Chapter 4
The Torah
“And then I will declare to them,’ I never knew you;
depart from Me you who practice lawlessness”
Matthew 7:23
This scripture is very strong, especially because it is spoken to those that are believers and are even casting out demons and know the power of God. We can’t just ignore it and ‘spiritualize’ it. It is better to be ‘shocked out of complacency’ than to receive this terrible ‘greeting’ from the Lord when we arrive to Heavens Gates. The word ‘law’ or ‘Torah’ can be interchanged. By saying Torah I mean only the five books of Moses and those regulations and instructions given to Israel by God Himself, (nearly every chapter in Leviticus and Deuteronomy begins with “And the Lord spoke to Moses saying, speak to the children of Israel…”). I do not mean the Talmud, Kabbalah or other Rabinnical writings.
I believe that this Scripture in Matthew 7: 23 can be interpreted correctly in the light of the Scriptures in Matthew 5:17-18, “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill for truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass away from the Law until all is fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of the least of these commandments , and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven; but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say unto you, that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven”. What the Lord is saying here is totally confirmed in Matthew 7:23 when He tells those that have been ‘doing things’ in His name even working miracles to depart from Him because they have been without law or without Torah, which are God’s instructions in righteousness.
Verse 17 has been misinterpreted for many centuries to say, that because the Lord ‘fulfilled’ the law, (from now on I will use the proper Hebrew word, Torah), then we that believe in Him are now ‘free from the Torah’. That of course would pose a tremendous threat to the very definition of the New Covenant as written in Jeremiah 31:31-33, “Behold the days are coming says the Lord, that I will make a New Covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah…But this is 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 I will be their God and they will be My people.” The very definition of the New Covenant is “The time when the Torah is written in the heart rather than on tablets of stone”. Just like the First Covenant was made at the time that the Torah was written by the finger of God on the stone tablets in Sinai, the New Covenant happens when the finger of God writes the Torah on the heart of a believer.
The question that remains is what does the word fulfill mean? This is a normal term that was used often 2.000 years ago that meant: “Do not think that I came to destroy the Torah or the prophets by misinterpretation but I came in order to interpret them to the full”. In other words I am the only one that can fully interpret and explain all the laws and all the prophecies, without Me you can’t have the full understanding! Then of course it would make sense why the Lord continued to give His interpretation to the Torah in the following verses. Look for example at the verses in Matthew 5:21 and 22, “Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, ‘Thou shalt not kill.. But I say unto you, that whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment…”.Isn’t it clear that Yeshua is interpreting the Torah to the full here? It is not enough to have the correct external actions but our hearts need to be right as well. In Matthew 5:27-28 He says, “Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery’, But I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” Again it’s extremely clear and obvious that Yeshua is fully interpreting the Torah here by challenging us not only to keep the external action but also to have our hearts right and pure. An impure heart or impure actions carry the same weight in God’s eyes.
From all this we can understand a few things:
When we get saved we immediately receive the Holy Spirit who is the deposit or proof of our salvation.(1 Corinthians 3:16,1 John 4:13). The Holy Spirit is the finger of God that writes the Torah on our hearts, (Luke 11:20, Deuteronomy 9:20, Exodus 8:19). The same Spirit by which we cast out devils and heal the sick is the one that writes God’s Torah in our hearts. So the only way for us as believers to walk in obedience to God’s Torah is to walk by the Spirit.(Romans 8:1-8). In Romans 8:7 it says, “Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: For it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be”. So the difference between those that walk according to the carnal, fleshly mind that is an enemy of God , and those that walk by the Spirit, is whether we are subject to God’s law or we are not. Those that are not subject in their minds to God’s Torah are carnal and those that are subject to God’s Torah are spiritual or spirit led. That of course makes, sense in the light of the revelation that God’s Holy Spirit both interprets and writes the Torah in our hearts. Since we can’t have the correct and full interpretation without Yeshua, neither can we understand or walk in the fullness of Torah without the leading and guidance of the Holy Spirit. In other words The Holy Spirit is the Key for us to be able to understand and obey God’s laws and instructions. Since our growth in the Spirit is an ongoing process so is our growth in the understanding and correct application of the Torah. We can’t just read the laws and try to figure out with our own reason how to apply them to our lives, we need the Holy Spirit to continually teach us and fully interpret those laws to us. That is why the Holy Spirit is called our Teacher, (this was the usual term given to the rabbi that taught the Torah and its applications). Now the Spirit of God is our official, God appointed Torah teacher. (John 14:16-21,26). The Lord calls the Holy Spirit the Comforter that will teach us all things. Yeshua goes onto say in John14: 21-26, that the one that loves Him keeps His words which are not His but those are the words and commandments of the Father who sent Him. Since Yeshua and the Father are one, Yeshua and the God of Israel have the exact same set of commandments and the proof that we love Yeshua is that we keep His commandments as revealed to us by the Holy Spirit.
