Romans Part IV

If you want to start at the beginning of this series, click this.

In my last post, Honor The King, I was specifically focused on the problem of people using Romans 13 in two inappropriate ways.  First, to suggest that we have to show honor and deference to evil rulers, and second the idea that we have rulers in the United States. Darn it; I didn't use John the Baptist as an example either.  I need to go back and update that post.  John, cousin of the Messiah, very publicly condemned Herod for committing terrible sin.  Herod was illegitimate as a king over Israel, and everyone knew it.   Jerome Corsi has recently published a book that proves that the current usurper at Pennsylvania Avenue is just as illegitimate as president.

Call me a "birther" all you want to.  The real idiot is someone who can't distinguish truth from fiction.

The purpose of this post is to pick up from where I left off in the complete study of Paul's letter to the congregation in Rome, for the express purpose of seeing if he ever said that we don't need to keep Torah any more.  I had gotten through chapter eleven and all I can discern so far is that he was making it clear that the Law of Moses has a purpose and we have no reason to disregard either the Torah or Messiah's admonition that He never came to abolish the Torah, or the prophets.

Paul was explaining that the pattern holds from the earliest time.  First Adonai saves us through his mercy and grace.  Being a God of order and righteousness, He requires that restitution be made, but He makes it Himself.  However, he expects us to then live our lives according to His rules out of gratitude.  We establish that the law is true and good.

So we now pick up the study of Romans at chapter twelve.  Paul is urging the brethren at Rome to make their bodies a living sacrifice as a spiritual form of worship.  Why does he write this?  Because all good Jews know that God commanded that the only real physical sacrifices could be made at the Temple. God made it clear when he showed Moses the heavenly Tabernacle and told him to construct it on earth, that man would no longer be allowed to sacrifice on his own terms anywhere he wanted to.  Why is this important to Paul's discussion in the letter?

After the diaspora of 600 years previous, many Jews had not returned to the land of Israel, either because they couldn't or wouldn't, but they were still aware of the prohibition of not offering sacrifices on their own. The rabbinic teaching became that the closest thing they could do to sacrifice  would be to study Torah.  Quite sensible, since John's gospel begins by telling us that Yeshua and the Word are one and the same.  The rabbis alluded to this for centuries before John wrote his gospel.  The sages taught that Torah was eternal and that Adonai created the universe through His Torah.

While Jews living in Rome had long understood that they could not offer sacrifices outside of the Temple system in Jerusalem, Roman gentiles had been living under the old pagan way of offering sacrifices to any or many gods, whenever and wherever they chose.  Accepting this Jewish Messiah was a radical departure from what they were used to.  Paul wanted them to understand that even though they might not be able to sacrifice in the traditional way, either because they couldn't go to Jerusalem to the Temple or because even if they went there, if they weren't circumcised they couldn't enter the Temple proper, in order to offer sacrifices anyway.
Therefore, Paul gives them specific instruction on the kinds of things they can do that serve as spiritual sacrifice.  That is essentially all of chapter twelve.

Most of what I have to say about Romans chapter 13 is contained in my post, Honor The King.  Click on the title and go read it if you haven't done so.  As for the rest of the chapter, I've seen the summary of verses 8 through 10 get horribly abused in the church.  How so?  Because most Christians have this amorphous, undefined, laissez faire attitude about what it means to love their neighbor.  I've heard some of the worst gossip and backbiting go on in churches under the guise of praying for people. I've had Christians have me bid on jobs and then expect a huge discount below an already fair price.  That one gets me because it assumes that I would charge a lot more money to a non-believer, or that I charge too much for my services, period.

I see people who claim to be proud Christians doing things all the time because it is the "accepted" way of doing things as far as the world is concerned, but they never stop to ask if it meets God's standard of loving their neighbor.  This is why studying the Torah and applying the standards to our behavior is so important.  Even after we come to Messiah and repent, accepting salvation, we still have a fallen, fleshly, selfish nature that we have to struggle with every day.  It requires us to study and contemplate what God requires as the standard of love.  It's not about our feelings.  The Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit) might nudge us in the right direction, but the Bible is full of admonitions to study and learn the Word.  For whatever reasons of God's choosing, He doesn't just inject it into our heads or download it like an autoexec.bat file.

And the admonition is to study the WHOLE Bible.  You can't make a proper judgment of what a few isolated Scriptures mean and how they apply unless you have a real working knowledge of all the Bible.  And since there isn't a single human being walking the planet who can accomplish all that, we are admonished to gather and fellowship with other believers.  God created us to be social animals.  And while I can agree with temporary sabbaticals on occasion, I can find nothing in Scripture that approves of living a sheltered monastic lifestyle.

Maybe the next post will wrap up this study of Romans.

Shalom Y'all

Camping's Doomsday Fail

Yes, I know the book was written by Robert Fitzpatrick.  Read on.

If time were not an issue, I would really like to take this "Doomsday Code" book and debunk each and every issue one at a time. There is so much wrong with the book that explains how someone can come up with such egregious nonsense about prophecy, that it could not all possibly be dealt with in a single post or even a three part series.  It would take nearly the same number of pages as the book (about 380) to explain all the error.  This post is going to have to stay narrower in scope than that.  It's still a very long post.

First, I don't expect anyone who is not interested in Biblical prophecy to understand much of what I'm going to explain because many of the concepts, references, and language will be foreign to the average Christian, let alone a non-believer.  If you are not familiar with terms like pre-tribulational, post-millennial, dispensation, preterist, eschatology, replacement theology, and the like, you will be lost in this essay. For this essay to be an easy read, you would need to be familiar with the arguments surrounding these terms.

