Someone said that unless we understand the Torah we will never understand Paul. What are the eternal implications of this statement?

Christian response,

Fully and intimately understanding Paul or any Epistle or Gospel or the foreshadowing of Messiah in the Torah is only possible through the teaching and tutoring of the indwelling Holy Spirit. Scripture is spiritual, not carnal (1 Corinthians 2:14)…if the Holy Spirit is not your Teacher, you will never see God’s deeper truths.

This is why only a remnant of Israel will be saved from the “second death” in Perdition and that in the last days (Isaiah 10:22; Romans 9:27), because the Jew and Israelite reject their Messiah and only by faith in Messiah as Lord and Mediator for our sin can the Holy Spirit take-up residence within you (Ephesians 1:13-14) and without the indwelling Spirit not only do you remain in your sins (John 8:24) but the truth of God never fully leaps from the pages of Scripture and penetrates the heart of man.

Why does God allow Satan limited dominion upon this Earth?

Christian response,

God allows Satan limited dominion on this Earth and uses him to separate the faithful from the unfaithful; the wheat from the chaff; the sheep from the goats. God allows Satan’s evil to reign yet restrained by the Holy Spirit (2 Thessalonians 2:7) as the faithful angels in the Kingdom observe, over the previous 6000-years, the horror of evil and disobedience that will eternally act as a bulwark against future rebellion as free will remains extant in the Kingdom.

Our entire creation within the Realm of Time is the resultant of an unfathomable spiritual war, a rebellion, having manifest in the Kingdom of God mandating a neutral repository (Earth) for that spiritual war as the destructiveness of evil/sin is not permitted in the Kingdom (Revelation 21:27). God the Father extricated this evil from the Kingdom (Luke 10:18), commissioned the Son, Jesus Christ (John 3:35; John 1; Hebrews 1; Colossians 1), to take elements from the unseen Spiritual Realm and create matter, Time, our Universe (Hebrews 11:3), and is presently dealing with His enemies within the Realm of Time partially constrained by Time and physics (Genesis 3:15).

The primary reason the Son of God, Jesus Christ, appeared within the Realm of Time was “to destroy the works of the Devil” (1 John 3:8b). Satan’s limited dominion on Earth has eternal relevance in God’s eschatological Plan for the New Jerusalem going forward as free will remains extant as free will is essential for love and relationship to exist with purity and authenticity.

Jesus died on a Roman Cross subsequent to declaring “It is finished” (John 19:30). What did Jesus finish?Jesus completed His primary mission having entered the Realm of Time to “destroy the works of the Devil” (1 John 3:8b); that is, death, Hell, the grave, for everyone who believes in Him as Lord. Second, Jesus reconciled mankind back to God, a reconciliation by faith in Messiah Jesus as Lord; a reconciliation as the Last-Adam, Jesus Christ, paid the sin-debt of the First-Adam manifesting from disobedience in Eden four-thousand-years earlier (1 Corinthians 15:45-49). Paradise lost in Genesis would be Paradise restored by God, Himself, through selfless love as first demonstrated in Genesis 3:21 i.e. the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Concerning the facade and obfuscation of Atheism…

There are no atheists…it’s a ruse. Every man and woman having attained an age of reason possessing sufficient cognitive acuity to discern the world around them, these intuitively know our Creator exists and they will be “without excuse” when they stand in the judgment of the condemned before Jesus Christ our Creator and Messiah (Romans 1:18-32; Revelation 20:11-15). Don’t waste your time arguing with those who espouse what they know to be a lie i.e. atheism-nihilism-Darwinism.

The futility, the absurdity, of the popular “works doctrine” relevant to salvation.

Human nature tells us that we must earn our own way to God, partly due to self-righteousness, partly due to a lack of faith in God and His word. What an awful life scenario for one who lives life never knowing for sure if they’ve lived sufficiently “good” or have completed a sufficient number of “good deeds” to be pleasing to the Father thereby garnering His favor for eternal life – or – are they headed to death in Hell because of past-present-future sin? This enslavement to Satan’s tactics is completely contrary to our Lord’s will.

It is written,

12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. 13 I have written these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life. 1 John 5:12-13 (Berean Study Bible)

24 Now to Him who is able to protect you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory, blameless with great joy, 25 to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority before all time and now and forever. Amen. Jude 24-25 (NASB)

O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. 2 I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law, or by hearing with faith? Galatians 3:1-2 (Berean Study Bible)

Statement was made: “God refuses to save anyone who does not obey Jesus.” Is this accurate?

Who are those who obey Jesus, is it not the one who is saved by grace through faith in Jesus as Lord? If salvation by faith in Jesus and receiving the Holy Spirit as Guarantor of relationship precedes obedience via sanctification, what role, if any, does obedience play in the “initiation” of salvation?

Does obedience save or is one saved by grace (a gift that cannot be earned by obedience) through faith (trusting-believing) in Jesus as our Lord who died for us to pay our sin-debt we could not pay through our own effort?

Is obedience the key to righteousness with God or is faith the Key to God’s heart and obedience subsequent to faith the validation of one’s faith as true? Is a man or woman saved from the second death in Hell by their works of obedience or by faith, alone, in the atoning work of Jesus at Golgotha?

Some will respond that “Faith without works is dead” (James 2:26) but I ask you, do works supplant or precede “faith” as the initiator of our salvation or are works “evidence” of our abiding faith “subsequent” to salvation by faith, alone?

Can one’s observance-obedience to the Torah satiate God’s wrath toward our sin and provide an escape from the “second death” in Hell?

No!

