Jewish Law and Gentile Commands

I feel some people are forgetting that Israel as a separate nation began to exist with circumcision in Genesis (Bereshit) chapter 17, if you want to learn those laws that were intended for the whole world, just take a look at the same book in the previous 16 chapters, where God is dealing with gentiles only.

During the period of time described there, many people still remembered the One true G-d. Yet, the Lord began to prepare the means to preserve the memory of Himself through a nation that stayed safeguarded by a fence made out of ordinances that were arranged specifically for them. Those laws, given to Israel in Mount Sinai guaranteed the safekeeping of G-d’s truth.

Gentiles were taught moral principles and some ceremonial ones too (specially how to give offerings) before Israel even existed, that took place through Noah and his children as exemplified by Melchizedek king of Salem who wasn’t an Israelite, however since the rest of the world didn’t have Torah as delivered through Moses, gentiles soon forgot or completely distorted their knowledge about G-d.

During ages to come, the one nation that kept worshiping the One true G-d, was Israel alone, until Jesus arrived. In the New Covenant, the Holy Spirit came to indwell every single believer, therefore the ceremonial, Israeli nation oriented law, was not necessary to keep people mindful of G-d, instead of that Jesus said:

“Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.” John 16:13

However, Israel was born through Moses Law and the covenant of circumcision given to Abraham. Given the fact that Israel’s purpose on earth, of witnessing to the nations is not finished yet, therefore Israel must keep abiding by the same law that gave birth to her existence. In other words, Jews must remain Jewish as they are until messiah comes back in order to receive the accomplishment of the promises made through the prophets.

“Brethren, let every man, wherein he is called, therein abide with God.” 1 Corinthians 7:24

As for the Gentiles, they don’t need to become Israelites in order to be saved or to be faithful believers, yet they do need to remember that part of the law that was originally intended for them, I honestly believe that Genesis 1 - 16 and Leviticus 18-19, constitute two major references to identify those commands G-d planned for all mankind. I believe my argument is thoroughly supported by Paul (Rav Shaul) whe he explains how faith is actually older than Jewish Law, and how Jewish Law was given to become a sign (protector) of the faith already given to Abraham.

“For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not before God. For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.” Romans 4:2-3

Of course, Paul refers to the period of time previous to Chapter 17, which signals the origin of our faith to a moment that predates Jewish Law. Besides, Jesus’ priesthood also predates Jewish priesthood.

“Whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made an high priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec.” Hebrews 6:20

Since Melchisedec’s priesthood wasn’t gained through Jewish Halacha customs, then Jesus priesthood wasn’t either. Since Melchisedec’s priesthood was intended for all mankind as Abraham gave his tithes to this priest while he was still a gentile, then Abraham represented both gentiles and Jews in his act of worship. This proves that back then Jewish law wasn’t necessary to be righteous. Yet, it became necessary for the Israelites once Israel was born as a nation.

Jewish law once it was given reflected both those commands that had already been known previously to all mankind and those new commands that were exclusively to be kept by the holy nation. That’s why Noahide laws exist within Judaism, and I can’t avoid the similarity between Acts 15 commands and Genesis 9 commands. I don’t know if James had noahide laws in mind back then, may be not, but it seems to me He was just reminding new believers in Jesus about those universal commands given during the period of time of Noah and his Children.

My final advice is for all Christians to be mindful of that era when everyone was a gentile in order to find out what commands are meant for gentiles and what commands are meant for Jews, because they are not the same.

Blessings to you all!

Dr. Antonio Cordero Jr.

Re-evangelizing America

Philippians 3:8 “Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ”

Romans 1:14 “I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise.”

Last presidential elections based on immigrant, gay, women and race minority vote, the recent rejection for a pastor  Louie Giglio’s participation in an inauguration because he had talked against gay rights movements 20 years ago, latest  designation of Hagel as defense secretary in spite of his pro Iran and anti Israel agenda, government forcing business owners to pay for health insurance that covers voluntary abortions, etc. All these issues present a gloomy spiritual future for the nation of America as they evidence a shift towards liberalism and sin both in the political and religious arena.

How did this happen? Can America trace its footsteps back? Well, in the first place I believe these events are a consequence of the things which have been slowly occupying more and more ground within people’s hearts. It’s been a long non stopping process which could have been stopped only by the church of Christ. By that I don’t mean the political religious protestant lobby in DC; I mean the magnificent bride of Christ, just as He sees her from heaven, I mean the redeemed, new born and sanctified, community of people who worship God daily in spirit and truth.

