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Each of us living in America, with the exception, perhaps of native Americans, who were already here when our ancestors arrived, has family who came from other cultures. They brought with them a wealth of traditions, including delicious and strange new foods, folk tales and religious practices. Whether we realize it or not, we are shaped by these traditions - in our views, our words and our actions. When we are sad, we reach for "comfort" foods from our past; when happy, we choose foods which remind us of past celebrations. We have expressions passed down to us from parents or grandparents which we use to describe our feelings. Then there are the religious customs with which we grew up, which we teach to our own children. Or, perhaps we choose a different path from the one we were taught, which gives us a more fulfilling expression of our beliefs.
The great Hebrew leaders of ancient times, who lived on the continent of Asia, particularly in the Middle East, had similar life experiences. Some changed their views after being led by God to new discoveries. Abraham began his life in a family that practiced the customs of his "birth nation". But down deep he knew that other nations had similar beliefs as his with differences only being in the cultural expression. He believed there was an order to the universe that had to have been formed by a single entity - a Creator. From this man, Abraham, and his wife, Sarah, grew a nation of people who were destined to carry a message of this "Divine Order" and "Pattern" from this Creator to the rest of the world, outlining a way of life and a justice system designed to bring peace and harmony to peoples who were not yet aware of this "Divine Order"; peoples living in violence and sexual immorality. This body of teaching of "Divine Order" and this "Divine Pattern" was called by the Hebrew people, the Torah, and by many others "The Law". But before Abraham other nations knew of this "Divine Order" as far back as ancient Egypt and even Sumer. Abraham and his faithfulness to live and model this "Divine Pattern" for humanity has forever changed the scope of human experience. The prophet, Moses, himself a Pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty of ancient Egypt, both inherited and later received an elaborated form of this "Divine Message" on Mt. Sinai, passing it, in both written and oral forms, from generation to generation, until the present. But this Torah of Moses can be found to exist long before the time of Moses where we find the ancient Egyptians possessing the 42 Negative Confessions which were written on their hearts in preparation for their deaths and ascent to their God. It is from these teachings that we have modeled our own justice system in America although of late it appears not to be esteemed by many the way God intended. The 10 Commandments, or should I say the "10 Categories of 613 Laws", purportedly inscribed by the "finger of God" on stone tablets, shapes the principles of many religious systems, and the traditions continue to be taught today. There truly is nothing new "under the Sun" as this basic "formula" for human existence can be found existing thousand of years before Moses.
Yeshua, (Jesus' Hebrew name), is taught to have also practiced the customs and traditions of his people. His teachings on brotherhood and morality came from the Jewish Torah, and his life, the archetypal "pattern" for all as the Christ, as Horus before his time had as well, reflected the strength of his convictions and this "Divine Pattern" for mankind's Soulish evolution. He shared his love of his tradition with individuals who had never before experienced these views. Many were uneducated country people, ignorant of the teachings of Torah, or rebellious Jews, engaged in acts of debauchery and lawlessness, who needed to be reminded of the consequences of their behavior. But this could be said about other nations as well.
Today, most of us reading these informative articles from Bet Emet Ministries, find ourselves as either Christians or "thinking believers" who used to be traditional Christians who grew up under a religious expression which denies the validity of these Laws in the Jewish Torah and which existed in ancient Egypt thousands of years earlier as the pathway given by the Creator for the Soul's Spiritual evolution in our incarnational experience. We most likely grow up under the preachers of our churches reminding us that "we are not under the Law but under grace" and that "Christ is the end of the Law"; never stopping to study out the contexts of these passages in their original language behind our English texts let alone the reliability of the texts in the New Testament that we inherited from ancient Rome which can be shown today to have "radically reinterpreted" and "purposefully mistranslated and altered" the ancient Spiritual Wisdom of the world during the 2nd through the 5th centuries. The Jewish people carried this ancient Spiritual Wisdom that finds it origin in the earliest recorded records on this planet; a revelation that Constantine the Great decided for the whole world would not be part of his "program for world dominance".
Answer for yourself: Why do we, today, both Jew and Non-Jew need to know the teachings of the Torah? Way are the Laws of God so important for us in spite of their negative treatment by the Romanized Paul and others in the New Testament given us by Rome?
Because we live today, much like in ancient times, in a world of violence, anarchy, lawlessness and chaos. We are bombarded with messages that condone, even encourage violence and sexual freedom which harm us physically and emotionally, and destroy our values, our homes, and our self-esteem. The traditions which gave us purpose and stability have been replaced by fragmented life-styles, which isolate and separate us from one another.
Our Creator intended for us to support one another, and to behave responsibly in the management of our environment and our lives. Our work has always been to refine the creation with which we were gifted, continuing and improving upon it, striving for perfection "without as well as within" until, as a final act of love and support, this Creator would reward us with the life of peace and harmony which He promised us from the beginning. The blueprint for such a grand plan has always been God's Torah and this Jewish Tanakh and the ancient Spiritual Wisdom before that. It is the Heavenly Blue-Print for a God-centered and purposeful life which cannot properly be understood or achieved without a Hebraic mindset.
This might sound almost unbelievable to those who are highly indoctrinated by typical Christian teachings today but as our studies advance this will become as plain to you as the nose on your face. Let us investigate this important subject together.