I remember that for many years I sought God on how to keep and relate to the Shabbat. Since I fly a lot to minister in different countries I have prayed for many hours during different flights for God to reveal this commandment to me: “Thou Shalt keep the Sabbath holy”. Each time I have had more and more revelation and have been able to obey God not under the letter of the law that kills but by the Spirit that gives life, (2 Corinthians 3:6). I have been seeking the Holy Spirit’s interpretation to the different commandments as I want to walk in obedience to God’s word and not as a ‘lawless’ or ‘torahless’ one. God has been gracious and patient with me in my growth of understanding of His commandments. I believe that as you seek Him for yourself with a genuine heart, He will do the same for you.
Of course there are many Ceremonial Laws & Animal sacrifices that we can’t & are not suppose to keep literally. But they still have prophetic importance on how to walk them out on the spirit as he reveals them to us.
I must warn you here from two extreme and incorrect reactions to the Torah:
Believers that hear the message on the Torah and they feel guilty that they have not been obeying it, they ‘put fig leaves on’ and try to ‘cover their guilt’ with doing everything religiously without the fully correct interpretation by the Holy Spirit. These believers miss it because they do not have an intimate relationship with the Holy Spirit who is the only one that can interpret the law to us. They fall into religiosity and ‘doing works’ without the Spirit. This is how a cultic spirit develops.
On the other hand there are other believers especially among the theologically schooled that react violently against the message on Torah with a deep fear that ‘people will come under the law’. They then fall prey to the trap of teaching people not to keep the Torah because it is all fulfilled and thus irrelevant for the believers in the New Covenant. The danger of that is pretty big since the Lord says in Matthew 5:19, “Whoever therefore will break the least of these commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven”.
Both of these reactions are incorrect, harmful and need repentance.
May I suggest that you stop here and pray and seek your heart before you go any further?
“Dear Heavenly Father, I would like to have a pure heart before you concerning the Torah. I pray that you give me the full interpretation of your laws through the Holy Spirit. I purpose to seek your face on this issue and I humble myself to hear from you.”
***
One of the major outcomes of the divorce from the Jewish roots was the problem of dealing with the ‘Old Testament’. In an attempt to keep the Old Testament as Bible, the Church Fathers decided that the way to interpret it would be to ‘allegorize’ and ‘spiritualize’ it.Thus the Torah could be spiritualized and all mention of Israel would mean the Church and Jerusalem will mean the New Jerusalem etc...The Torah of course was done away with at the Cross or so they taught.This problem continues until this day as we cannot reconcile Old Testament Scriptures to New Testament Scriptures. Take for example Scriptures that talk about all Mankind coming to bow down before the Lord from Shabbat to Shabbat from New Moon to New Moon. Since the Torah was ‘obsolete’ and Constantine had changed the Shabbat from Saturday to Sunday, this Scripture in Isaiah 66:22-24 was interpreted to mean from Sunday to Sunday. “And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith The Lord”.(Isaiah 66:23) .It is quite clear that all people will worship God forever on Shabbat, (that is the seventh day when God rested from all of His works). Nothing in the Scriptures even hints that God would change the Shabbat for the Sunday.
