Aleinu transliterated

Aleinu le’shabeiach la’adon hakol, lateit gedulah leyotzeir bereshit, she’lo asanu ke’goyei ha’aratzot, ve’lo samanu ke’mishpechot ha’adamah, she’lo sam chelkeinu kahem, ve’goraleinu ke’chol hamonam. Va’anachnu korim, u’mishtachavim, u’modim, lifnei melech, malchei ham’lachim, hakadosh baruch Hu. She’hu noteh shamayim, ve’yoseid aretz, u’moshav yikaro bashamayim mi-ma’al, u’sh’chinat u-zo be’gavhei me’romim. Hu Eloheinu, ein od. Emet malkeinu, efes zulato. Kakatuv be’torato, ve’yadata hayom, ve’hashevota Eil le’vavecha. Ki Adonai, Hu ha-Elohim, bashamayim mi-ma’al, ve’al ha’aretz mi-tachat. Ein od. Kakatuv be’toratecha: “Adonai yimloch le’olam va’ed.” Ve’ne’emar: “Ve’haya Adonai le’melech al kol ha’aretz, bayom hahu yihiyeh Adonai echad, u’shemo echad.”

Rapture Study

The covenants of God and specifically the promises of those covenants being fulfilled in the Messiah comprise the main message of the Bible. When we read and interpret the Apostolic Scriptures, it’s best to keep God’s covenants in mind. In regards to our study, I believe a specific aspect of the Mosaic covenant will aid us in understanding the events surrounding the return of the Messiah. Firstly, ifIsraeldisobeys God on a national level, God promises curses which include being scattered across the globe:

Dispelling Dispensational Thinking

Most Christians unknowingly read and interpret the Bible through the lenses of Dispensation Theology. Tonight’s study is not meant to be a comprehensive look at Dispensation Theology but rather a look at the Bible to see if some of the main elements of dispensational thinking are true. Distilled down to its core, Dispensation Theology is the idea that God dealt with people differently than He has since the death and resurrection of the Messiah. The commonly held pre-conceived premise is that before the coming of the Messiah, God saved sinners through their obedience to God’s commandments and through the animal sacrificial service. However, since the coming of the Messiah, God has saved sinners as a matter of His grace through the atoning death and resurrection of the Messiah, a reality which we accept by faith. In this way, believers are no longer obligated to keep the commandments of the Torah since there is now a better a way of salvation. In fact, to some, the keeping of the commandments of the Torah is a slap in the face of the Messiah who suffered for our salvation. With all this in mind, Christians can make a definite distinction between what was for the Old Testament, the time before the coming of the Messiah, and that which is for the New Testament, the time after the death and resurrection of the Messiah. Has there really been two ways of salvation and is there a distinction to be made between the time before and after the Messiah’s coming?

Before we begin, we should define what we mean when we say Torah. The word “torah” is a Hebrew word that means “teaching” or “instruction.” It is usually translated in our English Bibles as “law” and it primarily refers to the first five books of the Bible (Genesis through Deuteronomy). When we say that Christians think that the Torah has been changed or done away with, however, we are obviously specifically referring to aspects of the Torah such as the Sabbath, holidays, kosher laws and more. No sane Christian thinks that the whole of the Torah is completely irrelevant or done away with, since the Torah is the basis of our whole faith. We are simply taking it one step further in saying that all of the commandments in the Torah are still in place and are relevant to God’s people today as they were when they were given.
1) WHO WERE JESUS AND THE APOSTLES?

It is popular to hear the phrase “what would Jesus do?” but a better question would be “what did Jesus do?” The reason why this is a better question is because being a disciple of Jesus means doing what Jesus did. The Apostle John put it this way: “…the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked” (1 John 2:6). The first thing we need to realize is that Jesus and the Apostles were not Christians in the traditional sense. In other words, Jesus and the Apostles did not start nor did they intend to have their followers be a part of a new religion distinct from the life of faith practiced by Israel. Instead, they were Jewish and they kept the Torah according to the traditions of Israel. The Apostolic Scriptures tell us about Yochanan, a man of priestly descent, who called his fellow Israelites to repent of their sin. Yochanan led the way for Yeshua of Nazareth to begin his teaching ministry. Yeshua, the son of Miriam and Yoseph, taught Torah to the people of Israel and also called for repentance. Yeshua had twelve disciples, with Shimon Kefa, Yochanan and Ya’acov being his closest disciples.

Yeshua and his disciples were all zealous, Torah-observant Jews. Yeshua kept the Sabbath and participated in the Torah and Prophets readings in the synagogue every week. It says in Luke: “and He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up; and as was His custom, He entered the synagogue on the Sabbath, and stood up to read. And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. And He opened the book and found the place where it was written” (Luke 4:16-17). Just as Jewish people have done for millennia, Yeshua spent his Sabbath mornings in the synagogue hearing the Scriptures read. The disciples attended synagogue with their Master, as it says in Mark: “they went into Capernaum; and immediately on the Sabbath He entered the synagogue and began to teach” (Mark 1:21). In fact, even though their Master had died and was ready to be buried, Luke said of the disciples: “they returned and prepared spices and perfumes and on the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment” (Luke 23:56). This doesn’t sound like the disciples were ever taught by Yeshua to disregard keeping the Sabbath! Paul, known among his Jewish brothers as Sha’ul, also kept the Sabbath and spent his Sabbath mornings in the synagogue (see Acts 17:2-3, 18:3-5). Also, the brother of Yeshua, Ya’acov, in his epistle, assumed that the believers he was writing to attended synagogue since he said: “…if a man comes into your synagogue with a gold ring and dressed in fine clothes, and there also comes in a poor man in dirty clothes…” (James 2:2). The writer to the Hebrews said that “…there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His” (Hebrews 4:9-10), which even if this is to be taken purely in a spiritual sense, these verses only have meaning to those keeping the Sabbath, since the weekly Sabbath pictures the rest we will enter in the Messianic era. There is no place in the entirety of the Apostolic Scriptures that shows Yeshua and the Apostles disregarding the Sabbath for a new day of rest and worship.

In addition to the clear evidence that Yeshua and the Apostles kept the Sabbath and kept it in accordance with the traditions of Israel, the Apostolic Scriptures also clearly show Yeshua and the Apostles engaging in other aspects of the Torah. Luke 22:15-20 clearly shows Yeshua and the disciples celebrating the Passover seder, with the Master infusing additional meaning into the eating of unleavened bread and the four cups of wine. 1 Corinthians 5:6-8 contains the Apostle Paul’s teaching on the spiritual application of Passover and an exhortation to keep Passover and the days of Unleavened Bread with such an attitude. Of course, we all know that the Apostolic community kept Shavu’ot, also known in Greek as Pentecost, since they were gathered at the Temple during Shavu’ot in Acts 2 (see Acts 2:1; cf. Acts 20:16, 1 Corinthians 16:8-9). There is also a mention of Yom Kippur in Acts 27:9 as a time marker, showing that the Apostolic community considered the calendar of Israel to be their calendar. Additionally, there is mention of Sukkot, the feast of Booths, in John 7 (see verses 2, 10, 14 and 37), with Yeshua using the festival activities as illustrations in his teachings. Not only did Yeshua and the Apostles keep the Torah-mandated holidays, they also kept the traditional Jewish holidays as well. We see in John 10:22-23 that Yeshua kept Hanukkah, the festival of Dedication. In addition to celebrating the holidays of Israel, there is evidence in the Apostolic Scriptures that Yeshua and the Apostles prayed daily (Acts 2:42, 3:1, 6:4), recited brachot (blessings), which are short prayers or blessings recited to God before doing various activities (Matthew 14:19-20, 26:27 and Acts 27:35), wore tzitzit (Matthew 9:20-21), kept kosher (Acts 10:14), were circumcised (Luke 1:59-60, 2:21, Philippians 3:5, Acts 16:3), offered sacrifices (Acts 24:17) and immersed in mikvaot, which are ritual baths for purposes of ritual purity (Acts 2:41, 9:18).

