Q&A: Is it really impossible to obey ‘the Law’ of the ‘OT God’??

Image from www.stufffundieslike.com

Image from www.stufffundieslike.com

[First posted 2017; the image here says’ “not all who wonder are lost” — -amen, how true indeed!Sinaites started “wondering” as in “daring to question” the very religion we were born in (Christianity) and the New Testament scriptures it was based on and checked its claim to be ‘founded’ on the previous scriptures it re-labelled as “Old Testament’.  HOW DARE WE????  Well, we dared and daring led us “wondering” and “wandering” led us to to Sinai, the mountain of revelation, and the God who spoke to the liberated multitude which reformed into the nation of Israel.  How far have we travelled since?  This website is full of articles that explain our journey. —Admin1].

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This began as simply posting  an excerpt  from the long introduction to a chapter in the last book of the TORAH:

Sometimes in our zeal to over-explain the ‘obvious’, i.e. what should be clear in the ‘instructions for living on planet earth’ of the One True God, YHWH, we end up writing long introductions as though the reader won’t ‘get it’ from simply reading a chapter of the TORAH.  And yes, unfortunately, learning from experience, readers don’t always ‘get it’ —  why?  Because of previous religious orientation (whatever their religion is) that prevent them from applying basic reading rules required for understanding and interpreting any reading material, including books that claim to be “the very words of God”.

 

Readers fail to disengage their thinking from what they have been taught when they read the Hebrew Scriptures, and particularly when they read Christian translations (with a dogmatic  agenda) instead of translations by Jews immersed in the culture and language of their own Sacred Scriptures-cum-national origins/history.

 

I’m not sure if readers of the Koran have the same tendency if and when they read the Jewish Tanach.  I can only speak from and relate to my experience, having been deeply and lengthily rooted in the 2-part Christian Bible.  Like my Sinaite colleagues who were formerly readers with a Christian orientation — we tended to carry with us ‘baggage’ from New Testament teaching rather than reading the Old Testament with a clear mind, a fresh approach, attempting to understand the text in its original context,  and from the point of view of the original hearers, not fast-forwarding it to our own time frame,  to our  modern context, and to our specific religious orientation.  We should know, been-there-done-that.

 

Sinaites lived, studied, taught exactly this belief system, hook-line-sinker, for decades of our life.   It is the result of swallowing without question, the Christian doctrine of “progressive revelation” which claims that —

  • the revelation on Sinai was not complete,
  • that the receivers of that revelation were kept in ignorance,
  • ‘blind’ by deliberate divine design as per the apostle Paul’s teaching in Romans;
  • that a sequel was reserved for later revelation through a God-Man,
    • unbeknownst to the original receivers of the original revelation.

What was supposedly kept secret from Israel by the Sinai Revelator?

  • That a Roman political-religious power would form a new religion around their reconfigured NT Godhead;
  • and a Gentile “church” would usurp the chosen nation’s place and title,  calling itself the ‘New Israel’,
  • which would displace the original ‘son’ and ‘servant’ and replace everything in the TORAH and the Hebrew Scriptures with a new everything,
    • new testament,
    • new covenant,
    • new revelation (or continuing the ‘unfinished’ one (prequel) with the final installment’  or sequel, if you will);
    • a new chosen or people whose election is based on choice and not ethnicity;
    • a new and exclusive way to  approach a new reconfigured God,
    • whose ‘salvation’ requires belief in a Savior,
    • membership in His Church,
    • and acceptance of its doctrines.

Why?  Because it is claimed that the “old” was simply too difficult, nay “impossible” to obey,  not doable without the aid of, well, God Himself,

  • who comes down in the form of humanity,
  • tasting what it feels like to be human,
  • as though the all-wise and understanding Designer of individual human beings would not understand
  • unless He had to experience being human Himself,
  • Then,  as God-man, fix the sin/fallen-nature problem as Savior of fallen humanity;
  • fallen and damned because of the doctrine of original sin . . .

—-but let’s not get into that here, I’m forgetting what the original ‘Q’ is here, for which I’m supposed to provide the ‘A’.

 

The points here are simple and logical:

  • What did the Revelator really say about His own ‘Law’?
  • Would He give instructions impossible to obey?
  • If so, what would be the purpose of that?
  • Is that wise and just?
  • And could the Judge blame humans for failing to obey just because the first man and woman failed His test?

That doesn’t sound at all like a God of Justice!  Human parents would not punish the rest of their children just because their eldest failed to pass their obedience test, would they?  Yet the “OT God” constantly demands obedience nonstop from His chosen original Israel!   Now why would the all-Wise Just God be doing that,  knowing how impossible He has made it for any human, Jew or Gentile, to obey His ‘Law’, His Torah, His instructions for living?

 

What does the One True God of the Original Torah/Hebrew Scriptures  actually say, even after the supposed “fall” of the first representative humanity?

 

This is what He reiterates to everyone else after the first parents — ‘simply do as you are told’ or ‘follow the instructions’.

 

And this is what He says through His mouthpiece, Moses,  to the 2nd generation of the ‘mixed multitude’ who left Egypt and gathered around Sinai to receive the original Revelation and given instructions on how to live together in community:

 

Deuteronomy/Davarim 30:

11  For the commandment that I command you this day:

it is not too extraordinary for you,

it is not too far away!

