How Torah Improves One’s Life & an Understanding of the Bible

Boy reading from a gevil parchment scroll. This one is written on goat skin.

A New Way of Life

Coming to an understanding of YHVH Elohim’s Torah-laws and then adopting a Torah-compliant lifestyle coupled with viewing the Bible through a Hebraic perspective and context has numerous positive benefits in one’s life. A pro-Torah approach to one’s life is more than just…

  • Changing which day you go to church on.
  • Changing your eating habits.
  • Celebrating different holidays.
  • And, if you’re really into it, growing a beard and wearing blue fringes or tassels. 

Pursuing a Torah-centric lifestyle will not only change some aspects of your lifestyle, but will also change how you view the Bible, how you view Yeshua or Jesus, Elohim or God, yourself, the Jews, the land of Israel as well as your thinking about a lot of other things, and how you view yourself and your fellow Christians. It will also vastly deepen and broaden your understanding of the Bible in ways you could never imagine. Let’s briefly explore a few of these areas.

The Main Lifestyle Changes Include

  • Observing the seventh day Sabbath
  • Celebrating the biblical feasts
  • Adopting a biblically kosher diet

But as we are about to learn, this is only the beginning.

A New Perspective on the Bible

A pro-Torah and Hebraic view of the Bible opens up multiple new vistas in one’s understanding of the Bible. Here a few of them:

  • A more traditional  Greco-Roman, Western, caricaturized view of Jesus gives way to a more accurate Hebraic or Jewish and Middle Eastern view of the real and authentic Yeshua.
  • One learns that Yeshua in his pre-incarnate state was the God of the Old Testament and the one who interacted with the patriarchs, Moses, the children of Israel and the prophets. As such, he is the One, as the Word of Elohim who would eventually became flesh, who gave the ancient Hebrews his Torah-law.
  • One learns that the thesis-antithesis paradigm of the Old Testament Torah-law or law of Moses model versus the New Testament grace model is a false and church-invented construct, and that the concepts of law and grace are not antithetical as the mainstream church teaches but are complimentary and indivisible issues, and are, in reality, two sides of the same coin.
  • One gains a deeper understanding of who and what the church is. The church was neither birthed nor spontaneously combusted on the day of Pentecost. Rather the church is a long term continuation of YHVH’s relationship with his people going back for thousands of years and continues to this day and involves all of the saints.
  • A new and greater holistic view of the Bible emerges versus only seeing the Scriptures in a seemingly disparate, disjointed and unrelated parts and pieces. The pieces of this vast puzzle finally begin to fall into place and a much more glorious and expansive picture than ever imagined emerges.
  • A Hebraic or Eastern view of the Bible replaces a limited and somewhat cartoon Greco-Roman and Western Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant view.
  •  One begins to understand the Bible through Hebraic block logic rather than Greek step or syllogistic logic. 
  • One gains a deeper understanding of the rules of biblical interpretation including understanding Scripture in its whole Bible, linguistic, historical and cultural context. One also learns about the four levels of understanding the Bible known as the PaRDeS method (i.e., the simple, hinted at, allegorical and mystical levels). One also gains an understanding of and an appreciation for the concept of exegesis over eisegesis when correctly interpreting or rightly dividing the Word of Elohim.
  • A better understanding of biblical history and future events including the Hebraic understanding of cycles emerges.
  • One gains a new understanding of Paul and the real issues facing the New Testament church. The controversial issue that Paul was dealing  with was not the law versus grace and whether or not YHVH’s Torah-law was relevant to Christians. Rather, the issue was about a works-based salvation versus salvation by grace through faith. In Paul’s writings, the validity of the Torah-law was never the issue contrary to what mainstream Christianity has falsely taught over the millennia.
  • One gains a whole new perspective and understanding of Old Testament Bible prophecies as one learns who the ancient players were and who their modern descendants are and how that relates to end times Bible prophecy.
  • One learns who the two houses of Israel were and who their modern descendants are and how that relates to each of us regarding our future destiny as it relates to the establishment YHVH’s kingdom on earth.