In any event, even if the Apostolic Scriptures didn’t include all this evidence that Yeshua and the Apostles kept the Torah, in order for them to be legitimate prophets of God, they could not have taught against the Torah. In Deuteronomy 13:1-11 we find that no man claiming to speak for God but who tries to lead the people of Israel into worshipping other gods and away from the commandments of the Torah can be legitimately considered a real prophet. In fact, such a man is to be executed, which in our circumstances would mean at the very least ignoring him. Not only that, the Torah mandates that the kings of Israel uphold and observe the commandments of the Torah (Deuteronomy 17:18-20). Knowing this, we must see understand Yeshua and the Apostles as being faithful Jews who upheld, lived and taught the Torah and we must interpret their teachings with this evidence in mind. If we Yeshua and the Apostle did disregard the Torah and led the people of Israel away from Torah observance, then they are disqualified as being prophets and messengers of God.

2) IS THERE MORE THAN ONE WAY OF BEING SAVED?

In order to dispense with dispensational thinking, we should look to see if the basic presuppositions behind dispensation theology are correct. The main issue at hand is the matter of salvation, whether or not it has always been the same. I think all would agree that all of mankind, from Adam on, are in the same dilemma, namely that our sin separates us from God. Also, all Christians would agree that since the coming of the Messiah, God has graciously accepted sinners on the basis of the Messiah’s death and resurrection, something we take hold of by faith. The question then is, how did God accept sinners previous to the coming of the Messiah? Thankfully, we don’t have to speculate since the Apostles based their teachings regarding salvation on the Tanakh and they looked to the people of faith in the Tanakh as examples of those saved by grace through faith.

Yeshua proclaimed that “…Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad” (John 8:56) and the Apostle Paul taught that “…Abraham BELIEVED GOD, AND IT WAS RECKONED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS. Therefore, be sure that it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham. The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘ALL THE NATIONS WILL BE BLESSED IN YOU.’ So then those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham, the believer” (Galatians 3:6-9). Abraham is the quintessential believer and according to Apostles our faith should be similar to his. The people of faith previous to the coming of the Messiah were not saved through keeping the Law or through their connection to the Law as Israelites, as it says in Galatians: “…if righteousness could be gained through the law, Messiah died for nothing!” (Galatians 2:21). Think about it, if there was something we could have done ourselves to secure salvation then God would not have had to send His own precious son to suffer and die for our sins. Instead, the people of faith before the coming of Messiah looked forward to his coming. Job, for example, could say by faith: “I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will take His stand on the earth. Even after my skin is destroyed, yet from my flesh I shall see God” (Job 19:25-26). Job knew that his Redeemer lived and that death would not be the end of him but that God would resurrect him to life. Like us, Job trusted that God would be faithful to His promises and that he would be given immortality through the resurrection in the coming kingdom. Not only that, the Tanakh clearly teaches regarding the atoning death and resurrection of the Messiah, as it says in Isaiah: “…the LORD was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief; If He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, and the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand” (Isaiah 53:10) and in the Psalms: “…You will not abandon my soul to Sheol; nor will You allow Your Holy One to undergo decay” (Psalm 16:10). The Apostle Paul knew this and said to Timothy: “from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Messiah Jesus” (2 Timothy 3:15). The people of faith before the coming of the Messiah were saved by God’s grace based upon the atoning death of the Messiah, just as we are.

Some would argue that the animal sacrifices provided salvation for the people of faith before the coming of the Messiah but such an argument misunderstands the purpose of the animal sacrifices. The animal sacrifices provided atonement in regards to ritual purity not in regards to sins against God in the eternal sense. The writer to the Hebrews said: “it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (Hebrews 10:4). As the book of Hebrews teaches, the sacrificial service in the Temple in Jerusalem was an earthly reflection of a greater reality. God’s presence resided in the Temple in Jerusalem and only those who were in a state of ritual purity could worship there. Ritual purity was achieved by following the guidelines regarding ritual purity in the Torah and immersing in water under the auspices of the sacrificial blood of animals. The Temple, the priesthood and the animal sacrifices in addition to providing a beautiful worship system for God, taught what the Holy One requires for eternal salvation, namely, the maintaining of the standard set in the Torah (repentance) and immersion in water (baptism) under the auspices of the sacrificial blood of the Messiah. The sacrifice of the Messiah and the animal sacrifices are not in competition! The animal sacrifices are for the purposes of securing ritual purity so that the believer can worship God at the Temple in Jerusalem, whereas the sacrifice of the Messiah is for the purpose of securing eternal salvation so that the believer can be forgiven of their sins and gain immortality in the resurrection. In this way, all believers of all time were saved by the timeless sacrifice of the Messiah; the blood of animals never took away their sin in regards to eternal salvation. The death of the Messiah did not do away with the animal sacrifices because the animal sacrifices would still serve the same purpose today if the Temple were to be rebuilt: they would secure ritual purity, allowing God’s people to worship in God’s holy space, all the while teaching us about the sacrifice of the Messiah, which secures eternal salvation, allowing God’s people to enter into eternity.

If salvation has always been the same, then that would also mean that the work of the Spirit in the lives of God’s people has been the same. To this, some would look at the out-pouring of the Spirit during Shavu’ot in Acts 2 was an indication that believers since then have a greater degree of spirituality than the believers before that point. To this we can simply examine the different ways God’s Spirit works in the lives of individuals to effect salvation and see if the same was true of the believers previous to the coming of the Messiah. Romans 2:29 says that those who are truly saved are circumcised in the heart by the Spirit of God but in Deuteronomy 10:16 the people of Israel are commanded to circumcise their hearts. Circumcision of the heart, that is, a willingness to submit to God, is a work of the Spirit and it is something God expected of the people of Israel previous to the coming of the Messiah. In Romans, the Apostle Paul said: “…the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so” (Romans 8:7) and that it is only by the Spirit that we are able to obey God but we know that the people of faith before the coming of the Messiah kept God’s commandments. A simple review of the life of any of the true believers in the Tanakh will show that they were indwelt and led by the Spirit. The out-pouring of the Spirit in Acts 2 was not for salvation but was to energize the Apostolic community to spread the Gospel among the nations and the subsequent and temporary ability to speak in a language they had not learned was simply a sign that God was among them in their mission to the nations (to those of different languages).

Knowing that believers of all generations are saved the same way and we all receive the same work of the Spirit to effect that salvation should dispel the notion that we can disregard the commandments of God because “we’re saved by Jesus not the Law!” Arguments using selected verses from Paul’s epistles should be taken with a grain of salt, since most of the time they are taken out of context. For example, “…sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace” (Romans 6:14) is used to argue that we don’t need to keep the commandments of the Law because we are not saved by the Law anymore, we’re saved by grace but the people before the coming of the Messiah were not saved by keeping the Law, they were saved by grace as we are! Not only that, such a conclusion has missed Paul’s point in Romans 6, namely that through the Messiah we are freed from the condemnation of the Torah, so we should no longer let sin be master over us. Please review the verse-by-verse studies available at MessianicNiagara.com for more!

3) WHAT ARE THE OLD AND NEW COVENANTS?

