Tag Archives: Law of Moses

Dividing and Conquering the Torah—Was the Torah Fulfilled (or Abrogated) By the Messiah?

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Divide-and-conquer the enemy is a well known and often used offensive military strategy. The enemy may be too large and powerful for a direct frontal assault, so the idea is to break up the enemy’s army or defenses into bite-sized pieces and then to conquer the enemy one smaller piece at a time. This same tactic is employed wittingly or unwittingly by those who don’t want to follow all of the Torah.

Perhaps you’ve seen this tactic used, but haven’t identified it for what it really is; it is a satanic method to undermine or to destroy the validity of the whole counsel of YHVH Elohim’s word. Why do I call it satanic? Because this is the same strategy Satan the serpent used at the tree of knowledge to undermine the clear instructions of Elohim to the first humans. Satan called Elohim’s word into question when he asked Adam and Eve, “Hath Elohim [really] said…?” He caused the first humans to question the word of Elohim, and then from this false narrative platform of doubt and unbelief, he launched his attack against the word of Elohim, and he lured Adam and Eve into committing humanity’s first sin. And, as the saying goes, the rest is history. All of the problems in the world from then till now can be traced back to this one incident.

From that time until now, rebellious and sin-prone men have been trying to find a way around obeying the clear words and instructions of Elohim. Man’s nefarious strategies and philosophies to accomplish this are endless. This human proclivity, however, can be explained by two terse verses in the Bible.

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it? Jer 17:9)

Because the carnal mind is enmity against Elohim; for it is not subject to the Torah-law of Elohim, nor indeed can be. (Rom 8:7)

For nearly 50 years I have been observing and studying this phenomenon to parse the Torah along artificial and ungodly lines. It’s nothing more than a carnal attempt by rebellious men to divide and conquer the Torah, so men can justify themselves in not having to obey it.  At one point in my spiritual journey, for a brief period of time—about six years—I even fell prey to this same false divide-and-conquer concept that mainstream Christianity has subscribed to for some 1900 years to diminish the validity of YHVH’s Torah-law. So I know this tactic well from personal experience. I had to repent of the sin of allowing myself to be duped into questioning the Creator and his Word.

First we must know the truth. What does the Word of Elohim really say? As a bank teller must know what real money looks like before they can identify counterfeit money, the same is true with the truth of the Bible. The righteous and dutiful disciple of Yeshua must know the Word of Elohim to be able to identify the counterfeit. This only occurs through personal and copious study. As such, one will discover that nowhere does the Bible divide Continue reading →

 

What truth shall make you free?

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John 8:32, Know the truth. “The truth shall set you free” is an often-quoted axiom, but few understand its deeper biblical implications.

We violate the sanctity of Scripture if we impose on it our own meanings. This is a cavalier and presumptuous approach to understanding the Bible and can hardly be called “rightly dividing the word of Elohim” (1 Tim 2:15).This practice often occurs with this verse. To do so is to twist the meaning of the Scriptures to fit our own vicissitudes and biases. This is humanism and insults the mind, will and sovereignty of the Almighty as divinely revealed in his Holy Word.

To properly understand this verse, we must look solely to the Bible for the keys to understanding it. We can start this process by first asking the question, what is truth?

The Bible defines its own terms when it calls the Torah truth (Ps 119:142 and 151). The truth of Torah (i.e. the law of Moses) will set a person free, for when one hears and obeys the Torah, one ceases sinning (i.e. violating YHVH’s Torah-law; 1 John 3:4), and therefore doesn’t come under the penalty of the Torah-law’s judgment for breaking it, which the Bible calls sin and which leads (ultimately) to eternal death (Ezek 18:4; Rom 6:23). When one is not under the judgment of sin, one is free. With freedom comes life.

Yeshua the Messiah himself is also the truth (John 14:6), for he is the Living Torah-Word of Elohim (John 1:1, 14). When we place our trusting faith in Yeshua and follow him, his spiritual life in the form of his Set-Apart Spirit will then flow through us and empower us to walk away from sin and follow the spiritual light of his Torah, which will keep us sin-free. This is the path that leads us toward the ultimate freedom from eternal death resulting in everlasting life (John 8:52). As such, sin will no longer have any legal claim on us, and thus we will not come into condemnation, but will pass from death into everlasting life (John 5:24). This is possible because Yeshua has taken upon himself our past sins (Rom 3:25), paid the legal penalty of them, and wiped our spiritual slate clean and has given us a fresh start in life (Gal 2:20; 1 Cor 5:17) to walk sin-free (in accordance with his standards of righteousness, which is the Torah). This is the result of knowing the truth and experiencing the freedom that comes therefrom.

It’s astounding how so many people have been taught to believe the exact opposite of the truth—that the laws of Elohim will place you under bondage instead of setting you free!

Now that you have been set free from the traditions of men, which make of none effect the word of Elohim, you now have the freedom to understand the fuller, biblical meaning of Yeshua’s statement, “And you shall know the truth and it shall make you free.”

 

To believe Yeashua, You have to first believe Moses

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John 5:46–47, Believed Moses. These two verses at the end of chapter five can easily be overlooked, but their implications are huge.

Quite simply, Yeshua is saying that those who don’t believe the writings of Moses (i.e. the Torah) won’t believe the words of Yeshua who himself upheld the Torah and taught its validity in the lives of his disciples.