A New Perspective About Yourself

As one embraces the Torah and the Hebrew roots of one’s faith…

  • A new and fuller perspective on the biblical definition of sin emerges. One learns that YHVH’s Torah-law defines sin, not church traditions and the rules of men. This is both liberating and sets one’s life on a more solid spiritual foundation based on the Truth of the Bible as opposed to the unbiblical traditions of men.
  • One gains a new and fuller perspective and understanding on who you are as a grafted-in Israelite. You are no longer a Gentile who is without God and without hope, but are part of the commonwealth, nation, citizenship and covenants of Israel. You are a redeemed Israelite and the literal offspring of Abraham and you are part of YHVH’s chosen people along with our Jewish brothers. This is an enormously empowering concept!
  • One obtains a new and fuller understanding of what holiness is and how to become holy. The Bible defines what people, things, practices or times are holy, not men.
  • Your physical diet improves. This is because one becomes a label reader and discovers that one has not only been eating biblical non-kosher foods, but a lot of unhealthy junk and chemical ingredients as well. By eliminating these toxic substances from one’s diet, one’s health will improve because one stops eating physical junk food.
  • One’s spiritual diet will improve. One becomes a spiritual label reader and begins to compare what the mainstream church is teaching or not teaching compared to what the Bible really says. As a result, one stops feeding from the toxic mixture of truth and lies that are emanating from the pulpit, which is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and one starts feeding from the whole Truth of the Bible, which is the tree of life. Thus, one’s spiritual health improves as one stops eating spiritual junk food.
  • One gains a deeper understanding of what it is to be the temple of the Holy Spirit and what it means to live a sanctified and holy life.

A New Perspective on Some Other Things

One gains…

  • A new love for the land of Israel.
  • A new love for the Jewish people.
  • A new love for YHVH’s lost and scattered sheep of the house of Israel. 
  • An expanded and deeper understanding of the gospel message including Yeshua’s remarriage to his Israelite bride and why he had to die on the cross to pay the sin price for his adulterous wife.
  • A fuller understanding on what it is to be the bride of Yeshua and how to prepare for and qualify to be his glorious and immortalized bride.
  • An understanding of the heavenly and temporal rewards that one will receive as a result Torah obedience versus not obeying YHVH’s Torah.
 

Looking for Shabbat Fellowship?

Are you looking for a way to fulfill the Torah command to gather together on the Sabbath with like-minded believers for instruction, Bible study, fellowship, prayer and worship, but you have nowhere to go? Donna Nash and Nathan Lawrence invite you to join us on Shabbat for our live online gathering, which we call Congregation Elim Online.

If you are interested, please email Nathan at hoshanarabbah@earthlink.net or hoshanarabbahblog@gmail.com. Please state your name and where you live (i.e., state and/or country) along with a brief testimony of how you came to Yeshua and the spiritual journey that led you to a more Hebraic and Torah-centric orientation to your faith walk.

We meet nearly every Shabbat at 1:30 US Eastern Time.

Hope to see you there!

 

Comments Section Malfunctioning

Recently, some of you have tried to post comments on my latest blog posts but have been unable to do so. For some strange reason and not of our doing, the comments section has been malfunctioning and we have no clue why. We have not changed any settings or done anything behind the scenes to cause this problem and all of our trouble shooting efforts proven fruitless to resolve this issue. The next step is to get in touch with tech support at Word Press and possibly spend hours on the phone often on hold. Until we have the time (and patience) to do this, the comments section will remain down. Sorry! Modern technology can be a blessing, but it can also at times be a royal pain in the posterior.

 

Exodus 1:1–6:6 Parashat Shemot (A Gospel Oriented Torah Study)

This is a gospel-oriented Torah study. Our goal is to connect the good news of Yeshua the Messiah (the gospel message) to its Hebraic, pro-Torah roots or foundations. The information given here is more than head knowledge. Understanding and wisdom (the right application of knowledge that is based on truth) is taught thus making biblical truth practical, relevant and applicable to your daily life. The truths of the Bible not only have the power to transform your life here and now for the better, but eventually to take you past the veil of death and into eternity.

This Torah study is subdivided in sections by topic in a magazine format thus making it easy to watch at several sittings. May you be blessed as you watch this video.