Another very common argument made by Christians when presented with the idea that we should be keeping the commandments of the Torah is that Christians are under the New Covenant and not the Old Covenant of Law. This argument, however, completely ignores what the Bible teaches regarding the New Covenant and is apparently ignorant of the Bible’s one-time use of the term “old covenant.” Firstly, let’s explore what the Bible teaches regarding the New Covenant. To understand what the New Covenant is, a person must understand that God has made several covenants with the family of Abraham, that is, the people of Israel. God promised Abraham that he would have many descendants and that he and his descendants would possess the land of Israel forever. God then promised the people of Israel that if they were obedient to the commandments of the Torah as a nation that He would keep them in the land and give them innumerable blessings. God also promised Phinehas that his sons would forever serve as the priesthood of Israel. Finally, God promised David that one of his descendants would also be on the throne in Israel. Throughout the history of the nation of Israel, there were only select generations that enjoyed the fulfillment of these promises and even then it wasn’t necessarily in ideal conditions. To this day, God has yet to properly and permanently fulfill any of these covenant promises. There is a future covenant coming, however, a future agreement that God will make with Israel in which He will promise to change His people so that they can receive the blessings promised to them. We read in Jeremiah, in the only passage in the Tanakh that uses the term “new covenant,” and then also in Ezekiel regarding this future covenant:

31″Behold, days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, 32not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD. 33″But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the LORD, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 34″They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the LORD, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” 35Thus says the LORD, Who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, Who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar; The LORD of hosts is His name: 36″If this fixed order departs From before Me,” declares the LORD, “Then the offspring of Israel also will cease from being a nation before Me forever.” 37Thus says the LORD, “If the heavens above can be measured And the foundations of the earth searched out below, Then I will also cast off all the offspring of Israel For all that they have done,” declares the LORD. (Jeremiah 31:31-37)

24″For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands and bring you into your own land. 25″Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. 26″Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27″I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances. 28″You will live in the land that I gave to your forefathers; so you will be My people, and I will be your God. (Ezekiel 36:24-28)

Let’s recap the promises made in these passages:

- The Torah written on the hearts of the whole nation of Israel.
- God and Israel will enjoy a unique, intimate relationship.
- Every person among Israel will have intimate relationship with God.
- God will forgive the sins of the entire nation of Israel.
- Israel will forever be God’s covenant people.
- God will gather Israel to the Land.
- God will spiritually cleanse the entire nation of Israel.
- God will give the entire nation of Israel a new heart to live for God.
- God will put His Spirit within the entire nation of Israel.
- The entire nation of Israel will be completely faithful to the covenant of Torah (originally made at Sinai).

Put very simply, the New Covenant is an agreement made between God and Israel that God will spiritually regenerate His people and fulfill all of the promises made to Israel. The New Covenant is a promise to Israel that God will enable His people to keep the Sinai covenant and thus receive the blessings promised: Israel will be in the land forever, they will keep God’s commandments, they will worship Him through the priesthood of the family of Phinehas and the son of David, Yeshua the Messiah, will be king over them.

Knowing what the New Covenant is should bring clarity to the few times the term is used in the Apostolic Scriptures. Yeshua said at that last Passover seder: “….this cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20). If not for the blood, that is, the death of the Messiah, God would not be able to forgive sins and put into effect that New Covenant in the future. The wine of the Passover seder meal not only symbolizes the deliverance from Egypt but also looks ahead to greater deliverance from sin and death through the resurrection. The Apostle Paul called himself and his associates “servants of a new covenant,” that is, those who were proclaiming the faith and repentance necessary to secure one’s place in that future reality when the New Covenant will be put into effect (see 2 Corinthians 3:6). Finally, the other reference to the New Covenant in the Apostolic Scriptures is in the book of Hebrews and the context is the contrast between this present age and the coming age to come. It says in Hebrews in reference to the New Covenant that “…he has obtained a more excellent ministry, by as much as he is also the mediator of a better covenant, which has been enacted on better promises” (Hebrews 8:6). The writer to the Hebrews says that the New Covenant is a better covenant and has been enacted on better promises but not because it is a replacement of the Sinai covenant; the New Covenant is a better covenant because the New Covenant promises to enable Israel to keep the Sinai covenant whereas the Sinai covenant in and of itself does not promise to enable Israel to keep the commandments. The covenant made at Sinai presented a choice to the nation ofIsrael: if, as a nation, they obeyed God’s commandments, He would be faithful to all of His covenant promises; if, as a nation, they disobeyed God’s commandments, He would continue to wait to fulfill the promises. Left by themselves,Israel would never be able to keep the commandments as a nation. The solution is to change the hearts of the entire nation, so they can then keep the Sinai covenant receive all of the covenant blessings and this is promised in the New Covenant.
The present reality of the New Covenant was the same for the believers previous to the coming of the Messiah as it is for us. God gives us a portion of His Spirit, an assurance that we will be given immortality and freedom from sin when God fulfills His promises to Israel. In every generation there have been an elect group of believers within Israel and from among the nations who have been given the gift of salvation, a taste of New Covenant life. Believers after the coming of the Messiah are in the same blessed position as believers previous to the coming of the Messiah. In the end, believers from all generations will be resurrected to immortality to live and reign with the Messiah for eternity.

What about the Old Covenant? I submit that there is no “old covenant” in the Bible, at least not in the sense that Christians usually think. Usually, Christians think of the New Covenant as a new Law-free era that started with the coming of the Messiah and the Old Covenant was the previous system of Law that was in place before the coming of the Messiah. As we’ve seen, however, the New Covenant is a yet future agreement that God will make with Israel, promising to spiritually change them so that all previous covenant promises can be fulfilled. So, the previous covenants, including the covenant made at Sinai, are not done away with. Both law and grace existed before the coming of the Messiah and remained the case after his coming. If that’s true, then where do we get the idea that there is an “old covenant”? Firstly, the term itself is found only once in the entire Bible, in 2 Corinthians: “…their minds were hardened; for until this very day at the reading of the old covenant the same veil remains unlifted, because it is removed in Messiah” (2 Corinthians 3:14). If we had the time, we could study the entirety of chapter 3 of 2 Corinthians so we could see exactly how Paul used this term. First of all, we know from the very next verse that Paul is referring to the five books of Moses, the Torah, when he says “old covenant.” It says in verse 15 of 2 Corinthians: “but to this day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their heart” (2 Corinthians 3:15). So, we see that Paul is paralleling the term “old covenant” with “Moses” and Moses is obviously a reference to the Torah. The key to understanding how Paul used the term “old covenant” is looking at how he used the word “old” elsewhere. Paul used the word “old” 5 other times in his epistles and each time it is used to refer a lack of faith or a lack of the work of the Spirit. Here are a couple of examples: “that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit” (Ephesians 4:22) and “knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin” (Romans 6:6). The “old self” refers to believers before coming to faith in the Messiah. The “old covenant,” therefore, is Torah read by a member of the covenant of Sinai, a Jewish person, who does not have faith and who has not had God’s Spirit open their eyes to the truth of salvation in Yeshua. To put it another way, especially for Jewish people, if the Torah is espoused but there is no genuine faith, no actual work of the Spirit to regenerate the heart, there can never be assurance of the New Covenant promises. For that person, the Torah will remain as the “old” covenant for them; the Sinai covenant without the New Covenant promises, that is, the ability to actually keep Torah and be faithful. Unless there is genuine faith and repentance, a result of the Spirit’s work, a veil will remain over the Torah, which in turns veils the heart; there will always be a barricade between the glory of the Torah and the heart of the person.

Yes, the Torah can be veiled and even the Gospel can be veiled, as Paul said in 2 Corinthians 4, but the key is that these things are veiled to those who are perishing because Satan and their sin has blinded them, preventing them from seeing the true way of salvation. If we were to call the Gospel the “old gospel,” that would refer to the fact that the hearer of the Gospel was spiritually deaf and blind and could not espouse God’s salvation by faith. In either case, when one turns to LORD in faith, it is neither the Torah nor the Gospel that is taken away; it is the veil that lies over their heart that is taken away. For believers, the covenant of Sinai, and the Torah which is a part of that covenant, is not “old” and this is because we are spiritually united with the Messiah, who has removed the veil and gives us the ability to be obedient. The Torah is not a source of condemnation for believers because we have assurance of the New Covenant promises. If we embrace the way Paul used the terms “old” and “new,” it is not correct for believers to call any part of the Scripture “old” because, to us, it is all “new.” The so-called Old Covenant refers to being a part of the covenant at Sinai without the work of the Spirit. To Paul, this was what the false teachers of his day were unwittingly proclaiming by teaching that salvation could be secured through legal conversion to Judaism: participation in Israel and connection to the Torah without the work of the Spirit. To put it another way, if one seeks out ritual conversion as their ticket into Israel, that person is participating in the covenant of Sinai without the promises of the New Covenant and therefore, because the Spirit has not applied the blood of Messiah and regenerated the heart, they are guaranteed the condemnation that comes from breaking the Torah.

