Imagine having a very long book that tells a massive, intricate, beautiful story in which all of the foundations are carefully laid out in the first part of the book, and then, the final 1/3 of the book starts revealing what all those foundations actually meant in the beginning.
Of course, what is revealed in the last part of the book is all based on everything that was detailed in the first part of it, and without all the details that were thoroughly described in the first part, much of the last part of the book simply wouldn’t make much sense. If one ignored the first part, and lacked all the details it contained, then what is revealed could be re-imagined, or interpreted to mean many things other than what they actually mean.
This is, essentially, how christianity views scripture. And, it is why there are more than 41,000 different flavors (denominations) of christianity that often disagree vehemently with one another over specific meanings of things found in the scriptures.
It is not uncommon, when sharing the Holy Spirit’s truths with christians, to be told, “That’s all Old Testament, but we’re New Testament,” as if the New Testament somehow eliminated the Old Testament. Actually, the division between the two parts is somewhat imaginary—imagined by christianity, the counterfeit of the true faith.
While it is true that the Old Testament contains books written before Messiah Yahoshua’s earthly ministry, and the New Testament was written after it, there is no actual separation between the two, for it was all inspired by the same Holy Spirit.
Scripture is scripture. There is not some scripture that is valid and some that is not. It is all inspired by the Holy Spirit, and is all truth (in its original languages and contexts).
Now, the Old Testament presents physical foreshadows of spiritual real substances that are revealed in the New Testament—but, nothing replaced anything else. One is a physical representation of something, and what it actually foreshadowed is the spiritual real substance. It is symbols of things, and then the actual things themselves.
However, when sharing truth with many christians, their approach to the scriptures makes the Almighty seem like a schizophrenic—or, like there was one God for the Old Testament and another one for the New Testament. Such thinking is simply ludicrous, but it explains why most christians have such a lack of understanding of the Father’s traditions (I know I was ignorant about them when I was christian).
Yes, there were ordinances given in the Torah that were part of a physical foreshadow of what would later be revealed as Messiah’s bride and the work of the Holy Spirit (those who had the physical covenant, or Ten Commandments, were under the physical law—those who have the spiritual covenant, or seal of the Holy Spirit, are under the guidance of the Holy Spirit).
Those ordinances in the Torah mandated many different physical rules and regulations regarding HOW things were to be done by those who possessed the physical covenant. The physical Jews were commanded HOW they were to eat and drink, HOW they were to dress, HOW they were to enjoy spousal intimacy, and HOW they were to observe the Sabbaths physically.
They were also commanded, in many ways, to stay completely separate from all those who were not physical Jews (Gentiles). This was a physical foreshadow of what is taught in the New Testament about light and darkness, and how there is no fellowship between them. The members of Messiah’s bride, who are indwelt by the light, are to maintain a separation from those who are not of the light. When those of the light refuse to dim that light around those of the darkness, there will be a necessary chasm between them.
Because all of those ordinances were physical, and were foreshadows of future-revealed spiritual real substances, when Messiah’s work of redemption was completed on Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and the Feast of Firstfruits, and the spiritual covenant was given on the Feast of Weeks (Acts 2), those physical rules and regulations were no longer necessary, as the real substances had been revealed.
The clean vs. unclean laws were abolished in Messiah, as the spiritual real substance of Messiah’s bride was revealed (those who receive the spiritual covenant are the true Jews—it has nothing to do with anything physical), and we can see those laws were merely a picture of the bride keeping herself separate from the world.
Now, most christians make a grave error in understanding about this by erroneously thinking that the removal of the laws mandating HOW things were to be done (eating, drinking, dressing, having sex, observing the Sabbaths, etc.), somehow abolished the Father’s traditions altogether, including His Sabbaths.
Nothing could be further from the truth! If the physical ordinances in the law of Moses being removed meant that Yah’s Sabbaths are no more, then that also necessarily means that there is no longer eating, drinking, clothing, or having sex. Hmmmm . . . that makes no sense whatsoever.
There is still eating, there is still drinking, there is still clothing, there is still sex, and Yah’s Sabbaths are still His—He still gives them to His children as a perpetual family sign. There has never been a single change to ANY of Yah’s Sabbaths themselves. The only thing that changed were the rules mandating HOW they must be observed. There are no longer any physical ordinances dictating how one must observe them.
That’s why the apostle Paul continued observing the Sabbaths (weekly and feasts) himself (Acts 18:20-21, Acts 20:6, Acts 20:16, Acts 27:9, 1 Corinthians 16:8), and also taught them to the Gentile converts (1 Corinthians 5:7-8, 1 Corinthians 11:2, 2 Thessalonians 2:15 ). Paul said in Colossians 2:16-17 that we are no longer to judge HOW others eat, drink, or observe the Sabbaths, but he never said that eating, drinking, and the Sabbaths were no more.
The reason christianity gets these facts so wrong is because it is a counterfeit of the true faith, and was invented out of ignorance concerning the Father’s traditions—thinking they were traditions that belonged to the physical Jews.
The early promulgaters of christianity were pagans who hated the Jews, and wanted to separate themselves from everything Jewey. So, they simply slapped some scriptural facts onto their paganism, and crafted an entirely new false religion. That new religion called christianity that Constantine codified in the 4th century more closely resembles Constantine’s sun worship than it does spiritual truth (SUNday assembling, christ-mass, easter/ishtar, etc.).
And, to this day, most christians look at the Father’s traditions the same way that their pagan forebears did—either with ambivalence (ignorance), or with loathing, as if the Father’s own traditions constitute some kind of legalism, or that those who choose to identify with the Father by honoring His family’s traditions are “Judaizers” (because most christians don’t know the difference between the law and the Sabbaths—and they conflate the two as if they were the same thing).
When you don’t understand the first part of the book, you’ll never understand the last part. Christianity is a false religion that, for the most part, ignores (hates) the first part of the book (at least in a practical sense), and misinterprets the last part of the book because of that ignorance of the first part.
If one is not both OT and NT, then one is not scripturally sound. If one proclaims to be one or the other, one is in gross spiritual error. The entirety of scripture is ONE STORY. It details Yah and His people, and specifically shows the Bridegroom and His bride, the friends of the Bridegroom, the friends of the bride, and the wedding guests. It shows us the best man and the bridesmaids.
By choosing willful ignorance of the meanings of the Hebrew scriptures (OT), most christians cannot describe who the bride is, who the different members of the wedding party are, or who the wedding guests are. They have no idea what the three spiritual harvests are (barley, wheat, and grapes), or how they are tied to the different groups who will be at the wedding feast (eternity).
They ignore the foundations of the book that provide all the rich details concerning the real substances that are later revealed. And, in so doing, they come up with their own meanings to explain the real substances (and always get them wrong, having no compass of discernment from the first part of the book).
What is happening in this country right now is a good analogy. The leftists are trying to erase all the details of the beginnings of this country, and by rewriting that history, they are trying to remake the country into something it was never intended to be.
The leftist revisionists are to America what christianity is to spiritual truth. That’s why Paul warned of the coming of christianity, calling it “a falling away” (2 Thessalonians 2:3).
Scripture is ONE VOLUME. There is one Father, one Messiah (who is Yahoshua), one Holy Spirit, and one body of believers in His truths (Ephesians 4:4-6). Outside of those truths are all the false teachings of christianity and every other religion of man on the planet.
For more information: What Are the Old and New Covenants?