For a free, printable adult and youth Torah study guide on this Torah portion (parashah), please go to http://www.hoshanarabbah.org/parshiot.html

 

The Hidden Truth Behind Hanukkah and Yeshua’s Incarnation

To the casual observer, Hanukkah is a Jewish holiday that occurs around Christmas-time and has something to do with lighting a menorah-like candelabra, and somehow relates to some important event that occurred a long time ago in Jewish history. Some Bible teachers even claim that Hanukkah is pagan-based holiday that in some way honors the demonic sun god of antiquity. But as we shall see below, there is a hidden truth behind the Hanukkah holiday that the devil doesn’t want people to know about. In fact, by the end of this study, you will hopefully see that Hanukkah celebrates the truth of the Messiah’s incarnation better than Christmas ever did and minus all the pagan trappings. You’ve probably never heard this before and wonder how this could be, so read on.

Anyone who has barely scratched the surface of the historical origins of Christmas’ realizes that they are profane and unbiblical. Christmas is the Christianization of some vile pagan traditions based on celebrating the winter solstice in honor of the demonic sun god through lewd and drunken, orgiastic and satanic rituals. Though the tradition of the Christmas tree came later, it is rooted in pre-Christian sex worship rituals that come straight out of demonic sun god worship, and is something that the Bible in many places condemns and forbids the saints from practicing. 

Hanukkah, on the other hand, doesn’t share Christmas’ pagan origins. Rather, this holiday links back directly to one of YHVH’s seven commanded biblical festivals. Though Hanukkah isn’t a commanded biblical holiday, and is of man’s creation, it still has prophetic implications that are worth noting. What’s more, it doesn’t carry the pagan baggage the Christian holidays like Christmas, Easter, Lent, All Saints Day (i.e. Halloween) and the others all do.

In our study of the origins of Hanukkah, let’s first demonstrate that a correlative link exists between the biblical fall festival of Sukkot or the Feast of Tabernacles (Lev 23:33–43) and Hanukkah. How is this? Interestingly, both Hanukkah and Sukkot along with the Eighth Day last for eight days. According to the intertestamental book of Maccabees, Hanukkah was a second, belated Feast of Tabernacles (Heb. Sukkot and the Eighth Day (Heb. Shemini Atzeret; see 1 Macc 4:44–592 Macc 1:7–910:1–8). After the Jews defeated the Greeks’ attempt to destroy Judaism and the Jewish people, the Jews had to cleanse and reconsecrate their temple from pagan defilement before again worshipping YHVH there. The temple wasn’t ready to be rededicated at the biblically prescribed time of Sukkot in the seventh month of the biblical calendar (in September/October), which is when Solomon dedicated the first temple (2 Chr 5:37:8–9). Instead, the Jews rededicated the cleansed temple roughly two months later in the ninth month (in December), and they celebrated a belated or second Sukkot roughly two months later after the temple was finally cleansed. 

Moreover, the extra biblical tradition of lighting of giant menorahs was a major aspect of Sukkot’s joyous celebration for the second temple Jews (The Temple, p. 224ff, by Alfred Edersheim). Yeshua seems to make reference to this celebration of light involving menorahs when he entered the temple on the last great day or seventh day of Sukkot (called Hoshana Rabbah). At this very time, Yeshua refers to himself as the (true) light of the world (John 8:12 cp. John 7:12).The lighting of an eight-branched candelabra at Hanukkah, also known as the Festival of Lights, seems to reflects this Jewish tradition of lighting menorahs during Sukkot. It also speaks of the miracle of the light of YHVH’s Torah-truth being preserved in Israel despite the heathen’s attempt to stamp it out. 

Interestingly, the timing of Hanukkah also relates to Yeshua who is the light of the world (John 8:12). There is strong biblical evidence to suggest that Yeshua was born at the biblical festival of Sukkot in the early fall. If this is the case, Yeshua would have been conceived in the virgin Mary’s womb by the Spirit of Elohim nine months earlier in our month of December at the time of Hanukkah. The Bible teaches that human life begins at conception (Exod 21:22Ps 139:13–16Jer 1:5Luke 1:154144), not at birth as we in the West typically view it. Therefore, Yeshua’s life really started when he was conceived in Mary’s womb, not when he was born. Therefore, in Hebraic thought, Christmas isn’t really celebrating the beginning of Yeshua’s life or incarnation. Hanukkah does! 