4) IDENTITY ISSUES: WHAT IS THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE CHURCH AND ISRAEL?

Another angle that many Christians take in arguing that believers do not need to keep particular aspects of the Torah, such as the Sabbath and kosher laws, is that Christians make up the Church and the Law was for Israel. This argument is deeply connected to the previous arguments made because the reasoning is that the Church has grace and is a part of the New Covenant, whereas Israel had the Law and is a part of the Old Covenant. We’ve already seen that salvation by grace has always been the way God has saved His people and that the New Covenant is a yet future agreement between God and Israel, so how should we understand ourselves within the scope of God’s people? What is the Church and how does it relate to the people of Israel?

I think all Christians can agree that God’s people from the time of Abraham to the Messiah were the people of Israel. Israel was the only nation on earth that was in covenant relationship with God. Sure, select Gentiles would join the people of Israel but it was primarily the people of Israel that knew and obeyed the one true God. Did this change at any point? Since the ascension of the Messiah and the out-pouring of the Spirit in Acts 2, most Christians would understand that God no longer considers the people of Israel to be His primary concern; instead, a new group, made up of both Jews and Gentiles, the Church, is God’s primary concern. We’re told that the Church is different from Israel: we’re under grace, not law; we’re under the New Covenant not the Old Covenant; we keep Sunday not the Sabbath; we baptize not circumcise; we meet in churches not synagogues; and on and on. But is this how the Apostles viewed the Assembly of the Messiah. As most of us know, the Greek word “ecclesia” is usually translated in our English Bibles as “church” but this is not accurate since the word “ecclesia” simply means “assembly” or “congregation.” So, is the Messiah’s Assembly distinct from the people of Israel or is perhaps the Assembly more closely connected to God’s covenant people Israel?

There is one primary problem with thinking that the Assembly is a completely separate entity from the people of Israel: apart from the covenant made with Noah (and all humanity), the Bible nowhere teaches that God has made any covenants with anyone but the people of Israel, including the New Covenant, the covenant that promises eternal salvation. If you are not a part of the people of Israel, you cannot have covenant relationship with God apart from the basic promises given to Noah. The Apostle Paul put it this way in reference to the state Gentile believers were in previous to coming to faith: “…you were at that time separate from Messiah, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12). How often do we hear calls to salvation that include acceptance of God and the Messiah, so that we can achieve hope, but included with God and the Messiah is being included in the commonwealth of Israel and not being strangers to the covenants of the promise! In other words, essential to salvation is being united with the Messiah but we must also understand ourselves to be now a part of the commonwealth of Israel and no longer be strangers to the covenants of the promise. The word translated here as “commonwealth” is the Greek word “politeia,” which can be translated as “citizenship.” In this way, we see that it is not that God has started a new group distinct from Israel; God has instead, in addition to giving covenant promises to the people of Israel, has also given Israelite citizenship, so to speak, to Gentiles, so that we too can enjoy the covenant promises made to Israel. (Citizenship, likely in the same sense that Paul had Roman citizenship but was still Jewish. Gentiles do not become Israelites or Jewish but we do have citizenship, that is, rights and privileges, in Israel.) Paul said in the next verse: “but now in Messiah Yeshua you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Messiah” (Ephesians 2:13). Gentile believers are not excluded from the covenant promises made to Israel because we are united with the quintessential Israelite, Yeshua the Messiah.

The people of Israel are God’s covenant people and every Jewish person, regardless of their relationship with God, participates in the covenant God made with Israel at Sinai (they are either in obedience or disobedience). In every generation, however, God bestows upon a faithful remnant in Israel His Holy Spirit as a sort of down-payment or foretaste, guaranteeing that each faithful remnant will be resurrected in the end to enjoy the fulfillment of God’s covenant promises. The faithful remnant in each generation are those who turn to God in faith and repentance, trusting that God will send the Messiah or for those since the Messiah’s coming, those who trust that God has sent the Messiah to deal with sin and will send him again to reign as king. You could call each faithful remnant the Messiah’s assembly (or church). The Messiah’s assembly cannot be considered an entity distinct from Israel because it is made up of faithful Israelites. Gentile believers too are not distinct from Israel because even though we are not Jewish, we are united with believing Jews in the Messiah’s Assembly. So, the Messiah’s Assembly is not a new entity that replaces Israel but is instead made up of faithful Israelites and those selected from the nations; together we constitute those who are witnesses for the Messiah. For more, please review our study notes on Romans 9-11 at MessianicNiagara.com.

So, to say “we don’t keep the Law because we’re the Church not Israel!” is to miss that the Church is made up of faithful Israelites and they are certainly supposed to be keeping the Law. There is nothing in the entire Bible that would indicate that Jewish people are supposed to stop keeping the commandments of the Torah when they become believers. On the contrary, as the faithful remnant, Jewish followers of the Messiah should be the most obedient and Torah-observant people in the world. The question is rather, do Gentile believers have to keep the commandments of the Torah? Most of the time, the Jerusalem council in Acts 15 and the entire epistle to the Galatians is raised as proof that Gentile believers do not have to keep the Torah but was the issue with Gentile believers keeping the Torah or was it something else, albeit connected with elements of the Torah?

As we’ve already covered, it’s usually assumed by Christians that people previous to the coming of the Messiah were saved by keeping the Law, so when they read and interpret Acts 15 and Galatians, it’s usually assumed that there were holdouts in the Apostolic community that were teaching that the new Gentile believers had to keep the Law in order to merit salvation. These assumptions, however, totally miss the fact that nowhere does anyone state that salvation can be obtained through keeping the Law. Instead, we read in Acts 15: “Some men came down from Judea and began teaching the brethren, ‘Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved’” (Acts 15:1). The main issue was that some among the Apostolic community believed that Gentiles could not be saved unless they were circumcised. Why would these men think that if you weren’t circumcised that you wouldn’t be saved? Did they really think that the simple cutting of the flesh would grant you salvation? Also, look how the word “saved” is used. They didn’t care what you believed or confessed but rather that you were “circumcised.” To these men, circumcision made the difference. If you were circumcised, then you were “in.” If you were not circumcised, then you were not “in.” What did the term “circumcision” mean in the first century? We read throughout Acts and the Epistles that the term “circumcision” refers to those who are legally Jewish, that is, those who according to Jewish law are identified as Jewish. Of course, this legal Jewish status could be obtained by being born Jewish but it could also be obtained through ritual conversion and the primary element of ritual conversion, for men at least, was circumcision.

The basic premise behind this line of thinking is not wrong! Indeed, Israel is the only nation that God has made covenant promises to. The question is how Gentiles can participate and receive these covenant promises as well. The prevailing idea among the Jewish communities of the first century was that they had to be come legally Jewish through ritual conversion. The truth is that God accepts Gentiles through faith in the Messiah. In Galatians 2, Paul recounts a time when he, Barnabas and Titus went to Jerusalem to meet with some of the other leaders in the Apostolic community. He presented to them the Gospel he was proclaiming to the Gentiles, to see if they approved of it. Their response was that Titus, a Greek, did not have to be circumcised. With our knowledge of how the Jewish community believed Gentiles could be saved, what does the Jerusalem leadership’s response to Titus mean? It means they agreed with Paul’s Gospel that through the Messiah, Gentiles could be saved as Gentiles, without having to become legally Jewish (become proselytes). Paul’s message that Gentile believers did not have to become legally Jewish in order to be saved was solidified in the Jerusalem council’s decision. The Apostle Peter recounted the fact that God had first worked through him to bring the Gospel to the Gentiles and that the Spirit was poured out on the Gentiles just as it was on the Jewish people in Acts 2. With that in mind, Peter said: “…we believe that we are saved through the grace of the Master Yeshua, in the same way as they also are” (Acts 15:11). Finally, the leader of the Jerusalem assembly, Ya’akov, declared that “it is my judgment that we do not trouble those who are turning to God from among the Gentiles but that we write to them that they abstain from things contaminated by idols and from fornication and from what is strangled and from blood” (Acts 15:19-20). So, in the end, the unified Apostolic decision on Gentile believers is that we do not have to be legally Jewish to be considered a part of the family of Abraham. Instead, Paul went on to say: “be sure that it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham” (Galatians 3:7) with the phrase “son of Abraham” actually being a short-hand way of referring to those Gentiles who had become proselytes. Reading Paul’s epistle to Galatians knowing that these Gentile believers were being influenced to become converts to Judaism in order to complete their salvation sheds light on what Paul was prohibiting when he fiercely stated: “Behold I, Paul, say to you that if you receive circumcision, Messiah will be of no benefit to you” (Galatians 5:2). It was not that Paul was teaching them to not keep the commandments of the Torah, even getting circumcised in and of itself, instead he was teaching them that if they thought there was more to do, namely, becoming proselytes (getting circumcised), in order to complete their salvation, then the Messiah’s death for them would be made useless because they wouldn’t be trusting that Messiah’s death was enough to secure their salvation. No, faith in the death of the Messiah is sufficient for Gentile believers to be accepted by God. For more, please review our study on the epistle to the Galatians at MessianicNiagara.com.