It has a lot to do with prayer life, sanctity of family and matrimony, financial integrity including tithes & offerings and passion for the lost. I believe all these important qualities have been greatly weakened over the last 50 years in America. Yet, I know there is a huge remnant holding on to the truth with all its strength, working hard to keep Christian values alive against a flood of sin.

However, I believe there are some issues that have to be solved if we want America to be back on the track for blessing. Things I sometimes denounced when I was a Missionary to America, when the Lord had spoken to me about the coming hardships in American Economy, back then it was 1999 and Clinton’s administration enjoyed the best economy ever in the history of the US, I remember the message from God I delivered in Kansas: “ If God needs to hit your economy so you can look upwards instead of focusing on your material wealth, He will, because, He is more interested in your eternal salvation than your earthly satisfaction”.

The strain on American economy came short time later, and the destruction of the twin towers was just a symbol of what was ahead, two wars that ended raising oil prices and putting more money on America’s enemies’ pockets, and a crisis that has placed the Nation on the edge of a fiscal pit. Meanwhile the Americans don’t seem to be seeking help in God but have tried to find rest in strategies that have failed in the rest of the world, just look at the Venezuelan example, following the path of socialism lost the freedoms it had been so proud about.

One hint to understand the situation is that America’s social composition has changed, as I said when I started, immigrants, women, GLBT and other racial minorities have control over votes, they have become a majority when put together. But, how did the greatest Christian nation from where most protestant missionaries were sent all over the world failed to evangelize its own citizens? Where are all the internal urban missions standing at today?

Well, I believe there is still a fundamental misunderstanding in very many American Christians today: They confuse their own culture with Christianity. Somehow main stream historical denominations of Christianity are engulfed within a culture, which they defined as western, civilized and Christian. But, the truth is that suburban American way of life has mostly succeeded in placing the message of the gospel inside some sort of cultural cocoon, where it feels safe from a hostile environment but that makes it unable to have an effect on the outer world.

Some newer denominations have been able to remove their shell at least partially and are succeeding in approaching traditionally liberal environments; such is the case with Baptists and Pentecostals in New England, where historical denominations of protestant churches are almost nonexistent. But, Why? Is it because nontraditional denominations have leaned their values towards political correctness? No, actually they can be very confrontational in terms of Bible values. It’s because they can get rid of the cultural issue. They are not attached to a single type of worship, language, music, buildings, clothing, etc.

If Christians in America really want their country back into serving God, they need to abandon their comfort zone and sacrifice mainstream culture for the sake of saving the lost that live among them. That might represent a tremendous sacrifice, very necessary when the Nation is in great peril. That might represent the need to advance intercultural church attendance, the necessity of Christians becoming real defenders of those who have less, of those who feel discriminated against. It’s time to take that role back from the liberals whose only purpose is to gain power.

Christians in America have to become real missionaries to their own Nation, but they need to do it now.

I pray this word may move some towards that goal, I pray we may seek within our hearts what C.S. Lewis described as “Mere Christianity”, I pray Christians in the US learn to use the spiritual tools they have instead of their cultural Americanism in order to assimilate those who have been left out, so the situation won’t come on them as a tidal wave, so Christ salvation may become relevant to all the nations and peoples and tribes living in the US, while all those who worship Jesus put their culture and pride aside in order to be together and fight together against what really is destroying American core values, which is neither the left wing of politics, nor the gays, nor the blacks, nor the Latinos.

Let’s overcome our self contentment and fight against satan.

Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees!

In recent times there has been an imbalance in some biblical doctrines on which the pendulum of opinion has gone from one extreme to another, leading principles that had somehow been overlooked by most Christians to be the central dogma held by many ministries. In such a way, that these ministries tend to discredit anyone who disagrees with their extreme position. This does not mean there hasn’t been a previous lack of teaching on real issues of Holly Scripture, but the problem is that “fashionable” doctrine; seem to overwhelm those believers who spend their efforts seeking the latest revelation.

This reminds me of toothbrushes propaganda, in which every week appears the only brush that really cleanses teeth and makes the others totally useless. Beloved, this is only possible due to our lack of maturity as believers. However, my concern on this occasion, rather than the well-documented lack of sanity in the ministries that preach only one aspect of the gospel, be it prosperity, ministry, church growth, healing, and therefore incur in doctrinal imbalance; it is to teach something to those ministries that focus on sound doctrine.