I personally believe that we should worship God every day of the week but from Friday night to Saturday night that is Shabbat and it is the special day that God Himself chose to be worshipped for all eternity. It is also the 4th of the ten commandments, “Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy”, (Exodus 20:8). It is very interesting to note that in the last few years many congregations started ‘prophetic meetings’ or ‘school of the Holy Spirit’ meetings on Friday nights. Those meetings are normally the most anointed ones and the Presence of the Holy Spirit is considerably stronger. That is no coincidence since on Friday night begins the Shabbat and most Jewish homes are celebrating it and setting it apart witha festive family meal. At the same time Yeshua has come to celebrate His Shabbat with His redeemed ones that have been ‘grafted into the olive tree’, (Romans 11) by sharing with them a special ‘festive meal’ in His Presence. We need to continually remember that the Shabbat and all the other Biblical, Jewish Feasts were already set at the time of Creation and therefore they are still very relevant, “And God said let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and for years.”.(Genesis 1:14). The same word used for the Feasts of God or holy convocations in Leviticus 23:2 is used in Genesis 1:14 for seasons. That word is moadim which means testimonials or rehearsals. And indeed as we celebrate the Shabbat and all the other holy Biblical festivals we get to rehearse and give testimony of God as a Creator and as a Redeemer. (Please read also Isaiah 56:6-8)
Concerning the dietary laws, we often misquote the Scripture of 1 Timothy 4:4,5 “ For everything created by God is good, and nothing to be rejected, if it is received with gratitude; for it is sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer”.We paraphrase it like this: ‘We are free to eat anything as long as we pray over it”. We totally ignore that it needs to be sanctified by the Word of God and prayer. The only Word that Paul was referring to and that Timothy had available was the ‘Tanach’, (Old Testament), as the New Testament had not been compiled yet. The word never sanctifies pigs or snakes or shellfish for human consumption. The animals have never changed. God creates some for human consumption and called them ‘clean’ and some not for human consumption and called them ‘unclean’, (Leviticus 11). Noah, who lived before the law was given knew about this and so he brought into the ark of the clean animals 7 by 7, (to eat and to sacrifice to the Lord) and of the unclean animals only two by two.(Genesis 7:2).
Also many people interpret the vision that Peter had on the roof in the city of Jaffa, to say that God was cleansing all animals, but that is not the interpretation of the vision:
While he was wondering what the vision meant, “The Spirit said to him, ‘Behold three men are looking for you, but arise go downstairs and accompany them without misgivings for I have sent them Myself’.” (Acts 10:19-20). When he arrived at Caesaria at the house of Cornelius he said to them: “You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a man who is a Jew to associate with a foreigner or to visit with him; and yet God has shown me that I should not call any man common or unclean”.(Acts 10:28). How did God show him that? A sheet with clean and unclean animals came down three times and three Gentile men came to pick him up as he was wondering what the vision meant. If we do a scientific test on the animals we will find out that they are basically exactly the same as 2000 years ago. However there is a very clear difference between born again people and people that have not yet received the blood atonement of Yeshua. The Lord cleansed people by His blood sacrifice, not animals. Now both Jews and Gentiles have access to God through the blood of the Messiah and by the same Spirit: The Holy Spirit.
Please understand what I’m saying. Your salvation does not depend on the animals you eat, but breaking the laws of the Lord even if it is because of ignorance, harm us both physically, mentally and spiritually. The Lord fulfilled all of the requirements of the Torah to purchase our righteousness, so that we could obey Him not by our own strength, but by the strength of the Spirit that He has given us. That same Spirit that raised Yeshua from the dead dwells in us. He is our Teacher and counselor. He will write God’s laws on our hearts, but how can He do that if we do not allow Him because our doctrines tell us that ‘we are free from the Law’ and that the Law is bondage and slavery! It is far more slavery to suffer the consequences of violating God’s Torah and principles, whether they are moral, social or dietary. He is just knocking on the door of our hearts to let Him write His Laws on our hearts!!!
I still remember when we were in Florida and a ministry couple wanted to receive nutritional counseling from me. These were very busy and famous ministers of the Lord. Both of them were overweight and as they were traveling a lot they needed a radical change in nutrition. In the past I used to be a health consultant and nutritionist and they thought it was a good idea to take some counseling from me on how to eat. They made an appointment, but a few days later they canceled it because of a sudden ministry engagement. I was sorry because I felt that their health was in jeopardy.