5) GENTILE OBLIGATION TO THE TORAH

If Gentile believers do not need to become legally Jewish in order to be counted among God’s covenant people, do we have any obligation to the commandments of the Torah? Of course we do! Our obligation to the Torah centers on our devotion to the Messiah Yeshua. Jewish people are naturally obligated to the commandments of the Torah because God has made a covenant with the nation of Israel, promising to bless them when they keep the commandments. Gentiles, however, are not obligated to keep God’s commandments. However, when Gentiles become believers, they take on a life of imitation of the perfectly Torah-observant Messiah of Israel. Yeshua said in Luke: “A pupil is not above his teacher; but everyone, after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher” (Luke 6:40) and, as mentioned earlier, John said: “…the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked” (1 John 2:6). Yeshua himself said: “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill” (Matthew 5:17), which refers to the fact that his teachings do not in any way cause his disciples to break the commandments of the Torah. Instead, by following the teachings and example of Yeshua, we will be keeping the commandments of the Torah.

The commandments of the Torah reveal to us God’s wisdom; without the commandments of God, we would not know what is right or wrong. It says in Romans: “What shall we say then? Is the Law sin? May it never be! On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the Law; for I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, ‘YOU SHALL NOT COVET’” (Romans 7:7) and the Apostle John said: “Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4). The commandments are God’s gift to His people, so that we can live out the salvation that He has given us by His grace.

Yeshua went on to teach in Matthew: “For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:18-19). Later on in Matthew, regarding the disciples that the Apostles would make among the Gentiles, Yeshua instructed the Apostles to “[teach] them to observe all that I commanded you…” (Matthew 28:20).

As Gentile followers of Yeshua the Messiah we have an opportunity to show our solidarity with God’s people Israel and to show the world the life that flows from having faith in the one true God. As the Apostle Paul said: “Do we then nullify the Torah through faith? May it never be! On the contrary, we establish the Torah” (Romans 3:31). Are Gentile believers absolutely obligated to the commandments of the Torah such as the Sabbath, festivals, kosher laws and more? No, not for salvation and not as a matter of natural obligation to the covenant of Sinai. But should Gentile believers imitate the Messiah and live out the commandments given to Israel as result of our new identity in the Messiah? Of course! This means that we as Gentile believers can and should keep the Sabbath, celebrate the holidays, keep kosher, wear tzitzit and tefillin and all of the other commandments given to the people of Israel. So, it’s not a matter of, on the one hand, must, as if we’d lose our salvation, nor is it, on the other hand, a matter of could, as if we can declare faith in the Messiah and then live however we want. Instead, it’s a matter of should, it’s a matter of keeping these commandments because it’s the right thing to do as followers of Yeshua the Messiah because he kept these commandments.

CONCLUSIONS

The main aspect of dispensational theology we sought to refute is that God relates to His people differently since the coming of the Messiah than He did before the coming of the Messiah. Firstly, Jesus and the Apostles were Torah observant Jews and there is no evidence in the Apostolic Scriptures that they started or wanted a new religion to be started in distinction from the life of faith given to Israel. So, the things Jesus and the Apostles taught and the way they lived do not indicate there is a new way of life different from the life of faith previous to the coming of the Messiah. Secondly, there has only been one way of being saved and that’s by God’s grace through faith based on the death and resurrection of the Messiah. So, any argument that tries to insinuate that there’s a new way of salvation by grace as opposed to an old way of salvation through the Law should be rejected. Thirdly, the work of the Spirit in believers in regards to salvation has always been the same. So, any argument that says that believers since the coming of the Messiah have a more spiritual relationship to God than those before his coming should simply look at the men of faith in the Tanakh and determine if we are any better. Fourthly, the New Covenant is a yet future agreement God will make with Israel wherein He will spiritually change them so they can become faithful to the Torah. Israel’s faithfulness will trigger the fulfillment of all of God’s covenant promises. So, any notion that the coming of the Messiah started some law-free New Covenant era simply ignores what the Bible teaches about the New Covenant. Fifthly, there is no actual “old covenant” instead it’s a term that Paul coined to describe the Torah as read by an unbelieving Jewish person. So, to say that the Old Covenant was the time before the coming of the Messiah is to ignore how Paul used the term, the one time it is used in the Bible. Sixthly, the Church is not a distinct entity from Israel since the Church or the Messiah’s Assembly is made up of faithful Israelites and believing Gentiles. So, any excuse that we don’t have to keep certain commandments because we’re in the Church and not Israel is to miss that the Messiah’s Assembly is made up of faithful Israelites and Gentiles grafted into the metaphorical tree of Israel. Seventhly, Gentile believers must be associated with Israel in order to enjoy the covenant promises made by God. We are associated with Israel in our union with the Messiah. Eighthly, the commonly assumed issue facing the Apostles in the first century is that there were those that wanted Gentiles to keep the Law but the real issue is that they wanted the Gentiles to convert to Judaism, to become legally Jewish. The Apostles clarified that Gentiles need not convert to Judaism in order to be saved. So, any argument that uses Acts 15 or Galatians to prove that Gentile believers don’t need to keep the Law is using those texts of context since those refer to legal conversion not simple keeping of God’s commandments as a matter of discipleship. Lastly, Gentiles do not to become Jewish when they become believers but instead are now Gentile disciples of the Messiah. In this way, imitation of the Messiah will lead to Torah observance. Knowing all of this, is there any reason to continue to call the books prior to Matthew the “Old Testament” and the writings of the Apostles the “New Testament”? Do not these labels simply feed these false dispensational notions?

 

Recovering True Monotheism

Reasons Why The Bible Presents Unitarianism Not Trinitarianism

 

The Trinitarian view: 

 

The Modalist view: 

 

The Unitarian view:

 

1) God is always presented as singular person

Singular pronoun =
Singular pronoun is used of God thousands of times vs. the four times the plural is used (Genesis 1:26, 3:22, 11:7 and Isaiah 6:8)

Know therefore today, and take it to your heart, that the LORD, He is God in heaven above and on the earth below; there is no other. (Deuteronomy 4:39)

“Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one!” (Deuteronomy 6:4)

Deuteronomy 32:39 | Isaiah 43:10-11, 44:6

 
2) Jesus is always presented as a person distinct from the one God.

“For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Messiah Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5)

“This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus the Messiah whom You have sent” (John 17:3)

“Therefore concerning the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that there is no such thing as an idol in the world, and that there is no God but one. For even if there are so-called gods whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through him” (1 Corinthians 8:4-6)

“The LORD [HaShem] says to my Lord [adoni]: ‘sit at My right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet’” (Psalm 110:1)

“…God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus the Messiah is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:9-11)

“…let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Messiah–this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2:36)

 

 
3) texts that appear to equate Jesus with God have a poetic literary parallel

“…by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities–all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:16-17)

“in these last days [God] has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world” (Hebrews 1:2).

