Sunday, March 30, 2014

Torah Observant (TO) Follower of Messiah Yahshua



Although I would now describe myself more as a “Torah Observant (TO) Follower of Messiah Yahshua”, my first Hebraic Roots experience was at a Messianic Congregation, which is comprised of both Jewish Believers and non-Jewish Believers in Yahshua (aka, 'Jesus'), and usually with Jewish leadership. I don't use the term 'Gentile' because I believe it implies one who is not part of Israel, and Scripture states that when we follow Yahshua we are, at the very least, 'grafted into' Israel (Rom 11:24, Eph 2:11 and 19, Gal 3:29).

Currently, I would explain first what I have in common with most Christians:

  • Faith in the redeeming Blood of Messiah Yahshua by grace alone
  •  Faith that our Father YHWH is One Elohim (i.e., ‘God’) Who sent His Only Son, Yahuahua, in the flesh as Messiah, born of a virgin via the Holy Spirit
  •  Faith that the Holy Spirit was sent to Believers  during the Feast of Weeks/Pentacost as  Messiah had promised
  •  Faith in the Scriptures, comprised of the Tanach (also known as ‘Old Testament’) and the Brit Chadasha (aka, ‘New Testament’) which is the inspired, infallible, and authoritative Word of Yah,  inerrant in the original writings.
  •  Faith that Messiah is returning for His Bride, and soon!       

I would also like to point out some things that are not true about my faith, though these are common accusations:
I am not a Judaizer, or ‘Jew wanna-be’.  Judaizers were actually those who insisted that new Believers in Messiah were required to follow Torah for salvation.  Although I do follow Torah to the best of my ability with the help of the Holy Spirit, I do it because I love Messiah, not because I believe it is a requirement for salvation, therefore it is not accurate to refer to me as a ‘legalist’, either.
 Now, on to the things that are usually most different about my faith:
  • I do not celebrate E----r, Xmas and other secular ‘holidays’, including birthdays, though not all on this path are as diligent except for the major ‘holidays’. 
  •  I keep Shabbat, or the Sabbath Day, on what is known as ‘Saturday’, partly because it is one of the ‘Big Ten’ and it is the only Commandment that is preceded by the word ‘Remember’, which seems to me to indicate that Yah knew we would forget!
  •  I believe that since Messiah Yahshua (aka, ‘Jesus’) is the Living Word, and that when
    John taught this that the only Scriptures were the Tanakh (aka ‘Old Testament’).  It is therefore clear to me that He, being Truth itself, and with a light yoke, was not referring to YHWH’s Commandments when he admonished the Pharisees, but instead the ‘fences’, i.e., added man-made laws.  After careful reading of Psalm 119, it is impossible for me to think of the Torah as a burden and would contradict the Word to do so, IMHO.  Yahshua nailed our sin to the cross, and the consequences of breaking the Law, not the Law itself.  Without the Law, we are lawless and without a definition of ‘sin’ (1 John 3:4 which tells us that sin is the transgression of the law.)
  •  I keep kosher as laid out in Scripture to the best of my ability, and avoid pork, shellfish, and other ‘unclean’ animals, and I believe the Scriptures commonly used to refute this are better interpreted by Peter himself when he explained that Yah had sent him the sheet unrolling dream to let him know that he must accept Cornelius’ invitation and welcome the new non-Jewish Believers as ‘clean’. 

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My walk in this manner has been enriched beyond anything I can fully describe.  I will share just a couple of the things that have particularly encouraged me that I might not have discovered otherwise:

  • YHWH, our Father’s Name, when broken down letter by letter into Paleo-Hebrew means “Behold the Hand, Behold the Nail”, proving that He truly had already planned all things from the very time He declared His Name to Moses!
  •  Hebraic thought and expression, unlike Greek, is cyclic rather than linear, and this is reflected in the Scriptures, which brings light and consistency to what I now consider to be the whole Torah, Genesis through Revelation.  We see Messiah throughout the Tanakh, just as those travelers on the Road to Emmaus said He Himself revealed to them.  A good example is the Appointed Times, or Spring and Fall Feasts, which not only celebrated events in Moses’ era, but presage the events that have come to pass (e.g., Passover/Yahshua’s Sacrifice and First Fruits/Resurrection) as well as those yet to come (e.g., Day of Trumpets/Yahshua’s Return and Tabernacles/Yahshua’s Millenial Reign).


I must say I am surprised there are not more former Wiccans and pagans following the Torah Observant path, though I have run across a few, the most notable being Bill Schnoebelen, whose ministry ‘Of One Accord’ has been a wonderful outreach to many.  Also, Binyamin Cogdill, Congregation Leader of Beth Hallel in Knoxville, the second congregation I regularly attended on this path, also has a history of dabbling in the occult, and has proven to be a wonderful resource to my spiritual growth.
I think that the Hebraic Roots of our faith provide excellent evangelical tools, not only for bringing the Jewish brothers and sisters to recognize our Jewish Messiah as their own, but also to help Wiccans and pagans to see that there is a way out of pagan ways and that we can know our God’s Name, and that He is One, not many, which a number of Wiccans already realize, and believe in an ultimate creative force that is simply broken down into the gods and goddesses for accessibility’s sake.  I remember thinking that Christians were actually all practicing witchcraft and just too uneducated to realize it, because, when I was a witch, I knew the pagan history of Christmas/Yule and Easter/Ostara, and I found it hypocritical.  I struggled mightily with all that when I first was born again and resisted the celebration of those times.  I am so much more at peace with celebrating the Appointed Times that YHWH gave us and finding the richness of Messiah in them.
Now that I have understood that Genesis through Revelation is the true Torah with no division at all (I even tore out the middle page of my Scripture book when I got this) and reflects the cycle that has revealed the end from the beginning, I cannot NOT see it any longer and it is a great comfort.