A Right Hunger and a Heavy Yoke
A man in your Bible study starts saying Yeshua instead of Jesus. He stops eating pork, keeps his Saturdays free, and tells you Christmas is pagan. You have never seen him so excited about the Bible. He isn't Jewish, and neither is anyone in the home fellowship he now visits. He believes he has found the faith of the first Christians.
Take him seriously. He loves the Old Testament, which many Christians neglect, and he wants to obey God. But he has raised a question the apostles already answered: must a Gentile who trusts Jesus keep the Law of Moses?
A loose modern network of teachers, online ministries, and small fellowships, made up mostly of Gentile Christians, which teaches that followers of Jesus ought to keep the Law of Moses, above all the seventh-day Sabbath, the feasts of Leviticus 23, and the food laws. Torah is the Hebrew word for law or instruction.
So why is it in a section on cults? We do not call the whole movement a cult, and we do not call everyone in it unsaved. It has no headquarters and no creed, and many in it trust Christ alone. We study it here for the same reason we study Seventh-day Adventism and Churches of Christ: a teaching can use Christian words and still move the weight of a person's standing from Christ to something he does.
Where this teaching adds law-keeping to the Gospel, it is the very error Galatians answers, and Paul called that another gospel (Galatians 1:6). Some teachers go further and deny the Trinity or the deity of Christ, and that is another Jesus (2 Corinthians 11:4). Others do neither. They are mistaken about the Law, and they should be corrected as brethren.
Labels don't save, and they don't damn. Someone who keeps the Sabbath may be resting in Christ alone, and someone who never misses a Sunday may never have been born again. Judge the teaching, never the heart.
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For Deeper Study
- Torahism: Are Christians Required to Keep the Law of Moses?Amazon R. L. SolbergA clear, verse-by-verse answer to Hebrew Roots arguments by an evangelical writer.
- 40 Questions About Christians and Biblical LawAmazon Thomas R. SchreinerA careful treatment by a Reformed Baptist scholar. We differ on election and on some points of the covenants.
- Israelology: The Missing Link in Systematic TheologyAmazon Arnold G. FruchtenbaumA long reference on Israel and the church by a Jewish believer and dispensational scholar.
- One Law, Two Sticks: A Critical Look at the Hebrew Roots MovementInternational Alliance of Messianic Congregations and SynagoguesA 2014 paper by Messianic Jewish leaders, free online. Polemical in places, and we differ on some questions of Jewish practice.
- Transformed by TruthAmazon Joseph TkachHow the Worldwide Church of God left Herbert W. Armstrong's teaching for the Gospel of grace. Evangelical, not Baptist.
- Foxe's Book of MartyrsAmazon John FoxeThe classic Protestant record of those who died for the faith, from the early church to the English Reformation.
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What Is a Cult?
A cult, as this section uses the word, is a group that uses Christian words while denying the Gospel or the God it reveals, preaching another Jesus, another spirit, or another gospel.
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