1Jn 2:22 Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son.Which basically is saying that the example you are using for "easy" Torah observance is antichrist. Did John work logic bombs too?
RM: [roamer_1:] Right... which ratifies within itself the Mosaic covenant, and every other covenant there before.
SR: No, that's not a ratification.
RM: Yes, it is.
Well, we could go back and forth like this indefinitely, couldn't we. :) In the interest of breaking this infinite loop, let me suggest the problem is in the word "ratify." If it simply means to say that Jesus agreed that the law of Moses was good and in force for the duration of the Old Covenant, then of course we actually agree. If it means that the entirety of the Mosaic covenant would be in force for gentile Christians during the entirety of the New Covenant era, even after the law was fulfilled in the person and ministry of Christ, then we still have a bone to pick. So "ratify" is ambiguous, and I will continue to disagree with what I think you think it means, because Jesus knew and the apostles would all figure out that the Old Covenant was coming to an end, and any meaning of "ratify" that is truthful must comply with that fact.
SR: Principle of mutual exclusion. You can't have a new contract that is fundamentally replacing the old and recapitulating the old at the same time, especially when we know from Jesus Himself the two are NOT compatible.
RM: There it is - Paul's logic bomb.
You've mentioned that now a couple of times, and as you haven't explained it to me, I can only theorize what you mean by it. I know a logic bomb is a malicious piece of code that might, for example, be buried in the systems of a nuclear power plant with intent to cause havoc at some predetermined time. This seems to suggest you might be one of those HR folks who think Paul was a saboteur and not a true apostle of Christianity. Is that your position? If so, you understand I reject that view entirely, and in so doing I reject the notion of "logic bomb" as an affront to the Holy Spirit Himself, who gave Paul those very words for the benefit of all who would later follow Christ.
As for the point of the logic itself, I theorize you mean that Paul nefariously set up the discontinuity between the covenants as a way to attack the uninterrupted continuity of OT Torah you think should be there. I am guessing here, so I will take no offense if you tell me I have guessed wrong. But if I have guessed correctly, please be aware that the only logic bombs pitting one inspired writer against another inspired writer must be coming from outside the system, falsely imposed on the system by a series of false assumptions, leading to apparent contradictions when in fact there are none. Scripture, when rightly understood, does not have self-destructive logic bombs.
And therefore, Paul and Jesus agree in all essential points. They have a difference of situation, in that Jesus speaks mainly from before the formal end of the Old Covenant, and Paul speaks from the perspective of one who came to faith in Christ after the inauguration of the New Covenant. Jesus lays the foundation for the New Covenant, and so all of His teaching is relevant to us as believers. But it must be understood in it's temporal context. You know yourself how subtle bugs can be introduced by failing to recognize the actual scope of a variable. Use it in it's proper scope, and all is well. Use it out of scope and it leads to major headaches. Jesus had to fulfill the final act of sacrifice under the Old Covenant law, in order to break that law's power to condemn lost sinners. When the curtain in the Holy of Holies is torn in two, by God Himself, He signals yet another change in the law, a new openness of access to the very presence of God, which the apostles will eventually teach is the consequence of His grace:
Heb 4:16 Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.
SR: In contract law, to bring all the terms of a previous agreement forward you would need an incorporation clause. Matthew 5:17 is a sunset clause issued during the last days of the Old Covenant, so its not even part of the New Covenant per se.
RM: Then none of the words of Yeshua himself are part of the 'new covenant' either.
Addressed above. I would further add that Christ spoke several times after His death and resurrection, and even after His ascension, to Paul and others, and that He promised the Holy Spirit, Who would guide us into all truth. Odd that the Holy Spirit did NOT guide the apostles into Old Covenant Torah observance.
That would be an absurdity, would it not? You contend that the 'sunset clause' has occurred, and the Torah is terminated, yet all of Torah and the prophets are not yet fulfilled...
They are all fulfilled with respect to Christ. I reiterate the passage conveying this from my last post:
Luk 24:44-49 And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me. (45) Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures, (46) And said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: (47) And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. (48) And ye are witnesses of these things. (49) And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high.
How then can the sunset clause have been reached? Indeed, the prophets AND Torah predict the Millenial Kingdom, and beyond - So how then can they be fulfilled? Focus only upon the Davidic Covenant - How much of that needs yet to be accomplished? If you study it, you will be amazed at that which must still come to pass.
Unless one is willing to see how Christ is the fulfillment of the law, as He Himself stated, then one might never see all that is fulfilled already in Him. This is essentially the problem the Pharisees had in perceiving who Jesus was and what His appearance really meant. It requires an act of faith to understand this. They couldn't do it. Many today still can't.
SR: Furthermore, even if one granted the premise of continuity past the terminus of the sunset clause (which makes no sense), the applicable parties under the full rigor of Moses are still just God and national Israel, those named in the Old Covenant contract, and only for as long as the individual provisions in question remain unfulfilled. That's not the contract Christians are under.
RM: Indeed it must be, as this 'new' covenant is made with 'the House of Israel and the House of Judah' (notice the distinction again). Gentiles are grafted into that covenant, else they have *no* covenant. There isn't any other.
Do you deny then there are two contracts? In Jeremiah 31, God says there are two. In Hebrews, there are two. Paul also here:
2Co 3:5-6 Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God; (6) Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.What do you do with the newness of the New Covenant. Yes, of course it was made to Israel, as Paul says here:
Rom 1:16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.But the grafting in of the gentiles is NOT to the Old Covenant, but the New, and NOT to the Hebraic status quo, but an entirely new sort of entity:
Eph 2:13-16 But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. (14) For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; (15) Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace; (16) And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby:You speak of logic. Let it rule the day here. This union is between Jew and Gentile, not two varieties of Old Covenant Hebrews. There is no grafting in if there are no true gentile believers. And we were afar off. We were never part of that Old Covenant. But in this New Covenant, God takes true Jews of all houses, and puts them together with true Gentiles in one new man. The ecclesia is a new thing. Not that there haven't been assemblies before. But this one is special. Nothing else like it. Unprecedented. NEW. And it has it's own Torah, the Torah of Christ as promulgated by His Apostles.
