Who am I? – 2

The first article Who am I? was intended to stand alone, complete in its message.  However, at one Shabbat Torah study of our Sinai 6000 core group, there was a discussion that expanded this topic to where the issue became not so much ‘who am I’ but to another more important aspect relating to the same question.

What is involved in the question “Who am I”?

The individuals composing the Sinai 6000 community share common characteristics and mindsets.

1.  First and foremost, each Sinaite is a God-seeker, that is a ‘given’ even if that is applicable to anyone and everyone who ends up in a religion or church or fellowship.

• Nobody would be in those faith communities if they were not seeking God, and wanting to worship Him.

2.  Secondly, while God-seekers are content in finding a ‘religion’ where they are content to stay in, Sinaites continued to go farther than ritual and prayer, seeking to discover the root and source of their belief system.  Thirdly, in the continuing study of the Bible, Sinaites moved from religion to religion — those who started in Catholicism went to Evangelical Christianity where Bible study was emphasized as important as church-going.

3.  That led them to what was claimed to be the source of Truth, that is, the Bible, specifically the Christian Bible of two parts: Old and New.

4.  When Messianism came into the picture and the Old Testament was re-focused on because it is crucial in the understanding of “progressive revelation” —prophecy and fulfillment — Sinaites moved on to that too, getting their introduction to Old Testament and sinking their teeth into many of its overlooked, untaught, or forgotten “prooftexts.”

What is the point of reviewing this journey of a Truth-seeker or a God-seeker?

To go back to the question of ‘Who am I?”, we Sinaites realized that at each stage of our development, we were the same obedient religious practitioners.  Our individual character and growth reflected the same unchanging desire to obey the rules of our church or the teachings of the New Testament.

In terms of behavior, we exhibited the same consciousness to be kind and forgiving, gracious and generous, endeavoring to be of service to our fellow church members, to outsiders, desiring to be of use to God in everything we did, perhaps not always successfully, but with all intentions to be “good Christians”.  The purpose?

• Partly because we were simply obedient and compliant to the new ‘truth’ we learned.
• Partly, so that non-believers or believers of other religions will be attracted to our faith and might even join our fellowship or church.

Numbers were always a sign of ‘success’ and blessing from God, or so we thought, so the more we evangelized others and converted them to join our faith community, the better for our church leadership.

So . . . . if we were good Catholics, good Evangelicals/Protestants, good Messianics . . .  exhibiting the character and lifestyle according to what was taught us from the New Testament, what then is the difference in us now?  If we look more or less ‘the same’ in our zeal and service and love for the God we serve, where is the difference?  Should not our former Catholic friends, Evangelical colleagues, Messianic co-religionists continue to accept us because, in behavior and lifestyle and service and friendliness, we really have not changed?  We are as “good” as we had always been through all the stages of our development, though changing religions, though worshipping their Christian God?

The change is in the God we now worship . . . and that appears to be an offense to our former Christ-centered colleagues.

When we declare that we worship the God of Israel, we are called Jew-wannabes.  When we declare His Name as YHWH, we are looked upon as having lost our salvation and are facing damnation because the key to the “Father” is through the “Son”.  Says who? Says the NT teaching which radically departs from the teaching of the TORAH.

So finally, what is the point?  Ultimately the point is that the question should not be “who am I” . . . but “who is our God?”  Who do we now worship?

We have been the same God-seeking people through decade after decade of our faith journey, behaving as best as we could in obedience to each new command we would learn, endeavoring to be as attractive to non-believers or other-faith religionists so that we could bring them to the God we believed in and worshipped. As far as behavior and character are concerned, we are the same . . . as far as the object of our faith NOW, that is where we depart from all others.

Do we draw, do we attract others because of our behavior at this point in our lives?  Probably . . . Torah life was intended by YHWH for all mankind, Jew and Gentile, Israel and the Nations.  But Christianity— because of the teachings of Paul — declared Torah to be passe, obsolete, only for the Jews.  So there goes the Torah . . . and with it, the God Who gave it to all mankind through His firstborn son, Israel.

We look the same even as we’ve aged; we act the same as we did as Christians/Messianics and now Sinaites.  Where lies the difference? The difference is the God we love, serve and worship, and His Torah which we have chosen to obey.

Never mind “who am I?”  The more important issue is:

WHO is the GOD I serve?  

What is HIS NAME? 

God revealed His Name to Moses and to Israel:

Sinaites are not reluctant but proud to declare His Name!

In fact, in the translations that we use which substitutes LORD for the Tetragrammaton, we take the liberty of restoring what should have been written by the translator(s) to be read by all readers!

Declaring and writing His Name, YHWH, is as much an act of reverence, if not even more than simply saying LORD.

YHWH is our God,

YHWH is His Name,

let us proudly declare

the Name of our LORD and KING!