Wondering about Colossians

I wrote this three years ago, very early on in my discovery of the eternal righteousness of EVERY word of God. I was just looking around my blog, hoping to find a link to this study, when I realized I had never shared it. So here it is, in all it’s underdeveloped beauty. I say beauty because it exhibits more humility than what you will generally find in my posts. Unfortunately, I am usually much more sure of myself. Sorry about that, guys. One thing I AM sure of though is that every Word of God is true forever, so that’s where my confidence comes from and why I seem arrogant sometimes. Anyway, introduction/apology/defense over. Here’s the study:

Colossians 2:16, 17: Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.

These are the verses that keep surfacing in response to what I have been talking about. I am trying to figure out if they mean what everyone says they mean, or if they mean something else. They obviously mean we shouldn’t judge each other. I am not judging anyone just because I would interpret the laws concerning the feast days differently, but I expect the same in return. If I think I should still be keeping feast days, then I have to do it, even if I’m wrong. It would be a sin to rebel against my own conscience. Also, Paul keeps bringing up the subject of love. Personally, this book convicted me because I have to remember that our journey is not about being right about everything; rather it is about Christ (who is our Head) and His body (who are my brothers and sisters).

Ok, so I just read the book of Colossians, and here’s what I have come up with. I need help with this though, so any input would be appreciated. First of all, I read the whole book without looking to see what anyone else’s opinion may be. However, I have 37 years of bias behind me, and a new direction I am leaning, so I don’t know how much good that actually did me.

Chapter 1

4-6 These are new believers.

9&10 They are still learning.

11 A verse for me. I need to be patient and long-suffering towards those with different beliefs.

26 The mystery. Of prophecies? Of the feast days? Either way, all were and are fulfilled in Christ.

Chapter 2

2 Love each other regardless.

8 Traditions of men – this could NOT be referring to feast days or the Law, which were ordained of God. Also, beware traditions of men.

8-14 There is nothing lacking for our salvation. Jesus Christ has taken care of everything. Don’t believe the traditions which say you must do this or that in order to obtain salvation. Don’t fall into following the ordinances of the Pharisees and Sadducees, because their ordinances were nailed to the cross, and Jesus exposed them for what they really were.

16-17 “Are” not “were.” Are they still a shadow of things to come? What things, specifically? Or is that still a mystery?

16 Not required for salvation. Don’t judge the Gentiles, whether they participate with the Jews in their feast days or not.

19 Keep Christ at the head.

20 Rudiments of the world – again referring to the extra laws of Pharisees and Sadducees? The wording here prevents me from thinking that he is referring to God’s perfect Law. It is not something to be despised, but a blessing. If anyone thinks the law is burdensome, just read Joshua 1:8 or Psalm 119. His Law is life – it is liberty. The ordinances were burdensome and not profitable.

22 Commandments and doctrines of men.

23 They denied themselves pleasures and freedoms because they thought they had to. They worshipped their own will-power over the flesh. “Shew of wisdom” – seeming to be wise. “Neglecting of the body.” “Not in any honor to the satisfying of the flesh.” I didn’t understand this part, but I am reading a dual-language Bible, and the Spanish says “Pero no tienen valor alguno contra los apetitos de la carne.” I am taking that to mean that these things (will-power, humility -as referred to here, neglect) do nothing to actually help us overcome the desires of the flesh. In an effort to be concise, I will only post my thoughts, and not copy and paste the actual verses. (Although the verses themselves are far more important than anything I happen to think about them.)

Rant: I figure these new baby Christians, Gentiles, it seems, had probably just heard about the feast days and sabbaths and how they relate to their “new” religion (Christianity). Perhaps they were being told that they had to observe them in order to obtain salvation, or perhaps they were trying to observe them like the Jews and were being ridiculed for it. Maybe the Jews didn’t want to share their heritage with barbarians. Or perhaps the Jews were saying, “You have no inheritance with us unless you do the following things: _____,  ______, ______. Or were these believers perhaps being ostracized by society because they wanted to lay aside their own traditions and follow God’s? I am afraid that will happen to me, but I am speaking up anyway. I didn’t talk about it for the first 6 months or a year because I was afraid, – afraid of being ostracized, but more afraid of leading others astray if I am wrong. However, after having read almost the entire Bible again with this new perspective, I am more persuaded than ever. That doesn’t make me right, and I realize that, but I still feel pretty certain. The whole Bible makes more sense than ever before. Rant over.

