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[This was originally posted on the 4th anniversary of Sinai 6000 and reposted on year 6. This is not only still relevant but also still reflective of our stand today as the core community of a belief system specifically for gentiles which we have come to identify as Sinai 6000. The title reflects our forward movement, otherwise it would have said “Looking forward but moving backward” — no way! For us, there is no turning back except perhaps to examine why it took us so long to realize we’ve been on the wrong path, the detour from the Way to Sinai that led us instead to Golgotha.
If you, readers, have been with us from the beginning or have gotten on the same road to Sinai at any point of our 8-year pilgrimage, let us celebrate together the knowledge and wisdom we have acquired since. It has been a journey of progressive clarification and understanding rather than confusion, as long as we stayed on the Way to YHWH.
Each year is a gift and a blessing from the Revelator on Sinai. How far a distance is there left to travel? It depends on how fast we have moved toward our goal. Will we ever arrive? Most likely not while on this earth, but beyond is the eternal God Who awaits all awakened souls to His Truth and His Way of Life, those who have endeavored to live according to His Manual for Living, His Torah.
The reward is in the living! Remember, blessings for obedience? That is what He promised, and the blessing is in the life lived now. What lies beyond, we can only trust in a benevolent God Who makes promises which He keeps! And so, greetings to God-seekers and Truth-seekers all over the world and to our nameless-faceless frequent visitors whose ‘checking in’ we can only read on our site stats and who, we presume, have journeyed on the same path.
May YHWH bless all of us with more knowledge of Him and more wisdom to live whatever time has been allotted to each of us on this earth and in the physical ‘tents’ we have inhabited for the length of time we have lived. To LIFE indeed!
Now here’s revisiting our 4th-anniversary post, still relevant to the Sinaite’s experience 5 years later, year A.D. 2019 in Gregorian, 5780 in the biblical calendar.—Admin1.]
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Looking back to Sinai 6000’s 4th anniversary, this is what I had written:
Imagine my surprise when I googled ‘birthday cake with four candles’ expecting to find nothing . . . only to discover a glut of images for practically any number of candles that could fit in a cake, take your pick! Here’s my pick: I’m the red candle, the first one to get ‘lit’ and ‘fired up’ (or so I mistakenly thought) unaware that others were simultaneously being ‘lit’ and ‘fired up’ as well. And the best part was, we were all on the same cake! Apply this metaphor to the quest for Truth undertaken by the founding members of Sinai 6000.
Rosh Hashanah marks the beginning of another year on the Jewish calendar, their New Year. Significantly, it also marks the founding of Sinai 6000 as a core community of 8 ex-Christians. There were about 12 individuals who gave us a hearing at the start of our spiritual pilgrimage, who after being convinced themselves, also eventually left their Christian roots and fellowships to get to know YHWH, the God of Israel as revealed in the Hebrew Scriptures. Some of them continue in weekly Torah study, while the others, rationalizing that without like-minded people to affiliate within their cities of residence, the next recourse is to relearn the Torah from Jewish teachers. Inevitably they resorted to attending Shabbat services at Synagogues where they knew they would learn the Torah. But they are still ‘Sinaites’ at the core.
The turnover to a new year makes one pause and ponder:
- where am I at this time
- so that I might determine if progress has been made
- with increasing knowledge about our Lord YHWH,
- with more understanding of how He works [if differently or the same?] in the lives of Jews and Gentiles, with Israel and the Nations,
- with more spiritual enlightenment on the extent God is directly involved in the lives of believers and unbelievers alike,
- with more wisdom gained,
- with more shifts in my thinking,
- enough to make a difference
- in how I now live my life?
Reread the highlighted last two dots . . . for . . .
- what is the purpose of acquiring information if it does not lead to knowledge of and belief in the One True God?
- What is the use, if none of it redounds to understanding the meaning of life and the answer not only to ‘what on earth am I doing’
- but more importantly to ‘what I am doing on earth’ for the remaining time the Giver of Life has allotted me in this one and only aging body that houses my essence?
For Sinai 6000, we always look back to where we used to be on year one, our awakening to the faith of Abraham and how our pilgrimage culminated naturally and inevitably at the mountain of divine revelation—Sinai.
