Tag: bar kochba

Why Christianity Has Ignored the Torah

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Today I am doing pretty much an opinion piece but the historical references are accurate.

I have two theories about why Christianity, in general, has ignored the Torah. In truth, most of the Tanakh is ignored, but the Torah, which has been misidentified as “the Law”, is taught to have been done away with by Yeshua’s sacrifice. As such, Christianity has been focused on love and forgiveness, and has marketed salvation through the Blood of Christ as a “Come as you are” party, after which you can “stay as you are.”  

First, we must remember that in First Century Jerusalem there were two religions: Judaism and Roman paganism. When a Gentile repented of their pagan ways and accepted Yeshua as their Messiah, they were converting to Judaism- there was nothing else. When a Jew accepted that Yeshua was the Messiah, he didn’t convert to anything because Yeshua was (and still is) Jewish and taught from the Tanakh, which included the Torah. So, Jews were still Jews and Gentiles were converting to Judaism.

The Elders in Jerusalem gave the new Gentile Believers some time to wean their way (so to speak) off of paganism and into this very different lifestyle by only having 4 absolutely “You can’t do this anymore” items on the list of immediate changes they must make (see Acts 15:19-21.) Soon, there were more Gentiles accepting Yeshua than Jews, and the distance between a Jewish lifestyle and the changes Gentiles had to make was growing further and further apart.

To add to the problem, Rome was persecuting the Jewish population because they were rebelling against Roman rule. This was not a religious persecution, mind you- it was a political one. To the converting Gentiles, though, it didn’t matter- the closer they were associated with Jews, the more under Roman persecution they came. Let’s not forget that the power elite in Judea also was persecuting this new sect of Judaism(it isn’t Christianity yet) because the teachings of Yeshua eroded the power base of the Pharisees, which was a performance-based salvation through which they could control the people by use of traditions they created.

By the end of the 1st Century leading into the 2nd Century, the majority of Believers were Gentiles who changed the rules of worship. The Sabbath was changed to Sunday and Ignatius of Antioch proclaimed Judaism and (now called) Christianity were unable to exist together. At this time we see most of the commandments in the Torah being ignored and the (mostly) Gentile Believers no longer had anything to do with Judaism.

NOTE: this back-fired on the Christians because to the Roman government, what was even worse than rebelling was forming a new religion. The Jewish persecution stopped sometime around the time of the first Jewish-Rome wars (60-90 C.E.)  when Rome had killed thousands of Jews and destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem. The next devastation of the Jewish population was about 60 years later during the Bar Kochba Rebellion, and by then Christians only had to worry about Rome.

The second reason, in my opinion, that Christianity ignored the Torah is because of a terrible misunderstanding of the “Great Commission”, which is considered a commandment by Yeshua to go out and make disciples of everyone in the world. This is found in Mark 16:15 and Matthew 28:19.

I call it a terrible misinterpretation because it has been used as the justification for slaughtering thousands upon thousands of Jews and Muslims over the centuries (the Crusades and the Inquisition are the best-known means of performing what can only be called a “religious genocide”, but Nazi Germany and the Russian Pogroms are an indirect result of this.) The idea of going throughout the world and spreading the Good News was meant to be a benevolent ministry, not a military incursion where people are forced to convert or die. Any condemnation for rejecting God and/or Yeshua was to be administered by God, not people.

At some point, people realized that instead of the threat of death, to make the “Great Commission” successful market it as a “Once saved, always saved” program, and to sell the idea that “God loves you just as you are, ask forgiveness in his name and go to heaven.” Now that is an easy sell!

“Wow! All I have to do is proclaim Jesus is the Messiah, I am sorry I have sinned, please forgive me in Jesus’s name, Amen…and that’s all? Really? Just repeat the “Sinner’s Prayer” and I will be guaranteed a place in heaven forever? Where do I sign?”

See what I mean? Now, if I came to you and said you need to repent, accept Yeshua as your Messiah and follow the 613 commandments in the Torah, you might want to think about it for a while. Like, maybe, for the rest of your life think about it! It’s not an easy thing to just jump into a completely different lifestyle. There is a Shabbat where you aren’t supposed to buy or sell anything, you aren’t allowed to work on many festival days during the year, and you can’t eat any pork or shellfish. You can’t fornicate, you can’t lie, and you have to do this for the rest of your life! In fact, even after you have repented, if you return to your old ways of sin you will lose the salvation that you were given.

See what I mean? If I am trying to convert people from a gluttonous, sexually free and hedonistic religion to one of moderation, sexual purity and servitude to others, I will not be very successful. However, if I say just proclaim faith in Jesus, ask forgiveness and you are set for eternity, I will get many more people to join the club.

Following the Torah is being made holy, which means you are separated from the world and that results in the world not accepting you. People, human beings, want to be accepted. We are a social animal, and so the true religion that God gave to the Jewish people to bring to the world is not going to be a popular choice. Christianity, especially after Constantine, was and still is being sold as something very simple to change to.

Throughout history, Jews have not encouraged anyone to convert to Judaism- but Christianity is all about converting, and the easier it is to convert without really changing your current lifestyle, the more converts you will get.

So there you have it! Christianity has rejected the Torah because:

  1. they didn’t want to be part of the persecution of Jews by Rome; and more recently
  2. it makes it easier to get converts.

