October 27, 2012

• What is ‘the Father’s Will’?
  ((Part II: or ‘The Old Covenant Lives!’))

  Yesterday I wrote about how the Father’s Will was keeping His commands.  Yeshua, who said, “I and My Father are One.” said, “If you love me, keep My commandments.”  And amazingly, He said that BEFORE there was a list of spiritual gifts, a list of fruit of the Spirit, and a  Great Commission.  So what on earth could these commands be that He was giving to the predominantly Jewish crowd?   TORAH.

  Christianity accepts that Yehovah Elohim never changes.  He’s the same yesterday, today, and forever.  Then WHY do they also believe that He’d throw out His requirements and ordinances for something new?  That’s change!  C’mon, people, please think a little.  Sin still requires atonement.  The shedding of blood is still the coverage.  Yes, it’s taken care of by Messiah’s once-for-all gift, but that doesn’t alter the fact that God’s requirements did NOT change – it’s the same as it has ALWAYS been.

  And do you want to really have your jaw drop?  Take a look at this:
  

  Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord:But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.  –Jeremiah 31:31-34
  

  Oh, look, a new covenant!  Jeremiah – an OT dude – says there will be a new covenant!  “That’s right – in Jee-zus!” the christian reading this agrees.  Um… no.   Look at the qualifications of it: ‘They shall teach no more every man his neighbor and every man his brother, saying ‘Know the Lord’: for they shall all know me, from the least to the greatest.”   Whoops, that’s not in Yeshua’s time, was it?  In fact, it’s not even in OUR time.  That new covenant doesn’t come until the Millenium, when Yeshua steps down and takes Jerusalem and reigns from Zion, and every knee bows and every tongue confesses.  At that point, I won’t be writing these blogs, trying to teach people something, anymore… cuz everyone will KNOW Him.  And believe you me, that’s NOT now.

  So if the new covenant isn’t until sometime in the future, guess what’s still in effect?  C’mon, I know you’re smart…!  Yes – the OLD covenant is still pertinent.  Which is why Messiah said He did not come to abolish the Law/Torah, but to bring it to full-ness.  Full meaning.  That’s why He said He’s ‘Lord of the Sabbath’ – because it’s STILL relevant, the command to keep it for ALL generations is still valid!  Which is why He is going to say, “Depart from me, ye who are law-less, I never knew you.”  Because if you don’t obey, your faith is dead.  Works ARE keeping Torah.

  This is a problem for me.  Because my mother says, “I understand that it’s still relevant, but I like the way my dad brought me up.  I don’t like all of this extra stuff.”  ((((ouch.))))  Then there’s my brother, who shrugs off Torah obedience and is happy being a christian.  That free pass that made my life so easy before?  It’s fake.  It won’t work.  And all of the people I assumed would just lose a crown or two are actually going to burn in Hell.  That?  Sucks.  It’s not so easy to take.  And I gulp every time my family comes over and says,  “I know pork is unclean, but Pop really likes sausage on his pizza, so we eat it because he wants it.”  Or, “We went to breakfast at a farm… I didn’t eat the bacon, but the triplets and Pop did, because they like that.”  Is that ‘raising the children up in the way they should go so that they will not depart from it’?  Is it?  Because I’d say NO.  People tell me that it doesn’t matter when we celebrate Christ’s birth, so long as we do it.  X-mess, Sukkot… God’s way doesn’t HAVE to be the way.  Are these things that people who really desire to live after Yehovah’s own heart would do?  NO.  What YOU like, what YOU want is irrelevant!  I am loathe to think what I think, but I know it’s true.  My family is law-less.  The only time ANY of them observe Shabbat is when I’m around.  The only time they  abstain from unclean foods is when I make them feel guilty about it.  The only feasts they keep are Hanukkah and Passover, because they come in at the same time as X-mess and Ishtar, and they don’t really want to give those up, so they just add them.  ‘We didn’t do Sukkot this year because there wasn’t room… there wasn’t a good place…’  Whatevs.  Excuses.  If you loved Him, you’d keep His commandments.

  I didn’t.  For years I didn’t, because I didn’t know.  I was so oblivious, seeking, but not yet having found.  Secure in a blanket of lies.  But the moment I realized, everything had to change.  I must live out my faith, and if that means a total renovation of everything I believed, everything I celebrated, everything I took for granted, the so be it.  I’m accountable for no one except myself.  But that has resulted in a new harsh reality: and that’s that my family likely will be left behind with the rest of the christians.

  And I’ve been torn on this for some time.  Because yes, scripture says ‘narrow is the path to righteousness, and few find it’, but then you read in Revelation 7:9 that there’s going to be a ‘great multitude without number before the throne, of all nations, tongues, tribes, and peoples’.  Which – because of our day and age – we always think so grandiose.  The sky is the limit, and all our imaginings are hyperbolistic.  We see billions before the throne when we picture that scene, don’t we?  But honestly?  Yeshua fed a ‘great multitude’ on the mount, and it was only about five thousand people.  Of course, to John (who wrote Revelation 7:9), five thousand WAS a great multitude.  So was he seeing a billion people in Heaven?  Not likely.  Even a million would be ‘without number’ to him… they didn’t have anything that big in AD90.  Even a hundred thousand… it was unimaginable to them.

  And if you count all the Torah-observant Messiah believers from Yeshua’s time, then add in all of them from the Apostolic/evangelistic era, then from the Torah/Messianic revival of the 1400s, then the redux of 1800, and the present-day Torah/Messianic revival… you have about a hundred thousand people, right there.  Because it’s one heckuva narrow path if few find it.

  And there’s not a need for Christians to be included. They are law-less.  More (and I’ve written an entire blog about this, in 2009), Christianity is THE largest belief system in the world – the broadest way.  How can something that has the MOST people in it be the narrow way?  ((It can’t.))  In fact 2 Thessalonians is quite clear what Christianity is – a ‘great delusion’… and aren’t all the best delusions the ones closest to the Truth without having any in it?  Take a look at the verse:
  

  And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the Truth, that they might be saved.  And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the Truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.  — 2 Thessalonians 2:10-12

  I honestly believe that Christianity is that strong delusion.  The lie that there’s a ‘new covenant’ and that the Old Covenant is no longer relevant.  I honestly believe that there are going to be packed churches on that day – whether it’s 17 Cheshvan of this coming week or some other feast day – and that people are going to be very, very sorry that they chose their pleasure over Truth.

  I’ll hit part III tomorrow, and we’ll talk about the Law & Legalism, some.
  

  • 8:02 am
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