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Looking back, the awakening did not happen overnight; it was more a process, a series of simultaneous individual self-examination and group spiritual evaluation that led to the formation of a core community that would review and re-examine the roots of the religion of our birth or of choice—Christianity. Then decide: continue in the same direction because it has been confirmed to be the right one? OR change direction if it has been confirmed to be wrong, realizing even so late in our journey of faith that we had been walking on the wrong path all along?
Facing that fork on the road . . . Our truth quest in the form of intense [short of obsessive] research led us back into the Hebrew Scriptures, particularly the Torah which should have been THE ROOTS to begin with, of every sincere seeker after the One True God, for right there in the opening verse of the first of five books attributed to Moses—is where we find the claim challenged by skeptics that earthly time began with God who first appears as Creator.
If there is ‘progressive revelation as Christianity claims, it is found in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy and no further.
The Creator is progressively made known by nobody else but Himself, for who else except He Himself can best do it?
- After appearing as Creator,
- within the invention of the seven-day week, He reveals Himself as the true Lord of the Sabbath.
- Then He interacts with the first man and woman—representative humanity—as a Wise Father, giving instructions (strangely though understandably) limited to ‘food’ for the body and within this context, the test for obedience is given in connection with one symbolic tree in the middle of the garden: “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”
- From Father Figure, He turns Judge, executing the judgment for representative humanity’s disobedience, driven out of the garden, unable to partake of the other symbolic “Tree of Life”, a consequence clearly spelled out as “you will surely die.”
- He speaks to troubled Cain as a Wise Counselor, with the warning: “If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.”
- He then reveals Himself to righteous Noah as a Merciful Savior as well as a Destroyer of evil humanity through the manipulation of natural forces that led to a worldwide flood.
- Then He makes Himself known progressively to three generations of a chosen set-apart line,
- no longer the mysterious unknowable universal God
- but this time identifiable and definable from other non-gods of ignorant idolaters,
- specifically thenceforth as “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob”;
- and, when the time was ripe, as Revelator on Sinai.
- He then self-describes to Moses: – Exodus 34:6
- Yahweh passed by before him, and proclaimed, “YHWH! YHWH, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness and truth . . .”
- Eventually, He becomes the God of the divinely-formed nation of Israel,
- their Redeemer and Deliverer,
- their new Lord and Master,
- their King who teaches them how to live as His subjects,
- as a people with a distinct divinely-designed destiny,
- chosen to model His prescribed lifestyle for all humanity.
All these are recorded in His Torah. For what purpose?
Observe them faithfully,
for that will be proof of your wisdom
and discernment to other peoples,
who on hearing of all these laws will say,
‘Surely, that great nation is a wise and discerning people.’
For what great nation is there
that has a god so close at hand
as is YHWH our God whenever we call upon Him? Or what great nation has laws and rules
as perfect as all this Teaching t
hat I set before you this day?
—-Deuteronomy 4:2, 5-7
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Reading the Hebrew Scriptures with fresh eyes and through Jewish publications/translations led to a totally different perspective. Little did we realize that translations greatly influence interpretation and thereby understanding and ultimately belief/faith/life. We discovered that if you keep reading the “Old Testament” of the Christian Bible, you will keep seeing Jesus all over it, since the mere capitalization of keywords such as “Son” for the original “son” and “Servant” for the original “servant” already influences your thinking and further reinforces the Christian perspective of “progressive revelation” and with it, the intended connection: “OT prophecy” points to”NT fulfillment”. There are many more differences between OT and TNK (Hebrew Scriptures) than mere translation alone! Not the least of which are differences that are designed to change the meaning of the original Hebrew Scriptures so that eventually it does appear to supply all the ‘prooftexts’ needed to present a different reconfiguration of the One and Only True God of the Hebrew Scriptures who eventually metamorphosed into the New Testament Trinitarian version of Father-Son-Holy Spirit mystery that nobody truly understands.
Our quest/research also led us to reread and review the history of Christianity,
- the roots of the faith we had mindlessly but wholeheartedly embraced,
- the religion we were born into and inherited from our parents,
- the religion that is predominant in our country’s culture.