A few days later we heard that they and their daughter who was with them, were at the hospital due to a violent food poisoning. They were very sick! On the way back from their ministry engagement they stopped at an ‘all you can eat’ shrimp place and they got violently sick due to the shrimp they ate. If they would have come to the nutritional counseling appointment, I would have told them about the dietary laws as written in Leviticus 11. I would have told them that there is a difference between clean and unclean animals and that shell fish and shrimp have not been created for human consumption. That they are ‘the vacuum cleaners of the ocean’ and because of that, they are prone to cause many diseases. The same with pork .The pig has no sweat glands therefore it rolls on the mud to cool itself down, it eats garbage and it cannot get rid of its poisons. People who know how to cook pork know not to boil pork for too long because all the poisons trapped within the pork come to the surface. It is a well known fact in nutrition that pork and all its derivatives are harmful to the arteries because of their high fat content.
Once my husband and I were preaching in Colombia about the Torah and the dietary laws. A woman seemed to be so excited that she could not contain herself. As we asked her about it she said, “I am a doctor in Microbiology and I have been doing autopsies (surgery to dead corpses) to different populations. I have seen that Jewish people that keep the dietary laws have a far healthier intestinal environment and far less bacteria that normal Christians that do not keep the dietary laws. I have also found that Christians die from very violent bacteria that have no cure and Jewish people don’t suffer from them. Also there is a horrible disease that looks like Epilepsy but it is not. It’s a disease that happens to people that eat pork”.
Later on we ministered to the leadership and staff of that church and gave an altar call for people to repent from breaking God’s Torah. Many people fell under the power of God and rose up refreshed or healed. Among them was a woman that was crying profusely as she confessed that her child had this Epileptic-like disease from the pork because she had been feeding her child pork from baby thinking it to be nutritious! We prayed for the healing of that child as the mother repented. In another circumstance we were ministering in the Far East to a pastor that functioned very strongly in the power and anointing of God. He confided in us that he could not sleep more than 3 hours a night. I told him to stop eating shell fish and unclean sea food as they cause a toxin build up in the body and they are not fit for human consumption. Since God had previously spoken to him about the pork being unclean, he decided to go further in obeying God’s Torah. Two months later we met again and he said to me, “Dominiquae you are not going to believe this: I am sleeping seven hours a night!”. He definitely looked like a different person.
The wisdom of God is all encompassing, and His Word is indeed a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. The Lord says in Hosea 4:6 that His people are perishing for lack of knowledge and we can see that everywhere, especially in the long lines for healing in the Church. People come to get healed again and again of the same conditions. But if they would heed to our manual of instruction in the Torah, they would be a healthier people!
God has no shadow of turning in Him, but since the divorce from the Biblical roots it appeared to be that God had changed His mind in many issues. And yet Jesus stated very clearly in Matthew 5: 17-20- “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill for truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass away from the Law until all is accomplished....” Then he proceeded to explain what He meant in the next verses as He said that even when we think about adultery we are sinning, or even when we are angry with our brother without cause we become murderers....He was not only saying to keep the commandment but even the spirit of the commandment, which is the motivation behind it. This is a far cry from ‘doing away with the Law’.
During the time when the ‘black plague’ swept through Europe, people were dying like flies. The only ones that were still healthy were the Jews, because they obeyed the ‘dietary laws’ written in Leviticus 11. The Jews of course were blamed for the plague because they were the only ones to be protected from it.
Another law that is largely ignored and that in our ‘freedom’ we constantly violate is ‘the Nida Law’. It is written in Leviticus 15:19, not to have sex with your wife during the time of her monthly period, during seven days you have to abstain from intercourse. Christian women suffer from cancer of the cervix, while Jewish women who keep that law don’t seem to have any cases of cervical cancer. Also many babies are miscarried by Christians and many a time it is connected with having the intercourse during the monthly period. It is well known that we should let the uterus and vagina rest at that time. Also God being such a wonderful Father, knows that a period of necessary abstinence fuels the marriage with renewed desire and love. In acts 15:29, there were four laws given to the Gentiles to apply to their lives immediately after accepting the Messiah. One of these laws was to abstain from blood. That of course includes, eating blood and intercourse at the time of blood which is the menstrual period.
Many people misinterpret Paul’s writings because they ‘think Gentile’ instead of ‘thinking Jewish’. We cannot understand Paul’s writings without understanding his background as a student of the Torah. Paul would have never encouraged anyone to break the Torah. If he would have done so he would be contradicting the words of Yeshua Himself:
“Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and so teachers others, 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 5:19
Which commandments was He talking about? He was obviously continuing the line of teaching of the previous 2 verses: “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law (Torah) or the Prophets”. Is Yeshua confused ? Is Paul in rebellion to the words of His Master? Not so! but the Gentilized Church has interpreted Paul’s writings very wrongly.
