The laws and commandments of the God of
Israel (YAHUAH) were delivered to the people through the hand of
Moses in the form of a written law. This law is the “Torah”, and
our understanding is that the Torah is composed specifically of the
laws written throughout the text from Exodus 12 to near the end of
Deuteronomy. This includes not only the “ten commandments” of
Exodus 20, and not only the supposed “great commandments” of
Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18, but all of the laws given in the
covenants through Moses. These commandments are required to be
obeyed (Leviticus 19:37, Deuteronomy 13:4, 27:10, etc).
The Torah itself was established as the
way for God's people, Israel, to operate, and as the framework for
their society. The obedient society was to have its law, government,
theology, ritual, and culture determined through the Torah. Not only
does it describe how to be right with God on an individual level, but
it describes how the nation as a whole is to operate righteously.
While many may think they agree with
the notion that the Torah is the framework that God established to be
done, many times this is not actually being perceived from the way an
ancient Israelite might have. For example, the Torah repeatedly
states that the commandments are to be observed forever (“all of
the days” - Deuteronomy 11:1, Deuteronomy 5:29, etc), and it
prophesies that the scattered of Israel will be caused to return to
the land of Canaan and then obey the Torah fully (Deuteronomy
30:1-10). Furthermore, the Torah requires that commands shall not be
added to it or be removed from it (Deuteronomy 4:2, 12:32), and
provides tests for prophets. As stated in the prophets test of
Deuteronomy 12:32-13:5, false prophets cause to compel us through
their prophecy to not walk according to the way we were commanded to
walk (v.5). Even if a prophet performs signs or miracles (v.1), they
are to be tested. Obviously, the way being commanded to walk is the
entire Torah, with all of its commandments. If an ancient Israelite
believed all of this, and believed what God said in the Torah, in
seeking to obey and do as commanded, then this Israelite would need
to apply the test for prophets in the case that any sort of prophecy
after Moses was encountered. However, this requirement is commonly
not heeded in modern times, and instead we have allowed traditional
acceptance of prophets to be our “prophets test”, rather than the
requirements of the Torah itself. If God indeed gave us a way to
test whether someone is truly speaking from Him, then we should use
the test He established rather than making up our own test, or rather
than just assuming that everyone prior to us handled the test
correctly. God certainly does not expect us to simply believe anyone
who claims to be from Him, and the existence of false prophets is
even said to be a test for us to see whether we truly love Him
(Deuteronomy 13:3). We are expected to test the prophets after
Moses, just as the ancient Israelites were. The Torah itself is to
be the basis for our belief system, and therefore is to serve as a
standard for all future prophets.
Today, the Torah typically does not
serve that role as being the framework or the basis for our belief,
even among many groups that claim to accept it or even obey it.
Instead, we are raised or otherwise taught to believe “all of the
Bible” and assume that it is wholly inspired, whether that “Bible”
is the 1647 Protestant canon, the TNK (“Old Testament”), or
otherwise. The way that we have formed our beliefs is not based upon
the framework of the Torah, but instead, is based upon the assumption
that all of these traditionally accepted works reflect one single
belief system. Instead of forming our understanding through the
system that God gave for His people through Moses, we have formed our
understanding through these later prophets and later works, then we
have imposed that understanding upon what God originally commanded.
Through this process, we do not see the Torah for what it is and what
it actually says, but we have allowed ourselves to simply assume that
it says what we think it should. If we have believed righteousness
cannot come through the law because of what future prophets said,
then we must recognize that the Torah itself conflicts with those
prophets in stating that the purpose of the law is to be our
righteousness (Deuteronomy 6:20, 25) and that the law is not a vain
thing to do (Deuteronomy 32:47), or we must reject the literal words
and mentally rewrite exceptions or clarifications into the text to
force it to read differently (which likely has gone on without our
conscious awareness). Also, whenever the law states that the
covenant will be remembered despite Israel breaking it (Leviticus
26:40-45), and that Israel will be caused to obey all of the Torah
and therefore receive all they were promised (Deuteronomy 30:1-10),
we likely must construe these passages into either being evil things
brought upon Israel or being false prophecies in order to justify not
changing certain theological beliefs. Similarly, in many verses
where detailed commands are given for rituals, we might not even
notice that the commands require that the rituals be done at the
“tent” or “tabernacle”, and instead, we might have rewritten
it in our minds to read “temple”. Because of bringing all this
focus to all of these later works, which we might not have even
realized we had been doing, many of us ultimately reject what God
said in the Torah to allow for the preservation of the “whole
Bible”, despite the Torah being established as God's system for His
people. That is, the Torah ends up being held at the lowest
importance, and is rejected in the case of any disagreement with
later prophecies or writings, many times without the person even
being aware that they have been doing this. This is obviously a
problem in adhering to what God asked of us through Moses, and
amounts to a rejection of the prophets test.