Second, one would need to know the history of end-time prophecy failures going back to 1988.  Amazingly, the author of the Doomsday Code defends the failures of those predictions.  Robert Fitzpatrick is not an original thinker.  It has become obvious to everyone who follows heretical teaching, and especially heretical teaching about prophecy, that Fitzpatrick is nothing more than a hired pen for Harold Camping.  I may simply refer to the false doctrine of this book from here on out as belonging to Camping.

Thirdly, I would like to make the main issue of this essay to be understanding how such bad doctrine comes about and thrives. How does the believer rightly discern truth from Scripture and avoid looking stupid and carrying the Lord's name in vain. That is where the focus of the believer ought to be.  And yes, that really is the meaning of the third of the ten commandments

Let's start with an amazing quote from Fitzpatrick's book:

"For one thing, we need to understand that every word of the Bible, in the original language in which it was written, is the word of God. In 2 Timothy 3:16, we read: "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:"
The original Greek, translated in this scripture as “given by inspiration of God,” carries the idea that scripture is “God breathed.” It's as if each word came from the mouth of God. God also took care to be sure that the Bible was preserved in tact [sic]- every word of it - down through the ages. He raised up a class of Jewish scribes who faithfully and accurately copied out the exact words, checking and rechecking so that there would be no error. If we come across a scripture that appears to contradict something else we have read in the Bible, we need to dig (and pray!) a bit deeper for understanding. . . .  By examining the way a word is used elsewhere in the Bible, you may be better able to understand the sense in which it is used in a scripture you are studying. This approach to the Bible works because the Bible is a cohesive whole, all coming from a single source.  [from page xxii of the Introduction]

The problem is, Fitzpatrick proceeded to ignore all of that advice in writing the rest of the book.  In reading the book I discover that "Replacement Theology" and worse abounds.  This is the idea that the "Christian" church has replaced Israel in God's plan throughout the pages of the Bible and history.  This is a direct denial of what Paul wrote to Timothy in the above quote, it denies the clear teaching of Paul in his letter to the Romans, and denies the prophecies of Scripture about Israel that have yet to be fulfilled, such as Ezekiel 38, and of what was just quoted from the book.  An important rule of proper Biblical interpretation is that you cannot interpret the meaning of one verse to be in direct opposition to the meaning of any other verse.  For clarification's sake, we are talking about the understanding of meaning, and not interpretation of translation.

Another indispensible rule of interpretation is exegesis versus eisegesis.  Eisegesis is essentially reading the meaning that you want into the text.  Fitzpatrick actually prepares us for the fact that he is going to commit this crime in chapter two on page 15:

"The intended meaning of a scripture will be its spiritual meaning: that's what God is teaching us. Sometimes the spiritual meaning is extremely difficult to understand, especially because the apparent meaning ontradicts it."

Whenever somebody claiming to be a Bible teacher starts in with something like that, he had better have lots and lots of scholarship, reason, and logic to back up what he's trying to prove.  Even the most respected Jewish sages and Bible scholars in the Christian world know that a basic rule of interpretation is that any deeper, or "spiritual" meaning should never, never contradict the plain meaning of the text.

 Torah scholars going back centuries believe that there are four levels of meaning embedded in the Torah. Jewish scholars use the word PaRDeS, the Hebrew word for orchard,  to remember these four levels. The first is Peshat; the plain, literal reading of the text. It is most often understood to be "simple" or the simple path.  The idea is that while you can enjoy all the other stuff along the path, the path keeps you from getting lost.  If you stray too far out into the weeds, you lose the correct way.  When you start coming up with interpretations where you change words or redefine them from their plain meaning, you can make the text say anything you want to and devolve into a bunch of nonsense.  The following three levels of exegesis must follow from the first level and not contradict it.  This is the heart of exegesis, the meaning of which is to draw out the meaning that the author intended.  All proper Biblical understanding flows from the idea that we are to avoid reading into the text what we would like for it to mean, and instead, we search out to understand the meaning as God Himself intended.

The next level of understanding is Remez. This refers to "hints" or more deep and allegorical meaning of the text without changing the plain meaning of the text.  For example; many of the events of Joseph's life directly hint at the events of Yeshua's (Jesus') life.  That doesn't mean that Joseph or the events that happened to him or Egypt, or Jacob and his sons are to be taken as anything other than literal events, but those events were a foreshadowing of the coming, suffering, Messiah.  The same applies to Moses.

The third level of understanding is called the Derash, which means "to dig", and a teaching on this level is referred to as a "midrash." Most of what we know to be the Jewish religious traditions are the result of midrashic explanation of the Torah.  Yeshua agreed with the vast majority of the midrashic teaching that was followed by the pharisees of His day.  Only where it departed from the plain meaning of the text of Torah did He correct them.  Most midrashic teaching is based on broad understanding of quite a few texts of Scripture and not some extrapolated conjecture based on just one or two verses.  Midrashic teachings on Scripture are always considered debatable and never carry the weight of infallible dogma.  However, some of it has become so well accepted as truth over the centuries that nobody has a reason to question it.

The fourth and last level is called Sod (rhymes with "mode") and is the esoteric level,  really deep meaning that the sages derive.  An example could be the belief that women are just naturally more spiritual than men and that is why they are exempt from many of the rules such as wearing tzitzit and praying three times a day at specific times as the orthodox do.  This is where the Qabbalistic writings come from and they are not intended for those who are not deeply grounded in basic Torah study, even though they too, are never supposed to violate the Peshat understanding of Scripture.

