Kathy's e-mail:

First of all, I wanted to say, I already know all the things you mentioned last night. In the 30 years I've been studying the Bible, I have studied in both the OT and the NT. I have also had some Bible college and seminary training. In my formal Bible education, my professors probably taught more from the OT than the NT. So, while I'm not an expert in Biblical understanding or interpretation by any means, neither am I a neophyte....

As much as I enjoy the Shabbat services, I didn't start attending your synagogue because I was disillusioned with the Christian Church. I've never had a problem with worshipping on Sunday, Christmas, "Easter", pork, etc. I believe what Jesus said about days and diets. And I think it is really in the face of the enemy to take what he meant for evil (paganistic festivals, etc.) and turn around and use those things for good and God!! It's just gotta torque ol' Lucifer no end that we celebrate Jesus' birthday during the winter solstice and Resurrection Day on a day named for a pagan goddess. Maybe that's part of what Jesus meant about the wheat and tares growing up together and would be separated during the end times by the angels.

I started going to the messianic synagogue to worship Jesus in a Jewish cultural setting. And I do wonder about something I need to talk to the rabbi about, and it's this: I have no desire and no intention of joining myself to the messianic movement by wholesale adopting Jewish practices. I am a gentile believer and always will be. I'll continue to eat pork, continue to worship Jesus as the Living Torah and place Him high above the written Torah, and continue to celebrate the Christian holidays....

Furthermore, it bothers me that the rabbi carries the Torah around the synagogue like some trophy. Perhaps he needs to have someone carry a Yeshua banner IN FRONT of the Torah?

In Him, Kathy

Response:

Hi Kathy,

I understand what you're saying, and the bottom line is, you can do or believe whatever you want. God gives us all that choice. But what makes you think you don't have to obey His "forever" commands? Has forever ended yet?

No, Kathy, you don't know "all the things I mentioned last night", because if you did, you would be "walking in Torah"! As much as you tried to impress us with your extensive schooling and Bible studies last night, it was blatantly obvious that you've never been taught Torah and, even after we tried to explain it, you've failed to grasp the meaning of it. In spite of everything we discussed, you insist on coming from that typical Christian perspective that is under the mistaken impression that God granted us carte blanche to ignore His original teachings and do whatever we want as long as "we believe in Jesus".

Kathy, I have to tell you, it's beyond me why people would deliberately go against God's original teaching and instruction and put Him into a box like most Christians have done! And, while you might have extensive Bible knowledge under your belt I'm guessing, by the things you've said, that you've never had any actual Torah study, or know much about studying the Bible from the "Hebrew mindset". By this, I mean really learning Torah and discovering why God presented it to mankind; along with some knowledge about the Hebrew language, etc., which would serve to help you understand things the way God MEANT for us to understand and comprehend them.

I didn't have your Bible college or seminary training, but I'm not exactly a slouch, myself. I even have a little more education than you, if you want to get technical or boastful about it (which it certainly seemed that you did). Do you think God will ask us on Judgment Day how much education we had? Or how much money we earned in our lifetimes? No! He will judge our heart conditions toward Him, and whether or not we did our best to obey His Word - ALL of His Word!

From the moment I was "saved" in a Baptist church, I felt "something was missing", even though back then I had no clue as to what it might be. But, the Holy Spirit made me wise enough to pose questions such as "Why, if Jesus said that He came NOT to do away with the Law, was the church basically ignoring the OT and referring to it as 'being under the Law'"? To me - even in my Christian infancy - it was clear that Jesus came to abolish MAN-MADE "rabbinical" thoughts, actions, deeds - not God's original teachings!

The Holy Spirit also caused me to question how and why the writings of Paul seemed to NEGATE God's original teachings - even though Paul said in Romans 3:31 Do we then nullify the Law through faith? May it never be! On the contrary, we establish the Law....Something seemed "off" between what Paul had said, and how "the church" was interpreting it. I recognized that fact immediately - yet, people such as yourself who have all this "extensive Bible training", seem to glide right over it....

The Holy Spirit also caused me to realize that Yeshua was the final SIN Sacrifice, in part, because God said His Word would last forever - and forever doesn't end next Tuesday....I realized it was ignorant and arrogant of us to think God would negate His original teachings and suddenly render them null and void! WHY would He do that??? Why don't Christians ever ask those questions???

I also realized right away that the church was just "milk", hanging onto the belief that nobody had to do anything but "believe on the shed blood of Christ" in order to be saved. While this is TRUE to some extent, we also need to realize that God never said to stop obeying His laws, or remembering His feasts or "walking in Torah" and doing the things that please Him. Yeshua ONLY "did away with" the man-made rabbinical junk, as He Himself said:

Matthew 5: 17"Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.

Has everything been accomplished yet? I don't think so! Have heaven and earth disappeared? Nope. This means that God's original Word hasn't disappeared, either. One of the original 613 commandments that God gave man told us to Keep the Sabbath. This was so important to Him that, when He condensed them into the 10 Commandments, "Keep the Sabbath" remained. It is a known fact that God's Sabbath was on the seventh day - so what makes man think we could change it to the first day? That is purely a man-made decision, just like Christmas and Easter - neither of which God EVER said to honor, and both of which have been perverted with pagan traditions and lies (see my articles on Christmas and Easter).

