The Deuteronomy 13 Test
There is an excellent on-line teaching by 119 Ministries called, “The Deuteronomy 13 Test” that I highly recommend you watch/read. You can do so by going to this URL:
http://119ministries.com/the-deuteronomy-thirteen-test
In this teaching, they direct our attention to (as you may have guessed) what is said in the thirteenth chapter of Deuteronomy, wherein we find…
DEUTERONOMY 13:
1 If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder,
2 And the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them;
3 Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams: for the Lord your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
4 Ye shall walk after the Lord your God, and fear him, and keep his commandments, and obey his voice, and ye shall serve him, and cleave unto him.
5 And that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death; because he hath spoken to turn you away from the Lord your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed you out of the house of bondage, to thrust thee out of the way which the Lord thy God commanded thee to walk in. So shalt thou put the evil away from the midst of thee.
We have some rather clear instructions given to us in this passage of Deuteronomy. By this “test” we can identify who we should be listening to and who we should not. The Jews understand this very well. In fact, I posted the previous section (The Deuteronomy 12 Test) to my Facebook page yesterday and this was one of the responses from a Jewish brother:
I can trace my family to Mount Sinai… Christianity can only trace back to the vision of one man Paul, who had a vision, with no witnesses…. Much like Joseph Smith and the Mormons… Do you really think G-d would forgo His chosen people and prophets to hand it over to pagan Romans and build His new “Church” in Rome. The same Romans that slaughtered His people and occupied His land and destroyed His Temple??? C’mon man… And “mysteriously” blind His people…
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The pagans call HASHEM’s Holy Days and eating unprofitable… you’re preaching Pro- Roman NT doctrine and don’t even know it…
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…Although your lack of study in Torah and Tanakh has you confused, it’s okay cause it’s not your book. It was written by my Jewish people for our Jewish people. We are His chosen, we follow His instructions. Not the words of pagans from Rome! Our faith is headquartered in Jerusalem, not Rome. We have no idol, you have the idol of J-Man and violated the a First Commandment: Thou shall have no other gods before Me… What’s so hard about that and you Christians can’t get over that??? You want to follow G-d except when it hard… That’s why His Chosen People, we Jews will always be few. Cause only a few have the obedience to stick with it. The Romans have sold you a bill of goods like Mohammed sold Islam! I like to say “Judaism, often imitated, never duplicated and the rest are just counterfeits”
—A Facebook friend
He, like many Jews reject both Yeshua as well as Paul (and the whole New Testament for that matter). This is largely because, as my brother so well put it in another thread response to that same Note, “Christianity comes from Rome, not Jerusalem and His Holy Land of Israel!!”
Sadly, he is right! Most of the beliefs and practices of modern Christianity do come from Rome and from other anti-Torah/anti-Semitic Gentile interpretations of the Holy Scriptures, going back to the likes of Nicolas, the Acts 6:5 proselyte of Antioch (from whom came the Nicolaitans, who are likened unto Balaam, who got the people of YHWH to disobey Him through whoredom), Marcion, Constantine, and much later folks such as Darby and Scofield (among many others) who all taught an Antinomian message, causing many to veer away from the clear teachings of the Torah. As soon as Gentiles became the dominant majority of “followers” and “believers” in “Jesus” we began to see a falling away from all things Hebrew. The Torah and Tanakh became the “Old Testament” and a mentality developed, which basically has us thinking that anything preceding the book of Matthew is not really relevant for us today.
But if we ever want to reach the Jew for Christ, we must be able to present Yeshua as a Messiah/Prophet who kept the Torah. The same is true of the writings of Paul. If we want to present the Scriptures Paul wrote as a tool for witnessing (such as using the “Romans Road” as it has come to be known in some evangelical circles), we had better be certain that we’re understanding Paul to be a man who passes the Deuteronomy 13 test. Otherwise, the Jew who knows his Torah will never accept anything we may have to say concerning his writings. And rightfully so. A Jew who knows his Torah and tries to live by it is absolutely justified in his rejection of the pagan, Torah abolishing Greek “Jesus” we all too often portray as their Messiah. In this regard, we may do well to learn a thing or two from Nehemiah Gordon’s teaching on the Greek Jesus vs the Hebrew Yeshua:
In the About section of this video, Nehemiah writes:
An astonishing realization has recently gripped the Christian world: “Jesus Christ” was not a blond-haired, blue-eyed Gentile. Yeshua of Nazareth was raised in an observant Jewish family in a culture where the Torah (five books of Moses) was the National Constitution. Yeshua’s teachings, which supposedly form the basis for Western Christianity, are now filtered through 2000 years of traditions born in ignorance of the land, language, and culture of the Bible. The issues over which Yeshua wrestled with the Pharisees are simply not understood by modern Christians; nor are his most important instructions followed by those who claim to be his disciples. Former Pharisee, Nehemia Gordon, a Dead Sea Scrolls scholar and Semitic language expert, explores the ancient Hebrew text of the Gospel of Matthew from manuscripts long hidden away in the archives of Jewish scribes. Gordon’s research reveals that the more “modern” Greek text of Matthew, from which the Western world’s versions were translated, depicts “another Jesus” from the Yeshua portrayed in the ancient Hebrew version of Matthew. Gordon explains the life-and-death conflict Yeshua had with the Pharisees as they schemed to grab the reins of Judaism in the first century, and brings that conflict into perspective for both Jew and Christian alike.