Despite the fact that Christmas misses the mark in celebrating the beginning of Yeshua’s life, Hanukkah and Christmas share something in common. They both celebrate the coming of Yeshua, the Word of Elohim from heaven to this earth to be the light of the world to show man the way to the Father in heaven. Sadly, Christmas is the Christianization of some horrific pagan holidays to arrive at this truth. Hanukkah, however, carries none of this ungodly baggage, as we have attempted to demonstrate so far in this short study.

Why did the Jews choose the twenty-fifth day of the ninth month on which to rededicate the temple? Did this timing have something to do with the winter solstice as the December 25 timing of Christmas does and as some Bible teachers suggest? Absolutely not. There is actually a connection between the timing of Hanukkah (which by the way usually starts well before the winter solstice) and an important historical event that occurred in Israel’s history. It also relates to a Messianic prophecy having to do with the coming of the promised Messiah into the world. This we see in the biblical book of Haggai. This tiny book records that on the day just before what would later become known as Hanukkah or the Feast of Dedication (i.e. the twenty-fourth day of the biblical ninth month, which is called Chislev or Kislev), the cornerstone to the second temple was laid (Hag 2:19). This is the same temple that the idolatrous Greeks would desecrate some 350 years later. Therefore the Maccabeean Jews had solid biblical precedence for choosing the date of Kislev 25 to start celebrating the eight day holiday of Hanukkah or the Feast of Dedication, for this was the day after the prophetic decree went out to lay the cornerstone for that very temple 350 years earlier. Therefore, it appears that the Maccabeean Jews merged the timing of the commencement of the second temple’s construction with the idea that the Solomon’s temple was dedicated on Sukkot. But since temple has been defiled by the Greeks and was not in a purified state to be able to celebrate Sukkot in the fall, they first purified it, then they celebrated a belated Sukkot-type celebration in the ninth month starting on Kislev 25, which became known as the Feast of Dedication or Hanukkah.

Furthermore, when Haggai the prophet records the laying of the cornerstone for the second temple, he also speaks about the Desire of All Nations—another name for Yeshua the Messiah—coming to that very temple and filling it with his glory (Hag 2:7). This is the greater reason why this temple had to be built! The Messiah needed a temple to come to, so that many biblical prophecies about him could be fulfilled. Moreover, in verse nine, Haggai prophesies that the glory of the second temple would be greater than that of Solomon’s temple. How is this? From a physical perspective this is hard to understand, since Solomon’s temple contained billions of dollars worth of gold alone. The second temple could hardly compare to the glorious and extravagant riches of the first temple. Yet considering that this would be the temple to which the Messiah, the Son of Elohim, would come, YHVH through the prophet could indeed predict that “the glory of this latter temple shall be greater than the former” (Hag 2:9), since Yeshua the Messiah and Creator of all things is infinitely greater than any temple made by men.

Finally, John, the Gospel writer, in a sense, confirms Haggai’s prophecy when he records a curious double entendre statement that Yeshua made. While at the second temple, Yeshua predicted the temple’s destruction and its raising up again in three days. Those around him thought he was referring to the destruction and rebuilding of the actual physical second temple.  John, however, informs us that Yeshua’s prophecy was instead referring to the temple of his body, which would be destroyed at his crucifixion and then raised up or resurrected after three days in the grave (John 2:19–22). As the cornerstone for the second temple (the very temple to which Yeshua came on the Feast of Dedication in John 10:22) was laid at Hanukkah time, so Yeshua who is the Rock of our salvation (Deut 32:15Pss 62:289:26) and our Chief Cornerstone (Eph 2:201 Pet 2:6) was miraculously conceived at this very time by Elohim in the womb of the virgin Mary. He was then born nine months later at Sukkot or the Feast of Tabernacles. It was at Sukkot, nine months after Hanukkah, that Yeshua the Messiah or Immanuel (or El [God] with man) was born in human likeness and came to dwell or tabernacle with men in a human body (1 John 1:114). 

This then is the greater and glorious story behind the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah that has been hidden for millennia!