Awakening

There may be some that are reading this blog series that are not familiar with the Bnei Noach Laws that one is born into. I will be writing on them later on in this blog series. For the purpose of continuity before we get into the laws themselves, I want us to slow down and take a look at the purpose of life from a direction you may not have even considered.

There has to be an awakening within your own life and soul, you have to wake up from the world you thought you were living in to the real world that the Creator had created and into His original plans for the lives of His Creation.

Go back to the beginning with me and let’s look at how it was and how it is supposed to be for the rest of the people who are not a part of the Priestly nation of Israel but one of the other nations scattered over the planet.

There needs to be an understanding that the Hebrew Scriptures from Adam to Moses up until Israel becoming a nation under a priestly covenant and including the books of Job and Jonah are all there for us non-Jews to study and learn from. They are there to teach us how to walk with G-d and Man.

The Creator formed man from the dirt of the earth, He then breathed life in him and man became a living soul. Man is a combined creation of earth and the Creator. This make the Creator alone Commander and Chief over us – Ezekiel 18:4 He tells us that all souls are His – rendering Him the Chief authority and source of everything in our lives. To rely on any other source is idolatry.

After the man awoke for the first time he met his Creator, then the Creator gave him a Torah (instruction/teaching) to live by. The Creator gave him a list of everything that was his, the foods he was permitted to eat and the duties he had to do on the earth. Along with this he was given also instructions of what did not belong to him and what he was not permitted to partake in.

“The very word Torah literally means “teaching.” Fittingly, the Torah, for Jews and non-Jews, is referred to in Proverbs 3:18 as “a tree of life.” The Torah was given primarily in order to educate and uplift us, not kill us.” Rabbi Michael Shelomo Bar-Ron, Guide for the Noahide

This was the walk that the Creator had laid out for the man. When man follows the instructions given him then he is walking with his Creator. Man is not to add to or take away from the instructions given him. In the Torah book of Bereishis/Genesis from Adam to Noach we find in the text various instructions given to pre-Israeli people. These instructions are meant to direct man’s steps in a way that the world would be filled with a people that had a correct way to walk with their Creator and their fellow man. The seven categorical Bnei Noach laws would create utopian society. Men would study them and strive with joy to obey them before the Creator.

What Happened?

Anyone with eyes to see can take a quick look at the world we live in and see that this did not happen.

When one is born into this world he/she is a blank slate then immediately someone else is in charge of writing your story for you. You may be born into a Christian family or any other family on the earth with or without some kind of belief system already in place.

Before I go any further there needs to be an explanation of terms:

Bnei Noach refers to those non-Jewish children of Noah who keep the Seven Noahide Laws, especially when they do so because of the Torah given at Mount Sinai.

Goy/gentile refers to those non-Jews who have not taken on the biblical Seven Laws for the non-Jewish nations that are still under some form of foreign belief system (Goy/gentile are the Hebrew and Greek words that literally means ‘nation’.)

Teshuva is the Hebrew word for repentance – it refers to the process of ‘returning’ back to the Creator.

So, what happened? Over time the Seven Laws had been neglected and forgotten by the nations. During this time they created their own religions to fill their spiritual voids.

There is a term for Jews who return to their Torah heritage ‘ba’alei teshuva – so in the same vein a goy/gentile that returns to the original laws given to the children of Noah is Bnei Noach teshuva.

Within the realm of Jews that are born outside of their heritage it is said that they were “an infant raised among gentiles”. This too is the very same case for those returning Bnei Noach – they too were raised among gentiles.

Today there is a worldwide phenomenon going on, as the Jewish nation is being redeemed out of the nations, so is the Bnei Noach. Thousands upon thousands of non-Jews are fleeing their idolatrous religions and returning back to the true path for man set forth by the Creator. They are walking into synagogues and contacting rabbis all over the world to be taught how to walk with their Creator.

The fulfillment of Zechariah 8:23 is coming about in our lifetime, “Thus said Hashem, Master of Legions: In those days it will happen that ten men, of all the [different] languages of the nations, will take hold, they will take hold of the corner of a Jewish man, saying, “let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.”

Adam, Noah, Abraham and our other pre-Sinai biblical forefathers were not given a religious system to operate and maintain; they were given a set of laws to live by that would create a world where man and G-d could walk together in peace and harmony.

In the next part we will get into the Bnei Noach Laws given to the non-Jewish nations.

Terry W. Hayes

5/2016

References:

Guide for the Noahide, Second Edition by Rabbi Michael Shelomo Bar-Ron

TESHUVA: A Guide For The Newly Observant Jew by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

www.beingnoahide.com

Artscroll Stone Edition Tanach