This then begs the following question: Where does this leave all those who claim to be followers of Yeshua, but who believe that the law of Moses was abrogated? It’s hard to be absolutely black and white on this matter, since only YHVH can judge the heart condition of each individual, for undoubtedly many who claim the law was “done away with” still adhere to many of the law’s tenets (e.g., you shall not steal, murder, lie, commit adultery, worship idols and you shall honor your parents, etc.) and are thus obedient to the law to one degree or another. However, we can safely say that it’s a matter of degrees. To the degree that we don’t believe the words of Moses, we don’t believe the words of Yeshua who was a proponent (and, in reality, as the Word of Elohim, the Originator) of the Torah-law of Moses.

John makes a similar statement in his first epistle from which we can deduce the following: To the degree we don’t keep the (Torah) commandments of Elohim, we won’t know him; that is to say, conversely, if we keep his commandments which are a reflection of his character, will and heart, we will be able to know what pleases him, which in turn will determine the depth of our spiritual relationship with him (1 John 2:4).

In reality, these should be simple concepts to grasp and put into practice in one’s spiritual walk, yet, sadly, most religious leaders have misled Christians to believe anything and everything but the simple truth of the Bible and instead of concocted convoluted man-made doctrines and unbiblical traditions by which they have made the word of Elohim of no effect (Mark 7:13). It’s time for Elohim’s people to come out of the Babylonian church system with its webbed mixture of truth along with half-truths and outright lies (Rev 18:4).

Moreover, Yeshua is saying here that Moses’ prophecies about the coming Messiah formed the foundation for all the subsequent biblical messianic prophecies and the eventual coming of Yeshua the Messiah. If one couldn’t believe these prophecies of Moses, how would they recognize, much less believe in, Yeshua when he did come?

 

Blind Guides: “The Law of YHVH” Vs. “the Law of Moses”

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Luke 2:24, Law of the Lord/YHVH. This phrase is found only three times in the NT—here and in verses. 24 and 39. The same phrase is additionally found 18 times in the Tanakh and obviously refers to the Torah (e.g. Pss 1:1; 19:7; 119:1).

The phrase the law of Moses is found a similar number of times in the Bible: 15 times in the Tanakh and seven times in the NT. Obviously the phrases the law of YHVH and the law of Moses are synonymous terms in that they refer to the same thing: the Written Torah. From obvious meanings of these two terms, we learn that YHVH Elohim is the divine source or origination of the Torah, while Moses was the one who wrote it down and as the leader of the nation of Israel, he administered it.

It is interesting, if not ironic, how the mainstream church chronically refers to the Torah as “the law of Moses,” when Scripture refers to the it as “the Torah of YHVH” the same number of times less one. The church system’s choice of one term over the other seems to reveal, sadly, its apathy, if not, at times, its outright antipathy, toward YHVH’s Torah. This furthermore underscores the truth of Paul’s words in Rom 8:7 about the carnal mind of man being at enmity with the laws of Elohim in that it refuses to be subject to them.

Praise be to YHVH that more and more people are waking up to the truth of the Bible and breaking through the barriers that churchianity has constructed to keep men from the full counsel of YHVH’s Word!

 

Why did Yeshua allow Moses to permit divorce?

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Marriage - Divorce signpost in a beach background

In the study below, we will discuss why Moses added the divorce clause to the Torah, and why Yeshua permitted it and what he had to say about it. (For the record, I am not divorced and thus have no dog in the fight. I am simply analyzing what the Bible has to say to say on the subject and attempting to accurately report my findings. — Natan)

Matthew 19:8, Moses permitted. From Yeshua’s statement here, it would seem that Elohim gave Moses certain freedom and latitude to redefine certain Torah principles to accommodate the needs and realities of fallen and sinful man.

In the case of marriage, even though it was Elohim’s highest ideal for a man to leave his parents and cleave to one wife for the rest of his life or until she died (Gen 2:24), the reality is that man too often is incapable of living up to the Creator’s highest ideal because of the hardness or sinfulness of his heart. It is important to note that YHVH gave the marriage command before the fall of man had occurred (Gen 2:24 cp. Gen 3:1–6). In light of the fact of the fall of man when sin entered the world thus negatively affecting the marriage relationship, YHVH allowed Moses to permit divorce under certain circumstances (see Deut 24:1–4).

Had Moses not made allowances for the sinfulness and hardness of the human heart and forbad all divorce in Israel in an effort to strictly adhere to YHVH’s highest letter-of-the-law ideal for marriage, then the societal results might have been unimaginably chaotic. For example, people would Continue reading →

 

Yeshua’s View on the Torah-Law

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Matthew 5:17–19 are three of the most important verses in the Testimony of Yeshua (New Testament) on the subject of the Torah. These are Yeshua’s instructions about the Torah. The words of Yeshua’s apostolic disciples cannot contradict the words of the Master! Christians theologians have twisted the words of Paul and then taken the words of Yeshua and crammed them to fit and painted them to match their twisted interpretations of Paul’s anti-Torah teachings. Millions of Christians one the millennia have been brainwashed into believing the lies of the theologians. How sad! Now, however, the truth is beginning to emerge as more believers are actually looking into the Scriptures and seeing what they really say instead of taking someone else’s word for it.

Here is my commentary on Yeshua’s words regarding his Torah.

Matthew 5:17, The law and the prophets. Yeshua mentions two of the three subdivisions of the Hebrew Scriptures in this passage: the Law or Torah and the Prophets or Neviim. The Jews have traditionally subdivided the Hebrew Scriptures into three sections: the Torah, Prophets and the Writings. We see Yeshua referring to this threefold subdivision in Luke 24:44. In fact, the Jews of today do not refer to their Hebrew Scriptures by the Christian term of “Old Testament,” but rather by the Hebrew word TaNaKh, which is an acronym Continue reading →