It's good that we try to maintain sound doctrine, but for those who talk a lot about being advocates of sound doctrine I have a disclaimer: no one has the perfect doctrine. In theology we often categorize doctrines as first level and second level doctrines, which means that there are things that do not define us as Christians and others that do have such importance, so that we agree on those issues that are central to faith and salvation, and we agree to disagree on those issues that provide denominational identity but are not essential in order to be called Christians.

For example, Pentecostals and Baptists have doctrinal differences, but they all such differences deal with aspects that are not first level, not that they are unimportant, but still we consider each other brothers in Christ. 50 years ago the debate in Venezuela between these two denominations were so heated that bordered on the mutual excommunication, today we’ve overcome intolerance allowing us to work together on multiple initiatives.

This is something essential to be remembered when correcting brethren who hold different views from ours, where the law of love is what must prevail (1 Corinthians 8) above other biblical but secondary criteria, as was the case with the discussion that was raised in the early church about appropriate food, sometimes we are very confident that we are right (and possibly we are) but the issue is to let the law of love prevail in terms of tolerance to divergent opinions, since these opinions do not put our salvation at risk.

But, let us remember that the spirit of human religion is also to be considered a spirit of error since it causes believers to focus only on external and intellectual aspects of their faith and makes them neglect their personal life with the Lord, this results in pastors and ministers who persist in all kinds of sins and in parallel are mounted on a witch hunt against false doctrines. This is the leaven of the Pharisees Jesus spoke in Matthew 16:5-7.

Moreover as I said earlier, no one (except Jesus) has overall doctrinal perfection to always be right in each of the topics touched on Scripture, and sometimes we can be too proud by thinking that we know them all and Over time God shows us that maybe we were wrong. Maturity is the balance and sanity to keep biblical positions with humility, knowing that we are not infallible.

I'm not saying it isn’t right to correct erroneous or out of balance doctrines, but I have seen a greater danger in the Church which I mentioned earlier, and it is greater as it goes undetected. Boast, arrogance and hypocrisy. The Pharisees most times taught correctly divine law (Jesus told his disciples to obey what they said Mt 23:3) but they did not live properly that divine law. Though it is true that nobody knows and understands with absolute certainty all the doctrines of Scripture, there are many things that we can defend with big confidence but there are things we just can’t be dogmatic about and excommunicating our brethren over them is only an act of arrogance.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. Some reflection after I watched it.

I agree with many things said by fellow believers on this movie (http://christiananswers.net/spotlight/movies/2011/piratesofthecaribbean2011.html#issues) But the reviews generally miss one point which is mostly invisible to the average American, who is not acquainted to African/Caribbean witchcraft and magic. For us Christians living in this area dealing and fighting against evil supernatural evil powers is quite common, though they are at work in America as well they are usually denied, because they aren’t so widely spread as actual religions and because of dominant Christian religious beliefs. But this movie does portray aspects of reality regarding factual sorcery practices (just as Harry Potter does) by mingling regular fantasy with devilish work. Voodoo is Not fantasy. It’s quite real and it’s a terrible enemy to Christianity, just check out news on Haiti and evangelicals for instance. We as Christians should be aware of this fact when dealing with Hollywood’s trivialization of witchcraft practices which are becoming a common personal religion among many world leaders.

REFLECTIONS ON CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY I

True Christian Psychology.

Psychological Christianity versus. Christian psychology.

Throughout my studies in the area of Psychology, and within the Christian scope, I have been in touch with a diversity of people who use the knowledge they have acquired from the “Science of the Mind”, in order to minister or help the members of Christian congregations. Under this approach of work numerous literature has been written, that at the present time occupies the shelves of many Christian bookstores and secular bookstores as well.

Their effort is more oriented than everything to extract specific truths that have been originated and used within each theoretical approach, an then translate them into a Christian language by sustaining them with some Biblical passage. This technique is widely used by pastors, advisors and Christian therapists. The result: even within churches we listen to Freud, Pearls, and Maslow, among others, exposing their ideas through the preaching and during Christian prayer meetings once their scholar language has been translated into a Christian language.

My purpose is not to ridicule the contributions of the different theories, nevertheless, what I have exposed before is the best Christianity has often done to exercise influence within psychology, in fact until now and mainly in the most modern approaches, it is psychology the one that has penetrated Christianity. I consider that Christianity’s worldview, has much more to contribute than just Biblical appointments to corroborate what has been already said by some famous theoretician. In fact, Christianity raises very convincing points of view to explain personality, human conduct, normal and the abnormal behavior, motivations, and so many other concepts that have been basic in our studies on the human mind.