12 It is not in the heavens,

(for you) to say:

Who will go up for us to the heavens

and get it for us 

and have us hear it,

that we may observe it?

13  And it is not across the sea, (for you) to say:  

Who will cross for us, across the sea,

and get it for us and have us hear it,

that we may observe it?

14  Rather, near to you is the word,

exceedingly,

in your mouth

and in your heart,

to observe it!

 

Having been rooted in Christian/Messianic orientation and with an ‘NT’ approach to the “Old Testament” of the two-part Christian Bible, it is difficult for Sinaites NOT to keep connecting what we have been taught by man-made religion, and what we have learned —not from ‘religion’ but from the Revelation given on Sinai, the Torah.

 

Really, how does one reconcile the declarations of YHWH in this chapter with the Christian teaching that —-

  • man is utterly helpless and definitely hopeless because of ‘original sin’;
  • that man cannot rise above his inherited depraved nature
  • because he has no ‘power’ within himself;
  • that self-changing power is not internal but external,
  • has to come from above, i.e. Holy Spirit;
  • and that 3rd person HS inhabits only those who believe in the 2nd person of the Trinitarian God, Jesus Christ;
  • and only then is one ‘enabled’ to obey . . .

Okay, but obey what? And where does ‘free will’ fit in?

 

If the expounder of Christian theology, Paul of Tarsus, declares ‘we are under grace, not law’,  then what are adherents of NT theology supposed to obey? Certainly not the Torah of YHWH, since that is ‘obsolete’ and ‘passé’ to Paul.

 

So, obey what or obey whom?  If not YHWH of the “OT”, then who?

 

Who else, or what else—the teachings of Christianity’s Man-God Jesus as transmitted to his apostles/disciples.

 

Oh, but isn’t Jesus God Himself, in the flesh?

 

Think about it,  who was Jesus?

 

A Jew who would have obeyed the Torah and if he was God in the flesh, he would remember that as Revelator on Sinai, these were his laws!  In fact according to the gospels, he supposedly declared in Matthew 5:17-18: 

 

“Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets;

I came not to destroy,

but to fulfill.

For verily I say unto you,

till heaven and earth pass away,

one jot or one tittle shall in no wise

pass away from the law,

till all things be accomplished.” 

 

And supposedly according to the teaching,  ‘all things’ were accomplished at his sacrificial death on the cross as the Paschal Lamb of God, etc. etc.  Please read other posts in this website if you need to be clarified because you’re still confused, or if you’re in shock to hear this for the first time.

The very fact that the 10 commandments or the ‘decalogue’ —

  • has been edited according to the Christian sect using it;
  •  has been adopted by Christianity as part of its commandments,
  • must signify that the original teaching of the TORAH is still recognized as valid,  as ‘law’.
Where did this ‘law’ come from? Where else, the Old Testament that was retitled “old” to suggest obsolescence and that it is for the Jew and not for the Christian.

Really?

The Decalogue states the ten foundational  principles of the Sinaitic Covenant, intended for ALL people.   Sometimes one has to wonder if the new religion of the NT is indeed the ‘New Israel’ . . . when it sounds more like the ‘New Babylon’.

 

The Lawgiver Himself (YHWH, not mediator Moses) assures the recipients of the TORAH that really, folks,  the commandments are not too hard nor too difficult to understand and  to apply,  THEN–AND–NOW!  This was repeatedly emphasized —

  • to the wilderness-wandering mixed multitude’
  • and to the children of that mixed multitude’ before they entered the Land of Promise,
  • and today, to the  TORAH-recognizing and TORAH-obedient mixed multitude’ of Jews and non-Jews all over the world,
  • i.e.  all humanity in general,  

—for whom TORAH was intended to begin with, or should we say, to end up with!

 

The prophets Isaiah and Zechariah among others envision the “end of days” when all nations will have knowledge of and recognize Who is the One True God,  obey His Torah, and worship Him and Him alone.

The problem is NOT the commandments.   The problem is the heart of each person who hears, hopefully understands, either accepts or refuses not only the command, but the LAW-GIVER as well.  The commandments are DOABLE as the Law-Giver Himself says in this text!  But unfortunately, even just the dietary prescriptions become a big issue; can’t give up pork, shrimp, oysters, unclean meat!   And the Sabbath? . . . goodness gracious . . . !  Man prefers to embrace a religion that caters to his convenience because the world goes by a Roman-sourced calendar that shifted the sabbath from Saturday to Sunday.

Oh well . . . .to each his choice, that is why the Creator endowed individual humanity with free will.

But choice boils down to only two options:

  •  ‘my’ will or what I want, over and above—
  • His Will and what He has commanded.

Be ready to face the consequences of choosing SELF over the CREATOR of SELF, the “I” in Idolatry vs. the “I” in God’s Image.

INFORMED CHOICE:  that is what we recommend in this website.

We are a ‘resource center’ for seekers of Truth.

Read, chew, then take it or leave it, digest or spit out!

Never mind our words, but do not ignore YHWH’s WORDS of Life, the Torah, the Tree of Life.

As the Life-Giver proposes for individual choice:  Choose life.

 

NSB@S6K

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