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Dear brethren,
Let's simplify this issue by asking ourselves some very pertinent, SIMPLE and straightforward questions (and please be open-minded and honest enough with yourself to LISTEN and THINK about what I'm saying!):
How did the death of Yeshua, our Final SIN Sacrifice, remove the need to OBEY God? When He walked this Earth, He showed us how to obey God by being Torah observant – obeying YHWH’s "forever" commands. Last time I checked, forever didn’t end last Tuesday....
Another question: If a SIN Sacrifice is able to do away with God’s DIVINE teachings, then how come God’s teachings weren’t nullified the moment after He killed an innocent animal to cover the sin of Adam and Even in the Garden of Eden? How come God kept requiring sin sacrifices throughout the millennia? Yeshua was the FINAL one, and He even showed us how to obey YHWH while He was here! WHAT supposedly took that away?
Since Yeshua (God come in the Flesh) obeyed His Father and His Father's Torah and even SHOWED US how to do it, what makes Christians think they don’t have to? What makes Christians think they are allowed to come up with their own "holy days" that cause parents to lie to their children?
Doug's correspondence kept referring to the New Covenant. Well, please re-read Jeremiah 31:32 which tells us that YHWH made His New Covenant with the Houses of Israel and Judah. He did NOT make it with "the Christians" or the "the Catholics" or anyone else. And the Houses of Israel and Judah were TORAH OBSERVANT, right down to ALL non-Jews who joined them! So, since God made His New Covenant with Israel and "the Jews" – where do Gentiles get off insisting they can worship the same God but they somehow have different rules? WHERE did God ever tell them that? The good news is that anyone who believes in Messiah Yeshua is automatically grafted in to Israel – and Israel is TORAH OBSERVANT!
If you honestly believe that "Jesus" replaced YHWH and all His Divine instructions, then tell me this: Where in the Bible does it say that God can be born or die? Don’t you feel there’s something wrong with the idea that "Jesus" – the guy who was born and died, came to abolish GOD’s DIVINE TEACHINGS???? What gave Him that authority? He even prayed to the Father (John 17), not the other way around....
All this theological discussion with opinions about what Paul said or didn’t say is fruitless, because the bottom line is, most Christians ain’t listening. They never bother (even when presented with Scriptural evidence)to ask: “What did GOD say?” And I’m talking about YHWH, the Head Honcho who made all the rules, not the Sin Sacrifice that Yeshua was, the Man who came to show us how to obey YHWH by being a living Example for us to follow (and He did NOT do Christmas or Easter!), and who then offered Himself as our Final Sin Sacrifice – whose purpose was to once and for all abolish the need for us to kill innocent animals. Where did Yeshua ever say He came to abolish the need for the Father and HIS rules?
As for your debate about what Colossians 2:16-17 says or doesn't say or mean, let’s dissect it using the Aramaic English New Testament by Aramaic scholar and author Andrew Gabriel Roth:
Colossians 2: 15. And, by yielding up his body, he showed contempt for principalities and authorities; and put them to shame, openly, in his own person. 16. Let no (pagan)[1] therefore judge you about food and drink, or about the distinctions of festivals and new moons and Shabbats 17. which were shadows of the things then future; but the body of Mashiyach.[2] 18. And let no one wish, by abasing the mind, to bring you under bonds that you subject yourselves to the worship of Messengers;[3] while he is prying into that which he has not seen and is vainly inflated in his fleshly mind 19. and holds not the head from which the whole body is framed and constructed with joints and members, and grows with the growth (given) of Elohim.
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Footnotes:
[1] The Body of Mashiyach must not be concerned with the judgments of those who are outside the Malchut Elohim, that is, those who don’t know Torah or Mashiyach. It is clear, given the location of this audience and the fact that Rav Shaul always references Jews directly, that Shaul is addressing the local talk of the pagans whose religion dominates this region.
[2] Compare this with Colossians 1:24. Paul is stating that the "Body of Mashiyach" determines how to observe Torah, including Kashrut, Shabbats, Moedim and Rosh Chodeshim; therefore, don’t let lawless pagans judge you; they have their own religious customs and way of doing things! For example, many choose to attend "religious" meetings on Sun-Day, and they have sunrise services on Ishtar (Easter), then for December 25th they put up a Tammuz (Christmas) tree that commemorates the rebirth of the Babylonian deity Tammuz. And the gold and silver balls that Christians hang on their Christmas trees originally represented Tammuz’ testicles, as he was renown for "pleasing the ladies."
Most Christians know full well that Y’shua was not born on December 25th, but the pagan celebrations have become such entrenched traditional rituals that truth has become an embarrassing inconvenience. See Christmas in Appendix. In other words, don’t let family, friends, pastors, or co-workers judge you for observing truthful Torah festivals, because their motive is for you to return to the pagan substitutes they themselves prefer. The Church today is following in the idolatrous footsteps of ancient and modern Israel according to Ezekiel 8:14 and Jeremiah 10 and 17. The vast majority of Christians twist this verse to teach that Shabbat and the Feasts of YHWH "were fulfilled by Christ and are no longer necessary" which completely contradicts what Rav Shaul (Paul) taught – that YHWH’s Feasts are a shadow of things to come; not to mention, they are rehearsals for the Bride of Mashiyach! What Mashiyach and Paul call "good," most Christians call evil; they even believe that their pagan-based rituals are sanctified through a "Christian" label (see Isaiah 5:14-23).
[3] See Messengers (Angels) in Appendix.
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Shalom,
Shali
NOTE FROM THE REFINER'S FIRE: The Aramaic English New Testament is a direct translation of the Khabouris Codex, which is the oldest New Testament ever discovered, possibly dating back to 120 A.D. The Khabouris Codex was written in ALL Aramaic, with not one word of Greek in sight. Andrew Gabriel Roth has translated this document directly into English, thus restoring not only the actual verbiage, but also correcting some of the Greek mistranslations/misinterpretations that permeate most Bible versions that have rendered more important the writings of Paul, over and above the actual teachings of our Messiah Yeshua.
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