There is so much wrong with Camping's interpretations of Scripture because he so blatantly violates the rules of exegesis.  In a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black we have this quote from page 210:

"These false apostles, deceitful workers, are church leaders who appear to be ministers of righteousness but who are actually ministers of Satan! Just as the early church was being “seeded” with tares - people who looked like true believers but were not - the early church was also being infiltrated by false apostles. Now you may be wondering if this situation which occurred ages ago may have been corrected, so that the church could go on to a glorious future until the end of time. Sadly, that is not the case."

Then, incredibly, on page 211, he quotes the passage from 2 Thess. 2:1-4 which explains why he is wrong about the Doomsday prediction.  I will come back to that passage in a moment, because that is the passage which I will use to prove why Camping is wrong and how badly he departs from exegesis.

See this quote from page 229:

"Incredibly, the entire focus of these annual feasts is on the Lord Jesus. It is so sad that, even today, many Jews all around the world are so careful to keep these feast days but are unaware of their significance."

Let me tell you what is sad.  That people who claim to be followers of the Messiah have abandoned God's appointed feasts on His designated calendar and cannot begin to understand their true significance because they have trashed thousands of years of hard earned Jewish wisdom and understanding and bought into some idea that Yeshua came and created a whole new religion.  But Camping's doctrine gets even worse.

In spite of what he wrote in the introduction, Fitzpatrick goes on to say the following on pages 266-267:

"Many people read Mark 13:32 and understand it to mean that the timing - the day and the hour of the rapture - cannot possibly be known because not even the Son of God knows it; but the scripture can't have that meaning.  [Warning! - Warning! - Warning! Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!  Where's the html code that let's me make this insert flash?]  The Lord Jesus must know the timing. Remember, it was He who wrote the Bible. He is the Word of God and He is God. It was He who told Daniel to “seal the book” to the time of the end; and it was He who unsealed that book (the Bible), as we read in Revelation 5. It was only after the book was unsealed in these latter days that we learned the timing of God's plan. The Lord Jesus, therefore, must have known the timing; but if that is so, we must search to understand the meaning of the scripture telling us the Son does not know of “that day and that hour.”

I've been in the world of Christendom long enough to understand most all of the doctrinal positions from original sin to transubstantiation in the eucharist.  I understand the trinitarian doctrine, but when you carry it to an extreme that causes you to contradict direct statements of Scripture, such as the one above, then there is a serious problem with your doctrine.  You don't search to understand (read re-interpret) the Scripture to make it work with your doctrine and your desire to know something that God has repeatedly made clear that you cannot know.

While we cannot know the day or the hour, we can pay attention to the signs.  Yeshua did give us the signs to look for so as to know that the time is getting closer.  He told us to watch and pray.  I could go through a list of things, but many of them could be considered vague or ambiguous.  I don't need many or even a few to demonstrate why Camping's prediction was doomed to failure.  My example also proves pre-tribulationalist doctrine wrong as well.  There isn't going to be two second comings of Messiah as required by pre-trib doctrine; some secret catching away and then some months or days or years later Messiah comes back to administer justice.

Paul made it clear that there was one event that the believers could look for that had to happen before the "catching away of the saints" (in Greek it is called the harpazo).  It helps to make sure that we understand the full context of Paul's statement.  In Paul's first letter to the Thessolonians, he is explaining how the new believers need not worry about the fate of those who have died.  He does this by giving the details of what will happen when the Lord comes back for his own and brings about the resurrection of the dead.  The key details make it clear that everyone can know that the event is happening.  "For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God; . . ."  This statement is in agreement with the angels who spoke to the disciples at Messiah's ascension. That Yeshua would come down the same way he went up.  Other Scripture confirms that the conquering King Messiah would touch down on the Mount of Olives.  The point here is that Paul is talking about the triumphal return of Messiah at the "end days."  Paul continues: "and the dead in Messiah shall rise first.  Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and thus we shall always be with the Lord." (1 Thess. 4:16-17)

We can surmise from the text that someone or some group was causing the believers in Thessolonica to worry that they had missed the return of Messiah.  By this time in the first century, there were already heretics who were teaching all sorts of bizarre doctrines about Messiah and the way of salvation.  People who tried to blend beliefs from the pagan religions or that you had to prove complete adherence to all the Jewish traditions in order to earn salvation.  The problem is, it didn't stop even after Paul's first letter.  Therefore, he had to write a second letter, reasserting his authority and warning that those who taught false doctrine about the return of Messiah would suffer judgment "on that day, and to be marveled at among all who have believed, . . ."  And continuing in his second letter on this very same subject, he now gives the Thessalonicans more details about the second coming so that they can rest assured what to look for and how not to be fooled by false prophets.  Here is the text:

"Now we request you, brethren, with regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together to Him, that you may not be quickly shaken from your composure or be disturbed either by a spirit or a message or a letter as if from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come."

Let's be perfectly clear in our understanding  of the subject.  Paul uses three distinct features to make sure that we are talking about one, single event.  The coming of Messiah; or in Greek the parousia.  The gathering together to Him; which is in Greek the harpazo, or "catching away."  Both of these features being part of "the day of the Lord" which is a very specific phrase repeated throughout prophetic Scripture to describe when God comes to earth in final judgment.  Bear in mind that Paul spent time with these people as he described in the first letter, teaching them and building them up as a congregation.  He expected them to understand what he was saying.  He chose his words carefully (or you could say the Holy Spirit was choosing the words carefully since this was meant to be Scripture for all believers into the future and we were all supposed to learn from it.).  Paul continues:

"Let no one in any way deceive you, for *it* will not come unless the apostasy comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction."