SR: (Sidebar here: This is why it is critical to define Torah to painful detail. Prophecy is not legal code. Unfulfilled prophecy has no bearing on whether the legal provisions foreshadowing Christ were fulfilled. Everything we are debating about was fulfilled in Christ. To prove that wrong, you would have to define Torah more exactly than you have so far.)
RM: I see what you are saying, but that is much harder to suss out than you might imagine, as ALL of Torah is prophetic. Everything we are debating was, or will be fulfilled in Messiah - Not all has been accomplished. That is the point. Take ONLY the Holy Days and study them. It will soon become apparent that the spring feasts have been fulfilled in an incremental and amazingly exact way in the first coming, death, and resurrection. But the Fall Feasts remain to be accomplished, and no doubt will be accomplished at the second coming, and that, with the very same incremental accuracy which was presented in the fulfillment of the Spring Feasts. This alone confounds your position as declared immediately above: The legal code is, in and of itself, prophetic. What now?
Addressed above. Christ's own post-resurrection statement indicates the fulfillments were in Him, and were accomplished. His apostles ratified this (nice word) in all their writings. Even Peter, preaching on Pentecost, under the power of the Holy Spirit, recognizes the immediate fulfillment of things thought to be far off:
Act 2:16-21 But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel; (17) And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: (18) And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy: (19) And I will shew wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath; blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke: (20) The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before that great and notable day of the Lord come: (21) And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.Peter says, this is right now happening. Look at all those far off celestial events, yet Peter says this miracle of Pentecost is being fulfilled before their very eyes. Difficult to reconcile with our limited way of thinking about these things, but the Holy Spirit is not wrong, and therefore Peter is not wrong, no matter how hard it might be to digest. This is the new wine, the power of the Holy Spirit for all believers, purchased with the blood of Christ, Jew and gentile reformed into one new man. No way the old wineskins could've handled this.
Luk 5:36-39 And he spake also a parable unto them; No man putteth a piece of a new garment upon an old; if otherwise, then both the new maketh a rent, and the piece that was taken out of the new agreeth not with the old. (37) And no man putteth new wine into old bottles; else the new wine will burst the bottles, and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish. (38) But new wine must be put into new bottles; and both are preserved. (39) No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better.and furthermore, the prophets necessarily reveal the purpose of the legal code - Something declared prophetically is no less law - Take the Inheritance, as an example. What YHWH has explicitly declared within the Inheritance must necessarily come to pass, and therefore, has the force of law in a prophetic sense - This is no small thing, especially as it touches Ephraim (the House of Israel). In a programmatic sense, it MUST execute in order to complete (fulfill) the entirety.
No, prophecy is not automatically law. Law is directive of human behavior. Much prophecy is of what God will do. It is descriptive. Any prophecy that is prescriptive is never in announcment of some new obligation, but is always a restatement of law already given. To dilute the meaning of law to incorporate everything spoken is just a convenient tactic to sweep in things not yet fulfilled, but which are not law, the end effect of which is to discount Jesus' own post-resurrection words that the fulfillment of which He spoke was what was written in the law concerning Him.
Do not forgo the principle of 'two witnesses'... The Word and the Prophets are intricately intertwined - It is the very signature of YHWH.
No problem. The New Covenant is replete with multiple witnesses that the Old Covenant has passed and is no longer in force.
RM: [roamer_1:] No, I don't... All I can do is tell you - If you don't do anything about it, that's your business.
SR: Yes you do. Paul and much in the New Covent specification says we are free of the Old Covenant to the extent it foreshadowed Christ.
RM: Again, Paul's logic bomb. Try operating under this premise: Paul cannot go against the Words of his Master, and Paul MUST be saying the very same thing as his fellows... There is only ONE Gospel. Reconcile Paul to John, and to James particularly. They are all three saying the same thing, from different aspects, just as the Gospels are all saying the same thing from different aspects.
I agree with your statement, but that does not speak of malicious code in Scripture at all, so I do not get the logic bomb theory. Sounds to me like you have an active contradiction in your thought. I could be wrong, but that's what I'm seeing at the moment.
And every time Paul says we are free from the law, he always immediately ties it back to the idea that the freedom we have as Christians should *not* be considered license... Are we free to sin? Of course not! And since 'sin' is transgression of Torah...
New Covenant Torah. Not Old. Of course God redeems us in Christ to sanctify, heal and purify us. And the directives flowing from the New Covenant royal law of love, which we know satisfies the requirements of the Torah of either Covenant, are all valuable to our walk with God and with each other. But we do not leave the New just to end up back at the Old. Otherwise the New isn't New. It's impossible to be a Christian without being born again. We have a new life. We are a new creation. I have experienced this personally. It is real, a work of God's own Spirit, and it leads to the forsaking of sin (per New Covenant Torah) and a hunger to please God in all our ways. So it is a false dilemma to suggest we have no guidance into the ways of love if we do not eat kosher, or do not wear tassels, or do not observe moons and feasts etc etc. We each have the seal of the Spirit of God, and we have the teaching of the apostles of God. What more anyone would want beyond that is past my imagination.
SR:If you want to convince me, you need to tell me what this "easy" Torah is because I don't see it. I see a law which, while itself good and reflective of the goodness of the divine nature, puts me in the position of death and eternal doom. The New Covenant undoes that, because as I identify with Christ in His death, I die to the law. The law no longer condemns me. It can't. I'm dead to it, and alive to God.
RM: Right. Messiah removes the curses of the law. But we are continually being made in his image - His example to us shows us what that looks like. We, as disciples are to 'walk in his footsteps' - A strange phrase, that. I wonder where it comes from (heh... not really. I know where it comes from). So we are no longer doomed. We can earnestly try and try again... Keep trying to walk in his footsteps.
