| Letter#13 Judaism
Before Moses
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| My dear Mr. Isaacs: |
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| Your command will be
obeyed. My reply to your query will be "short and to the point." My agreement
with you makes that possible, as "Jewish religious history did not begin with priests
and sacrifices at a central altar," etc., as you say. Judaism began with Moses;
Israel began with Abraham. About four hundred years before the world heard of the sacrifices recorded in the Torah, God made a covenant for the Jews with Abram, who, through his son Isaac, followed by his son Jacob (father of the twelve tribes of Israel), became the patriarchial ancestor of the Jews. God changed Abram's name to Abraham (raham, in Arabic, being a vast number), signifying him to be the "father of the multitude." God commanded circumcision of Abraham as a token of the covenant (Gen. 15; 16; 17). The Law, which includes the Commandments, the Aaronic priesthood and sacrifices, came from God through Moses. Moses is the Law-giver, the founder of the Jewish religion; the inspired writer of the Torah which all Jews were morally obligated by God to obey. The Commandments you can, and I assume do, obey; but Jewish worship of God, as God commanded in the Torah, is a thing impossible to obey, being of the long gone past. God has not ceased to demand worship through sacrifice at the altar. Then where can such sacrifice be offered? In one place only, in the Church of the Messiah, through the Sacrifice He commanded to be offered in remembrance of Him. That's to the point. |
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