Stop and be sure  you understand what the pronoun *it* is referring to.  One should not need an advanced degree in language to comprehend that *it* is referring to the event described in verses one and two of the second chapter of 2nd Thessalonians.  Any reader who does not understand that, needs to seek remedial reading instruction as soon as possible.

Verse three also tells us what the two things are that must occur before the parousia, harpazo, and the "day of the Lord" can happen.  While the apostasy might not be something that everyone can agree on in easily definable terms, the "man of lawlessness" is pretty much understood by all believers to be THE anti-Christ, or the final archtype Antichrist.  He wasn't the first of his kind.  Paul wrote those verses being fully aware of Antiochus Epiphanes and what he did in the Temple at Jerusalem.  Such was considered an "abomination of desolation" which required the cleansing and re-dedication of the Temple.  The miracle of that re-dedication is why we celebrate Channukah today.   But this Antichrist is defined by Paul in verse nine as having all the power of Satan, being able to perform miracles and wonders.
In verse four, Paul explains that this Antichrist, this man, will exalt himself above all gods and will take his seat in the Temple, declaring himself to be the only god.  Such an event would be another "abomination of desolation" and fitting the description given by Messiah Himself in Matthew 24:15 as part of the answer to the direct questions of the disciples about the sign of His coming and the end of the age.  Read the whole 24th chapter of Matthew.

Paul thus exhorts the believers at Thessalonica that unless this event of another evil man, the final evil man with the power of Satan, coming into the Temple and desecrating it happens for all to see, keeping with the prophecy of Messiah Himself, there would be no return of Messiah.  End of story.

In wrapping this whole issue up, I can state with the utmost confidence that I don't need to re-define any plain readings of Scripture to make it say what it doesn't say. I  come to the clear conclusion that while "no man can know the day nor the hour" of the return of Messiah or the actual moment that begins the "day of the Lord," I not only can, but I am exhorted by Scripture to know and watch for the signs that must take place before Messiah returns.  So, all you pre-tribbers out there reading this: you have been warned.  You see, the Scripture teaches that Messiah's return, and our "catching away" or rapture, and the beginning of the "day of the Lord" cannot happen until the events that Paul and the Messiah described.  Those events cannot happen until a Temple has been built and is in service in Jerusalem on the Temple Mount.  The "Holy place" is the Holy of Holies.  You can allegorize it away as being or representing something else, but you do so to your own detriment.

The biggest problem with this whole mess is that it gives skeptics of the Bible something to laugh at.  They won't say that Harold Camping and Robert Fitzpatrick were wrong about what the Bible teaches.  They'll say that all of those Christians who believe in that silly Bible are all a bunch of idiots.  They will mock God and ridicule the Bible.

All those who claim allegiance to Messiah are called upon to study and show themselves to be faithful disciples, understanding the Word of God properly and leading others to salvation, not creating opportunities for evil to seem successful.

If you can't understand how to use the comments feature, you can email me with your questions, comments, or criticisms at the address in the sidebar.

Shalom Y'all

On Romans & Olive Trees: Part 3

This is the third post in a study of Paul's letter to the believers in Rome.  You can start at the beginning by clicking here.

The eleventh chapter of Romans contains some things that should shut the mouths of a lot of pastors and teachers who are out there blaspheming by teaching garbage like “replacement theology.”  Let’s look at this first and then move to the next thing.

Paul introduces the chapter with this: “I say then, God has not rejected His people, has He?  May it never be! For I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.  God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew. Or do you not know what the Scripture says in the passage about Elijah, . . .”

There are many more passages that make it clear that God would never abandon Israel.  Not the land, nor the people as a corporate body.  In a previous post I spoke of God’s fulfillment of Israel becoming a nation on the exact day of the end of their last punishment for not keeping His Torah, May 14, 1948.  We also have other prophecies about Israel that have yet to be fulfilled, such as Ezekiel 38 & 39.  So if you hear some pastor or teacher telling you that the church has replaced Israel or gives you the telltale clues that they believe in “Dominion theology,” run for the exit.

Even though Paul is grieved by the number of his Jewish brethren who will not recognize Yeshua as Messiah, he reveals in verse eleven that the purpose is to spread the gospel to the gentile world.

Then Paul gives us this beautiful, vivid illustration of the Gentile relationship to the Jews and the Torah.  Gentiles are like a wild olive branch that is being grafted in to the main trunk of a well established tree.  This is truly a great picture.  In the world of plants, there are some plants that barely last a season.  They might live long enough to create seed and die for the next crop to germinate in the spring.  An olive tree is one of the few species that lasts for centuries and even millennia.  Yes.  An olive tree can be several thousand years old.  At least some of the olive trees in the very garden where Yeshua sweated drops of blood are still growing there today.  An olive tree takes a lot of care to become established but once they are, they can produce quite a lot.

If you want to produce a new variety of olives quickly and easily,  you can graft an existing shoot onto an older well established tree.  You don’t rip out a well established tree to plant a new sapling.  And olive trees, like most food producing plants require pruning and cultivation to be productive.  The Messiah also used grape vines as an illustration of this principle.  Paul uses the olive tree because in prophecy, the olive tree is understood to represent Israel, as well as the fig tree.  In this letter, Paul warns the Gentiles to remember their status as being grafted in to the tree.  The tree hasn’t been destroyed, and in fact, it is the roots of the tree that support and give life to the new graftees.  He also states that if the non-productive branches of the tree can be chopped off and discarded, so can the newcomers.  The newly grafted branches don’t change everything by becoming a part of the well-established tree.  It can take a while for the graft to fully “take.”  The existing old olive tree that is producing good fruit continues to produce good fruit because all the right things are being done by the Master Gardener and the tree accepts it.  Another very, very interesting thing about olive trees is that an old, well established tree can be cut down, or even burned down, level with the ground, seeming to be totally destroyed, and yet it’s root system will put up shoots in a few years.