Nothing much to disagree with there, though I don't get your inside humor about the footsteps. Care to share that with the rest of the class? :)
RM: [roamer_1:] Why then have the Jews been able to keep Torah for the last two thousand years?
SR: But they haven't. God took away the sacrifice and now no one can keep Torah under Moses.
RM: That isn't the point. Second Temple Jews lived as far away from Jerusalem as Holland and Spain - Many, no doubt, may have only seen the Temple once in their whole life, if that. What you seem to be reading into the law is not nor has it ever been a feasible interpretation.
But it is the point. You are switching to individual inconveniences, but the law was written for the nation. The priests could not do sacrifice. The nation was deprived of the means of obeying a huge percentage of the law of Moses. But the law didn't stop acting to condemn them. Unless you think Paul is wrong. What they should have concluded from this, and it should have come from the rabbis, is that they had no means of atonement. God took it away. Unless they found their way back the Messiah, they were condemned. The law condemned them. It's no good to make excuses. They should have been terrified. Instead they made excuses, and you appear to be ratifying those excuses to live outside the law of atonement.
SR: No one gave the rabbis permission to just say, "oh well, let's just be nice now instead of sacrifice." That's a unilateral man-generated modification to the law of the contract.
RM: So was the synagogue system. It is not specified in Torah. Yet Yeshua endorsed it. Used it. Preached from it. It's Rabbinical basis was relied upon by all the Apostles. That system was the fall-back necessary for those who could not make it to Temple at least since the Babylonian exile. What then? A second Temple era Jew, living in the south of France, too poor to go to Temple three times a year (not to mention every Sabbath), was just bound for hell even if he was devout in other aspects? What of Ruth? What of Esther? No, this sense that Christians have of what the law does and what it is for is wholly their own invention.
You can't seriously be arguing that finding a building in which to study Torah, which they were already obligated to do, is the equivalent of giving up on the sacrifices demanded by the law. Apples and oranges. One is merely finding a physical means to keep the law, the other is making spiritual excuses to break the law.
SR: It voids the contract. Furthermore, the Jewish religion still rejects God's Messiah. Is that compatible with Torah observance? They have retained a form of godliness, but have forsaken the power of God.
RM: Funny, as I could say the very same thing about the vast majority of Christendom.
I'm not God, so I don't have a clue what's going on in the hearts of the vast majority of Christians. If you are comfortable making such statements, that's up to you. I can't go there.
SR:I respect Jewish people as individuals, as I would any other people. But I do not see them keeping Torah properly. Not at all.
RM: Neither do I see them keeping Torah 'properly'. No one but Yeshua has ever kept it 'properly'. But yet they do their best to keep it as best as they can. And the devout always have.
Except that in rejecting Messiah they deny both Father and Son, which John identifies as Antichrist. Torah observant? Not even on the radar. They need to believe in Jesus first.
SR: No, there are principles of statutory interpretation involved here that are as ancient as law itself. I have heard repeatedly from the HR community that the explicit statements of the law are immutable. That's false. The law of the sacrifice is explicitly stated, is it not? Yet it is not only mutable, it can be cast aside as nothing when the inconvenience of a missing temple is encountered.
RM: It is not mutable. But they (Jews) have relied upon grace through faith, even as the Christians do - It is a Torah principle:
A devout man, never missing a single Temple pilgrimage, becomes too old to travel... Even though he has done his best through his whole life, he is doomed because the very long life that YHWH has blessed him with makes him too frail to keep Torah, as he desires? And his son, who is still in his prime, stays home to care for his ailing father... He too is doomed? Which is more important? Making it to the feast, or honoring his father? What of those who lived far away? what of those who were slaves? All of them, doomed? No, accommodations have to be made, and those are made within Torah. See if you can find them out. It isn't the contract. It is your reading thereof.
The whole point of Paul's introductory remarks in his treatise to the Romans is that God holds all sinners guilty, whether they are gentiles living without the law, or Jews with the full benefit of Moses. All stand condemned. Young, old, strong, weak, it doesn't matter. All have sinned, and all are headed for the gallows, but for the Gospel of Christ. If they deny Messiah, they deny to themselves God's means of grace, God's chosen object of faith. Yes, without Christ, they are doomed.
SR: In addition, as a matter of statutory interpretation, if you have a complete, interdependent system, with no specific provision for severing parts of the law out of "inconvenience," then that entire statutory construct must stand or fall as a whole. There is a rational reason for this. You cannot impose rules for individuals that cannot be supported by the full infrastructure.
RM: But that's just it - the infrastructure does allow - It must. This is part of the same mindset that always figures Israel to be agrarian and small - not taking into account her maritime capabilities... not taking into account her colonies. I know it is dreadfully difficult to shake the traditional view you have been raised in, but the job of Israel, from the first, was to spread Torah to the world. How can that be done if everyone has to stay in walking distance to the Temple? Unfortunately, Israel wound up becoming insular anyway, which is why they didn't bear much fruit.
It isn't about the sons of Abraham. It's about the sons of Adam.
Well, I think you misunderstood, perhaps, what I meant by infrastructure. The law was designed for a theocratic nation. It has many principles which a wise nation might borrow and use to bring justice, and many of those principles actually survive to this day in our common law. But for the law to operate as a whole for the nation for which it was designed, that nation had to exist. There is no provision in the law for how to proceed if the worship of God per God's commanded form of worship becomes impossible. You can't play cafeteria and only obey those portions of the law which are easiest to perform. That's cheating.
RM: [roamer_1:] I have already told you - ALL of Torah is Torah. Whatever of it is yours to do, that DO.
SR: Except for the parts that you say don't apply. I am sorry, but that appears to me to be nothing but a useless tautology.
