Dear Pastor

It has been more than 10 years ago that I walked out of church one Sunday, frustrated with how another Scriptural teaching had been misrepresented from the pulpit. I will say right up front that I don't believe for a minute that a "deliberate lie" was being taught as "truth." I am sure that the speaker (not you, in that particular instance) was speaking "the truth as they understood it." Nevertheless, I am going to use a broader brush as I paint the objection I want to raise today, and that is the Church as a whole (Catholic as well as Protestant) has been distorting the teaching about the "Old Testament" and the "New Testament" for centuries and it has led (not just in my opinion, but the opinion of thousands of others) to a distorted view within the New Testament Church in general about what God says in His word and how it applies to all of us as followers of Christ.

I walked out of church back then, and I walked away from that corporate fellowship for several years because I was frustrated and confused - I needed to do more reading and thinking for myself instead of accepting at face value what was being taught each week from a pulpit. Eventually I became involved in home Bible fellowship with other believers who had come to the same theological fork in the road. Unfortunately, years into that fellowship, I realized that there would always be a vocal few who had become so disenchanted with established religion that it seemed they mainly wanted to spend our time pointing out the errors in teaching and criticizing any who continued to remain in the traditional church, discounting the faith of many who are genuinely following Christ as best as they know how.

That left me with a dilemma: 

• Hebrews 10 clearly admonishes let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching. 
• Matthew writes: in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 
• On the other hand, Peter wrote in his second letter: there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies. 

I had come to yet another fork in the road. I want and need to be in fellowship. But, are some of the teachings from the pulpit indeed deliberate misrepresentations of Scripture? Or have minor errors in doctrine snowballed down through the centuries? Either way, is the end result something I could just shut up and live with?

To my way of thinking, if we are not faithful with the "small things" in doctrine and theology, where does that lead us as people who want to be, and claim to be, followers of Christ? That same Christ who claimed I am in the Father, and the Father (is) in Me. The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me... That same Christ who also said not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. And finally, the same Christ who said I am not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets... [and] not one dot of the Law would be done away with until Heaven and Earth are destroyed.

So what, you may ask, does that have to do with walking away from the church or disagreeing with what has been (or continues to be) taught from the pulpit? What are my options when it comes to rightly dividing the Word of Truth? Not that I am overly concerned with what others think about me (because I hardly think "others" give very much thought to me in the first place,) but I don't want to be one who is constantly banging a clanging cymbal or sowing discord among the believers. Is it better that I just shut up and sit down, shut up and walk out, or take my questions to someone who will listen?

By now, I am sure you are scratching your head and ready to put down this letter, but I will try to get to the point of my frustration.

Yesterday, the guest speaker, in explaining the difference between the "Old Covenant" and the "New Covenant", made several points that raised questions in my mind. Was it simply a case of over-simplification in order to come up with concise bullet points for a visual? But these are the points that were represented:

I do agree that some of these are mostly true: 

• Yes, the Old Testament was a foreshadowing of Messiah. But Christ himself said that he came to fulfill but not abolish God's commandments. 
• Yes, the tablets given to Moses were written on stone, but "external behavior" is usually an outcome of a change of heart. Abraham's faith and obedience were counted to him as righteousness; are those not external behaviors? 
• The Law was our Instruction on how to live our lives as evidence of being a chosen and set-apart people. (The rabbis added "guards" to those Instructions down through the centuries that became more important than God's original instructions!) 
• When Christ came, he lived a life demonstrating how those Instructions were to apply in real life. When he ascended to heaven after his crucifixion, he gave the Holy Spirit to come alongside and guide us.

Confusing the issue, it was stated outright in the November 20 presentation that the Old Testament was for the nation of Israel, and that gentiles being included in the faith started in the book of Acts of the Apostles. 

Wait. What?!?

I don't believe I am veering too far off track when I question this. (I think what I actually said at the time was, "That's not true!")

Walter Kaiser Jr., President Emeritus of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, wrote Mission in the Old Testament to challenge the idea that mission [to gentiles] is a New Testament development... God promised to bless Abraham and bless all peoples through him. God’s promise of blessing, which also appears in the creation accounts of Genesis, is one of the key themes that make up his promise.
Kaiser's contention is that God didn't forget the rest of the world when He chose Abraham. Instead, God was choosing Israel to be His light and emissary to the rest of the world. 

Israel was set apart by God as a nation to emulate. Isaiah 42 says: I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness; I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the [nations.]  In Exodus, God says that He delivered Israel not only for their own benefit, but so that "the Egyptians will know that I am the LORD."

The Old Testament is full of examples of "gentiles" who were followers of the God of Israel: Melchizedek, Jethro, Balaam, Rahab, and Ruth, Elijah the Tishbite, Caleb the Kenizzite, and we further are told in Exodus 12 that a mixed multitude left Egypt with the sons of Jacob. Further, in Exodus 12, Numbers 15, Leviticus 24 and elsewhere God states: "One law shall be for the native-born and for the stranger who dwells among you.”

Under the Old Covenant, circumcision was the sign of that allowed a stranger dwelling among them to become as a native of the land. It was the physical symbol of God's covenant with Abraham which demonstrated that person had become set apart. Anyone who did not have the sign of the covenant became cut off and could not share in the land inheritance. It has been argued by many that circumcision is a covenant tied to the land of Israel. It is true that by the time of Christ and 1st century Judaism, the Messianic kingdom and land inheritance were tied together. 

It is also true that in the 1st century church, the apostles agreed that the minimum standard for gentile converts who were turning to YHVH was to abstain from things polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from things strangled, and from blood. (Acts 15:19-20) They were not expected to have all their religious training at the time of baptism. In other words, they were to turn from elements of pagan worship, then be baptized, and then spend time in the word to become familiar with how to live their lives set apart for God as a witness (or light) to others. Peter and James concluded at the Jerusalem Council in verse 21 that "Moses has had throughout many generations those who preach him in every city, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath”, which implied that further instruction to the new converts was to be received in weekly teaching from Scriptures (which at that time was the "Old Testament"!) 

This is just one small point of doctrine that I want to address. My point being, these differences in how we understand or apply Scripture have led over the years to a theology that teaches "The Church" has replaced Israel, which is antisemitic and ignores the fact that God repeatedly says throughout Scripture that He is not finished with Israel, that Christ came to call the Lost Sheep of Israel, and we are grafted in to Israel!

This is my concern: that by saying - or even implying - that the Old Testament was for the "Jews" (which is exactly what many people in Christian churches say and believe - I have heard it with my own ears in our own church), we are saying the the God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever, the God who gave us the instructions for how we are to live our lives set apart for Him as a witness to the nations, just one day between Malachi and Matthew suddenly decided, Oops, I changed my mind. Yes, that sounds like a ludicrous over-simplification, but isn't that the end result of that teaching?

I think we need to be very careful to rightly divide the Word of Truth, and not simply keep repeating doctrines of men that have been handed down through the years by those in the second and third centuries who sought to distance themselves from "the Jews" when the going got rough after the Bar Kokhba revolt.

I know this was not short, and I hope you were able to discern my point. I very much appreciate you and the heart you have for our assembly and for our region. And I would not have bothered to bring my concern to you if I felt you do not care about me and what I think.