613 Ropes 613 Laws

Each Has It's Own Purpose

  As a Mayflower descendant, I'm particularly interested in the ship that brought my ancestors over here and the reason why they came.  We all know they were called Separatists.  They wanted to separate from the established institution that overtook the governing of the people. When the state marries a religious institution, religious freedom becomes bondage.  We found this out back in Constantine's day.  Anyone who has truly studied the history will know that the Roman Emperor, Constantine forced people to convert or face death.  He had forced baptisms whether the person had a heart change or not. He persecuted the Jews who refused to convert.  We also know that the Roman church did the same thing with the Crusades and the Inquisition. It was either convert or be persecuted or executed.  The Gospel was never intended to force people to convert to anything, it was freedom, and it still is freedom.  In the same way there is more freedom in the 613 Laws of Moses than the thousands of unspoken and spoken rules the church has since written and taught, because the rules of Christianity are subject to man's interpretation thereby not objective but subjective. 

    As many of my readers know, I am what some call a TORAH observer.  Many Christians will say that I have put myself back under the bondage of the Law, but that is absolutely not the case.  Let's define the terms observe and TORAH. The Hebrew word TORAH translated means INSTRUCTIONS, the Law of Moses is in the TORAH but not the whole of TORAH.  When we observe something we study it, watch it, try to learn something about it.  I have spent the last eight years or so trying to learn about the TORAH. I know that GOD's instructions are for my good, but what about His Laws, are they for my good also? 

  It is fairly common knowledge that there are 613 Laws in the Mosaic Law.  Of those 613 not everyone can obey all of them, including Jesus himself.  He could not obey the Laws concerning women.  When he left the disciples his last words were, "Go and make disciples of all nations, teaching them to OBSERVE all that I have commanded."  Let's explore the purpose of Jesus coming here. Was it just to die for our sins? No, it was to teach TORAH and purpose behind it.  What he did was complete the TORAH by dying so we could obtain eternal life, because the Law was never able to grant us eternal life.  He fulfilled the TORAH he did not abolish it. (Matthew 5:17-20) In other words, what we are all called to do is to trust in Yeshua/Jesus who observed and taught the  TORAH, the instructions. We are not all called to obey 613 Laws. it is impossible, but that does not mean they are now abolished. When we set rules for our children's good and they break them, do we abolished the rules?  

   Lately, I've been studying the 613 Laws of Moses and what I've learned is that there are specific reason for each Law and each one was given for our benefit and not because YHVH GOD is some kind of tryrannical deity.  I'll use the food laws as one example, which seems to be the one most people get upset about.  YHVH God designed certain of His creation for certain purposes.  In other words, vegetation for food, and then after the flood, Noah and his descendants were given animals as food, also.  I can't begin to explain why the change came, but I'm going to assume it has something to do with the change in the earth's atmosphere and ecology after the flood.  We know that before the flood, 600-900 years of living was the norm, but after the flood the human life span dropped to around 100 or so years.  With that in mind, there was obviously something missing in plant life that animals could now produce in terms of nutrition for the human body. Clean and unclean animals did not start with Moses, by the way, even Noah knew which were clean and unclean animals.   Genesis 7: (Clean and unclean animals even in Noah's day ) 

    What does clean and unclean mean? It means their purpose on this planet were for the good of man and the good for the ecology. Clean animals were for good of the human body, whereas,  unclean means that they are good for the ecology.  Of course, there is a much more spiritual meaning with clean and unclean, but I'm just sticking to biology here in this post.  Seeing how pork is the issue here, I'll tell you that swine was considered unclean because it was never created for the purpose of human consumption, but to be environmental agents to clean the earth.  A pig will eat anything, including its own waste, whereas, cattle eats only vegetation.  It is the same with the sea creatures.  Scavengers, i.e, lobster and clams (which used to be my favorite food) along with shrimp are on the bottom of the sea to keep it clean by eating what other fish defecate. To put is simply, do you want to eat a creature that eats the waste products of what other animals or humans eliminate from their bodies? From my persepective it's the same as eating out of the garbage or the septic tank if you really want to be grossed out. 

  Another reason why pork is bad for you is the parasites that are in its system. Many are not elimated by cooking. Microscopic parasites survive the high temperatures in cooking.  I don't often quote from Joel Osteen, but his was the plainest explanation I have heard.  Joel Osteen explains pork was never food  Although I had already decided to obey YHVH about not eating what He said not to eat, I loved his explanation and it made so much sense to me. (Video quality not so great, but the words are clear as day).  

   So what do the 613 Laws of Moses have to do with the the hundreds of ropes on the Mayflower? PURPOSE. My ancestor came here as a separatist to live out freedom in worshiping YHVH GOD. He could not do that without those ropes.  I'm not a sailor by any means, I'm just a beneficiary of what those early sailors knew and did.  Each of those ropes has a purpose. In the little research I did do, I found that each rope has a name and a purpose. If one of those ropes is cut it is the difference between arriving at one's destination and sinking or adrift forever on an endless sea.  It's the same with the 613 Laws of Moses, each had a purpose. 

    Now, we know that with the Temple having been destroyed in AD 70 and the Levitical Priesthood all but abolished, many of those 613 cannot be obeyed or followed, but does that mean we should not observe the reason or purpose for them? My opinion is that if YHVH GOD wrote it, Jesus taught it, then by golly, I'm going to investigate the purpose of it.

  

   My daughter once asked me about animal sacrifice and why we do not go back to that, and I told her that we still do when we eat animal protein. She was shocked to find out that the animal sacrifices were not just for spilling the blood of the animals but they were food for the priesthood. Sacrificing the animal over the altar was the priesthood dedicating the animal's nourishment to their body in gratefulness to YHVH GOD. The difference today and back then is we do not do it over an altar to sacrifice it to YHVH, but we pray over it before we eat it. I enjoyed watching her eyes pop open when that truth hit her.  

    When the Pilgrims came here, they put off the ways of the institutional church.  They did not obsereve the church's sacraments or holy days.  In other words, they did not celebrate Christmas or Easter. They were in fact Hebrew roots Christians. I find the irony kind of crazy that my ancestor was a TORAH observer.  I grew up in institutional Christianity and now, I am a TORAH observer.  I've come full circle and I am grateful for the purpose of both the 613 and however many ropes on the Mayflower that brought him here to begin my family in this wonderf land of the free and home of the brave. 

   I did not come to this knowledge all at once because learning is progressive and so is revelation from YHVH.  I do not expect my readers to go through their freezers and toss all their pork, but I hope I have stirred in them questions, enough questions for them to go find the answers.  Answers come from Scripture and the work of the Holy Spirit.  Only the Holy Spirit can spark a true revival, and from what I'm seeing these past eight years or so, is that a huge world-wide revival is happening, bringing people back to the the purpose of the TORAH, GOD's instructions.