“The LORD by wisdom founded the earth, by understanding He established the heavens” (Proverbs 3:19)

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being” (John 1:1-3)

“When He established the heavens, I was there, when He inscribed a circle on the face of the deep” (Proverbs 8:27, cf. all of chapter 8 of Proverbs)

“As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:10-11)

“The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14)

“No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him” (John 1:18) ["...he who has seen me has seen the Father..." (John 14:9)]

 

 
4) Scripture never requires belief in Jesus as God but rather we are to affirm that Jesus is Lord, Messiah, Son of God and Saviour, which are all things that do not necessarily make him God.

“…the Messiah, the son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16)

“these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name” (John 20:31)

“if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9)

[cf. Psalm 110:1, Luke 1:35, Mark 12:32]

 

 

5) God possesses certain attributes which are incompatible with human nature.
“now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen” (1 Timothy 1:17)

“[God] alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see: to Him be honor and eternal dominion! Amen” (1 Timothy 6:16)

“let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone” (James 1:13, cf. Luke 22:42)

“but of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone” (Matthew 24:36, cf. 1 John 3:20)

 

 

 

 

 

Recovering True Monotheism
Reasons Why the Bible Presents Unitarianism Not Trinitarianism

[take 5 minutes]

As Christians, the questions “who is God?” and “who is Jesus?” are of the utmost importance. The following is a short survey of the Bible to begin to answer those questions. Primarily of importance, we are looking to determine how many persons God is and if Jesus is himself God. To start, let’s define the historical positions on the nature of God and the relationship between the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit:

The Trinitarian view: God is three persons (God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit), each person being fully God, co-eternal, co-essential, and co-equal. In this way, God is not an individual person, but rather three individual persons who each share the substance of “God.” It can be said this way: “God is three whos in one what.” Jesus is God the Son incarnate, making him both fully God the Son and fully human.

The Modalist view: God is one person who manifests Himself in three ways or modes (as Father, Son or Holy Spirit). This can be expressed this way: “God is one who in three whats.” Jesus is God incarnate.

The Unitarian view: God is a single person, the Father, whereas Jesus is God’s direct creation in the womb of Mary, the second Adam, and the Holy Spirit is God’s personal, operational presence in His creation. Jesus is the fully human son of God who functions as God to his people but is not literally God in any sense.

It is almost impossible to approach the Bible without already having one of these perspectives already in mind. The purpose of this short survey is to demonstrate that the Bible actually presents the Unitarian view and that the other views were developed to deal with the Christological passages that seem to imply that Jesus is literally God.

1. God is always presented as singular person.

[take 10 minutes]

God gave us His revelation in common language, which means that we must take the language used as normative. In other words, if God intended to communicate truth to us, He would have had to have done it using a method we can understand. For God to use words that normally mean one thing to us but He actually meant something different, then it is no longer revelation, it is confusion. So, when God consistently uses the first person, singular personal pronoun when referring to Himself, we must take that to mean that He is one person. In normal language, when the words “I,” “me,” “he,” “him,” and “himself” are used, they all refer to one person. The handful of times that the plural personal pronoun is used in reference to God (Genesis 1:26, 3:22, 11:7 and Isaiah 6:8) must be weighed against the thousands of verses that use the singular personal pronoun instead. Besides, when a person uses the first person, plural pronoun, it always refers to one person and at least one other person. Why would we think that isn’t what God meant in those rare instances where He uses a plural pronoun? Why would we suddenly think that it refers to multiple persons within an entity?

As mentioned, there are literally thousands of examples we could look at to find the singular personal pronoun used of God but the following should suffice:

Know therefore today, and take it to your heart, that the LORD, He is God in heaven above and on the earth below; there is no other. (Deuteronomy 4:39)

Here we find Moses referring to God as “He,” meaning God is a single person. The purpose of this verse is to convey that HaShem is the only God in the universe. This, of course, is another of way stating the cardinal creed of Israel: “Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one!” (Deuteronomy 6:4). If God was a Trinity of persons, this verse should read “…the LORD, they are God…” but it does not, it communicates to us that God is one person.

See now that I, I am He, and there is no god besides Me; it is I who put to death and give life. I have wounded and it is I who heal, and there is no one who can deliver from My hand. (Deuteronomy 32:39)

Here we have God speaking in the first person and referring to Himself as “I.” Here God exhausts human language to communicate that He is a single individual and that He alone is God. I submit that the entire concept of multiple persons within the same god is completely foreign to the Bible, whether of the true God or even of false gods. False gods are individual persons as well and here in this verse HaShem declared that those so-called gods do not actual exist for He alone is the only true God.

‘You are My witnesses,’ declares the LORD, ‘and My servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe Me and understand that I am He, before Me there was no God formed, and there will be none after Me. I, even I, am the LORD, and there is no savior besides Me’ (Isaiah 43:10-11).

“Thus says the LORD, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the LORD of hosts: ‘I am the first and I am the last, and there is no God besides Me” (Isaiah 44:6).
Here we find HaShem revealing again that He alone is God and that there are no other gods. The words “I” and “Me” are used to signify that HaShem is a singular personal entity. There is no hint that HaShem is actually three persons. If God is actually three persons then plural pronouns should have been used since it would be deceitful to use singular personal pronouns to refer to the impersonal essence or substance that the three persons of the Trinity share.

2. Jesus is always presented as a person distinct from the one God.

[take 20 minutes]

The Bible clearly presents Jesus as a distinct person from His Father. Even Trinitarians readily admit this, since, from that perspective, the unity between the Father and Jesus is not in that they are the same person but that they share the same essence or substance. In this way, when the Bible distinguishes between Jesus and God the Father, the Trinitarians can affirm this and maintain the doctrine of the Trinity. However, there are instances when Jesus is distinguished from God and the word “God” is not coupled with a further identification (i.e. God the Father). To put it a different way, from a Trinitarian perspective, when the word “god” is used of the one true deity, it can refer to the three persons of the Trinity at once or it can refer to a specific person of that Trinity. So, when the word “God” without any reference to a specific person of the Trinity is used and it is distinguished from Jesus, the Trinitarian has to infer that the Father is meant (or perhaps the Spirit). In this way, the Trinitarian gets to have their cake and eat it too. Conveniently for them, the writers of Scripture can make a distinction between God and Jesus and yet Jesus can still be God because the doctrine of the Trinity does acknowledge the distinction in persons. This, however, is placing a contrived doctrine onto the text of Scripture. What if the writers of Scripture, when distinguishing Jesus from God, were simply saying that Jesus is not to be understood as God?
 

 

Take, for example, this creedal statement in 1 Timothy: “for there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Messiah Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5). Unless Paul intended to communicate that Jesus is a mediator between man and himself, the reference to the one God here is a reference to the Father. So, unless Paul intended to convey that Jesus is the mediator between man and one person of the Trinity (the Father, who would then somehow be the “one God”), Jesus here, whom Paul clearly identified as a man, is the mediator between God the Father, the one God, and men. With only a handful of exceptions, the thirteen hundred plus times the word “God” (“theos“) is used in the Apostolic Scriptures, it undeniably refers to the Father. This is because the Father is the only true God, as Jesus himself declared in John: “this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus the Messiah whom You have sent” (John 17:3). In prayer to the Father, Jesus declared that the Father is the only true God. Of course, eternal life is that we have relationship with the Father through Jesus the Messiah, whom the one God has sent. It is true and let us affirm that the only way to God is through the Messiah Jesus but Jesus is not to be confused with the one God.

Consider Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians: “therefore concerning the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that there is no such thing as an idol in the world, and that there is no God but one. For even if there are so-called gods whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through him” (1 Corinthians 8:4-6). Here the Father is clearly identified as the one God and once again Jesus the Messiah, our one human Lord, is coupled with his Father. This passage distinguishes between God and Jesus but, of course, recognizes the highly exalted position that Jesus enjoys. This is similar to Psalm 110:1, the most quoted or alluded to passage of the Tanakh in the Apostolic Scriptures.

