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Colossians 2:17
These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Messiah. Sometimes we make the mistake of interpreting the Bible by the virtue of one verse instead of understanding the verse by the virtue of the overall context. That would be like saying that Yosemite Park is an orchard because of a couple of hazelnut trees (that I can document with pictures) in the middle of the vastness of the coniferous trees which define this beautiful expense of land. When we read the verse, Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath (Colossians 2:16) in the mind-frame that God is telling us not to pay attention to His former command concerning the Levitical calendar and diet is doing just that. To read this with an anti-Torah observance twist is completely ignoring the context of the Letter to the Colossians. This epistle was addressed to the formerly pagan Colossians striving to take Torah upon them while receiving criticism from others about it. Paul encourages them by telling them that they are right because, The Levitical calendar and diet concerns, are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Messiah (Colossians 2:17). Every shadow betrays a shadow caster and in this case Messiah is the Shadow-Caster of the festivals and diet concerns in Leviticus. Jewish sages have put together a Midrash that compares all of Jewish history to the phases of the moon. Here is how it works, ‘So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations (Matthew 1:17). If each generation from Abraham is one day, we have a full moon at the time of king David, darkness at the time of the Babylonian deportation, indeed a dark time in our History, and a full moon again at the time of Messiah. Moonlight creates a shadow. If I were to stand still during the movement of the moon during the night I would see my shadow move from one place to the other, first behind me, then in front of me. In this case, Messiah is the shadow caster whose shadow we see on earth. We see His shadow both before and after His ‘full’ manifestation. Again, a shadow betrays a ‘Shadow-Caster’, and the diet and calendar Levitical injunctions are the ‘shadow’ of Messiah. Paul tells of those who would discourage the newly-born Colossian disciples’ attempts at following Torah that, they are ‘not holding fast to the Head, (Colossians 2:19; 1 Corinthians 11:13). That same midrash needs another twenty-eight generations for the Messiah to return in His ‘fullness’. That gives us a time of darkness somewhere during the time of the Spanish Inquisition, again another dark time in our History, to take us again to the fullness of the manifestation of Messiah at the end of this age, when He comes to reign on the earth. May it be soon Abba, even in our days. In the mean-time, may we rejoice in Him in the ‘shadow’ of His Presence among us.
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Romans 14:6
The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of Adonai Each religion distinguishes itself through its calendar of events and yearly feasts, but Abba is the One who has created and organized the celestial bodies to show us His calendar (Genesis 1:14), so we should leave it up to Him to teach us what the important times of the year are. In the Book of Leviticus the Almighty teaches us about the weekly Sabbath and also of seven heavenly appointments called in the Hebrew text ‘moadim’ (Leviticus 23). These are commanded to be observed perpetually throughout our generations wherever we are. One may argue that Paul is the one who taught us to abolish these feasts, but a reading of his lectures within their own contextual values shows us that he never did but actually practiced them. We must remember that in the days of Paul, ‘Christianity’ did not exist; that before their divorce from Jerusalem to pursue their adulterous relationship with Rome, believers were merely a sect of Judaism called: the Sect of the Nazarenes (Acts 24:5). Believers were actually found practicing the Levitical Festivals up to the fourth century C.E. when Constantine finally ruled them illegal in the Council of Nicaea in favor of Roman observances. Whereas Jews in the congregations were already familiar with God’s calendar of events, Paul had to teach them to the gentile believers as well as to encourage them to renounce their pagan holy days. In Corinthians Paul gives the congregation instructions on how to observe Passover (1 Corinthians 5:8), and all throughout Acts, Paul times his journeys according to the Levitical schedule. The Pauline texts used to abolish Levitical Holy Days for believers are texts divorced from their context. For example in Romans, Paul seems to teach that there are no days above others and that the distinction of days is a matter of personal opinion (Romans 14:5-6). We must remember that the Roman congregations were made up of both Jews and gentiles, and that we are only left to speculations as to the subject matter of the text. In any case though, Levitical ‘moadim’ are Holy Appointments and commandments given by the very Voice of God in Horeb, not issues subject to personal opinion. I would therefore safely assume that Paul cannot be talking about them in this text. The non-Jewish disciples in Colossi were given a hard time by their pagan counter-parts, and even from non-believing Jews for adopting the Biblical Festivals, but Paul encouraged the disciples to not let people bother them about it, because they are important times shadowing the reality of the Messiah who will soon return to rule and judge the earth (Colossians 2:17-18). Lastly, Paul seems to rebuke the Galatians congregation for following the Biblical Festivals, but a closer look at that text shows us that he was actually talking to gentile believers about their inclinations towards pagan observances (Galatians 4:8-17); the adjectives used in this text could hardly define God’s Appointed Days. Again, we must read the text within its proper context. People today have even forgotten which day is the Master’s Sabbath, and some even say that it can be observed on any day as long as we take one. Before He left, in His Endtime discourse, the Master instructed us to pray that our ‘flight be not … on the Sabbath Day’ (Matthew 24:20). The contextual Sabbath in this passage is God’s weekly Sabbath, but how can believers pray that prayer if they don’t even know what day it is? The Levitical Feasts are our yearly appointments with our God. They lead us to the final of all Appointments at the end of time, but someone who wants us to miss the Heavenly Rendez-Vous falsified the information. Let us now return to our first love and the truth if the Word; you don’t want to miss the ‘Appointment. Do you? |
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