Chapter 3

5-9 Mortify evil desires, etc. The law also tells us this. How could it be passed away? Paul is saying, don’t mortify your flesh (as in physically harming yourself), but evil. Not your body, but sin. He calls sin out, so we cannot say that it is impossible to sin, only that our sins are covered. The law still points out sin in our lives. “Sin is the transgression of the law.” I John 3:4.

3:11 Christianity is not a separate religion from that of the believing Jews. He is the fulfillment of their religion. We are saved under the same Christ. He is the head of us all.

3:14 Love each other above all.

Chapter 4

I feel like this whole chapter is speaking expressly to me.

From Rose Publications Bible Overview:

“Jesus Christ is sufficient in all things. No power, philosophy, or practice is effective in forgiving us and redeeming us other than Jesus…It is important to be on guard and aware of false teachings, heresies, and idle promises from other religions and philosophies that claim salvation can be found in something or someone else besides Jesus. Unlike Gnosticism that claims to have ‘hidden knowledge,’ God has revealed in the Scriptures everything we need to know…”

Jewish High Days and the Resurrection of the Messiah

Here is my third point describing my interest into what Jews believe. If this intrigues you, check out points one and two.

The very things that the Jews misunderstand about their own writings prove that they have been blinded to the truth. And before you think I’m being presumptuous here, let me remind you that Hebrew people prophesied against the Hebrew nation, claiming that they would not understand. If they had not rejected the Messiah, the prophecies would be untrue. And not just the prophecies, but their blindness is foreshadowed all the way back in the Torah. (Exodus 34:34-35, 2 Corinthians 3: 12-15) “Seeing then that we have such hope, we use great plainness of speech: And not as Moses, which put a vail over his face, that the children of Israel could not stedfastly look to the end of that which is abolished: But their minds were blinded: for until this day remaineth the same vail untaken away in the reading of the old testament; which vail is done away in Christ. But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the vail is upon their heart.”

Yesterday’s post mentioned the prophecy about the cornerstone that has been rejected. If you want to look into this more, here is a page on BibleHub quoting Jeremiah 5:21, complete with clickable cross-references: “Hear now this, O foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not:”

And while Jews need to open their eyes to the scriptures, the flip side of that coin is true as well. It is abundantly clear that Jesus is the Messiah, especially in light of what the Jews know that is hidden from the Gentiles. And before you think I typed that backwards, think about this: The Jews are blinded to the Word made flesh. The Gentiles need to open their eyes concerning the written Word, the Torah. We have invalidated it and ignored it to the point that we cannot even use it to prove the most basic truths about Jesus, that He is who He says He is. As a matter of fact, without understanding the Torah, it is even difficult to prove that Jesus ever even claimed to be the Son of God. The Muslims say that this claim never came from His own mouth, and I was hard-pressed to prove them wrong at first. (Of course, he does verify the claim of Peter and answer the high priest’s question during His interview.) However, I finally learned that, yes, God does have a name and that Jesus Christ used this name to prove His identity several times in the New Testament.

Exodus 3:14: And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

John 8:58: Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am. (Why do you think Jesus used an uncommon grammatical structure for His statement here? So He could speak the holy name of Yahweh and claim to be one with the Father.)

Mark 14:62: And Jesus said, I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.

John 18:4-6: Jesus therefore, knowing all things that should come upon him, went forth, and said unto them, Whom seek ye? They answered him, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus saith unto them, I am he. And Judas also, which betrayed him, stood with them. As soon then as he had said unto them, I am he, they went backward, and fell to the ground. (The word “he” following “I am” in this passage was inserted into the English for grammatical clarification. Jesus didn’t actually speak the word for “he.”)

