"How Do I Love Thee, Let me Count the Ways?" Part One.

(Answering the Great Deception)

There are still a great many people in this area of our nation who claim to be G-d loving, G-d honoring, Yeshua-following, "Believers" in The Holy Scriptures. (And for this writing "Holy Scriptures" will mean the Torah that Moses passed down to us, which constitutes the books of the law, plus the other "Writings", including the Prophets, the Psalms, Song of Songs, etc.; which Yeshua and His disciples read, & followed, while observing the heart of them, and which they expanded to include the B'rit Ha'Dasha or New Covenant, which they wrote by the Holy Spirit).

So my question is how can we claim to so "love G-D", and yet so reject His Torah? The Torah, the book of the Law, which contains His commandments, how can we go on viewing them as a lethal bondage which produces slow death, when G-D, Himself, distinctly bound the blessing of life to obedience of them? How can we claim to believe and follow a Torah, or the G-D who gave it for that matter, which we systematically reject as bondage?  A rather perplexing conundrum isn't it?

We seem to think that the "New Covenant" excuses us from the Torah's, or Old Covenant's, "antiquated ways", but the "New Covenant" really isn't new in its content or intent, it is only a fulfilled ratification of the Old Covenant. It is, to be more accurate a more recent and updated version, since nothing much changed, with the notable exception that Messiah boiled it all down to the attitude or motivation of the heart over the mere outward act! Which, in effect, made it even more impossible to keep!

But then He left His Ruach HaKodesh, His Holy Spirit, behind to transform us into beings that are capable of keeping it! He did not, as some slanderously teach, excuse us from certain parts of it, due to our "weakness in the flesh" - by "a miracle of Grace" (in that erroneous teaching, grace is seen as some big eraser that wipes out the evil, though we continue to support it with our choices and decisions! The very idea!). In plain truth, the thing from which He freed us was bondage to our own sin-infested flesh, and He freed us so that Torah could be observed, with the result of obtaining the Blessing of G-D, including the wonderful prospects of closest fellowship with Him!

He did rebuke a legalistic, heartless, loveless representation and usage of Torah/The Law, but He did not come to eradicate it! G-D forbid! He came to completely eradicate the flesh, and enable us to become spirit beings, that operate by the Spirit, within the confines of the physical flesh for now, but freed from its power over us, so that we are not being led around by the nose, by the appetites and selfish demands of the flesh (Our own flesh or anyone else's)!

He gave us power to obey His Law in the proper motivation, which is Love for His Father, and our Father, if we choose to become His children through receiving the Living Torah, Yeshua! He gave us the ability to get Authority over the flesh in order to Keep the Commandments - Torah, not Authority or permission to side-step them! This a total misunderstanding and abuse of Grace! Yeshua certainly had  command over His flesh, in fact, such command that He boldly claimed that no one took His life! Rather, He insisted, that He voluntarily laid it down for our sakes, and at the exact moment that He intended to! And furthermore, He declared that He had the power to take it up again! Now that is power. And it is the power that He left us.

So no more of this ridiculous cop-out that Flip Wilson mocked in the sixties, "the devil made me do it". If he did, you had better choose a different master and get delivered from his yoke, that really is bondage. And if there is a habit that you can not break it is most likely because you have rejected Torah in that area. Yeshua is the Living Torah! Torah lives! And He has freed us to be able to follow Him in His Joy of serving His Father! So now, perhaps you can see that obeying Torah is not "dead works", unless it is performed from a dead heart, that is to say, from lifeless, religious ritual!

In this day when the Church at large is constantly looking for New Wine-skins and New Wine, I think we should heed Yeshua's insistence that the "old is better"! It is more stable, it is valuable, it is seasoned. Not to the exclusion of the new! But as something that the new is to be judged by. I think we need to realize that we have thrown the "baby out with the bath water" on this obedience thing. And that in divorcing ourselves from the Jewish elements to avoid the bondage of the Pharisees, we have doubly sinned. We have become modern day Pharisees anyway - but have become bound to rank abomination, to G-D offending heathenism! That is what we get for judging them!

We have traded Torah, G-D's law, for a series of man-made deadly, empty, idolatrous junk. The European sophisticates thought they were so smug by trading shiny worthless trinkets to the First Americans for their valuable land. But, we, the majority of church-going "Christians" have been hornswaggled far worse than those first Americans!

Those early so called "church Fathers" were actually "whore-mongers" by G-d's definition. Why would I say such a hard thing? They clearly went "Whoring after other god's"! They polluted His Scriptures and Feasts and ordinances with laws of their own making, while pulling in the heathenistic observances to idols, that we, as G-D's people, were commanded to be separate from! They erred greatly, and in doing so have produced a lot of illegitimate children, which they try to pawn off as G-D's! Those men bought into the devil's hatred for G-D's chosen people, they also dripped venomous antisemitism in their writings, to the point that Hitler formed his hideous justifications of his persecution of Jews and others from those writings - how far off the mark is that?! And they presumptiously, pridefully pitched out His permanent ordinances - which they, His chosen people - the Jews - were chosen to preserve, by the way, condemning them as religious bondage! Those charlatans and hirelings,then went on to trade the truths of G-D's feasts for heathen idolatrous practices, to appease the flesh and profit themselves, and have, as a result maimed the Bride of Messiah, so that she now hasn't a leg to stand on, nor does she know where to stand if she could! And in doing so they have also profaned the Name of G-D! And crucified Messiah anew themselves, thus heaping to themselves their judgment against the Jews, whom they have dubbed the "Christ-Killers", in order to justify their evil-doing against them.

We, in post-modern "Christianity, have become sad, straying, sheep, who have been cross-bred with heathenism until we have become strange mixtures of sheep and goat - head butting, trash consuming, half-starved, hateful, stubborn, prideful, unteachable, burned out, angry revolting lone rangers, roving the land in search of Truth, tired of searching, tired of trying to commit to something that inwardly our spirit cries out against. Trying to follow shepherds who are apparently just as lost as we are and too stubborn to ask directions!

Oy vey! "Who shall deliver us from this body of death?!", Sh'aul (Paul) cried out, and then He answered the question himself, by the Ruach HaKodesh, "thanks be to G-D, through Yeshua, Ha Messiach..." The living Torah! We need a Teshuvah back to Torah! How do I love thee, let me count the ways?

First let me count the ways where I let lies break down my love for You LORD! After I have repented of those, I might be able to find some real places where I have loved You!

I am in my own personal season of Teshuvah, for me it has been a lifelong journey. I feel that I have finally reached the end of a very long tunnel and broken out into a glorious light. As time goes on I will share more of that journey and how I got here, so that those who follow may benefit from my mistakes. How do I love thee? I have a feeling we may just be getting ready to find out, and it is about time.

~ Selah