Salvation is by Grace through faith. Not one of the works of the Law can save us!
But when we receive the New Birth a process begins; the Lord starts writing His laws in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. That is a process of sanctification.(See Jeremiah 31:31-33). In Ephesians 5:26 it states about the Church : “That He might sanctify her by the washing of water with the word”. Which word is He talking about? The ‘Old Testament’ of course. It was the only word that all the disciples had available. For over 300 years the Church only had the Old Testament. Scriptures to guide them and when Constantine came to power he and the Church fathers canonized the New Testament in the 4th century. In 2 Timothy 3:16 Paul says to Timothy: “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness.” The all Scripture means the Torah and the Prophets and the writings. The name is not ‘Old Testament’, that is a later terminology used by the ‘divorced’ Church. The name is Tanach- Torah, (Law), Neviim, (Prophets), Ketuvim, (The Writings as in Psalms,Eecclesiastes etc..).The word Torah means ‘instruction’ and that is exactly the word that Paul uses in 2 Timothy 3:16 and he calls it ,‘instruction in righteousness’, or in other words the Torah or also known as the Law.
I was leading a prayer meeting for women at one time and as the Holy Spirit was moving greatly in our midst many physical and emotional healings were happening. A young lady in her 30’s came to the meeting for the first time and asked me to pray for her. She was suffering from heart problems and was taking much medication. I took one look at her and asked her one question: “Do you keep the Shabbat, (Sabbath)?” (Shabbat means ‘to go on strike’ and stop all regular work). To which she answered; “Of course I do not keep the Shabbat. I am a student and I am in need of money for my studies so I work 7 days a week! I just said to her: “Repent before God for breaking the Shabbat and you will be healed!”. Before I finished the sentence she was on the floor weeping and crying for violating His loving laws and instructions to us, His Creation. She got thoroughly healed and did not have to take any more heart medication.
Dear friends ignoring the Law does not ‘make it go away’, there are consequences to our ignorance. It causes us to die for lack of knowledge. It is likened unto a person deciding to defy the law of gravity, (just like the story of Icharos that tried to fly).
In order to prove the point, he would go to the roof of a tall building and ‘jump down by faith’...Guess what would be the outcome? He of course would crash and most likely die. That is what the divorce from our Jewish/Biblical roots does, we are constantly defying the laws of the Lord because of ignorance and misinterpretation.
Our faith becomes presumption instead of solid faith based on His Word.
I am a firm believer that the only way to please the Father is to be led by the Spirit. To be totally under the control and guidance of the Holy Spirit. That is the way that Yeshua walked and that is the only way to live an abundant life. Trying to keep the Torah by our own strength is futile, but the opposite of that is allowing the Holy Spirit to write the Torah in our hearts. Paul says: “...That the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the spirit”. Romans 8:4
When we are ignorant of God’s word and we think that the law is abolished, we will turn a deaf ear to the Holy Spirit and resist Him all the way! Our mindset stands as a block in our relationship with God.
I remember that before I married my husband, I had received numerous visions and words from God about His will for me to marry Baruch. I was so wounded from previous relationships and so afraid of making a mistake that I ‘fought the devil’ for three months thinking that he was deceiving me into the wrong marriage. One day as I was resisting these visions in prayer, I became violently sick. Then I understood that I had been resisting the Holy Spirit and as I repented I became well again. In the same manner, our church doctrines and mindset prevent us from yielding to the Holy Spirit. Let’s say the Holy Spirit will tell you to stop celebrating Christmas and to celebrate the Feasts of the Lord as written in the Bible instead, (these are also called Jewish Feasts and Jesus celebrated them). Would you yield immediately to the leading of the Spirit, or would you resist Him for quite a while, or let’s say that you are a missionary and were trained to ‘ eat everything that is set before you, how ready would you be to respond to the prompting of the Holy Spirit if He would lead you to eat only ‘clean animals’? Wouldn’t you fight against a ‘spirit of legalism’ that was trying to possess you? And yet it would have been God’s Spirit!
