About

The goal of this blog is to get down in writing all of my thoughts and findings as I study the Bible, and watch teachings by fellow Bereans.

I myself am a student of the Word, and do not profess to being a teacher. However, I also want to share with as many people as possible the WHOLE Word.  As the title of my blog indicates, I will be emphasizing the importance of Torah to mainly Christians.  I feel as though my calling is doing exactly that. There are others in the body of Christ that excel at bringing the Good News of Jesus (Yeshua, as I like to refer to him in his Hebrew name) to the unknowing. The question once you have the Good News then becomes, “What do I do now?”

That’s where myself an many others come into play.  You see, I want to link the Good News of the New Testament with the How To’s of the Old Testament. Before I do this though I need to make a few things very clear:

1.  The “How To’s” without the “Good News” are Empty

What I mean is, Jesus is the only way to salvation. PERIOD.  When people start learning Torah (the laws given to us in the first 5 books of the Bible), some end up doing a 180 and start emphasizing works for salvation instead of Jesus.  This is wrong, and it is not why I follow Torah.  The reason we follow Torah, is because we want to show God (Yahweh, again, I prefer the Hebrew) that we love him and want to obey his instructions.  Once we have salvation, we need to turn away from as much sin as possible, which is why we learn the how-to’s.  This is how it was supposed to be.  In Acts we are told that as the apostles were giving the Good News to the gentiles, they ran into a problem: what laws do they tell these people to follow as they came to know Jesus?  Should they tell them that they must drop everything and follow all of the laws right away, or have them first concentrate on the “biggies” first, and pick up the rest as they went?  They ended up going with the latter, and gave them 4 laws to start out with, and they would learn the rest IN THE SYNAGOGUE EVERY SABBATH.  So, my point is, learning these things takes time, but it is what we are supposed to do when we fully repent.

2.  I’m Learning Too

I have only been trying to follow the Torah for just over a year, so I sure as heck don’t have everything figured out.  If I misspeak, please rebuke me, with love :). Also, feel free to share you’re opinions and things that you have learned with me. The Bible is a big book with many layers in each verse, so everyone gets different things out of what they read.  I want this to morph into an online Bible study if that is even possible.

3.  Torah is not for “Only the Jews”

My 1st blog post (after this one) will be on this very topic.  The “Jews” were only a fraction of the people that were given the Torah on Mt. Sinai.  As a follow up, the Law was also not given to only Israel either! The Torah was given to the WHOLE WORLD.  In Deuteronomy it specifically states that there is one law for the native born and foreigner among you.  This will be huge going forward, and the reason why it will be my first blog entry.

4. Don’t Take my Word for it

This is very important.  This is also the reason why “the church” looks so differently from where it started out.  We’ve spent too long outside the Bible instead of inside.  I want everyone to take what I say and test it to the Bible.  If I make a mistake, bring it up, and we’ll investigate.  We all need to aspire to be like the Bereans in the book of Acts.  The Bereans didn’t take Paul’s word for it when he told them of the Messiah.  They went into the Scriptures and tested what he was saying, so that they could prove to themselves that Jesus was truly the Messiah.  This is my goal!

5.  Use Your Heart Along with Your Brain

When Jesus walked the Earth, he showed us how to apply the Torah with our heart.  He took what was black and white and breathed life into.  He was the Living Word.  With that in mind, we need to think with our heart and not just our mind.  I’ve heard of people going out to everyone they know and go straight to rebuking them for not following Torah to the T.  What we need to remember is that we were once in the same position.  People generally don’t respond well when you start telling them everything they are doing wrong.  Instead, show them love first, and they might be more receptive to what you have to say.

So, with all that said, I encourage you to get a head start on me.  I started with passionfortruth.com and 119ministries.com.  They are very informative and easy to follow along with.  I will be using a lot of what I’ve learned from them in my posts.

See you soon,

-Joel the Berean

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