It is important to emphasize that most of the efforts made until now by the majority of Christian psychologists could be labeled as Psychological Christianity, a Christianity that lacks conceptual purity, when trying to cientificize its religion while its fundamental doctrine is altered to adapt it to the most fashionable scientific theory. As an example of the way in which the scientific theories have influenced the most universal religious doctrines, even beyond the field of Psychology, it is enough to consider how the authorities of the Roman Catholic Church decided to deny the historical validity of the facts narrated in the first chapters of the Genesis, failing in favor of the Evolution theory as the most reasonable explanation for the origin of alive beings and forgetting that this is only a THEORY.

The Evolution has still not fulfilled the necessary empirical requirements of origin to be universally accepted as true, in fact; sincerely and in spite of the respect that my catholic and evolutionist friends deserve, I consider that just as it happened with previous theories such as “the Spontaneous Generation”; “The Evolution” as conceived at the moment, though solid and universally accepted as it pretends to be, it will possibly be a past and even shameful position around time, because of the introduction of newer more modern theories, with more reliable foundations, as soon as new scientific paradigms appear.

Which will have to be the position assumed by the Church in case what I mentioned in the previous paragraph actually happens? , Will the church have to adapt her beliefs in order to be updated according to science?, Is not the Bible the same book since its edition was finished at the beginning of our era? The Bible has demonstrated to be able to surpass the stumbling blocks of time, the community of scientists after all has had to recognize in numerous occasions that the Bible was right and they were wrong, and the only reason we could find errors in the sacred book was the deformed way in which we perceived its reality.

(Note: The reader should remember the battle of Louis Pasteur who was a Christian scientist and who faced the scientific community of his time, maintaining that life can’t arise from the inert matter and that only an alive being can give origin to another alive being. Such thing contradicts the majority of modern positions, which postulate that in the primordial world, under certain conditions such as a reducing atmosphere and other highly improbable special circumstances, the first living cell was originated from a series of chemical processes by which the amino acids were transformed into proteins and these were grouped as well, breaking the second law of the thermodynamics, to conform the first organism, everything as result of mere chance).

On the other hand: Who said that the religion must adapt to science? , the principles that sublie it are usually accepted by believers by means of faith, thus are not susceptible to be verified a priori, since the evidences of the reality of its arguments can only be obtained once a person has accepted them as true. This is not what it happens with science, as it would be a terrible mistake,since scientific method will only accept that a statement is valid once pertinent evidences that sustain it are obtained.

According to what I’ve said, Religion does not require being penetrated by scientific principles, unless it wishes to lose its identity; however, science does take elements from any source to put them under its consideration, even philosophy can do it without losing its essence as a studious discipline of the human thought; because the requirements of science are not satisfied by the origin of the arguments that are put under its scrutiny, but by the validity of the evidences displayed in favor of the such.

Then, our effort should consist, not in doing a Christian like application of such-and-such theory, but in offering examples on how it is possible to translate some of the old principles that Christianity and the Bible have defended for centuries, into a comprehensible language for the scientist. Simultaneously, many theoretical explanations can be derived about behavior, once the basic principles of Christianity are extracted, achieving what I call a TRUE CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY.

On the other hand, in order to fulfill the intention mentioned previously, it is necessary to understand in first instance some of the historical foundations that gave origin to Christian world vision, in such a way that it will be possible for us to attain how such facts were associated with its lessons and with the values that it professes.

It is my desire also to fortify the faith of those Christians dedicated to aid professions, that in numerous occasions have been attempted to be ashamed, shut up or still deny their faith, out of fear of social retaliation that they would obtain from their non Christian colleagues, whom although usually do it silently, don’t avoid being harsh, because they are generally oriented towards putting in doubt the professionalism, seriousness and the objectivity of those exerting a profession of psychological attention who embrace the Christian faith with integrity.

The result that I hope we will achieve is not a secular Psychology adapted to a Christian scope in order to reach it or “to enrich it”, but a Christianity that says its truths, which I believe with all vehemence, by using the psychological language in order to fill us with faith, optimism unto life, its hope of eternity or to at least help us to reach a greater understanding of ourselves.

The latest action is by no means mere proselytism, or Isn’t it true that the most serious scholars strive to gain followers for their theories by means of the persuasiveness of their reasoning? So that I consider my effort as totally valid, and I leave it in first instance to God to be the judge, secondly to the reader and thirdly for the future generations to admit or to reject.