It is interesting to know that when people accept the Lord and have no teaching from the prevalent Church doctrines they often have a very wholesome understanding of the Torah. Once we were preaching in the Philippines, in a mountainous area, to a new congregation. The people there are very simple and the new babes in the Lord did not have much contact with Church doctrine. As we taught a seminar on Covenant and on the Roots, and said that the dietary laws were still for today, the people had no problem receiving it. In fact one old man by the name of Nicomedes who had been bitten twice by poisonous snakes, (cobras),just believed the Word in Luke 10:19 that God has given us authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and that nothing would harm us. He just said “God your word is true, now heal me!”. The man was instantly healed. In the same way when he read that pork was an unclean animal, he took it literally and stopped eating pork. It was a simple thing for him as he walked in ‘child like faith’ obeying his loving Father and His Torah. He was never taught that the law was obsolete or that the ‘Old Testament’. needs to be ‘spiritualised’ and ‘allegorised’. He was walking in the Spirit, ‘not fulfilling the lust of the flesh’ However in other more ‘urbanized’ areas of the Philippines, people had been exposed to a lot of ‘Gentilized Christian Doctrine’, and they had a real tough time receiving the word of truth. For example it is written in Acts 15:29 to abstain from blood. Many of these Philippine Christians were eaters of blood soup and other ‘local delicacies’. They felt that if they pray over it, it would be sanctified.God does not sanctify what His Word does not sanctify! Many of ‘the blood eaters’ had trouble in their spiritual walk with the Lord. We had to pray and break the spirit of addiction to blood in them. In Leviticus 17:11 it’s written: “The life of the soul is in the blood”. The life of the animal is in his blood and the Lord forbade us to touch it and to partake of the soul of the animal. I still remember very vividly a magazine that we received a few years ago. It was the magazine of one of the most flourishing churches in the Far East. One of the stories caught my attention. The Head Overseer of this church had gone to Africa to minister to a tribe. The chief of the tribe invited him to partake of their ‘sacred, covenant meal’. It was milk mixed with animal blood. The said pastor wanted to win the chief to the Lord and so he drank blood with him! Then he became violently sick! This meal was certainly not sanctified by the Word!
But what shocked me is that the story was written in order to boast of the courage of this pastor who was willing to become sick for the sake of the gospel! This is the kind of ignorance that is killing us. We have forgotten the law of our God and in Hosea 4:6 He says....I will also forget your children.
My husband and I used to lead an outreach on the streets of central Dallas, Texas. It was in an area called ‘Deep Ellum’. This area was plagued with witchcraft, occult, punk, rock, new age, homosexuality, skin heads, bikers and Neo Nazis. The human scene there is terrible. For the most part these were young people 20 to 30 years of age. And many of them, if not most of them, were children of Christian families, Catholic, Baptist, Pentecostal, Presbyterian etc.... These children were in deep distress, they were being killed by the ignorance in the Church and by their lack of identity.
When we are cut off from the Jewish Roots of our faith we loose our identity. In the same way that the 10 tribes of Israel lost their identity when Jeroboam cut them off from the roots and from the Temple Worship in Jerusalem. (See Scriptures at the beginning of Chapter 3). One of the most prevalent things we saw was a ‘repeat’ from the German scene in the 30’s as Hitler started recruiting Nazi youth for his purpose. Many of these young people in the ‘Deep Ellum’ scene in Dallas, hated Jews and believed that Jews could never receive God’s salvation and forgiveness. We preached the gospel and loved them, and they could not believe that we were Jews and that we were saved!
In order for these children to be saved their families need to repent for anti-Semitism and for repudiating everything Jewish, including the Tanach. In Proverbs 28:9 we read, “He who turns his ear from listening to the law, even his prayer is an abomination”. We need to learn to repent for our ancestors and break before God so that the curse is removed and we can have our children back from the dead!
Romans 11:15 gives us a promise:
“ For if their, (the Jews) rejection be the reconciliation of the world what will their acceptance be but life from the dead”. Accepting the Jews and the Jewish Biblical roots back is a matter of life and death!