In having a “Torah-centric” belief,
we use the Torah as the basis for our understanding and the guideline
for our behavior and mindset. Obviously, in believing that the Torah
is legitimate and in believing that it is true, one would expect to
therefore believe what it says and then adhere to it. Part of
adhering to the Torah, as previously mentioned, is the use of its
prophets tests. If a prophet teaches to walk in a way different than
the commands of the Torah, he is false. Adding to or removing from
the law is prohibited by Deuteronomy 4:2 and 12:32. If a prophet
prophesies that a command is no longer necessary, or that it is
obsolete, or that it has been changed, then that ultimately amounts
to removing it from the law, which is not allowed to be done.
Likewise, if a prophet prophesies that a new law is being given for
the entire nation, then that prophet is also prophesying
disobedience. In such a system, there truly is not any legitimate
way other than doing what was commanded. It does not matter whether
a prophet performs signs or wonders (Deuteronomy 13:1) or whether the
prophet tries to characterize the change to the law as being somehow
good or foreshadowed, a change is a change. It does not matter if a
prophet generically claims that the Torah is “good” or “true”
when his prophecy amounts to changing the Torah or teaching to no
longer walk in it. By holding the Torah as our primary document, we
trust the words of the Torah over the words of future prophets,
including the prophets and figures that have been traditionally
accepted, and for this reason we hold the Torah to still be true,
applicable, commanded, and required to be obeyed by all who wish to
serve YAHUAH.
To truly apply the prophets tests of
the Torah, we need to have not already decided that a prophet is
“true” before “testing” him. In some sense, the wording of
Deuteronomy 18:21 would imply that we are to approach the acceptance
of prophets with skepticism, and not simply assume that a prophet is
true. In applying this today, we hold all prophets after Moses with
skepticism until a sign or fulfillment is given (Deuteronomy
18:21-22). If they do not obviously change the Torah with their
prophecy and do not prophesy in the name of other gods, they must
still provide some sort of verification to be confirmed as a true
prophet that we must listen to.
In dealing with traditionally accepted
prophets, such as the prophets of the TNK (Isaiah, Jeremiah, etc), we
potentially only have claims of prophetic fulfillments, and have no
actual verification to go off of today. It may be argued that the
book of Jeremiah prophesied correctly regarding the 70 years of
captivity, but in reality, we do not know when that claim was exactly
made or whether it was fulfilled in that exact way. The primary
author of this website once knew personally an individual who claimed
to have made fulfilled prophecies and done signs and miracles, and
this person, who was later recognized to indeed be false, had written
his claims in a book. Simply because claims of prophetic
fulfillments were written in a book and passed on does not actually
confirm the speaker of these claims to be a true prophet. In the
case of the post-mosaic prophets that are dead and that we only know
about because of books and quotes that were attributed to them, they
are often going to amount to being “unverifiable”. Therefore,
while it is indeed possible for there to be true prophets, even
today, we should likely not be in the business of just accepting
prophets after Moses without being given verification.
In having a more Torah-centric
perspective, by focusing on the Torah and being skeptical of future
prophets, we may begin to recognize more of what the Torah commanded.
We will begin to notice conflicts between what God commanded and
between what some of the prophets we once accepted taught, even with
prophets we thought to be pro-Torah. The ultimate result should be
the return to what God commanded, and the return to the system which
He established for all time.
Our return to His Torah is what is
required. The Torah is the difference between good and life and
death and evil (Deuteronomy 30:15-16). It is within our power to do
(Deuteronomy 30:14). In being Torah-centric, we focus on what He
required of us, and we seek to understand what He said through the
lens of the Torah itself, not by filtering it through later
traditions and later prophets. While we believe future prophets can
be legitimate, we recognize that we are required to test prophets and
use the Torah as the basis for that test. The Torah is therefore
upheld as our primary and foremost document.