The eleventh chapter of Romans makes it clear that there is a partial blinding of Israel regarding the identity of Messiah until all those of the Gentile world are gathered in.  But the zealous Pharisee named Paul understands that these Gentile converts are coming to the saving knowledge of Messiah AND to obedience to Torah.  Without the obedience to Torah, the Jews would have nothing to be jealous about.  In short, there is no new religion for the Gentiles who come to follow Messiah.  Yeshua said, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments."

We must keep in mind that Yeshua Himself said He came to save the lost sheep of the house of Israel.  In Matthew 15 we have the story of a Canaanite woman who comes to Yeshua to have her daughter delivered from a demon.  Yeshua not only tells her that he was sent to Israel only, but he further insults her by saying that it is not good to throw the children’s bread to the dogs.  Hyperbole?  A set up?  Sure.  But it makes the point.  God wants His chosen ones first and He has no intention of abandoning Israel.

Paul gets to the heart of the matter in verse 11 of chapter 11:  “I say then, they did not stumble so as to fall, did they?  May it never be! But by their transgression salvation has come to the Gentiles, to make them jealous.”

In order for us to feel the full weight of what Paul is saying here, we would have to be very familiar, or should I say well studied, in the Hebrew Scriptures.  The book of Hosea is especially helpful here.  The time of the prophet Hosea was more than 100 years before the Babylonian captivity; about 750 to 720 years before Messiah came.  Adonai was so fed up with the idolatry of Israel that He commanded Hosea to go and find a prostitute to marry.  This is to symbolize how God sees Israel’s idolatry.  He severely punishes the Northern Kingdom to near utter annihilation. Adonai’s apparent mercy on Judah is because that is the line of Messiah and Judah seemed to try to hold to Torah.  Taking the whole of at least the first two chapters, we see that God is so angered by that generation that He wants to divorce her until she turns from her harlotry.

Is it not interesting that God created this world with sex and marriage, reproduction and progeny and parenting to give us tangible, emotional ways to relate to Him?  It is precisely because Adonai loves all of his created children that he chastises them to try to get them to come back to Himself.  Chapter 3 of Hosea is so obviously prophetic about the conquering Messiah and the end times.

“For the sons of Israel will remain for many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred pillar, and without ephod or seraphim.  Afterward the sons of Israel will return and seek the Lord their God and David their king; and they will come trembling to the Lord and to His goodness in the last days.”  (Hosea 3:4,5)

This passage tells us a couple of very important things: A time would come, and we’ve seen most of it come to pass, where Israel had no real political or civil leadership of their own and no Temple for religious service to Adonai.  Now, as I type this, there is increasing and fervent interest in Israel and among other Jews about Yeshua the Nazarene.  Israel has been restored as a nation with self rule. The only thing we need to see now for the anti-Christ to be revealed is a Temple (2 Thess. 2:1-4).

In verse 17 & 18 of Romans 11, we read, “But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, being a wild olive, were grafted in among them and became partaker with them of the rich root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant toward the branches [natural Jews]; but if you are arrogant, remember that it is not you who supports the root, but the root supports you.”    Some Christians need to read this verse every day for a month until it sinks in.  This is one of the clearest statements in the New Testament to tell Gentile believers, “Hey, listen up, Yeshua did not come to create a whole new religious system.  He came to make a way for you folks outside of Judaism to become a part of God’s Kingdom. That means you are supposed to learn God’s ways from them, the Jews, not them learning from you.”

Oh yes, I know that just shocks the snot out of most Christians who read that. But if you disagree, then search the Scriptures and show me the text that says that previous paragraph is wrong.  For heaven’s sake; keep reading verses 19 through 29 and Paul is even more emphatic about warning Gentiles that the grafted in branches are merely that and that the ultimate purpose is the salvation of Israel.

So far, we’ve made it up to chapter 12 of Romans in three posts, and still I can’t find anything in Paul’s words (actually the words of the Ruach HaKodesh) that tell me that the Torah has become void or that we can disregard the commandments.  This again is in keeping with the words of the Master Himself in Matthew 5:17-20.  If you know something that I don’t, you can leave a comment, or email me.  The address is in the sidebar.

You can move on to part IV in this series by clicking here.

Paul’s Letter To The Romans: Part 2

To start at the beginning, click here.

Paul spends most of chapter five explaining the monumental accomplishment of Messiah suffering death and being raised again as the ultimate offering to atone for sin.  The idea of ritualistic sacrifice was nothing new to the Romans or the Greeks or any of the people inside or outside of Israel.  What was so amazing and foreign a concept to all of them, was the idea that one man could be the perfect and only necessary sacrifice for the transgressions of the whole world and for all time.  We are several centuries, which might as well be an eternity,  from having such a concept deeply ingrained in our way of life.  Therefore, I can say with confidence that what Paul was saying in chapter five had a much greater, and even a different impact on the hearers in Rome than it does on a modern western person.

But even after spending that much effort on explaining that God made it possible by sending His Shekinah into the body of a man in order to become such a perfect sacrifice that it could atone for all sin for all time, Paul asks the rhetorical question that begins chapter six: Do we continue sinning [violating Torah] in order to show how much greater the grace is than the offense against Torah?