A Prayer of Repentance
Please pray this prayer in order to start the cleansing process of your family tree:
Dear Father in Heaven. Me and my ancestors have sinned against you and against your people. We have lived disconnected from our Jewish roots. We have thought that the Law is obsolete and we have not allowed you to write it on our hearts. We have been afraid of being under the Law, but instead we have gone into lawlessness. Our children are hurting because of our ignorance of our roots. We ask you to cleanse us from any ignorance of our Jewish roots. We renounce any anti-Semitism in our family, and we bind any familiar spirit of Jewish hatred, of lawlessness, and of rebellion against the Word of God in the Tanach. Lord I ask you to write the Torah in my heart and to sanctify me by your Word. Please reconnect me and my family to the Jewish roots of our faith and save our children. Father I accept the Jews and the Biblical Roots of the faith back into my heart.
Thank you that this will bring resurrection life to me and to my family.
In Jesus name I pray. Amen
Additional Information about the Torah
Even until this day we interpret passages of Scripture in the New Testament writings according to the ‘legacy’ left to us by the Bizantine Church Fathers and the Constantinic era. I believe that God is leading us all to reconsider the ‘normal Christian interpretation’ of passages like Galatians 5:18 or Romans 8:1-6. I believe that the Lord is calling us to humble ourselves and lay many doctrines at the altar so that He can give us through the Holy Spirit a fresh new revelation on the Word.
A revelation that will free us and prepare us for His second coming.
It will take great humility from the part of great segments of the Church to admit that we really need to take a new look at the New Testament Scriptures and this time from a Jewish perspective by getting acquainted with the culture, the language and many rabinical terms that Yeshua and Paul used when preaching. We need to realise that Yeshua’s audience while on Earth was entirely Jewish and that it would be easy to misinterpret what He or even Paul is saying after centuries of divorce and hostility against the Jewish Roots of our faith and the Jewish people.
Let me give you an example of this: In Matthew 5:17- “ Think not that I come to destroy the law or the prophets. I come not to destroy but to fulfil” and then until verse 22 He explains what He means by showing us that it is not enough to keep the law outwardly but that we need a change of heart in order to keep it inwardly. In other words He was confirming what the New Covenant is all about: The Torah (God’s instructions and commandments) written in our hearts according to Jeremiah 31:31-33. In this Scripture in Matthew 5:17 the Lord uses two rabbinical terms: DESTROY and FULFIL. These words were used 2.000 years ago in Israel in a very different way than how we use them today. ‘Destroy’ means to misinterpret and ‘fulfil’ means to interpret it correctly and fully. In other words He was saying “Do not think that I came to misinterpret the Law but I came to give the fully correct interpretation”. And then He proceeds to give it by saying that it is not enough to do external works, we also need to have a change of heart and have our heart accompany our works: “ Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time. Thou shall not commit adultery. But I say unto you that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart”. Matthew 5:27,28
The only way for us to interpret the Torah, (5 books of Moses) and the Prophets correctly is by the Holy Spirit but the work of the Spirit is hindered in our midst constantly because of our steeped traditions and Church doctrines that have been antagonistic for centuries against any Jewish interpretation. The time is extremely late! We must humble ourselves before God and cry out: “Lord cleanse me from any misinterpretation of the Scriptures and any doctrines that are hindering your Spirit from teaching me the Scriptures”. In fact this should be our heart cry all the time.
I remember when I was fresh out of Bible School I went before God and gave Him all that I had been taught and said: “Lord sort it out for me and help me keep what you want me to keep”. If we are not willing or able to do that I am afraid that we are in deep religious bondage and very deceived because of pride. “O create in me a clean heart o God and renew a right spirit within me…”
The issue of ‘Legalism’
I hate ‘legalism’ of any kind but what does legalism really mean? Anything that quenches the Fire of the Holy Spirit can be regarded as legalism. Any action that is not rooted in Faith can be described as ‘legalistic’. Anything that we do with ant other motivation but LOVE is also legalism. In other words doing external actions without a clean and pure heart accompanying the actions is legalistic and Yeshua calls it in Matthew 5: ‘misinterpreting’ or ‘destroying ‘ the law. So ‘legalism’ is an outcome of eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil while the correct interpretation of the Scriptures by the Holy Spirit will be likened unto eating from the Tree of Life. The Torah on its own is not legalistic it is good, it’s a tree of life it’s a lamp unto our feet it’s The Word, it’s established in Heaven and it cannot be moved. Legalism is the spirit by which we relate to the Torah: Out of obligation and condemnation or out of Faith and Love. Out of our carnal minds or as an outcome of the leading and the teaching of the Holy Spirit in our lives.