Reader Question

I was checking out the Internet to go on the website of Jesus-is-Saviour when I noticed your letter to that website. I would like to thank you for your great answers to the wrong teachings of a man that is foolish enough to hate Judaism and mistakenly call Jews heretics. I should point out that I am not Jewish, but gentile.

I cannot in my mind grasp the idea that Christian can hate what was their beginnings. Jesus was born of a Jewish mother, of the Tribe of Judah and in the line of David. He lived as a Jew. He worshiped at the temple, celebrated the different Jewish feasts. He would have studied the Torah from childhood, as most Jewish boys did. His followers were Jews. The early church worshiped at the temple. Jesus never did away with the "Law", but refined it. He only showed that it was impossible to follow the law without His help.

Was it not Abraham given the promise from God that he would be the father of a nation that the blessings to the world would come, which it did through Jesus? Because of Abraham's faith not only was he the start of the Hebrew nation but the Gentiles would also be blessed. In fact does it not say in Galatians 3:29 "If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise." Christianity was not a new religion, but a continuation of the God's chosen people.

You're right about so many times we don't read the "Old Testament". Which is a shame. The two books need to be read as a whole. Jesus, Paul and the other writers of the "New Testament" often quotes the passages in the Old Testament. We need to read both books to know God and what he was doing to move the world to love and obey Him. It's a shame the Roman and Greek philosophy corrupted the early church.

Our Response....

Thank you so much for writing to The Refiner's Fire! You've made some great comments and are obviously very wise for everything you said was true!

Did you also know that the Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) were not Jews? There were no Jews until Jacob begat the Tribe of Judah, where the word "Jew" comes from. But yet, EVERYONE up until that time (except, of course, the pagans and heathens who were believers in other gods) was Torah observant! Cain and Abel provided sin sacrifices, and they weren't Jews; and Noah knew the difference between "clean and unclean" and he wasn't a Jew, either. As a matter of fact, YHWH (Yahweh) reiterated FOUR TIMES in the following, that EVERYONE who chose Him would have to do exactly as His Chosen people - who were Torah observant:

Numbers 15: 13 "'Everyone who is native-born must do these things in this way when he brings an offering made by fire as an aroma pleasing to the LORD. 14 For the generations to come, whenever an alien or anyone else living among you presents an offering made by fire as an aroma pleasing to the LORD, he must do exactly as you do. 15 The community is to have the same rules for you and for the alien living among you; this is a lasting ordinance for the generations to come. You and the alien shall be the same before the LORD: 16 The same laws and regulations will apply both to you and to the alien living among you.'"

Any Torah-less non-Jew/Hebrew/Israelite is an "alien"/foreigner. God was very specific what non-Jews/Hebrews were to do: The same laws and regulations will apply both to you and to the alien living among you...."Living among" means not necessarily physically, but rather, it refers to all those who have accepted the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They MUST be Torah observant, just like the Houses of Israel and Judah were with whom God made His New Covenant (Jeremiah 31:32)! YHWH did not make His New Covenant with the Gentiles; He made it with those who were obedient to His divine Instructions! Same God, same rules for both the "natural" and the grafted-in" children. It could not be any clearer.

It's not just about "reading the Old Testament" but being obedient to the "forever" commands we can find within the Torah (first five Books). Yeshua came not to replace YHWH or abolish His Divine rules; He came to fullfill - which did not mean "put an end to" but, rather, to fulfill His purpose by coming to Earth and personally showing people how to obey God through Torah, to show us how to live with each other according to His Father's Torah, and then to die as our Final SIN Sacrifice.

Unfortunately, most people don't get that. They insist that Jesus came to abolish His Father's Laws and start a bunch of new ones, and institute "grace" which means we can do whatever we want because we're "forgiven." Hardly anyone stops to think that "grace" has always been around. Grace is the reason God didn't wipe Adam and Eve off the face of the Earth when they sinned; grace is why He killed an innocent animal (an animal they had personally known and had named and played with!) in front of their eyes, and then told them to now go and deal with the consequences of their sins, out in "the world." And these consequences from now on would include the shedding of innocent blood to atone for our guilt and sin...

Grace was around when God allowed Noah to be spared from the Flood; grace allowed Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to live through the fire; grace allowed Lot and his family to escape God's wrath on Sodom and Gemorrah.....Grace is the reason He sent His Son to become our Final Sin Sacrifice....It didn't start with Catholicism or Protestantism!

Yeshua didn't come to institute a new religion based on "grace" or start any new religion; He simply came to walk out His Father's desire, which was to show us personally how to obey God's Torah - and yet somehow, "the church" decided to change all that (thanks to the "Church Fathers" who hated anything Jewish because they were too dense to realize it wasn't "Judaism" they were supposed to be following; but rather, GOD'S TORAH!)

Man has certainly done a lot of silly things "in the Name of the Lord." Unfortunately, God wasn't in the midst of any of those things! And many "good, God-fearing Christians" will find they have been "left behind" when the rapture comes....because they insisted on ignoring HIM and instead, hanging on to their paganism which is rooted in the fact that they refuse to REST on the Seventh Day Sabbath, or to bother with His commanded Biblical Feasts - all of which foreshadow Yeshua, who has so far only fulfilled the first four of the seven.