We are not honoring God by worshiping Him with these pagan holidays! They are surely the type of "strange fire" for which He put the sons of Aaron to death (Leviticus 10:1; Numbers 3:4; Numbers 26:61)! Sure, we can worship Him on whatever day we want, but His commanded day of rest is STILL the seventh day! So, why be delibereately belligerent? Did Jesus' death somehow negate how God WANTS to be worshipped and when? The only reason WE aren't being zapped is because Yeshua died so that we could be forgiven our sins.

You have the right idea about "torquing Lucifer off", but deliberately celebrating Yeshua's birth on the 25th of December probably makes Satan smile because you're playing into a lie, which breaks the Ninth Commandment. Wouldn't it make more sense to celebrate His birth in the CORRECT month, rather than to mix Him in with the birthdate of several pagan gods and goddesses? Yeshua was NOT born in December, so why pretend and FORCE it on Him? God's feasts indicate that Yeshua was born in the September/October time frame during Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles. We know this from the Bible, because Mary gave birth in a "temporary dwelling" since there was no room for them anywhere. God's feasts are VERY important and help us to figure out very closely WHEN things happened in the Bible. Check out my article about how Yeshua has so far only fulfilled the first four feasts and why they're significant.

Seeing the entire Bible from the Hebrew perspective - since we are, after all, borrowing from the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (none of whom were Jews, but were simply Torah observant, obedient servants of God!) is truly important. Yeshua was the very FIRST "Messianic Jew"....He was a Torah observant, tallit wearing, synagogue attending, feast-keeping, kosher Jew, who viewed the Tanach (OT) through a "Hebrew mindset", not a "Christian NT-only" mindset in which man could start inserting his own ideas, changing God's holidays, and ignoring His will.

Concerning your comment that you have no problem with pork, I'd like to remind you that God outlined what He considered to be food (see Leviticus). Man has totally twisted those Scriptures about "all food being clean". Why would "unclean" foods suddenly be considered "clean" just because Yeshua offered Himself as our final SIN Sacrifice? What did foods have to do with the need for sin sacrifices? The fact is: neither Jesus nor Paul EVER negated God's original Word about food; that is simply another Christian misconception as is outlined in our article about the writings of Paul which says, in part:

Question: Did Rav Sha'ul say it is up to each of us to decide what we should eat and what day we should keep?

Romans 14:5-6: 5 One person considers some days more holy than others, while someone else regards them as being all alike. What is important is for each to be fully convinced in his own mind. 6 He who observes a day as special does so to honor the Lord. Also he who eats anything, eats to honor the Lord, since he gives thanks to God; likewise the abstainer abstains to honor the Lord, and he too gives thanks to God.

Answer: Absolutely not. The context of this passage was a dispute over whether one may eat food that MAY or MAY NOT have been offered to idols. In those days food that was offered to idols was usually put out for sale to people on a certain day of the week. It could or could not have been offered to idols. Therefore, some believers would not buy food and eat it on those days just to make sure. However, some believers did, because they reasoned that since they didn't know for sure it was offered, it was not wrong. Paul's instruction did not address either Kosher or Sabbath day observance. It addressed the dispute over whether marketplace food, because of idolatry, should be purchased and eaten on a certain day of the week. It also shows how sensitive the believers were to the possibility of food offered to idols. How much more sensitive should we be to what we eat, as to whether or not it is approved by the Word of God.

Check out David H. Stern's explanation in the preface of his Complete Jewish Bible, where he demonstrates that there is a difference between what is kosher and what is ceremonially clean. God NEVER said pork, shellfish, etc. were food - people called it food in rebellion against God. Where the passages are in question in the Bri't Chadasha (NT), it is dealing with animals God gave us to eat and whether they are ceremonially clean and can be eaten at that time. Even in Peter's vision, he would never have eaten the kosher animals that had been in contact with treife (non-kosher) animals. The vision was to show that the kosher animals were no longer considered unclean because they were among the treife. This was clearly showing that the Gentiles were to be accepted and it would be okay to associate with them. The rest of the passage shows that this is the correct interpretation and what the vision was all about.

As to your comment about the rabbi's carrying a "Yeshua banner IN FRONT of the Torah", I'd say you truly don't have a clue. Torah is God's original teaching. Yeshua is the LIVING Torah who came to basically "put a Face on God" and teach us personally how to understand and obey His "forever" commands, and then to die as our Final SIN Sacrifice; He was not someone who came to kill off His Father or His Father's will. End of story....

Hopefully the above has opened your eyes to the importance of reading the Bible IN CONTEXT. Granted, works don't save us, and all that really matters in the end is our relationship with Yeshua. But, having that "relationship" also means not putting Him into a box and trying to make Him into someone He isn't, or to twist the things He DID say! Please think about the things we tried to tell you. Why only put your big toe in the water, when you can jump in and get more of God's blessings for being totally and completely obedient?