We researched not one, not two, but as many books as are available in this no-holds-barred age of information, whether in hard copy or ebook form or available with the click of a computer key. We researched many historical sources and documentation of how councils of men in the 4th century made major decisions on the nature of God and the nature of the figure they decided was God Himself, Jesus of Nazareth.
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What???!!! Men decided God’s nature? Mere men elevated another man to divine status? Don’t take our word for it, do your homework! But first, open your mind and check out truths you swallowed without question, including everything being presented in this anniversary post.
You get the picture, this was not a casual reality-check but a doggedly determined investigation of everything there is available. After all, we live in an age when this is now possible.
Learn to Discern
As we studied, we tasted but did not swallow everything we read; however, there was enough reliable consistent verifiable information to indeed finally digest after being convinced without a doubt, after processing so much information with eyes-wide-open, with minds eventually trained with discernment and wisdom. We reasoned that if we bother to check out sources of food we eat or products we buy to determine if these adversely affect our health, all the more should we look into matters of faith, of religious beliefs, since these affect our destiny both in this life and beyond.
And so we read and read and read. . . a lot! In fact more than enough, and processed what we learned, then decided as late as it was in our lives to change direction. Evidence was too convincing to ignore. As one Christian apologist titled his book, “Evidence demands a verdict,” we the ‘jury’ reached a verdict: change now, it is never too late!
In fact, change is crucial at any point in life, once more Truth has been uncovered. We would never be happy remaining in the same pathway we had already determined without a doubt, to be the wrong one.
A change in direction is what ‘repentance’ truly means, not simply admission and confession that one was wrong or in the wrong and yet remain unchanged. Surprisingly, the change was not difficult to do individually, particularly when there were others to have long discussions with, for balance, for confirmation, for reinforcement of a radical shift about to be undertaken by 8 of us first, and another 6 among my Bible students, and another 6 affiliates of BAN and VAN who were instrumental in influencing them to consider Messianic Judaism and were about to admit to them they were wrong all these years!
The long and lonely barely trodden road . . . .
Not a surprise, many of our colleagues did not join us in backtracking to the ancient pathway that for so long, only observant Israel had trod. Still, we felt we had an obligation to inform [though not necessarily influence] those we had converted who joined our bible studies and Christian fellowships; peers with whom we grew and matured together in churches and fellowships where we actively took part in specific ministries. Would you believe some of us were ‘church planters’ while others pursued degrees in theology in Christian seminaries? We were staunch defenders of the Christian faith, steeped into apologetics; we were Bible study organizers as well as teachers of New Testament theology.
Those who knew us would never have expected any one of us to turn ‘renegade’ for, after all, some of us were virtual ‘indoctrinators’ of new converts, devout and zealous for the propagation of the good news about salvation in Jesus Christ. Yes, we drew in many souls into the Christian fold; therefore it was our obligation to confess we had left that fold and why. Some gave us a hearing but were hardly convinced; others simply shunned us like we were deluded and consequently irrelevant. Others were seriously concerned about our losing our salvation because we were now destined for hellfire for turning away from Christianity’s Savior and declaring the name of another God.
We stood our ground; we did not ‘evangelize’, we simply stated our position to alert that we were no longer on the same page with them. We not only turned the page, but we also moved to the next chapter; in effect, we completely dumped the ‘new’ and reinvestigated the ‘old’.
You see, the problem is —-as it happens in Christian conversions, the indoctrinating process is in reverse of any logical educational system. Simply put, as the song “Do Re Mi” [in The Sound of Music] prefaces,
“Let’s start at the very beginning,
a very good place to start,
when you read you begin with ABC,
when you sing you begin with . . . .”
Well in Christian indoctrination, one begins with—
- first: believe in the Christian Trinitarian version of God, accept the second Person Jesus Christ the Son as Lord and Savior,
- and next: study the New Testament, specifically the Gospel of John. Why? Because after accepting Jesus Christ as Lord, the Holy Spirit enters you and with His [Its?] illumination, you can start understanding the Christian Bible.