RM: Any more so than 'love God and love your neighbor'? What does that mean? If you want to talk about a lack of specificity, there is far less ground for you to stand upon than I.
Answered above. The New Covenant Torah speaks endlessly on the principles of love for God and neighbor. And not one word affirming kosher or calendars or using Hebrew names etc. as obligatory.
SR: Well no. If that's the pitch, I'm sticking with the New Contract, which really is new because it's different from the Old Contract. We die to the law when we become believers in Christ, because we follow Him in death, and in resurrection, and so pass out from under the law: Rom 7:4-6 [...]
RM: Careful now, with Romans 7 - You will note that he is speaking to those who know Torah. You cannot take it out of a Torah context.
That's a form of begging the question. He is using an Old Covenant principle that explains by analogy how the Old Covenant could cease to have force on a New Covenant believer. And he is in fact explaining how the two covenants interface with each other in the life of one person, how our identification with Christ in His death transfers us from the condemnation of the one to the newness of life in the other.
As to his audience, I note a mixture of names in the epistle, and do not assume Rome to be an exclusively Jewish, or even a mainly Jewish congregation. Many generations of gentile believers have read this passage with sufficient understanding to get what he is saying. God designed Scripture for all believers. It is our food, the words of God, and he has made it accessible.
SR: This is Torah for the New Covenant believer, to have faith in Christ, and be renewed by the Spirit, being filled with His love and all manner of spiritual fruit, which the Old Covenant had no power to do:
RM: How can that possibly fail to resemble Torah?
There is a resemblance, but not an identity. That's the point. Forcing it into an identity, or coming around to identity by the back door, is what got Paul all frosted in Galatians. So bad was it Paul described it as another Gospel, another Jesus. If we live according to the Torah of the New Covenant, all will be well with us, for our salvation is secured by the blood of the Lamb of God, and nothing can or will remove us from His protective care. If we try to live under both covenants, we are inviting heartache and trouble into our lives. It is disobedience, rebellion.
SR: New wine and old wine skins do not mix. But you are in effect teaching the old wine skins are incorporated into the new wine skin, in direct contradiction to the explicit teaching of Christ. The New Covenant Torah is the royal law of love. We are done with the training wheels. How odd it would be to see an adult riding around with training wheels, proclaiming to everyone he met that we should all go back to using training wheels. But for everything there is a time and season, and there comes a time to internalize your sense of balance and set those training wheels aside.
RM: That would necessarily imply that you personally had used the training wheels in the first place. The training wheels are there to help you get your internal balance - You seem to imply that training wheels are not needed at all, even to someone who knows nothing and is just starting to ride a bike.
And the analogy is good - because once you have internalized what the training wheels teach you, you are not going to fall down any more. Because even yet, you are not to sin, and sin is transgression of the law of YHWH.
No, this is not about us personally using the training wheels. This is more what Paul spoke of in Galatians concerning the law being our tutor and leading us to Christ. The nation Israel had the training wheels. We have the Spirit, and the new creation in Christ. "Old things are passed away. Behold all things are become new." We are past the training wheels.
SR: This is possible and does NOT offend God, because God can change His own law. For example, according to Jesus, divorce was alien to Torah before Moses, but was permitted under Moses because of the hardness of human hearts:
RM: It was not needed from the beginning - Of course it wasn't. That isn't to say that just in the days of Moses it became necessary.
Good, then you admit my point, that God can modify His own law based on conditions. Thank you.
SR: God can change His own law respecting worship:
[...]
The pattern of the new temple service was given to David directly from the Lord, to be built by Solomon, but it abrogates the pattern of the wilderness tabernacle, which was also Torah, given explicitly and in great detail. Set aside just like that. Because the Lawgiver declared it so, due to a change in circumstances.
RM: That isn't true- like with the covenants, one incorporated into the next, the Tabernacle is incorporated into the Temple. The Temple is an expansion of, not an abrogation of, the Tabernacle.
But it is true. The Tabernacle is described in great detail in Exodus 26-27. The overall pattern of the Temple is similar, but in many details different. They didn't need a desert tent anymore. The Tabernacle was designed for packing up and moving around. The Temple was a far more grandiose project, set permanently on Zion. There is no account I am aware of that described the one being incorporated into the other. I don't mean to offend, but that sounds totally fictitious. You can argue it was a minor change, but a change it was. So again we see that some parts of the law clearly were mutable. What Blackstone would call "things indifferent," i.e., things that cannot be tied to universal, eternal moral principles.
SR: In the New Covenant we learn that the two greatest commandments are to love God with everything we've got and love our neighbor as we love ourselves, that the law in fact is fulfilled in these two commandments. This love we also learn is made possible, not by the dead letter of the Mosaic law, but by the spirit of Christ living within us, which life of the Spirit is only possible precisely because we have died to the law in Christ and been raised in newness of life, with the great principles of the law written on our heart, just as Jeremiah prophesied. To go back under that lesser law from which Jesus has set us free is open defiance of the New Covenant Torah. It is disobedience to Christ, who has fulfilled the law on our behalf, and satisfied the all the terms of the sunset clause, allowing us to live in the light of the New Covenant:
RM: So then the 'NEW LAW', looking *nothing* like Torah, is written on the heart - What good then was Torah EVER? In what way is it the 'training wheels' you speak of? When YHWH spends three quarters of the Book saying to keep his Torah, to not do as the heathens do, to not do their religious rites and say they are for Him... That he HATES what they do, and what their rites remind him of... Showing us HIS way, teaching us HIS Holy Days, saying all of that is FOREVER and for everyone...
But now, in the 'NEW LAW' we are free to do exactly what He spent so much time telling us *not* to do - Christmas, and Easter, and Sunday Sabbath (if any Sabbath) are now good, and written on our hearts. That just simply makes no sense at all.
