We all know that after Yeshua was resurrected salvation became available to the Gentiles who were willing to faithfully accept that Yeshua is the Messiah the God of the Jews promised to send.
And in doing so, they also obligated themselves to accept the same laws and way of life that the Jews led.
If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.
Now, I’m sure that many Christians reading what I just wrote about the Gentiles being obligated to live as Jews lived if they accepted Yeshua as their Messiah are thinking:
“Well, no! We only have to do those 4 things in the letter they wrote (Acts 15) and the Torah is no longer valid for Gentiles because we have the law of Christ and we don’t have to follow the laws of Moses.”
I understand that is what many, MANY Christians have been taught, but I am here to say that is not correct.
Sorry, but the only place in the entire Bible where any of that church rhetoric comes from is not from God or Yeshua- it is a false teaching stemming from confusing language in letters written by a man to congregations of Gentiles he was teaching to be Torah obedient, but doing so slowly so that he wouldn’t lose them to their old habits.
Shaul (Paul) wrote to congregations that were started by him, teaching them the Torah but at a pace they could handle. That is why it has been so easy for Gentiles who did not want to worship God as God said to do (in the Torah) to change things around.
You see, at that time there was a constant rebellion against Roman rule by the Jews, and as these Gentiles began to accept Yeshua and be taught the Jewish way of worship, they felt they would be associated with the jews and, as such, become targets of Rome.
So, to politically protect themselves from Rome, they separated themselves from the Jews by changing how they worshipped.
And as for those 4 things in the letter James suggested, Christianity loves to teach that those are all Gentiles have to do, but James never said that! In fact, he suggested those 4 things as initial “must-do’s” never intending them to be the only things to do, and that is confirmed by Acts 15:21 when he said that these neophyte believers would learn the law of Moses while attending Shabbat services every week, when the laws were always being read.
So, again, sorry, but the truth is that Gentiles who accept Yeshua as their Messiah also have to accept the Torah as their way of life.
But they didn’t, and (as I mentioned) in order to separate themselves from the Jews, they decided to cover their own tuchas by changing how they worshipped from the way Yeshua worshipped to a way that was not pagan or Jewish, creating a new religion that was soon to be called Christianity.
And that is when they pruned themselves from the Tree of Life, which is the Torah. They created a new man-made religion which has rejected nearly everything God said he wanted from those who worship him.
They rejected his Holy Days and created their own.
They rejected his Shabbat and made their own.
In truth, they rejected God.
How did they reject God? Well, first off, when you reject what God says to do, you have rejected God, and by the middle of the Second Century they had created the idea of a Trinity which replaced God the Father with Jesus the Savior by making them one and the same entity.
Christians pray to Jesus, they ask Jesus for forgiveness of sins (which he, himself, said he could do only while on the earth in Matthew 9:1-8), and there is at least one Christian religion that says any priest can forgive your sins!
Personally, I think they came up with that idea because a celibate life is boring, and by creating this confession thing they could add a little vicarious excitement into their life by hearing what others were doing.
Remember the Bugs Bunny cartoon where Elmer chases Bugs up a tree? Bugs is at the end of a branch, with Elmer on that same branch sitting next to the trunk, sawing away at the part that Bugs is on. And when he saws all the way through the branch, the tree and Elmer fall, while the separated branch Bugs is on miraculously stays suspended in the air!
Christianity thinks it can do what Bugs did and get away with it.
If any Gentile states they have been grafted onto the Tree of Life but don’t obey the Torah, well they may have been grafted on at one time but by choosing to reject the Torah they have pruned themself from the Tree of Life, and are grafted onto nothing.
Thank you for being here and please remember to comment and share these messages with everyone you know, even non-believers. Hey, after all, you never know how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.
That’s it for this week, so l’hitraot and (an early) Shabbat Shalom!