In what reading system does anyone start with a sequel rather than the ‘prequel’? And so, many get stuck in the NT and never move forward, or should we say ‘backward’ to OT . . . or farther back to the Hebrew Scriptures or the TNK. After all, we were guilty of passing on the general teaching that the ‘roots’ of the Christian faith, the introduction to the ‘newer’ scriptures is passé as in obsolete, as in ‘old’, as in ‘superseded’, so why waste time studying what is only for Jews; hey, there’s enough to study in the ‘new testament’ which Christians should focus on.
But all that is history now. So finally, where are we today? Just as our year by year musings, discussions and discoveries have been recorded step by step and shared in this website, here again, we are sharing the views of our core community.
The question we’re simply focusing every year is:
“How has my discovery of YHWH as God
and the study of His Torah
affected my thinking
and consequently changed my behavior
and my life…if at all?
In effect,
- have we simply accumulated information
- or have changes in thinking translated to behavior changes?
- How have we lived since?
- What is a Sinaite like today?
The list below represents collective answers for every Sinaite who has expressed almost the same sentiments, [amazing!] like we were of the same mind, lit candles on the same cake, remember?
- For one, we have finally succeeded in shedding our ‘Jew-wannabe’ initial tendency, though unfortunately not our Jew-wannabe image in the eyes of others.
At first, we resorted to clinging to ‘everything Jewish’ because they held the ‘arrow’ pointing to the God of Israel and His Torah. After all, what did we know at the time of transition? We did not hold the keys to understanding the Torah.
So we turned to the teaching of the Jewish sages which are full of wisdom and so different from everything we have ever read and studied. While we continue to learn from them, we have also become discerning of what is “scripturally TNK” and what is “culturally Jewish,” what is of YHWH and what is of rabbinical interpretation.
In time, we realized we did not have to shed our Gentile-ness nor did we need to gravitate toward Judaism.
2. Gradually, we simply developed our own way of celebrating the Sabbath, incorporating what is meaningful to us from Jewish tradition and creating uniquely our own preferred way of praying and celebrating.
3. We also learned what in the Torah was for Israel and was in Israel’s experience and what we could embrace as universal—the decalogue, three out of seven feasts in Leviticus 23, and the dietary prescriptions of Leviticus 11, among others. These are expounded in articles under the heading SINAI 6000 (please check the SiteMap or Updated Site Contents)
4. The best part of it is this: all of us have become more tolerant of ALL faiths, particularly the religion we left behind.
We totally understand Christian thinking, we thought the same way for decades!
If we made it out of there, we know that others who continue to seek will find Him–YHWH— and apply His prescribed Way of living in community. Hopefully, they will find their niche in the existing faith communities that worship YHWH.
It does not necessarily have to be with Sinai 6000 .
- we are not a church nor a religion;
- we are a resource center, like many lamplighters in the darkness for sojourners who are seeking the path leading to the One True God.
- We are a distinct way of thinking which translates to a distinct way of living;
- anyone can agree with our perspective and consider himself one with us, even call himself a Sinaite if indeed he understands and agrees with everything we stand for.
- We are a way of life a wee bit different from Jews but still Torah-based.
- The difference lies in that we’re Gentiles and not Jews from whom much more is expected.
- We’re not chosen like the Jews, we’re Gentiles who did our own choosing of the same pathway laid out for Israel by their God, YHWH.
- We are Gentiles who chose the God of Israel, YHWH, as the God we believe is the One True and Only God;
- He didn’t exactly choose us, but we chose Him, isn’t that so much better?
5. We insist that THE pathway leads to Sinai, a neutral territory and not to Jerusalem which indeed is associated with Israel, and definitely not to Rome, the birthplace of Christianity.
6. Even better, not only have we become more tolerant but we have become less judgmental as well.
Are they not one and the same? One could be outwardly tolerant but still inwardly judgmental.
Sinaites do not think we have a monopoly of the Truth and that everyone else is wrong; that we are “saved” and everyone else is “damned” and headed for hellfire. In fact, we no longer think in terms of “saved” and “unsaved” as per our Christian orientation.
7. We think in simple terms: “Who is the God I worship?” and “how do I express my love for Him?”
8. We don’t think “religion” but rather “relationship” and that makes a big difference in how we conduct ourselves, particularly in relation to people of other faiths.