Where did I say the New Covenant Law has no resemblance to the Old Covenant law? I have already said that it does resemble it. They are both from the hand of the same Lawgiver. But it is necessary to have respect for the Lawgiver. He has told us, repeatedly, this covenant is new. Not like the old. The principles of righteousness are written on our hearts by the Spirit of God, not on stone tablets that can be shattered. As to your question, if your conscience forbids you certain things, then avoid them. If another believer as an expression of his liberty in Christ does not use the same calendar you do, or eat the same food, is that really a good reason to cause division in the body of Christ? Each believer will stand or fall before their own Master. Better to focus on what we have in common. New Covenant principles, and the leading of God's Spirit, will take us away from all idolatry, sexual corruption, dishonesty, sloth, and so many other things. But we are to always remember that the core is love. Without that, the rest is all empty pride and noise.
Peace,
SR
Yep. This sort of thing is problematic over this form of communication - If it weren't for the vast ocean of corn between you and I, I would be much more comfortable addressing these issues on one back porch or the other, with a handy supply of sweet tea. ; ) Our entire conversation thus far would have hardly passed an hour in that condition. Much better conversing, and my favorite preference - far preferred to banging about with these accursed thumbs.
To that end, I offer only this link to address the two house fable: A Brief Assessment of Two House Theology
Let me begin by noting that, as I said before, my position is more like Two House Messianic than British Israelism - I do not fully adhere to either one. My insatiable penchant is for the Prophecy, from which my greater thesis arises...
But that being said, your presented article is a rather shallow case. Again, the errata proves the point:
Note that I use 'Ephraim' as shorthand for the 'House of Israel' to distill the thought away from Israel proper, and to avoid confusion between the two.No, by far and away, the House of Israel is the most ignored saga in the Book. And a huge portion of the Book is dedicated to that story. There is no way one can understand the prophets if one misses the distinction.
- Read the prophets. Ephraim is present, separate, and distinct from Judah in end time battles (ALL of the tribes are mentioned). Ephraim owns lands, has armies and weaponry. If, as your article describes, the ten tribes are presently incorporated into what we know as Israel, then some action necessarily must occur to separate Ephraim out again, allowing him to fill the position he is in by the end time. I think that is, of course, a ludicrous thought, hence I believe that Ephraim is already separate and distinct, and as close as we are to the coming conflagration (say, within the next 50 years) I don't think there is time for him to appear, thus he must be here already...
- Read Hosea particularly, because he describes in no uncertain terms how Ephraim will fair in the breadth of time. He cannot go back - brambles are put in his way. He forgets who he is. YHWH brings him into the wilderness and courts him, and for a while things are swell... But eventually Ephraim becomes wealthy and arrogant and falls away again, forgetting the Father and going after his monies and wine, full of decadence. It doesn't end very well... Ephraim does return, but only after he is made scarce upon the earth - as scarce as the gold of Ophir. If the Church, or Western Civilization, is indeed Ephraim, it is not with any sort of pride that I announce it - but rather with a sense of certain doom. We are in for a terrible time, if that is the case.
- Look into the inheritance of Ephraim (Joseph, Ephraim, Manasseh) - How is it that he, given the lion's share of the blessing, remains unfulfilled? He is the fruitful bough (bears fruit) by the river, overflowing the wall. He is given the fruits of the land and the sea, the earth will set forth her treasures (mining). Cattle and land... And understand: The inheritance cannot be given until the death of the testator (heard that before?). So IF I am right, one should not begin to see Ephraim forming from the nations until after the death of Messiah... He CANNOT be incorporated in Israel, because Israel (since Messiah, even since Babylon), certainly has never received these blessings.
When the dragon goes after the seed of the woman, some 1650 years are spent chasing them into the wilderness... The 1700's are an extraordinary time. A study of long-count prophecies in the Bible will amaze you. Read that old black heretic Isaac Newton. His math si pretty good on the long count stuff, even if He didn't get it perfectly right.
- And lastly, I would bring you to Isaiah 54 - Read 53 for context - Who is this barren woman who is told to leap for joy following the death of Messiah? She cannot be the gentiles, for she inherits them. She cannot be the married wife (the House of Judah), for she will have more children than her. She was a wife of youth, rejected and shamed... but now, she is married again to YHWH. There is only one entity that she could be. Only the House of Israel can be this woman.
- THEN look to the NT. You will find he is still in the nations at that time. The clues are sparse to a Greek mind, but they are there - and once you see, you will see it everywhere.
I will also add this: it is the snare of Satan, who has been much mentioned on these pages, to attack believers through the universal human Achilles heel, pride. What better way to do that than to draw off tens of thousands of gentile believers into spiritual coma by convincing them they are crypto-Ephraimites? And what better way to show spite toward God, which spite is ever in the heart of Satan, than by promoting an abuse of God's good law to promote evil and division in the body of Christ, and to blunt the message of God's amazing grace?
I would submit that it is not I who is in a spiritual coma. Rather, most of Christendom slumbers in Greek blankets and with a Roman pillow. Read the Temple texts in Ezekiel. The House of Israel (Ephraim) is shown the measure of the Temple so that he will be ashamed of himself - HE DOESN'T KNOW.
And don't feed me a line about siphoning off believers - The very same thing is spouted by the Romanists. The only unity there is is in TRUTH. One cannot be so sure of oneself that one does not seek. The truth is not in the choir-box now any more than it was for the Temple Jews. Had they the knowledge of the few who were paying attention, they would not have missed the time of their visitation. In it's ignorance of the Tanakh, I believe the church at large is in the very same position.
More tomorrow. I am too beat to address your whole post. I hope you have a great day.
As for using Torah observance among disbelieving Israel as a model for Christian behavior, this might be a problem:
1Jn 2:22 Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son.
Which basically is saying that the example you are using for "easy" Torah observance is antichrist. Did John work logic bombs too?
Who is denying that Yeshua is Messiah?