Those who seek the Kingdom of God through the Law are under a curse (Deuteronomy 27:27; Galatians 3:10) because the Law mandates perfection if one is to attain righteousness through Law leading to salvation (James 2:10) and all of mankind is under the curse of sin (Romans 3:23); therefore, no one is justified before God by works of the Law (Romans 3:20) as the Law only defines our sin void atonement; It is the shedding of blood that is mandated as atonement for mankind’s sin (Genesis 3:21; Leviticus 17:11; Hebrews 9:22; Hebrews 10) and it is only the sinless shed blood of Yeshua-Jesus who is God and man through the hypostatic union that atones for sin; Only the shed blood of Yeshua satiates the Father’s wrath concerning our sin, not the blood of animals as demonstrated in the Torah (Hebrews 10:4) and ONLY by trusting in Yeshua as our Messiah who died for our sin can we receive the imputation of His perfection over our life and thereby be declared “not guilty” for sin and welcomed into the Kingdom of God where nothing impure is permitted to enter (2 Corinthians 5:21; Revelation 21:27).

Jewish-Israelite deception concerning the “Day of Atonement”

Apparently, many of Jacob’s children today believe, in error, that the Day of Atonement forgave the sin of the individual; not so, the Day of Atonement was National; that is, for the sins of Israel as a Nation relevant to Israel’s Covenant relationship with God. The sole purpose of the animal sacrifices was to point Israel to the coming Messiah who would take away the sins of the World and to allow the individual offering the sacrifice an opportunity to express “faith” in God and thereby find righteousness (a right standing) with God through that faith.

The animals offered for an individual’s sin could NEVER take away sin or make atonement but it was the “faith” of the one offering the sacrifice that established “righteousness” with God not the sacrifice or the blood of an animal (Hebrews 10-11). Even though an individual in the Hebrew Scriptures was made positionally “right” with God through their faith; that is, believing that God is true and will do what He has promised, their “faith” was NOT reckoned as atonement; therefore, the Old Testament saints, upon death of the body in Time, their spirit was detained in Sheol-Paradise (Abraham’s Bosom, Luke 16) awaiting Messiah’s atonement (Psalm 16:10) as nothing impure is permitted to enter the Kingdom of God (Revelation 21:27). The blood atonement of Messiah is the ONLY acceptable atonement permitting access to the Kingdom.

The Holy Spirit tells us that while Messiah’s human body laid in the tomb subsequent to His Crucifixion, Messiah descended into Sheol (Hades-Paradise) and preached liberty i.e. the Gospel to the captives there and these were taken on-high by our Lord into the Kingdom awaiting the resurrection of the righteous (Ephesians 4:7-10; 1 Peter 3:19). Subsequent to Messiah’s death, burial, resurrection, those who die in the New Covenant having trusted-believed in Jesus as Lord, these are now, subsequent to death of their body, translated immediately into the presence of our Lord awaiting the resurrection of the righteous for service in the New Jerusalem (2 Corinthians 5:8).

NO ONE, Jew-Israelite-Gentile-Man-Woman will find life in the Kingdom of God through self-righteousness or works of the Law (Romans 3:20; Ephesians 2:8-9) but ONLY by faith in Jesus Christ as Lord believing that Jesus died to pay their sin-debt, a debt they could never pay through their own efforts (John 14:6; John 3:16-18; Romans 10:9-10).

Elohim rested on the Sabbath. Was the Sabbath, as an edict, mandated for Adam or any Gentile subsequent to the Sixth-Day? Was Elohim required to codify the Sabbath or forbid the worship of other gods for Adam to have known God’s will?

Christian response,

Again, ad nauseam, Adam stood in the presence of God and the moral law was instilled in Adam at his creation…Adam knew God personally…there were no other Gods or Icons to worship in Adam’s world but himself, Eve and Satan…I don’t see the concept of paganism arising among the human population until the Adamic generation flowed into the Noahic generation and the corruption of the human genome and the sin-nature began a catalyst push toward apostasy (Genesis 6).

Nearly half of all human history is reflected in the Genesis narrative and not once does Elohim command Sabbath observance. To suggest that He did is conjecture and adding to the Scriptures on your part…if the Sabbath edict was truly as important to Elohim as your obsessions with it suggest, there would have been a clear and defining edict for all of humankind to follow yet it’s absent until Exodus 16 as God established the Sabbath Day as a Covenant between Himself and Israel’s children. We know this because God was required to provide Moses EXACTING instructions relevant to how the Sabbath was to be honored; this, because NO prior PRECEDENT existed.

12 Then the Lord said to Moses, 13 “Say to the Israelites, ‘You must observe my Sabbaths. This will be a sign between me and you for the generations to come, so you may know that I am the Lord, who makes you holy. Exodus 31

Works Salvation? “Here is the perseverance of the saints who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus.” Revelation 14:12 (NASB)

Christian response,

Jesus’ Commandments are the subject here, not the Covenant of Law/the Decalogue and no one keeps the Commandments of Jesus unless they have first established relationship with the Father by grace through faith in Jesus as Lord and received the indwelling Holy Spirit who walks them in obedience through sanctification. It is the indwelling Holy Spirit who is Guarantor of relationship with the Father (Ephesians 1:13-14) and it the Holy Spirit and Jesus and the Father who keep the faithful from stumbling and ensures their endurance in the faith to the end (Jude 1:24-25; John 10:28-30). No one possess the indwelling Holy Spirit in the New Covenant unless they have first established covenant relationship with the Father by faith-belief-trust in Jesus Christ as their Lord who died to pay their sin-debt (John 3).