[This was first posted as We have heard it said – A Sinaite’s Apologetics – 3; updated with insights gained from many years of Torah study applicable to gentile truth-seekers. Self-explanatory why we keep reposting.—Admin1.]
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One of our Messianic critics point out:
- Do they accept Sinai (in Arabia) as more important than Jerusalem (in Israel)
- where additional revelations were given
- and where the rest of Israel’s History “actually” happened (after 40 years in the wilderness)?”
We equate Mount Sinai with YHWH and His Torah. The wilderness of Sinai is neutral territory belonging to no one, save God.
We equate Jerusalem with Israel ‘the promised land,’ with Israelites/Jews ‘the chosen people’ who were to be the “Light to the Nations.”
Ponder this:
Why is Sinai the site where the Creator God chose to reveal Himself and to make His Name known?
Think:
The very choice of Sinai where the Self-Revealing God gave His guidelines for living is significant in itself.
What happened on Sinai is one of the most momentous events that would leave an impact on all humanity, not only on Israel. We might refer to it as the “First Coming,” the descent of the God of the universe Who manifested His presence first to Moses in the burning bush; then later to a people who never saw Him, but heard His spoken Words amidst thunder and lightning.
Had the Torah been given in Jerusalem, it would indeed appear (as Christians claim) that it was meant only for Israel. But in His wisdom and foresight, the Lord YHWH chose to issue the Decalogue to representatives of the two categories of people in the ‘mixed multitude’:
- Israelites and
- non-Israelites (gentiles) among them.
By the very fact that the God chose to give His Torah on Sinai all the more emphasizes the universality of the Torah, initially condensed in the 10 Commandments that were written by ‘the very finger of YHWH’ on two tablets of stone.
YHWH’S INSTRUCTIONS, His GUIDELINES FOR LIVING, were not meant to be applied only to Israel; they were intended for all humanity.
The TORAH is all one needs to know about what God requires of man. In it He defines His standards for human behavior in the context of relationships. His standards are absolute. He has the right to define what is “right.” He has not left humanity in ignorance about His requirements.
By the time the second generation of Israelites were ready to enter the Land with Caleb and Joshua 40 years after Sinai, the instructions given to Moses had been completed and placed exactly where YHWH specified: the 2nd set of tablets inside the Ark of the Covenant, the book of instructions in a separate compartment in the Ark.
True, Israel’s history continued after the Torah was completed in the Book of Deuteronomy, just before the second generation entered the Land with Joshua and Caleb. In fact the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures after the Torah record their failures and successes in living out the Torah. God continued communicating through His mouthpieces, the Prophets of Israel.
“Thus saith the Lord” mostly called for a return to YHWH and His Torah. Amidst those proclamations were judgments on gentile kings as well as projections into future events relating to Israel and the nations, all culminating to a time when all nations would know YHWH and live His Torah.
With continuing research and updates on the Hebrew Scriptures and when/where they were recorded/rewritten/put together in the canon of 24 books that now composes the TNK, truth-seekers are constantly confronted by ‘doubting Thomases’ and results of their scholarly studies. At some point, one simply has to decide on the foundations of his faith.
Sinaites have decided to remain solely with the Torah, the five books whose authorship is attributed to Moses. These books contain everything one needs to know about—
- how to relate with the Creator/God on Sinai/YHWH,
- and how to live in community.
The specific teachings, instructions are not always applicable to all cultures and times; many are—-
- time-bound,
- culture-bound,
- Israel-in-the-wilderness-bound;
—-nevertheless there are basics that do not change.
Gentiles seeking YHWH’s Truth have no book to claim for themselves; even the Christian scriptures called the New Testament had to append itself to the Hebrew Scriptures on which it supposedly based its claim to validity.
Like those non-Israelites, the gentiles in the mixed multitude that stood on Sinai with the Israelites, we claim the universal Torah for all humanity as our own as well.
Sinai IS the place of revelation, not Jerusalem. Its revelation is complete, read the end of the last book in the Torah.
Without a standard to guide human behavior, people resort to relativism, the doctrine that knowledge, truth, and morality exist in relation to culture, society, or historical context, and are not absolute but subject to change. Just look at how values and morality have changed just in the last century and the atrocities the world have witnessed in cultures that have not heard or have heard but ignore the ‘other’-centeredness stressed in YHWH’s TORAH.
If only all people and all nations were Torah-observant, it would be a totally different world indeed! But alas, another religion emerged that taught the Torah was “obsolete” and “only for Jews”. They should review in the “Old” or the foundational portion of their two testaments what their most literary version says so well and succinctly:
[KJV] Isaiah 8:20:
To the law and to the testimony:
if they speak not according to this word,
it is because there is no light in them.
In behalf of Sinai 6000 Core Community,