Okay, so that was a rabbit trail I did not intend to follow this morning. Let me try to be brief with the rest:

If the Jews were to open their eyes to the symbolism and foreshadowing in their own religion, there would be insurmountable evidence supporting Yeshua as the Messiah. Some of this evidence, Gentiles have understood for hundreds of years, and some of it has been forgotten. Due in large part to the influence of the Catholic church, many anti-Jewish doctrines and traditions prevail in Christianity today. They want to discount everything Jewish as meaningless and pretend that Christianity, at its very root, is not a Hebrew religion. Let me show you how this ignorance has hurt us.

I’m going to make a statement here, 100% true, but many (if not most) of you will disagree with me. If Jesus died on a Friday and rose from the grave on a Sunday, He is not the Messiah. I say that because He would have failed to fulfill the only sign He prophesied would be given to this generation: that of the prophet Jonah. “For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” Matthew 12:40

Our best and brightest, our Bible “scholars” and those holding doctorates in theology have wasted precious hours of their lives trying to reconcile the nonsense that they cling to. When Jews, Muslims, and atheists (to name a few) look into our belief system, they see us scrambling to make the prophecies fit into our doctrine. We have made a mockery of this thing we call Christianity.

Why does modern Christianity cling to this idea? Because it doesn’t understand the simplest commandments in the Torah. Because of incomplete knowledge of sabbath days and how they work. We know Jesus Christ was crucified on preparation day, and I guess most Christian theologians believe that every single preparation day is a Friday because that’s the day that precedes the weekly sabbath. Luke 23:45: “And that day was the preparation, and the sabbath drew on.” And our Friday night-Sunday morning doctrine was born.

How did the Bible scholars fail to read this verse? “The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the sabbath day, (for that sabbath day was an high day,) besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away.” John 19:31

Do you see? NOT your regular weekly sabbath. In fact, every single Passover since the giving of the Law has been a preparation day for the high sabbath that follows it – the first day of unleavened bread. And Passover always falls on Nisan 14, a specific day of the month, which follows the lunar calendar, not a specific day of the week. So in reality, hardly any Passovers fall on Fridays. “In the fourteenth day of the first month at even is the Lord‘s passover. And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the feast of unleavened bread unto the Lord: seven days ye must eat unleavened bread.” Leviticus 23:5-6

Seven days shall ye eat unleavened bread; even the first day ye shall put away leaven out of your houses: for whosoever eateth leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that soul shall be cut off from Israel. And in the first day there shall be an holy convocation, and in the seventh day there shall be an holy convocation to you; no manner of work shall be done in them, save that which every man must eat, that only may be done of you. And ye shall observe the feast of unleavened bread; for in this selfsame day have I brought your armies out of the land of Egypt: therefore shall ye observe this day in your generations by an ordinance for ever.” Exodus 12:15-17 (…an ordinance for ever – one of many reasons why Torah-observant Christians still keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread.)

So modern doctrine has called Him a liar. They have said, well, He wasn’t REALLY in the ground three days and three nights. (Does this tactic look familiar? “And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:” Genesis 3:4) If you will read the Pentateuch and the Gospels, you will have a perfect understanding of the timeline of His crucifixion, and you won’t have to jump through hoops to achieve it. (The day-night issue is not even the only issue with the Christian belief. Look into how the ladies rested according to the sabbath, then bought and prepared spices, then rested according to the sabbath again before going to the grave. Jesus was in the ground for a high sabbath, a regular day, and a weekly sabbath and most likely rose right after the sun went down as the sabbath was drawing to a close – Saturday night – in the beginning moments of the Feast of Firstfruits.) If you look more closely, it will be easy to see that yes, He did fulfill His own prophecy about Himself.

When Jews look at us and see us scrambling and stretching to make sense of the scriptures, no wonder we look like fools to them. If any of them would take the time to do the math – knowing what they already do about the High Sabbath days – they would see proof that Jesus is who He says He is. And they would know that Jesus is not an invention of the Gentiles, because Gentiles still do not understand everything He said and everything that went on. It can ONLY be fullyunderstood in the light of the Old Testament – the Jews’ own religious prophecies concerning the Messiah.