17 (TLV)
Here is the perseverance of the kedoshim—those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Yeshua.
—Revelation 14:12 (TLV)
False expressions of “Christianity” are any and all forms of the religion that in any capacity oppose living totally sold out to God through following His Torah. It doesn’t matter if you “believe in Jesus”, if you do not follow The Torah then you are not following Yeshua. This would include fully antinomian views that go as far as saying things like “we need to unhitch from the Old Testament”, as one popular preacher has said, to what might be better referred to as partial-nomians who believe in following some commandments but not all.
Isn’t it interesting that The Bible tells us that the only people Satan wages war against are those who both keep the commandments of God and hold to the faith of Yeshua? The Bible speaks of those who profane The Torah. The Bible speaks of those who do all of the things “Christians” do, including their rejection of The Torah, and says these people will be rejected by Yeshua because of lawlessness—because they rejected The Torah. It doesn’t matter if you prophesy, cast out devils, work miracles, or have “revivals”. If you do not follow The Torah you will be turned away.
Often times people will ask me if Torah-keeping is “a salvation issue” or if I believe people will “go to hell” over some particular commandment—usually something like the food laws, The Sabbath, or celebrating the popular Catholic pagan holidays. To this my first response is that they are asking the wrong question. The moment these questions are asked it reveals the true condition of their heart—such people are set against the commandments of God to the point where they will seek any justification they can concoct to strengthen their anti-Torah beliefs.
What they should be asking is this: Is it holy? Are eating unclean things, breaking The Sabbath, or celebrating things like Christmas and Easter set apart and sanctified as holy by the Word of God? No! Quite the opposite, actually. Things like the food laws and The Sabbath are the commandment of God and those pagan Catholic holidays are celebrated in direct opposition to the commandment of God.
My dear “Christian” friends, your faith is the exact opposite of The Bible you claim to base it on. You don’t even follow the biblical Messiah you claim to have salvation through. In The Torah, Deuteronomy 18:15-19, we are commanded to “shema” (hear, listen to, follow, obey) one who will be a prophet like Moses. Acts chapters 3 and 7 reveal that Yeshua was and is this very same prophet like Moses. He taught His followers to live by The Torah. If you claim to follow Him but do not live by The Torah, you are, as the apostle John said, a liar and the truth is not in you.
It may surprise you, but every single person who was used to write anything recorded in The Bible was a Torah-keeping Israelite, with the possible exceptions of Job and Luke, but even they lived according to the commandments of God. What that means is that everyone who wrote the words you read in Scripture believed the exact opposite of what most “Christians” think The Bible says. Do you find this concerning at all?
Please, read The Bible with the opening two points about the lawless one and The Righteous One as the foundation for understanding everything you read. When you encounter a passage that you think or have been taught overrides the mandate to keep The Torah as a “Christian”, ask yourself if that understanding of the text comes from Satan—the lawless one—who seeks to lead people against The Torah or Yeshua—The Righteous One—who constantly and consistently upheld The Torah.
As you read The Bible remember that the opening chapters speak of the commandment being broken and the people being banished from The Tree Of Life and the closing chapters speak of those who kept the commandments of God being given a right to The Tree Of Life. Remember that we are to walk as Yeshua walked, and not walk after the way of sinners. Remember that contrary to what “Christianity” teaches, The Torah is not a curse, but rather is the source of blessing. Remember that despite “Christianity” insisting that it’s impossible to keep The Torah and God only gave The Torah to prove people could not keep it, Scripture tells us that it’s easy to live by The Torah and the commandments are not a burden. Remember that The Spirit of God causes people to walk in The Torah and Satan leads people against The Torah. Remember that in the future Millennium everyone will live by The Torah and it makes no sense that “Christians” don’t have to follow it. Get your Bible out, shut yourself away from modern “Christianity”, and read it with all of these points in mind and see where it leads you. What do you have to lose? The reason you became a “Christian” in the first place is because you were seeking the truth of The Bible. So why not give this a try?
Blessings and Shalom
©2023 Truth Ignited Ministry