Well, we could go back and forth like this indefinitely, couldn't we. :) In the interest of breaking this infinite loop, let me suggest the problem is in the word "ratify." If it simply means to say that Jesus agreed that the law of Moses was good and in force for the duration of the Old Covenant, then of course we actually agree. If it means that the entirety of the Mosaic covenant would be in force for gentile Christians during the entirety of the New Covenant era, even after the law was fulfilled in the person and ministry of Christ, then we still have a bone to pick. So "ratify" is ambiguous, and I will continue to disagree with what I think you think it means, because Jesus knew and the apostles would all figure out that the Old Covenant was coming to an end, and any meaning of "ratify" that is truthful must comply with that fact.
In fact, I DO believe that the entirety of Moses was ratified into the new covenant, and is meant for everyone - That was the original intent for Torah, and Torah remains beyond this current age into the millennium, as recorded by the prophets, to include the Sabbath and Feast Days... And the WHOLE WORLD (implies Gentiles, no?) will keep Torah then. So again, my question is how it can be that the bride refrains from keeping what is plainly described as law in the Kingdom?
You've mentioned that now a couple of times, and as you haven't explained it to me, I can only theorize what you mean by it. I know a logic bomb is a malicious piece of code that might, for example, be buried in the systems of a nuclear power plant with intent to cause havoc at some predetermined time.
A classic logic bomb is malicious only if the software is abused. If it is used according to it's design, no untoward thing will happen, and the software is benign and useful for it's purpose.
This seems to suggest you might be one of those HR folks who think Paul was a saboteur and not a true apostle of Christianity. Is that your position?
No, I have nothing against Paul, as I have declared before - My fight is against abusing Paul by way of interpretation.
As for the point of the logic itself, I theorize you mean that Paul nefariously set up the discontinuity between the covenants as a way to attack the uninterrupted continuity of OT Torah you think should be there.
No, I am saying that you seem to be reading in a discontinuity where there can be none. No doubt Paul can be read that way, IF one is willing to say that YHWH changed His mind. But I know for a fact that He didn't. He set Torah in stone on purpose. Structurally, the contract(s) cannot be voided without pulling down the prophets too. Do that and the primary proofs of the deity of YHWH are nullified. THAT Paul can easily be read into is the abuse of code triggering the logic bomb. If one is concerned with the preservation of the structures present in the layout of the whole, Paul is saying something quite different from what you suppose.
I am guessing here, so I will take no offense if you tell me I have guessed wrong. But if I have guessed correctly, please be aware that the only logic bombs pitting one inspired writer against another inspired writer must be coming from outside the system, falsely imposed on the system by a series of false assumptions, leading to apparent contradictions when in fact there are none.
That is exactly right - If the disciples are gainsaying Messiah, or if one disciple is seen authoritatively speaking differently than the other disciples, something is drastically wrong with one's interpretation. That is why I am against the standard reading of Paul. His words need to be reconciled to his Master, and the other disciples. If one does so, he cannot be saying what everyone says he is saying. There is no private revelation. Paul MUST stand with the prophets, to include Yeshua, as must every other disciple. The prophets judge the prophets. What was already said has been said, and WILL be so.
Scripture, when rightly understood, does not have self-destructive logic bombs.
PRECISELY so.
And therefore, Paul and Jesus agree in all essential points. They have a difference of situation, in that Jesus speaks mainly from before the formal end of the Old Covenant, and Paul speaks from the perspective of one who came to faith in Christ after the inauguration of the New Covenant.
That cannot be so. Yeshua is the lawgiver. What HE says is necessarily paramount.
Jesus lays the foundation for the New Covenant, and so all of His teaching is relevant to us as believers. But it must be understood in it's temporal context. You know yourself how subtle bugs can be introduced by failing to recognize the actual scope of a variable. Use it in it's proper scope, and all is well. Use it out of scope and it leads to major headaches.
Here is the scope: Yeshua is the lawgiver. His words will never pass away. His words CANNOT be temporal. There's your problem, right there. It is the same as considering Moses' words to be temporal (malleable, fungible), which is exactly what got the Jews in so much trouble. A disciple must align EVERY word to his master's words. He cannot add to them, nor take away.
Jesus had to fulfill the final act of sacrifice under the Old Covenant law, in order to break that law's power to condemn lost sinners. When the curtain in the Holy of Holies is torn in two, by God Himself, He signals yet another change in the law, a new openness of access to the very presence of God, which the apostles will eventually teach is the consequence of His grace:
ALL TRUE. Yet the prophets show animal sacrifice in the Kingdom. Go figger.
Addressed above. I would further add that Christ spoke several times after His death and resurrection, and even after His ascension, to Paul and others, and that He promised the Holy Spirit, Who would guide us into all truth. Odd that the Holy Spirit did NOT guide the apostles into Old Covenant Torah observance.
Oh, but he did. To include Paul. That again, is read into the text by a Greek-centric mind. Understand the definition of terms as declared in Torah, and it all changes perspective.
They are all fulfilled with respect to Christ. I reiterate the passage conveying this from my last post:
But no, they are not. He has not come in glory and power to establish His Kingdom here upon earth upon the throne of David. You will find that every one of the Feasts of YHWH are all about Messiah. And the fall feasts are not accomplished... So your reading must be necessarily incorrect. In fact, the prophets declare Him through the Kingdom and beyond.
Unless one is willing to see how Christ is the fulfillment of the law, as He Himself stated, then one might never see all that is fulfilled already in Him. This is essentially the problem the Pharisees had in perceiving who Jesus was and what His appearance really meant. It requires an act of faith to understand this. They couldn't do it. Many today still can't.
I disagree emphatically. YES, in the same sense as a betrothal is a marriage... What was done at the cross makes the end game inevitable - But like a betrothal is also *not* a marriage until the consummation, the end game must still occur, and the establishment of the Kingdom must BE. Inevitable as that is, it hasn't happened YET.
