Truths for Life's Trail: Reflections on the Torah Volume 1

By Brother Craig

Brother Craig's church was about to celebrate the Passover with a Messianic Jewish congregation when on the eve of Passover 2005, an arsonist set fire to his home on the church property. By God's grace, he and his family escaped--shaken but unharmed. His book, Truths for the Trail, grew out of his search to understand why it had happened. In the process, he had to reevaluate everything he had been taught in Scripture about the Jews, the festivals of the Lord, and the Torah, which Christians know as the Law.

Brother Craig didn't realize it at first, but he was about to begin a spiritual journey just to find some answers to his questions. He discovered that he had to go back to the beginning of man to see what the Lord wanted him to see--what God taught ancient, nomadic Hebrews to see--that life is a road to travel, a path to walk, or a trail to follow. That the commandments God gave the ancient Hebrews were each laid out in a sequence designed to help simple shepherds and their families walk in righteousness.

If the ancient commandments could help ancient peoples walk in the way of the Lord, could they not also help modern Christians wend their way through the dangers and difficulties of life? As he reflected on the commandments, Brother Craig began to see a pattern emerge that undoubtedly led the ancient Hebrews to understand life from the Lord's divine viewpoint.

Truths for Life's Trail: Reflections on the Torah, Volume 1 covers all the commandments given by God to man over the course of over two thousand years, as recorded by Moses. From Genesis 1 through Exodus 20, from creation to Mount Sinai, these commandments laid the foundation for all the commandments yet to come in Scripture. And mysteriously, the Torah would point to the future Savior of mankind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9781638443292

Book preview

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Truths for Life's Trail

Reflections on the Torah Volume 1

Brother Craig

ISBN 978-1-63844-328-5 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63844-329-2 (digital)

Copyright © 2022 by Brother Craig

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Unless otherwise noted, all biblical citations are from the English Standard Version.

All sketches in this book are done by Trisha Spicer.

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Preface

Archways of Life and Death

Be Fruitful!

Archways of Good and Evil

Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil

Mystery of the Patriarchs' Names in Genesis 5

The Stones of Consecration

Remaining Clean: What We May Bring Into Ourselves

Circumcision

A Memorial to Jacob's Walk

Timing

Observing Times and Seasons

The Passover Salvation

The Passover Festival

The Passover Lamb

Sanctification

No Yeast During the Feast of Unleavened Bread

The First Born

The Firstborn

The Archway of the Ten Words

Christian Liberty

Know the Lord Is God

Revering God Alone

No Other Gods

Idolatry Forbidden

Hallowing God's Name

Stones of Righteous Living

Remember the Sabbath

Honor Your Father and Mother

You Shall Not Murder

You Shall Not Commit Adultery

You Shall Not Steal

Speaking Truth at All Times

You Shall Not Covet

The Stones of Our Altars

An Altar of Earth You Shall Make

God's Human Altar

Author's Note

About the Author

Acknowledgments

After much soul-searching, I would like to acknowledge my thanks to the arsonist who set fire to a storage building next to our house on Passover Eve 2005. What he meant for evil, God turned it all for good. If he had not shattered my wall of false thinking about Israel and the Torah, I would likely have blithely continued through life missing out on the simplicity, majesty, and beauty of God's commandments.

I would also like to acknowledge my debt of gratitude to Jeff Benner, the founder and administrator of Ancient Hebrew Research Center. His insights into the original meanings of words and phrases of the earliest and of later Hebrews of antiquity have helped me better understand my entire Bible, the Torah specifically.

Lastly, I would like to thank my wife, Susan, for patiently enduring over the last several years my need for seclusion to study, reflect on, and write this book. I could not have done this without her help in every imaginable way.

Introduction

The moment a man opens his eyes at birth, lives, grows into adulthood and old age, and eventually closes his eyes in death, he is seen by God to be on a life journey. His journey will take him on a pathway unlike any other person's pathway, yet it will be similar enough for Yahweh his Elohim (the Lord his God) to lead him by general precepts. These precepts are called mitzvoth in Hebrew. In English, they are called commandments. The compilation of these commandments, along with other divine teachings, is called the Torah. The word torah means teaching.

Our God is truth and spirit. His commandments serve as expressions of His divine character and essence or shem. Thus, to keep His commandments is seen in heaven as agreeing with His divine character and essence. Contrarily, to violate His commandments (to sin) is understood in heaven as to reject His divine character and essence. Additionally, as we hold on to His commandments, we supernaturally become virtuous people in His sight.

His commandments matter then, and they should matter to all Christians. Because the Torah commandments are housed in the first five books of the Bible—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy—these books of the Bible are also collectively called the Torah. I revere the Torah books and their commandments because of their beauty, simplicity, and purity. I also love them because they guide the sojourner through life one step at a time. The Psalmist said of God's Torah: Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path (Ps. 119:105).

