If you go to almost any Bible, and turn to Acts Chapter 9, you will find a caption that says something to the effect of, “Paul converts on the road to Damascus.”
The problem with that caption is that it is a total lie!
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Christianity has based nearly every tenet and canon on misunderstanding and misusing the letters that Shaul (Paul’s real name) wrote, which were to congregations composed mostly of Gentiles who wanted to be part of this movement that promised eternal joy after they die if they simply accept that this Jewish guy named Yeshua is the son of that Jewish God, Adonai, and that when they do that they can be forgiven of their sins.
I would think one of the first obstacles Shaul had to face is that pagans don’t have sins because what they do is OK with their gods; after all, their gods did it, all the time! Once Shaul could get these Gentiles who wanted something better to listen to him, then he had a starting point.
Most Bibles will lead you to believe that these early Christians (even though that wasn’t a term of affection, at that time) were all Gentiles, the movement accepting Yeshua as the Messiah was initially only Jews. The thousands who were fed, the thousands who accepted him as Messiah at that first Shavuot (Pentecost) after his crucifixion were all Jews, who (for the record) never converted to anything but remained Jews living a Torah-observant lifestyle!
After all, he said he came only for the lost sheep of Israel (Matthew 15:24), and the spreading of his “Good News” didn’t reach Gentiles until a while after he was raised into heaven.
The fact is that until after Yeshua was taken up into heaven, Gentiles were not a significant part of the movement of those Jews who accepted the Messiahship (is that a word?) of Yeshua.
Now, when Shaul was riding to Damascus to persecute the believing Jews, and he got knocked off his high horse (literally, as well as figuratively), he did not convert to a different religion. What happened is simply that he changed his belief regarding Yeshua as the Messiah. That was the only thing that changed, and despite how many people call him a Christian saint or use his letters as justification for ignoring the Torah, Shaul was a Torah-observant Pharisee his entire life and never taught against the Torah.
Prove it, you say? I don’t have to prove it because Shaul, himself, says so!
Let’s take a look at Acts 24:14, where Shaul was making a defense to the Roman governor when he was accused of desecrating the Temple and teaching against the Torah:
But this I do admit to you: I worship the God of our fathers in accordance with the Way (which they call a sect). I continue to believe everything that accords with the Torah and everything written in the Prophets. And I continue to have a hope in God – which they too accept – that there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the unrighteous.
His admission that he worshipped God in accordance with the “Way” simply meant that he accepted Yeshua was the Messiah God promised to send- there was no church, there was no Christian canon, the New Covenant wasn’t even written yet, and the majority of followers of Yeshua were still Torah-observant Jews.
It wasn’t until near the end of Shaul’s missionary work, sometime around 65 AD, that the number of Gentiles now being called Christians outnumbered the remaining Jews accepting Yeshua as the Messiah.
By the end of the First Century, what started as a Jewish movement had mutated into a totally different religion.
If you ask me, and even if you don’t (because this is my ministry and I’ll say what I believe), the main reason that Christianity has become so completely different from its Judaic roots is because the Gentiles who became the leaders of the movement after all the original, Jewish apostles and shamashim (Hebrew for leaders) died off, decided that all this Jewish stuff would get them in trouble with Rome. You see, there were three rebellions by the Jews in Judea against Roman occupation and rule (the third and last was in 70-73 AD, when the second temple was destroyed), and if these previously “safe” Gentiles now associated with the Jewish population, they were afraid they would also get on Rome’s “Hit List”. So, they changed things around to separate themselves from the Jews, starting with changing the day of the Sabbath, eventually misinterpreting Shaul’s letters to indicate following the Torah was wrong.
Of course, the way Shaul wrote, misinterpreting his stuff was easy.
But, to get back on track, Shaul was a Torah-observant Jew all his life, never converting to anything, especially not what we know today as Christianity. He continually taught how to be Torah observant, but required this conversion from paganism to Judaism to take place only a few steps at a time (which the Elders in Jerusalem agreed with- read Acts 15:21).
His arguments against circumcision and other Jewish forms of worship were never meant to tell these neophyte believers to ignore the Torah, only that they must not succumb to the legalism being forced on them (legalism meaning to obey the Torah as a means of earning salvation). He really never had any issues with Gentiles getting circumcised, so long as the reason was to be faithful to the Torah, and not just to be “correct”.
There are many other places in the Epistles that Shaul wrote that justify the fact he never converted to any other religion, and never stopped being a Torah-observant Jew. The truth is that if Christians want to live and worship as Yeshua (Jesus) did, then they need to get familiar with what God said to do (in the Torah) regarding how to worship him and how to treat each other, because that’s really the way Yeshua lived.
Thank you for being here; don’t forget to subscribe and share these messages. That’s it for today, so… l’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!