Unfortunately, in the Church today, many Christians actually believe that Yeshua violated the Torah because of their misconceptions concerning what we see Him doing on the Sabbath among other things. Those who believe and teach this clearly have not thought this through. The Bible makes it crystal clear that “sin is transgression of the Law” (1 John 3:4). So, if Yeshua violated any of that Law, then He was a sinner! If He was a sinner, then He could not be the sinLESS Lamb that takes away our sins. If He is not the sinless Lamb, then our faith in Him is completely and totally in vain.
Many also believe and teach that Paul was against the Torah, imagining that he taught us all that “Old Testament” stuff has been “nailed to the cross” and is thus no longer applicable for the Believer in Yeshua today. We’ve supposedly been “set free from the curse”—that in their mind is the Torah—so we no longer need to pay any attention to it. Nothing can be further from the truth! I believe the Devil has done an outstanding job of twisting and distorting the Christian Church’s view of Paul’s writings in order to cause a stark division between Christian and Jew. Indeed, Peter warned against this in 2 Peter 2:14-18, when he said that ignorant and unstable people would twist and distort the writings of Paul and fall into the “error of lawLESSness.” Until we correct this massive problem in our understanding of the Scriptures, the Jew will never come to know their Jewish Messiah and the (former) Gentile will remain ignorant to what it actually means to “love” the God they claim to believe in. Neither will our Messiah return until the Jews repent and call upon His name. Can you see why this is a seriously important issue for all of us?
The Jews who know their Torah and Tanakh, have read Deuteronomy 13 and Jeremiah 31:31-33. They know that no true prophet of YHWH will ever violate Torah and they know about a “new covenant” that is to be written on their hearts and minds. They know the Holy Spirit leads them to truth. They know the Torah is the standard upon which truth and life is to be judged. It is a permanent standard. Indeed, Yeshua Himself declared that the Law of YHWH will remain so long as heaven and earth remain and that not one “jot or tittle” is to be changed.
MATTHEW 5:
17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
19 Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
It should be noted that not all of the Torah and the Prophets has been fulfilled. Yeshua still has yet to fulfill many prophetic passages of Scripture. Furthermore, to suggest that something YHWH said would be “everlasting” and be a “permanent statute” and be in existence “forever” has somehow been abolished will never make sense to the Torah observant Jew. To be honest it shouldn’t make sense to us either! Either YHWH changes not or He is a liar.
DEUTERONOMY 13:
17 And there shall cleave nought of the cursed thing to thine hand: that the Lord may turn from the fierceness of his anger, and shew thee mercy, and have compassion upon thee, and multiply thee, as he hath sworn unto thy fathers;
18 When thou shalt hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, to keep all his commandments which I command thee this day, to do that which is right in the eyes of the Lord thy God.
Christians believe the New Testament is the truth. The Jew believes the Old Testament is the truth. We however, believe the whole thing is true from Genesis to Revelation—and it is all in agreement with itself!
DEUTERONOMY 12:32 What thing soever I command you, observe to do it: thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it.
According to the Deuteronomy 13 test, if anyone teaches that YHWH’s commandments have been diminished, abolished, and/or done away with, he is a liar and the truth is not in Him, which is exactly what the “beloved apostle” John, who was the last living Apostle of Yeshua reiterated.
1 JOHN 2:
1 My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous:
2 And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.
3 And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments.
4 He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.
5 But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him.
6 He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked.
Yeshua clearly told us in many places in the New Testament that He and His Father are one.
JOHN 10:30 I and my Father are one.
However, many seem to operate under the misguided assumption that Yeshua had different (or newer) commandments that somehow supersede those of His Father. That simply cannot be true. John 10:30 says they are one. This means they are 100% in unity with One Another. It means that whatever the Father commanded, He did too. Whatever the Father said or did, He did too. In fact, He even said that if He did not do as the Father does, that we should not believe Him!
JOHN 10:
37 If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not.
38 But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him.
If we are to now claim to be in Him (Yeshua), then we must “walk even as He walked” (1 John 2:6). This is true for all Believers who claim Him as their Savior and Messiah. Thus, it also had to be true of the Apostle Paul, who boldly proclaimed that we should imitate him as he imitated Christ (1 Corinthians 11:1). Paul passed the Deuteronomy 13 test. Will we?
– Rob Skiba
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