The first verse of the hundred and tenth Psalm says: “the LORD says to my Lord: ‘sit at My right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet’” (Psalm 110:1). Here, David prophetically records for us a statement from HaShem to David’s Lord. Our English translations blur the distinction made between the first “LORD” and the second “Lord” in this verse. The first “LORD,” in the Hebrew, is actually the Tetragrammaton, that is, the four-letter name of God. The second “Lord” in this verse is actually the Hebrew word “adoni,” which literally means “my lord.” The word “adoni” is never used of God in the Bible but certainly does refer to human superiors. So, like what we saw in John 17:3 and 1 Corinthians 8:6, Jesus is clearly distinguished from the one God, HaShem, but is also coupled with Him.

Again, it is true that Jesus has been highly exalted but his exalted position was granted to him by God and it is for God’s glory. Paul said in Philippians: “…God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus the Messiah is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:9-11). Notice how it is the Father who is identified as God, whereas Jesus is identified as Lord, which is the pattern set by Psalm 110:1. Elsewhere, in Acts, we learn that God highly exalted Jesus and made him both Lord and Messiah: “…let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Messiah–this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2:36). Read through the entire book of Acts (and the rest of the Bible) and you will consistently find the Apostles distinguishing Jesus from God, who is clearly
the Father.

(Not only that, even among Trinitarians, most Christians already relate to God and Jesus through the Unitarian model. Do you believe that Jesus is God’s son and God’s anointed King? Then you are making a distinction between the one God and His human son, Jesus.)

3. Any text that appears to equate Jesus with God has a literary parallel, which proves that it is not to be taken literally.

[take 20 minutes]

In the Apostolic Scriptures, we encounter several passages that on the surface appear to imply that Jesus is literally God. To conclude that, in these passages, the Apostles intended to convey to us that Jesus is literally God is take their words hyper-literally. In other words, when we read and interpret the Bible, we must remember that though we are to take the Bible literally, sometimes the writers of Scripture employ metaphor and symbolism. Additionally, sometimes the Apostles use certain language which the Jewish audience of the day would have understood to be taken poetically and not literally. For example, in Colossians, Paul said: “…by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities–all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:16-17). Similarly, it says in Hebrews: “in these last days [God] has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world” (Hebrews 1:2). Taken out of context and without any knowledge of the Jewish literature of the day, we could conclude that Jesus was the Creator of the universe. However, Paul and the writer to the Hebrews were both using the language that other Jewish writers of the day used of wisdom. For example, Philo said that Wisdom was the agent that God used to create the world (see Christology in the Making, James Dunn, pg.  ). Not only that, but in the Hebrew Scriptures we find: “the LORD by wisdom founded the earth, by understanding He established the heavens” (Proverbs 3:19).

So, what did the Apostles intend to convey by equating Jesus with the wisdom of God? Jesus is the wisdom of God in so far that he fully obeyed God and therefore perfectly lived out the wisdom of God found in the commandments. As a human being, Jesus perfectly conveyed to us the right way to live since he always used God’s wisdom. In what way was the universe created through Jesus? Jesus is the creative power of God because God had Jesus in mind when creating the world, specifically in regards to us and our salvation. Additionally, through Jesus we are created anew, destined to live forever. These statements are beautifully poetic and express to us how perfect and Godly Jesus was and is.

In the first chapter of the gospel of John we find: “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being” (John 1:1-3). John clearly echoes the first line from the book of Genesis when he says “in the beginning.” In fact, the Hebrew name for the book of Genesis is Breisheet which we translate as “in the beginning.” Therefore, with just the first line, John intends for us to think of the Torah. This informs what John meant when he used the word “logos,” which is translated into English as “word.” In Jewish thinking, the Torah is God’s own expression of Himself to Israel (and the world), His very word. In the Torah we can learn about who God is and what He expects of mankind. Through God’s commandments, mankind can know God’s wisdom. This wisdom, the expression of God, was poetically personified in the book of Proverbs: “when He established the heavens, I was there, when He inscribed a circle on the face of the deep” (Proverbs 8:27, cf. all of chapter 8 of Proverbs). No one in ancient Israel took the personification of wisdom in the book of Proverbs literally, as if there was a lady named Wisdom there with God at creation. Instead, personifying God’s attributes is way of expressing the transcendent God. The personification of the word here in the first chapter of John should be understood in a similar vein.

To speak of God’s word being with God and being God is just another way to communicate how God expresses Himself and that this expression accurately represents Him. Just as the words we speak express our thoughts and represent who we are, so too does God’s word (His speech) express who He is and represents Him perfectly. We should keep in mind however, that a person’s speech is not literally the person but rather represents the person. This, of course, is highly philosophical and esoteric but this is how John chose to present his version of the story of Jesus.

If we are correct in thinking that the word that John has in mind is God’s speech which brought creation into existence as conveyed to us in the Torah then we can be sure that any personification of the word is purely for poetical reasons. In Genesis, God’s word is not to be understood as a second person but rather the expression of God. John would not be the first Biblical writer to attribute personality to God’s word. Isaiah recorded the words of God as follows: “as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:10-11). Here, God’s word is sent on a mission and accomplishes the task assigned to it but God’s word should not be understood to be a literal person.

When we come to verse 14 of the first chapter of John, we find: “the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). It is at this point that we can rightly speak of the word being a literal person, in the sense that God’s word was embodied in the human being, Jesus of Nazareth. It is correct to say that Jesus is the word of God made flesh because he is the direct creation of God who perfectly expresses God to the world in regards to being a man. This informs what is written later in the first chapter of John: “no one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him” (John 1:18). Whether the text says “the only begotten God” or “the only begotten Son” (the manuscripts differ on this) is irrelevant because what is being communicated is that Jesus is the ultimate created representative of the one God. Jesus is the new Adam, the image of the invisible God, which means he represents God. In fact, Jesus represents God so perfectly that he could say: “…he who has seen me has seen the Father…” (John 14:9).

4. Scripture never requires belief in Jesus as God but rather we are to affirm that Jesus is Lord, Messiah, Son of God and Saviour, all things that do not necessarily make him God.

[take 10 minutes]

There is never a place where the Bible calls for belief that Jesus is God. When Jesus asks Peter who he thought he was, Peter’s reply was to declare that Jesus was “…the Messiah, the son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16); Jesus’ approval of Peter’s declaration should signal to us that there wasn’t more to be learned about Jesus’ nature. Similarly, at the end of the book of John we read: “these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name” (John 20:31). Consider also Paul’s words in Romans: “if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9). Search through the Scriptures and you will never find anything that requires people to believe that Jesus is literally God.

Surely, we must affirm that Jesus is our Lord (cf. Psalm 110:1), God’s anointed, the one who was directly created in the womb of Mary, making him God’s only begotten son (cf. Luke 1:35). To confess Jesus as Lord is to confess that he is your God-appointed human superior. Jesus is the one we must pledge allegiance to and imitate because he is God’s chosen and perfect representative. Jesus is the son of God because he was begotten in the womb of a virgin. To say that Jesus is God is to make nonsense the words “son of” in the title “son of God.”

Additionally, similar to the instance in Matthew 16, in Mark 12 we find another opportunity for Jesus to teach that he is to be included in the definition of the nature of God and that there was more to God than simply understanding Him to be one person. In affirming Jesus’ statement that the Shema was the greatest of all the commandments, the scribe said: “right, Teacher; you have truly stated that HE IS ONE, AND THERE IS NO ONE ELSE BESIDES HIM” (Mark 12:32). Again, notice the use of singular personal pronouns in reference to the one God. Not only did Jesus not go on to say that there was more to learned about the nature of God, he complimented the scribe, saying that he was not far from the kingdom.

 

5. God possess certain attributes which are incompatible with human nature, namely, God possesses intrinsic immortality, whereas Jesus died.