Let me again state that these theories are my own ideas. I expect that most Christians raised and accepting typical Christian dogma will vehemently disagree with me, and most Messianic Jews and Hebrew Roots Christians will agree with me, or at least accept that it is possible things happened this way.

 

The 3 Biggest Lies about Jesus

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Third Biggest Lie: If you are Jewish and you believe Jesus is the Messiah then you can’t be Jewish anymore.

That’s what I have been told, and not just by Jews but the Christian world teaches that, also. They don’t come right out and say it, but the teachings are based on misunderstanding of the letters from Paul (Shaul) to the Romans and Galatians, which have been used as a polemic against following the Torah when they are really an apologetic explaining why it is still absolutely necessary to follow the Torah. There are also many subtle anti-Semitic terms in the New Covenant writings, no matter whether it is King James, NIV, or whatever. Unless you have a Messianic New Covenant, the First Century Jews and Pagans who accepted Yeshua as the Messiah God promised are called the “Church”- that is just not right. There was no “church”, at least not as we know the word to be used today. There were Jews and pagans becoming Jews. They met in groups and homes, and if we need to label them in any way, the best term would be Kahillot, the plural of the Hebrew word Kahal, which means congregation. The first century Jews who accepted Yeshua to be the true Messiah remained (and worshiped as) Jews. The pagans who accepted Yeshua as the Messiah of the Jews began to become Jewish, since there were no other religions. You were either a pagan of one sort or another, or a Jew. When you stopped being a pagan, you had no choice but to be a Jew. Duh! So, where did we go wrong? When did accepting the Jewish Messiah require converting to Christianity?  Sometime around the time when the second biggest lie started.

Second Biggest Lie: Jesus founded Christianity.

Jesus never founded Christianity. He preached only to Jews and used Torah as His only source. After the resurrection and the inclusion of the Gentiles into salvation (Acts 10) , as more and more Gentiles joined the movement it became (I believe) less and less attractive to the “everyday” Jewish person. After the suppression by Emperor Hadrian of the Bar Kochba revolt (132-136 AD) being Jewish meant being subject to persecution. If you were a Jew who accepted Yeshua or a Gentile who did the same thing, it was less “dangerous” to be Christian than Jewish.  Frankly speaking, the more Gentiles that accepted Yeshua the less appealing it became to Jews (my opinion) and the further from Torah they traveled (historical fact.) By the Third Century when Emperor Constantine had “legitimatized” Christianity (as it was being called then) and began to form doctrine and canon at the Council of Nicene, the schism was complete and Christianity was totally different from Judaism. The apple had fallen far from the tree.

Biggest Lie about Jesus: If you are a Christian the Torah is not applicable to you.

Acts, Galatians, and Romans are the three Epistles that (I believe) have damaged the truth about being a follower of Yeshua with regard to being responsible to follow the commandments and regulations found in the Torah. As we saw in the lie above, as more and more Gentiles entered the group of Jewish Believers, the Mosaic law became not a means of worshiping but a stumbling block. I mean, really- I want to be saved by this Yeshua you have told me about, but I have to let you cut what off my what? I would certainly have to think twice about that one. Especially because no one had invented Novocaine yet! Also, I have been eating anything I wanted to eat, and now I can’t eat any shellfish or pork?

I separate biblical Kosher from Rabbinical- biblical Kosher, as I call it, means essentially no pork or shellfish, but Rabbinical Kosher is keeping in alignment with what the Rabbi’s say: different dishes, no meat and dairy at all, and an entire host of rules and regulations that are hard and complicated to follow, even back then.

Even to be biblically Kosher was a big move and (again, this is just what I believe) these requirements were, for many, a deal-breaker. Clearly, strict and immediate adherence to Torah was a significant barrier, which is why in Acts 15 they reduced the requirements to be a new Believer to just the 4 rules about food and fornication. What people miss, though, is that they say these are just the initial requirements, and the next sentence states that they will be seeing the laws of Moses every day in the Temple. The clear meaning of that is that Torah will be taught to them, eventually. The “Christian world” has conveniently failed to mention that part.  Yeshua said, in Matthew 5:17, he did not come to change the laws. And when He said He came to fulfill them that meant, in the language of the day, that He was interpreting them correctly. Fulfilling a law doesn’t mean doing away with it: if that was true, when you next come to a stop sign or a red light and the car ahead of you comes to a full stop, you don’t need to. That car fulfilled the law so it is no longer valid.

Yeah, right- try that one on the cop when he is writing the ticket.

The truth is simple: Jesus, Yeshua, was Jewish and lived a Jewish lifestyle. In fact, His “claim to fame” is that He lived Torah exactly, perfectly, and as the sinless Lamb of God was acceptable as the sacrifice for sin for all mankind. If Yeshua did not live Torah perfectly, He was not sinless and was not an acceptable sacrifice. Simple. However, since He was raised, then He did live Torah perfectly.

The Christian world asks that the followers of Jesus live as Jesus lived and do as Jesus did. Then they tell you that Torah is only for Jews because Christians have Grace. Grace came from Torah, so without Torah there can be no Grace- that is the message Shaul was trying to get across in Romans.

What Jesus taught was to worship God not just in action but in mind and heart. Jesus was the living Word, and the only word was Torah- reject the Torah and you reject Jesus.

Stop living a lie and get with the program.