He makes the point that we should be dead to sin. Just as when a Gentile in the past converted to Judaism and was circumcised and baptized into a new life of following Torah, the believer in Messiah became baptized into a new level of spirituality that empowered the believer to keep and obey Torah as never before.

Paul makes the statement in 6:14 that “sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law, but under grace.”   I have seen people purposefully sinning in ways that were obvious even to unbelievers, by just citing that second phrase in the verse.  “I’m not under the law,” they would say, “I’m under grace.”  This is an evil perversion of Paul’s message.  This is why the apostle Peter wrote in his second letter near the end of the letter that Paul wrote about these things that were “hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction.”  (2 Peter 3:16)

No doubt some Christians will cite Paul’s example of  marriage in chapter seven as the reason for not obeying Torah, but is that the right way to think of this passage?  First of all, the wording makes it clear that Paul is talking specifically to the Jews in Rome, rather as an aside.  He does this to illustrate the point that as lifelong Jews who saw themselves married to the Torah, they needed to now see themselves as betrothed to the real bridegroom; Messiah.  You can see this illustration in its proper perspective as long as you keep in mind the words of the Messiah Himself in Matthew 5:17-20.

In an effort to keep the reader from misunderstanding, Paul clarifies in 7:7 that the Law is not sin.  Rather, the Law shows us what sin is where we might not have been aware of it without the Law as a teacher.  In 7:12 Paul further states that “the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.”  He goes on to explain that the flesh is powerfully inclined toward evil, so much so, in fact, that we cannot fully obey the Law [Torah] through our own human effort alone.  So, now we are all the way into chapter seven and Paul has repeatedly asked the rhetorical question, “Is the Law the problem?”  Answer: No, sin is the problem, and the Law is there to teach us about sin.

Perhaps one could be confused when coming to chapter eight and verse two.  This is a good place to make a point about the problem of translation.  In the NASB version, the translators do us the favor of distinguishing between the two types of law that Paul speaks of in Romans, and they do this by capitalizing “Law” when it refers to Torah and they don’t capitalize “law” when it refers to a general rule.

We must understand the difference here.  Ever since the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, Torah has been understood as “The Law of Moses.”  Torah does not actually directly translate as “law.”  Torah actually means “teaching.”  But the translators knew that using the word “teaching” would have meant a great loss of importance for the word.  They knew that the Greek mind, with its polytheistic religious understanding of God’s who were capricious and fallible as human beings, and interpret the word “teaching” as being more like a suggestion.  There was and is no singularly good word in Greek or English, or perhaps any other language that explains Torah.  Torah can be as simple as it needs to be so that all can obey it and more complex and deep than any scholar can ever hope to study it.

When Paul talks about the “law of sin and of death” in 8:2, he’s talking about a law as in the laws of physics.  In this case, “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”   If you want to indulge in sin, the result is that you will pay the consequences.  The fact that Yeshua came and made the ultimate sacrifice to save us from the consequences of sin does not make the law obsolete.  If you get a ticket for running a stop sign and I step up in court and pay your fine, that does not make the stop sign disappear from the corner where you failed to stop.  And if you go out and get caught running that same stop sign, you are going to find yourself right back in front of the judge.

Paul continues in 8:3 & 4 to explain that since Messiah came to be the perfect offering for sin, we believers are empowered “in order that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, . . .”  This statement stands in direct opposition to any idea that Paul has claimed that the Law is obsolete.  On the contrary, he is saying that we can now obey and keep the Torah in a fuller and better way than it has ever been kept before, because the Holy Spirit will help us to “not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.”

The rest of chapter eight is reinforcing the idea that God chooses us who believe and orders our steps and that nothing we endure is in vain.  God will not leave us nor forsake us.

In chapter nine Paul begins by grieving for his fellow Jews who are not yet believers.  He lists the benefits of being the rightful heirs to the Kingdom of God.  If the Torah (the Law) is not something good and to be treasured, why is it in the list?  Why does Paul not simply cite the covenant and the promises as the reward?  Why does he also include the Law and Temple service?  Wouldn’t that seem odd several decades after the death and resurrection of Messiah?  If the Holy Spirit is directing Paul to write these things, why wouldn’t the Holy Spirit know to dismiss this keeping of the Law and Temple service as being obsolete?  Could it be that when God kept using those words in Torah about this stuff being “forever” and “always,” He actually meant it?

And lest anyone should try to misunderstand or twist Paul’s meaning by saying that all that stuff is just for the Jews, he goes on to point out that being born of the flesh to some bloodline is not what is important.  Those who believe in the God of Abraham and His Messiah are the true children of the promise.  The flesh counts for nothing.  He further elaborates on this theme by citing the prophet Hosea.

“I will call those who were not My people, My people, . . .”

Read the whole passage.  The idea is that Gentiles who believe and are called by God can now participate in His Kingdom, being called sons of God.  But did Daddy change the rules of the house?  I don’t see any evidence of that.  Gentiles can be adopted as sons of God and begin obeying Torah.  Paul calls it “pursuing righteousness.”   Paul says that the Gentiles have now obtained that righteousness by  pursuing it in faith by believing in Messiah.  The Jews [who don’t believe in Messiah] cannot obtain that righteousness because they insist  on pursuing it by their own effort in the flesh.

Chapter ten and verse four has a statement that I’m sure has been twisted by those who would like to think that Torah is no longer in effect.

“For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.”

No doubt someone will read that and think, “end of the law” so there you go, the Law is done.  We don’t have to worry about it any more.  Well, only if you take that verse out of context and forget everything else Paul has said up to this point in Romans and ignore what the Master said in Matthew 5:17-19.  By taking all of Scripture in whole and in context, I can paraphrase Romans 10:4 by saying it this way:

The Messiah is the end goal and fulfillment of the Torah for everyone who puts their trust in Him.