Do you deny then there are two contracts? In Jeremiah 31, God says there are two. In Hebrews, there are two. Paul also here:
No, there is one, but all previous contracts are necessarily ratified en toto into the current one. None of it can pass away until all of it is fulfilled. Every jot and title. Every jot and tittle. ELSE there are many contracts, each standing on their own, awaiting fulfillment each in it's own power and way... But that is not the foregone example(s), and that is not what it says.
But the grafting in of the gentiles is NOT to the Old Covenant, but the New, and NOT to the Hebraic status quo, but an entirely new sort of entity:
I don't think you are grasping the concept of the covenants one being within the next. The Adamic Covenant did not make the Edenic covenant null - Neither did Noah nullify the Adamic. Neither did Abraham nullify the Noahdic, and so on. Each time, the previous was expanded, more revealed, by the next. Each one ratifies what was before into itself. The tricky business is in the split within Abraham/Melchizedek - There is the Inheritance, and Moses, and Aaron, and, some would argue, the Moabic covenant too. But the Inheritance is necessarily interactive with Moses, and the Davidic covenant is necessarily back-logged from within Moses, interactive with Abraham. Just as the Aaronic priesthood of Moses is within, and draws authority from, Melchizedek. Necessarily, for all intensive porpoises, ALL of the 'contracts' are interactively the SAME thing. One CANNOT make even one single word EVER UTTERED by YHWH to return to Him empty, because IT WON'T return to Him empty. If you have it so, you are doing it wrong.
You speak of logic. Let it rule the day here. This union is between Jew and Gentile, not two varieties of Old Covenant Hebrews.
No, the primary split is between the two houses. It is the sticks of the two houses that are, with exact specificity, made into one stick in the hand of Messiah.
There is no grafting in if there are no true gentile believers.
But you forget that the House of Israel inherits the gentiles. Ephraim is the fruitful bough...
And we were afar off. We were never part of that Old Covenant.
But it says 'sometimes' afar off, or more succinctly 'for some time afar off'... You are right. Gentiles were never part of the Covenant. So how could they have been 'sometimes' afar off... they have ALWAYS been off the map, according to the covenants... Since Noah.
But in this New Covenant, God takes true Jews of all houses, and puts them together with true Gentiles in one new man.
I have no argument with that, except in the ordering of it, which is specific.
The ecclesia is a new thing.
No, FRiend, it is not. The Hebrews were mikvah'd in the Red Sea, and all of Israel took bread and wine from Melchizedek in the loins of their father. It is the very same thing, except for the aspect of the discipleship of Yeshua within the greater assembly. That is new, just as the discipleship of any Rabbi is new, within the context of Torah.
Not that there haven't been assemblies before. But this one is special. Nothing else like it. Unprecedented. NEW. And it has it's own Torah, the Torah of Christ as promulgated by His Apostles.
No, there is necessarily ONE Torah. The Torah that Yeshua Himself followed as our example. Not that a Rabbi cannot give his disciples instructions (Torah means 'instruction', not 'law'), That can be 'new',,, But that is needfully within the context of Torah as handed down through Moses, lest Yeshua breaks Torah by adding to or taking from.
Now you made light of my "tautology" of love, love for God, love for each other. But my "tautology" has an advantage over yours ("All Torah is Torah," IIRC). Mine is sanctioned as central truth by Christ and His apostles, repeatedly. So the Holy Spirit must've thought it was pretty important to say. Works for me.
I didn't make light of your tautology - You were demanding specifics from me, while saying there are no specifics for you. The greatest commandments 'love YHWH and love one another', have ALWAYS been there. They are Torah. Your tautology IS Torah. There is no difference.
Your theory of wholesale incorporation is unfounded, and early attempts at such incorporation were all resisted and rejected by those same apostles.
It isn't a theory - it is right there in black and white. And no, the Apostles fought Halakha and the oral torah of the Pharisees. They necessarily had to have kept Torah.
Addressed above. Christ's own post-resurrection statement indicates the fulfillments were in Him, and were accomplished.
Countered above. The Fall Feasts are not fulfilled. Study them. They are about the Great Harvest... The Second Coming. If you can show them fulfilled to my reasonable satisfaction, I will cede. As to the new winskin, it is still a wineskin! Not a bottle. Not a set of matching tumblers from wally world. Same for same.
No, prophecy is not automatically law. Law is directive of human behavior.
I said, 'in a sense'. Prophets are too - the inheritance is all prophecy and it is directly involving the behavior of the tribes.
[...] It is descriptive. Any prophecy that is prescriptive is never in announcment of some new obligation, but is always a restatement of law already given.
you had best go read Ezekiel.
To dilute the meaning of law to incorporate everything spoken is just a convenient tactic to sweep in things not yet fulfilled, but which are not law, the end effect of which is to discount Jesus' own post-resurrection words that the fulfillment of which He spoke was what was written in the law concerning Him.
I am discounting nothing. In fact, I dare say that I probably find the blood of Messiah to be more powerful than most Christians to. The ripples from the cross travel across time in both directions.
No problem. The New Covenant is replete with multiple witnesses that the Old Covenant has passed and is no longer in force.
no, it is not. The spirit of the law is within the law. How then can the law be abrogated?
[roamer_1:] Right. Messiah removes the curses of the law. But we are continually being made in his image - His example to us shows us what that looks like. We, as disciples are to 'walk in his footsteps' - A strange phrase, that. I wonder where it comes from (heh... not really. I know where it comes from). So we are no longer doomed. We can earnestly try and try again... Keep trying to walk in his footsteps.
Nothing much to disagree with there, though I don't get your inside humor about the footsteps. Care to share that with the rest of the class? :)
It is disciple-speak. Inherent to the Hebrew Talmudim. Part of the training thereof was for them to follow single-file and literally walk in the footsteps of their master. Usually the foremost was directly behind the master, said to be 'covered in his dust'. There is much to learn in the Hebrew definition of a disciple.