I picture each commandment as a stone in the pathway for true followers of Yahweh. He has lovingly laid our pathway down with stones of wisdom to help us walk securely and faithfully in a sin-saturated world. Another way I see them is as trail markers to help us sojourners find our way through life when we feel lost along our trail. No matter where we are, no matter what mistakes we have made in our lives, we can instantly find grace in our Savior—the Adonai Yeshua ha Meshiach, the Lord Jesus Christ, who leads by the gifting of the Holy Spirit those who put their full weight of trust in Him. The Christian is told, Trust the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make straight your paths (Prov. 3:5–6). The Torah given to Moses makes a wonderful path straightener for us.

Torah is very ancient. In John 1:17, we are told, The law came through Moses… But it did not originate with him. It came through him and was codified through him by Yahweh's command. However, we know that it preceded Abraham because Yahweh spoke to Isaac about Abraham, his father, hundreds of years before the birth of Moses, saying that He chose Abraham because Abraham obeyed my commandments, my statutes, and my laws [Torah] (Gen. 26:5). I suspect that Torah goes back at least to Noah and perhaps back to the garden of Eden, where God began to speak to His creation.

The alphabet of early Hebrew was also quite ancient. Ancient (or early) Hebrew writing was pictographic, unlike the Modern Hebrew, which many scholars of the Bible are familiar with today. Though this writing was going out of style during the time of the patriarchs and was being replaced by Middle or Paleo-Hebrew (a similar pictographic language), Abraham would have been fluent in it.

The word torah means teaching—wisdom teaching, to be precise. In the ancient Hebrew language, the word torah was spelled with the letters tav, vav, resh, and hey. The letter tav was illustrated as a cross; the letter vav was illustrated as a tent nail; the letter resh was illustrated as the side view of the head of a leader or king; and the letter hey was illustrated as a man with arms gesturing, hopping up and down. I call the last one the storyteller because the embedded meanings of the letter hey were breath, look, and revelation. So what story is the storyteller telling? What mystery is he revealing? It is the story of a king nailed to a cross. I believe that is what the ancient peoples of the earth knew about the Torah, the pathway of wisdom, thousands of years ago.

I contend that, whether they knew it or not, the core and centralizing fact of Torah to the ancient Hebrews and all of humanity who lived thousands of years ago was the cross, the nail, the king, and the revelator. Torah was all about the coming Savior. Thus, the word torah was prophetic of that which was yet to come to pass: the death of the promised Messiah. This simple message is also the core and centralizing fact of Christianity.

Seekers of faith in Christianity might wish to consider that this prediction of the death of our Savior was revealed thousands of years before Jesus was born on the earth. How much the ancient Hebrews knew of this, we will never know. We should remember, though, that Christ was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world (Rev. 13:8 KJV). Before the world was made, Jesus was set in God's calendar to die on planet earth. That scheduled event came to pass nearly two thousand years ago outside the city of Jerusalem.

Messiah Yeshua spoke at the beginning of his ministry,

Do not think I have come to abolish the Law [Torah] and the Prophets. I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished. (Matt. 5:17–18)

He then warned his disciples that anyone who relaxes any of God's commandments in the Torah and leads others away from them will be instantly considered least in the kingdom of God. Those who keep the Torah commandments and teach others to do so will be considered great in the kingdom of God (verse 19). As Bible teachers, do we wish to be considered ‘great' or ‘least'?

The apostle Paul relayed to the church at Ephesus that the grace of the Lord, including the Gentiles with Jews as heirs in the kingdom of God, was always part of God's master plan. His mystery hidden from previous generations of men but now made known to God's prophets and apostles by the Spirit (Eph. 3:3–9).

He talked more about this revelation of the mystery of God in 1 Corinthians 2 while discussing the differences between the wisdom of God and the wisdom of man. Paul said that he was sharing an ancient wisdom which the rulers of his time did not know.

But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. (1 Cor. 2:7–8)

This mystery of the story of a king who would one day be nailed to a cross was hidden in plain sight for anyone who might have known the language of Ancient Hebrew. Alas! From the time of the patriarchs till the death of the Messiah, this mystery was concealed because the written language of Hebrew moved away from the ancient pictographs to the symbols of modern (biblical) Hebrew. Yet Yeshua said to the religious leaders of the Jews in John 8:56, Your father Abraham rejoiced that he should see my day. He saw it and was glad. I often have wondered what Father Abraham saw by faith. I believe he saw the death of the coming Savior. I believe he saw the Messiah, the Son of God, sacrificed on a cross for the forgiveness of sins as the hidden meaning of the ancient word torah foretold. He rejoiced. As Christians today, we also should rejoice.

I am asking fellow believers in Messiah Yeshua to open up their hearts to that portion of the Scriptures known as Torah. Please show the same reverence for the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, that you would show for the rest of God's Word. We can afford to do so because Messiah Yeshua did so Himself. Over the course of my long sojourn with the Lord, I have heard many dismissive comments made by Christians about God's Law. At one time, I also treated the Torah inappropriately and since have had to repent of it.

I have written this book to help Christians bridge the gap between the Old and the New Testaments of the Bible. In God's viewpoint, His revelation is all one Word. There is no old and new.