It takes several more words to make it clear, but the meaning is the same and it does not violate the rule of non-contradiction when interpreting Scripture.  Let me give you another example.  Let’s say Boeing came out with an advertisement that said, “The new  777 Dreamliner is the end in comfort, speed, and fuel efficiency for transoceanic air travel.”  Would you think that all international air travel had stopped?  Would you think that they were telling you that from now on, if you wanted to fly to other parts of the world it would have to be on slow, uncomfortable cattle cars disguised as jet planes? Or would you rightly take that to mean they believed that they had reached the epitome of design in that class?

Near the end of chapter ten, Paul reveals something important.  The Gentiles who could now be grafted in by faith and called to the obedience of Torah would create jealousy and anger in the hearts of Jews.  True believers would have real joy in keeping the Torah and thus make the Jews crazy with jealousy.  Jews don’t really see mainstream “Christianity” as anything to get upset about, except for the pogroms carried out in the past in the name of the church.  Jews see nearly all of “Christianity” as a completely different religion that has hijacked parts of the Old Testament and following a false messiah, who is proven false according to Deuteronomy 13.  The God of Abraham and Moses warned them that anyone who came along with miracles, but told them to depart from Torah was worthy of death.

Keep in mind as we continue this study, or go back and read the gospels and remember that the religious leaders could never successfully accuse Yeshua of violating Torah or advocating that anyone violate Torah.

Part three is found at On Romans & Olive Trees.

Paul’s Letter To The Romans

This epistle, written by a Rabbi and devout follower of the Torah, is probably the most abused book of the New Testament by those who call themselves Christians.  This is because they either cannot or simply refuse to see all of Scripture as a whole.  To elaborate further; they have no problem interpreting the full meaning of one text in complete contradiction to other clear texts.

I’ve had select verses of Romans quoted to me in order to make a case that “Christians” don’t need to keep the Torah or The Law.  Early in my years as a baby Christian I bought those arguments.  But as I have matured in my studies and thinking, I see just how childish that way of thinking is.  Please don’t compound the error by quoting Jesus as saying we have to come to Him as little children.  It seems obvious to me now that Paul himself got tired of having that verse from the gospels quoted to him inappropriately and thus felt the need to tell the congregations that it was time to grow up.  Yes, you must come to Messiah with the faith and trust of a little child, but you don’t stay a child.  Only the immature hold on to simplistic ways of thinking.  If you want to want to truly know God and learn His ways, you have to put effort into it.

Let’s try putting some effort into reading, ah, correction . . .  Let’s put some effort into studying Paul’s letter to the Romans with the idea that all other Scripture must be understood to NOT be in contradiction with the message that Paul is trying to get across to his audience.

Three things need to be firmly in our minds as we read the words penned by Paul under the direction of the Holy Spirit.  First is the conviction that Messiah did NOT come to start a new religious movement as He clearly stated in Matthew 5:17-19.  Torah is now and shall be in effect even if heaven and earth were to pass away.  Also see Luke 16:17.

Secondly, that Paul’s whole purpose in going to the Temple under the direction of the Apostles who carried the authority of the Master and the elders of the congregation at Jerusalem, was to put an end to the rumor that he was teaching that it was no longer necessary to keep the Torah.  Do not confuse Paul’s teaching about the improper understanding of circumcision as being necessary for salvation with the keeping of Torah.  In fact, Paul’s purpose of writing this letter to the Romans was to explain how grace and faith precede and are requisite to obedience to Torah.

Thirdly, Paul was very outspoken about being a righteous Pharisee, his understanding and obedience to the Law, and how important it was in spite of the human incapacity to fully live out the law.

I will not quote every single verse, because if you are serious about understanding this message properly, I would assume that you will have a Bible open to the text in question.  I welcome the challenge of those who would seek to prove that I may be trying to read into the text that which I am trying to argue, versus drawing out that which God Himself wants us to understand.  If you have a question about my exegesis, by all means, make it known.

In addition, there is no getting around the importance of good language translation.  I will use the New American Standard version because it has the most respect among those who take scholarship seriously.  No English language translation is perfect.  You could read plenty of scholarly explanations on why this is true.  The NASB tries to remain as close to the intended meaning of the original language, but there are many cases where further digging is required to understand.  Translators have to walk a fine line between selecting the closest corresponding words and not “adding” anything for clarification.  This is where the serious student of the Bible has to be willing to use the concordance and delve into the lexicon to study the full meanings of the words from the original language and all their possible meanings.

With all that said, let’s get started.

Paul introduces himself as an apostle, or “one who is sent” as having authority.  He makes clear that the gospel that he is authorized to spread comes from the Scriptures; the Law and the Prophets and that the Messiah that it speaks of comes duly through the line of David.  Whether you are a Jew living in Rome, or a Gentile of Roman origin, he makes it clear that we are talking about the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  Then Paul says something interesting that I’ve never heard expounded on.  He says he has received apostleship to “bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles.”    Why not simply say to “bring about the faith of the Gentiles”?  Hmm?  What does Paul mean by “obedience of faith?”

Paul spends several lines lauding the believers in Rome and specifically for their faith.  So, what is the purpose of the letter?  Just to laud them about their faith?  I don’t think so.  It’s a long letter.  Sixteen chapters worth, although chapter and verse divisions were not added until much later, and we don’t even know if Paul was fully aware that what he was writing at the time would become canonized into Scripture.