But it is the point. You are switching to individual inconveniences, but the law was written for the nation. The priests could not do sacrifice. The nation was deprived of the means of obeying a huge percentage of the law of Moses. But the law didn't stop acting to condemn them. Unless you think Paul is wrong. What they should have concluded from this, and it should have come from the rabbis, is that they had no means of atonement. God took it away. Unless they found their way back the Messiah, they were condemned. The law condemned them. It's no good to make excuses. They should have been terrified. Instead they made excuses, and you appear to be ratifying those excuses to live outside the law of atonement.
You forget they have been through diaspora before. Were all the Jews in Babylon doomed because the priests could not make atonement? Daniel? Esther? Mordecai? For if your premise is true today, then it was also true then. OR, your assumptions of how this works is in error.
And while it is true that Torah is given to the nation, each individual is also responsible - Our nation is currently going through the same thing - We are besieged by our own permissive government. The federal abrogation of authority and justice does not stop me from being true to what America is - In the same way, the personal aspect of Torah cannot be denied - So the personal adherence is every bit as important as the national aspect of Torah, and every bit as open to judgement by YHWH.
Thus my examples of 'personal inconvenience' hold just as much to bear as does the national - In fact, as it touches this conversation, it bears more weight - After all, your contention against me is because I personally choose to try to keep Torah.
[roamer_1:] So was the synagogue system. It is not specified in Torah. Yet Yeshua endorsed it. Used it. Preached from it. It's Rabbinical basis was relied upon by all the Apostles. That system was the fall-back necessary for those who could not make it to Temple at least since the Babylonian exile. What then? A second Temple era Jew, living in the south of France, too poor to go to Temple three times a year (not to mention every Sabbath), was just bound for hell even if he was devout in other aspects? What of Ruth? What of Esther? No, this sense that Christians have of what the law does and what it is for is wholly their own invention.
You can't seriously be arguing that finding a building in which to study Torah, which they were already obligated to do, is the equivalent of giving up on the sacrifices demanded by the law. Apples and oranges. One is merely finding a physical means to keep the law, the other is making spiritual excuses to break the law.
No, the question is not a matter of convenience or excuse - It has been your contention that if one breaks any part of the law, one is doomed. I am simply presenting scenarios which plainly show the error in your thought - The desire to keep Torah in that poor Jew living in the South of France is more important than his actual compliance with the 'letter'... In your world, it seems that Jew will be damned for not completing the pilgrimage, regardless of his status and ability to keep the letter of the law... I would submit to you that such has never been the case. The spirit of the law was always the point, else David would have been struck dead for eating the showbread.
But no, David was forgiven. So too, no doubt that poor Jew in the Languedoc. It has always been the circumcision of the heart - that is what I have been saying all the way along.
That's a form of begging the question. He is using an Old Covenant principle that explains by analogy how the Old Covenant could cease to have force on a New Covenant believer. And he is in fact explaining how the two covenants interface with each other in the life of one person, how our identification with Christ in His death transfers us from the condemnation of the one to the newness of life in the other.
He is speaking directly to the divorce and remarriage of the House of Israel. Her bill of divorcement kept her 'afar off' - She can be the only one who married another, and stands accused of adultery. Do not miss the impact upon the crowd's Hebrews when he said those words, because that is exactly what they would react with, what they would hear. And understand too, that in those words, Paul is declaring explicitly that Yeshua IS YHWH.
As to his audience, I note a mixture of names in the epistle, and do not assume Rome to be an exclusively Jewish, or even a mainly Jewish congregation.
I would somewhat disagree - Paul went where others had not gone, so it is a mystery as to how this large congregation in Rome even occurred. I would be speculating of course, but what seems natural to me is that the Roman believers were present at Shavuot when the Spirit was given, which would point to at least a Jewish core influencing the believers there... and the interim communications must have most naturally been with the Jerusalem Church directly, else how are they even there?
Many generations of gentile believers have read this passage with sufficient understanding to get what he is saying. God designed Scripture for all believers. It is our food, the words of God, and he has made it accessible.
OK, but without the Hebrew understanding, gentile believers are missing much.
If we live according to the Torah of the New Covenant, all will be well with us, for our salvation is secured by the blood of the Lamb of God, and nothing can or will remove us from His protective care. If we try to live under both covenants, we are inviting heartache and trouble into our lives. It is disobedience, rebellion.
LOL! Are you listening to yourself? Again, we see the ONLY thing that Christians CAN'T do is keep Torah! Funny how Galatia, which is purportedly gentile according to Christian thought, is accused of keeping Torah!
[roamer_1:] That would necessarily imply that you personally had used the training wheels in the first place. [...] And the analogy is good - because once you have internalized what the training wheels teach you, you are not going to fall down any more. Because even yet, you are not to sin, and sin is transgression of the law of YHWH.
No, this is not about us personally using the training wheels. This is more what Paul spoke of in Galatians concerning the law being our tutor and leading us to Christ. The nation Israel had the training wheels. We have the Spirit, and the new creation in Christ. "Old things are passed away. Behold all things are become new." We are past the training wheels.
Again, the dichotomy is apparent - The only Scriptures the Galatians had, if they had any, are contained in Tanakh in a synagogue. The NT was not there. And Paul is telling them not to follow the Scriptures? How do you suppose he could even stand to speak in a synagogue telling them to throw their ancient Torah in the garbage can?
Good, then you admit my point, that God can modify His own law based on conditions. Thank you.
That isn't what I said. And if you cannot see the Tabernacle in the Temple, that is your problem, not mine.
Where did I say the New Covenant Law has no resemblance to the Old Covenant law? I have already said that it does resemble it. They are both from the hand of the same Lawgiver. But it is necessary to have respect for the Lawgiver. He has told us, repeatedly, this covenant is new. Not like the old.
He has also said that His Torah as given through Moses is eternal, never to pass away. If He can so easily discount what He said to the Hebrews, how then can you trust his promises? It doesn't make any sense at all.