9. Like the Jews, we believe in ‘live and let live.’ Respect the faith choice of each person but pray that he keeps seeking and finds more light, for our God is far bigger than any of us even collectively, can ever conceive.
10. “In my simple thinking” as one of our most senior affiliates prefaces her opinion, the Sinaite’s faith walk has become so simple, even a child can easily relate to it:
—-love and worship YHWH as Creator and Revelator;
—-then live His Torah as best as we can, even and specially in a Torah-less cultural context and Torah-unobservant society.
Torah is do-able; it is all simply a matter of choice and the will to ‘do’ or ‘don’t do.’
11. After determining where evil comes from according to the Hebrew Scriptures, we eliminated finger-pointing which often lays the blame for sin on non-existent evil figures such as the Devil and his demonic cohorts.
Knowing that every human being is endowed with free will, then every choice to do right or wrong has its automatic consequences.
Evil is the consequence of individual decisions not to live God’s Way and instead live ‘my way’. When SELF predominates and rules behavior, it manifests in as many ways as there are self-centered individuals whose selfish motives add up to total disregard for anyone else on this planet. It is evident in traffic, crimes, domestic violence, corruption in government, etc., where the strong overpower the weak, where those in privileged positions take advantage of the underprivileged, and so on.
Ignorance is no longer an excuse not to know what the Lord YHWH has taught in His Torah. The will to know should lead anyone to find information on anything, the choice to do is up to him. Choosing to remain ignorant is a choice, and unfortunately, there are consequences on society in general when people think of self only with total disregard for others.
But we also believe that there is an inherent, inborn knowledge of what is good and right and just in every person born; we see this in the lives of the non-religious, in agnostics and atheists who actually live the Torah life. After all, YHWH did say He will write His law in the hearts of humanity.
12. We have become NOW-centered, as in ‘this is the only life I have for the time I am allotted on this earth’ — I will live to make a difference in the NOW.
In fact, the NOW is fleeting every second so do as much good as we can for others as well as for ourselves, always at the moment, as opportunity arises.
We don’t think in terms of earning points for the world beyond– ‘heaven’ the destination of Christ-believers.
We are not other-world oriented; this world is all we know, for now, this world is where we make a difference for our God YHWH, and our fellowmen.
As my non-religious father said, “my religion is to be good and to do good.” Good as in ‘right’, according to God’s standard of right and wrong. Sounds simple enough.
A surprise bonus in health
Last but not least, we have learned healthy living from the Genesis diet (plant-based) as well as the Leviticus diet (clean animals). The longer we can live in good health, the more we can enjoy our lives, be of good use to our fellow-beings and be used of God. Stress has been identified as a huge factor in causing all kinds of diseases, particularly cancer. Eating healthy stuff gets sidetracked in the digestive system when stress hinders proper digestion when cells and pores are closed and can’t do their proper work. What causes stress? Faulty relationships, causing ‘the other’ hurt and harm. Nine days prior to Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement is a reminder to set all our relationships right. Never mind if the ‘other’ does not respond or is negative, ‘just do it!’, clear your record and set it right from your side.
Finally, may the Giver of Life, the Source of our breath of life, give us Sinaites more time and opportunity to serve Him, from Sabbath to Sabbath and all the days between until we reach our Final Sabbath of eternal rest.
Oh YHWH, God of Sinaites, we thank You
—for snatching us out of our bondage to a man-made religion that did not issue from You,
—that taught us to worship a different God that was not You,
—that negated Your Torah as ‘done away with’,
—that replaced Your chosen people with a ‘New Israel’,
—that replaced Your ‘son’ with a ‘Son’ elevated to divine status, equal to You, and more worshipped than You.
Thank You, Lord YHWH,
for delivering us from idolatry
and leading us back to the ancient path
which we are now treading with observant Israel.
May our individual ‘book of life’
and the ‘saga of Sinai 6000’s journey’
continue to draw spiritually awakened Gentiles
who are seeking an alternative between Christianity and Judaism,
that they may be led to You
and Your Revelation on Sinai,
a Way of living for all people, Jew and Gentile.
May it be so!
On behalf of the original Sinai 6000 Core Community,
those who celebrate the Sabbath in earth time . . .
and those who graduated to their final Sabbath Rest.
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