Most of chapter one and into chapter two, Paul explains that because man was created in the image of God, as explained in the beginning of Genesis, man instinctively knows that there is right and wrong and that man has to deliberately sear his own conscience against the knowledge of God in order to do evil.  His point seems to be that, no matter what your background in life, you know that there is some kind of standard of righteousness.

In 2:13, Paul makes this statement: “for not the hearers of the Law [Torah] are just before God, but the doers of the Law [Torah] will be justified.”    Whoa.  Wait a minute.   How can that statement be in there?    Is Paul schizophrenic?  He was just talking about faith a while ago.  But here, he makes a point that there are Gentiles who seek after God and instinctively do many of the  things that Torah requires.  He also makes the point that Jews who know the Law have “the embodiment of knowledge and of the truth.”  This is why Paul makes the point that Jews will be judged by the Law when they stand before God, while Gentiles who never had the opportunity to hear the Torah will be judged by their consciences.  In verse 23 Paul speaks directly to the Jews by asking them if it is not true that they dishonor God by breaking His Law?  He then answers it by saying that God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of Jews disobeying the Torah.

Question:  Why would Paul make this point to the Jews in Rome if Torah was no longer in effect since Messiah had come?

Interestingly enough, Paul is backed up in this lesson by the Apostle James, the half-brother of the Master in James' epistle.  James remained in Jerusalem and his letter was directed to mostly Jewish believers.  He made it clear that talking about faith is nothing but garbage if you have no works, no "fruit" to back it up.  Don't be just hearers of the Word but DOERS of the Word.  What Word?  Torah.

This same Apostle Paul who fought against those who tried to make circumcision a prerequisite for salvation then makes this interesting statement in verse 25:  “For indeed circumcision is of value, if you practice the Law; but if you are a transgressor of the Law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision.”
Think carefully on this for a moment.  Not only does Paul not say that circumcision is no longer valid, but he acknowledges that it has value as long as we understand it as being greatly inferior to keeping Torah as the Messiah taught it.  In verse 26 through 29 he further emphasizes that keeping Torah practically proves circumcision in the heart. Note that he does not say, "Circumcision is for those who keep the Law, and we don't need to keep the Law any longer."  I would be correct in paraphrasing Paul by saying, "Don't think that being circumcised in the flesh is some kind of substitute for keeping Torah."

But then Paul turns to the Jews and makes it clear that if they think that they can follow the Law perfectly enough to be justified apart from having faith in the Messiah, then they have missed the point.  The main point being that putting one’s complete trust in the Messiah and relying on the Holy Spirit to help us carry out the keeping of God’s commandments is what faith is all about.  Then Paul concludes the thought at the end of chapter three with this emphatic statement that should shut the mouths of those who think that believers don’t need to keep Torah:  “Do we then nullify the Law through faith? May it never be! On the contrary, we establish the Law.”

That’s a pretty strong statement.  If you are a non-believing critic of the Bible and Christianity, that’s about all the evidence you need right there to say that the Bible contradicts itself, that all you Christians don’t know what you are talking about, etc.  It’s only logical to ask the question: How can Christians claim to believe in the Jewish Messiah who lived His life never violating Torah, declared the Torah to be eternal and unchanging, and then live their lives as if Torah doesn’t apply to them?  Are Paul and Jesus crazy, or is it the modern Christian who is failing to understand the message?

The Jews that Paul was addressing in this letter to Rome were not completely ignorant of this concept of justification by faith, because Paul uses the ultimate patriarch Abraham to make his case.  Even though Abraham had learned Torah at the feet of Noah,* he was still an imperfect man, just as Noah was.  However, God declares Abraham righteous not based on Abraham’s ability to keep Torah, but rather on Abraham’s faith that God would carry out His covenant through a future Messiah.  Paul explains this in a little more depth in the third chapter of Galatians.

Paul then goes further in explaining the reasoning that not only he, but all the elders in Jerusalem used to declare that circumcision was not a prerequisite for salvation.  God had declared  Abraham justified many years before requiring circumcision as a sign in the flesh.  Therefore, the circumcision couldn’t be confused with being something that justified Abraham.  It was as if God specifically waited 13 years after presenting Abraham with the Gospel and declaring him justified, for the express purpose of making sure that a “work of the flesh” could not be construed to be something that even remotely aided in making one justified.

So, up through chapter four, we get this explanation by Paul that we need to understand the hierarchy of the Kingdom of God.  The same Apostle who would later be arrested and sent to Rome under guard, and who bragged about the fact that he was zealous for keeping the Torah, is the same man who is explaining to the believers in Rome that circumcision cannot and will not save you.  But Paul is also the same man who is telling us that we do not nullify the Torah.  Is there a contradiction here?  No.  We do not keep Torah in order to be saved.  We keep Torah because Yeshua the Messiah said, “If you love me, you will keep My commandments.”  Another way to look at it is to think of His words to the prostitute: “Neither do I condemn you; now go, and sin no more.”

Remember at the beginning of this post, when I pondered that phrase, "obedience of faith?"  Is it not beginning to make sense that obedience comes from faith?  You don't get faith from being obedient.  Rather, you can become obedient by having faith.  Paul's purpose in writing to the congregation in Rome was to explain this.  He wasn't writing to tell them that it was okay to ignore or deny Torah.  His purpose was to explain that obedience to Torah comes from placing one's trust in Messiah.

*This is explained in the book of Jasher.  While not canonized as Scripture itself, Jasher is referred to as being authoritative by Scripture in Joshua 10:13; 2 Samuel 1:18; and 2 Timothy 3:8.

To move on to part two, you can click on this link.