I recently engaged in an extend on-line “debate” with an individual who genuinely seemed to want to understand an issue associated with marriage and Scripture. (One of those “big three” most-twisted doctrines!) The specifics of that debate aren’t the point of this article, but the fundamental fallacy that underlies the Big Lie certainly is.
And the problem might simply be called “Baggage Overload.”
The result is clear, albeit denied by ‘the church’ in spite of the legions of prophetic warnings:
Forbidding things that are NOT forbidden, from dancing to drinking to marriage, while “doing away” with prohibitions that come directly from Scripture.
Yahushua warned (Mark chapter 7, etc.) against such hypocrisy, saying, “By your traditions, you have made the commandments of Yah of no effect.”
If there is a single problem with “xtianity” other than the claim that a man in a fish-god hat can override the Word of YHVH Himself, it is the heresy that says the letters of Paul supersede the entire rest of the Bible. Since he declares himself to be a “bondservant of the Most High”, isn’t it correct to presume he would not directly contradict the One he claims to serve?
If nothing else, the “burden of proof” rests on those who claim he did, particularly when it is contradictory to the entire rest of Scripture!
It never ceases to amaze me how people can be “believe in Jesus” and then ignore what He said. (He said the same thing, actually, in Luke 6:46!) But the chief logical fallacy seems to be quoting Paul to deny His commandments.
The ‘mainstream xtianity’ proponent called this fallacy a “plain reading of St. Paul’s text.
“As twisted,” no doubt. (See II Peter 3:15-16!)
And here is how he summarized the chasm between the Torah-observant view and ‘Christianity’:
…Different starting points. The Christian view on ‘The Law’ is radically different than the Jews. To the Christian, “The Law” has practiced by the Jews has passed and His Law is now (being) written on our hearts. Instead of the external obligations we have internal being. We call that internal being sanctification – a fundamental pillar of salvation by grace.
The process is easy (His yoke is light).
He paid for our sin for us at Calvary.
We believe it and walk with Him trusting Him to lead us.
He gives us Himself and takes up residence in us.
He, in us, transforms us.
The problem is what Scripture AND the One they claim to worship as Messiah actually SAYS, from “If you love Me, keep My commands,” (John 14:15, 21, 23, 24, and the warnings that immediately follow) to the very stern rebuke of I John 2:3-6. “By this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. He who says “I know Him, and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him…He who says he abides in Him ought to walk just as He walked.”
Yahushua NEVER, EVER said that His “Law” had, or would (so long as “heaven and earth still remain!) “pass away.” And He was just as hard on the Pharisees for their hypocrisy of “adding to” His commandments, and claiming they were thus “Law”, as His Word still is for those of ‘the Church’ who claim to be able to “do away with” what He said would abide in SPITE of their lies. (It is for that very reason that I take special care in such discussions to distinguish between that “other jesus, whom we have not preached,” and Yahushua HaMeshiach.)
And the fact that such people deny His Word, do NOT keep His sabbaths, and eat what He said is not ‘food’, in general proves that the “renewed Covenant” spoken of in Jeremiah 31:31-34 has NOT yet been “written on their hearts.” Because such ‘teachers’ not only ARE ‘unlearned and untaught‘, but reject that knowledge. (Hosea 4:6)
The prophet Hosea says therefore that they will not be priests for Him, and that YHVH will also forget their children. Those warnings have long been true. But it is Yahushua’s admonition of those who claim to “come in My Name” that instead He declares, “I never knew you!” that must take His Word, and His character that underlies it, to heart today.
Every aspect of the world situation today trumpets the concept “End Times.” Those who can see that “handwriting on the wall,” must come to terms with the fact that we have “inherited lies from our [church] ‘fathers‘” and that the deception has been in place for a very long time. Like it or not, many today do follow “another jesus, whom we have NOT preached.”