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The last thing we can look at in this short study is the issue of how God can become a man. The classical Trinitarian position is that Jesus was both fully man and fully God. From this view, though Jesus has two natures, he is still one person. On this surface, this view appears to satisfy the conundrum that the Scriptures seem to speak of Jesus both in terms of being a man and being God. Digging a little deeper, however, we find that there are certain characteristics of God and man that are simply incompatible. Foremost is that of that fact that God is intrinsically immortal, whereas man is mortal.

In Paul’s first epistle to Timothy, it says: “now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen” (1 Timothy 1:17). Here, Paul clearly identifies the only God as being immortal and invisible. Not only that, he went on to say in that same epistle that God “alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see: to Him be honor and eternal dominion! Amen” (1 Timothy 6:16). It does not take much convincing of any thinking Christian that Jesus was mortal and visible!

From the so-called orthodox Christian perspective, Jesus was both fully God and fully man but yet was still one person (Jesus did not have two centers of consciousness). If this was the case, then how is it possible to say that the God part of him lived on but the human part of him died? Does that have any meaning? Death is the cessation of life, the cessation of consciousness. Doesn’t it make more sense that Jesus was a man and that when he died, he actually died?

God cannot be tempted, as it says in James: “let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone” (James 1:13), but Jesus was tempted. If Jesus is God then the temptation that he endured from Satan was a charade. Not only that, if Jesus cannot actually be tempted to sin, it diminishes his decision to give himself as a ransom for his people. Thankfully, despite the temptation to do otherwise, Jesus said to God: “yet not my will, but Yours be done” (Luke 22:42).

God knows everything (1 John 3:20) but Jesus didn’t know the time of his return, as it says in Matthew: “but of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone” (Matthew 24:36). Are there secrets within the Godhead? Is Jesus able to limit the God part of himself?

I submit that, despite paying lip service to it, no one actually believes in the doctrine that states Jesus is both fully God and fully man. Taking what’s written about Jesus in the Gospels, you will either understand him to be God functioning as man or man functioning as God. Trinitarians have to explain away the parts of the Gospels that clearly show Jesus to be a man. When Jesus does not know the time of his second coming, at this moment, from the Trinitarian perspective, Jesus is simply functioning as man and the God part of him is somehow being limited. When Jesus died, the human part of Jesus died but the God part continued to live. So, is Jesus’ consciousness in the human part or the God part? If it’s in the God part, then why did he not know the time of his second coming? If it’s in the human part, then how can we say that the God part continued to live on when his human part died? The doctrine that Jesus is both fully God and fully man simply does not hold up under scrutiny. Instead, Jesus is fully human and, as a perfect human being, he represents God to us; Jesus functions as God to us but is not literally God.

The Context of Galatians

Does the epistle to the Galatians teach that Christians shouldn’t keep the Law?

As more and more Christians come to see the beauty and validity of the commandments of the Torah (such as the Sabbath and the kosher laws), many well-meaning and concerned brothers and sisters point us to the Apostle Paul’s epistle to the Galatians. Their intention is to remind us that in that epistle, the Apostle Paul taught against Gentile Believers keeping the Law.

But does the epistle to the Galatians really teach against Gentile Believers keeping the Torah? Is the Apostle Paul able to overthrow the clear words of both the Hebrew Scriptures and of the Messiah Himself, which instructs us to obey the Torah, and lead Gentiles away from God’s commandments? From a historical Christian perspective, the answers to both of these questions are a resounding “yes!” The long-standing interpretation of Galatians is that Paul was teaching against Gentile Believers keeping the Torah.

Is this interpretation, however, consistent with the rest of the Bible and even the Apostle Paul’s own writings? Now, I’m not claiming to have THE interpretation of Galatians, nor am I claiming to be able to properly interpret every single verse, though I have attempted to do so and you can read my thoughts on MessianicNiagara.com in the Studies section. This blog entry is a summation of the introduction to those notes.

Video Blog

I’ve decided to begin recording some videos answering the common objections I hear when I tell people about the Torah. In this first video, I tackle the objection “We don’t need to keep the Law because we’re saved by Jesus!” I do this by answering two very basic questions: “what is salvation?” and “how were the people before the coming of Jesus saved?”

Part 1 – What is salvation?

Part 2 – How were the people saved before the coming of the Messiah?

How sweet the sound

If you know me and have talked to me about the Bible then you know that I believe that the whole Bible is authoritative for holy living. In other words, all of God’s commandments in the Torah are still just as authoritative today as they were in Bible times. Some Christians misunderstand and think that this means Believers who are endeavouring to keep the Torah’s commandments are trying to earn their salvation. Recently at work, I’ve been speaking with a woman who is interested in the Torah perspective and has brought up that usually the Torah perspective teachers don’t bring up grace. Additionally, a prominent believing Jewish singer has recently publicly stated that he has left the Messianic movement and even went as far to say that Believers who are trying to keep the Torah might not be saved. His opinions are coming from his reading and misunderstanding of the Apostle Paul’s epistle to the Galatians.

I can’t speak for other Torah submissive Believers; I can only speak for myself. Am I endeavouring to learn and obey Torah to get saved? Am I trying to gain God’s favour by trying to keep the Sabbath? Am I scoring some points with God because I’m trying to keep Kosher? Is there any good work that a person can do to gain merit in God’s eyes?

To Whom Shall We Pray?

It happened that while Yeshua was praying in a certain place, after He had finished, one of His disciples said to Him, “Master, teach us to pray just as Yochanan also taught his disciples.” (Luke 11:1)

Recently, I spent a great deal of time with a Pentecostal group. There were, of course, times when we would pray together and I was reminded of some things that I had thought about in the past in regards to prayer. What I’m about to address brings up many questions regarding the nature of God and what theologians call Christology. Christology is the study of the person of Christ, that is, the Messiah. I by no means think that I have even begun to truly understand the nature of God and the nature of the Messiah. No one fully understands the nature of God. To understand the nature of God would mean that you were on the same level as God. The reason why we don’t understand the nature of God is because we are the creation and He is the Creator. That being said, it is our duty to understand what the Bible says about the nature of God and respond to the truth accordingly.

Dissecting Dispensation Theology

One of the most pervasive theologies in the Evangelical movement is that of Dispensation Theology. Dispensational Theology has become so ingrained in Christian thinking that most don’t even realize they believe in it. Essentially, Dispensation Theology can be broken down into the belief that God deals with different people in different eras in different ways. There are many flavours of Dispensation Theology but most would agree that the main line of demarcation between the dispensations is the cross of the Messiah. Previous to the cross, there was a different way of salvation and different expectations of obedience from God. Not only that, previous to cross, God viewed Israel as His people and, subsequent to the cross, God viewed the Church as His people.

Perhaps on the surface, this theological paradigm makes everything fit together but when put under scrutiny it betrays some major deficiencies. In the following survey of the different facets of this theology, I’m not going to hold back. The following views (which are in bold) are what dispensationalists believe once you strip off the theological jargon:

Cat Got Your Tongues?

When it comes to Biblical issues and practices, sometimes emotion can blur the lines between what we experience and what’s actually in the Bible. Perhaps none more emotionally charged is the issue of “speaking in tongues.”

Firstly, let me point out that I grew up in a Pentecostal church. Growing up, I was proud to be Pentecostal. I was always intrigued with people speaking in tongues and being “slain in the Spirit.” When God radically changed me in the spring of 2004, I became even more zealous for all things Pentecostal. When I read 1 Corinthians 14, I did what most Pentecostals do, I assumed that the modern day “tongues” phenomenon was what was happening in Corinth. Within the paradigm of this interpretation, I eagerly desired to speak in tongues (as it would seem Paul indicated in 1 Corinthians 14:1). Within a couple of months, I began to speak in tongues. At first it was few “words” but it eventually developed into a couple of different patterns. I was completely sincere and I genuinely thought that the Holy Spirit was speaking through me.

Within the past couple of years, though, as I’ve begun to study the pertinent passages a little more deeply, I’ve stumbled upon a couple of things that makes this “tongues” experience inconsistent with the Bible. Let’s begin in Acts 2, and see if we can figure this out.