Throughout history powerful people have tried to manipulate the beliefs of those who follow The Messiah, the one known as The Son of God. To force the people called, Christians to live as someone in power wants them to believe.
Even the Apostles had to deal with people trying to teach things that were not true. As they passed on, many people tried to change the teachings that the Messiah and Apostles taught. People were killed if they did not change to new teachings. How can one kill someone for not converting to a new teaching when the Bible teaches us to love our neighbor?
As time went on a strong group in Rome developed to the point that very few dared to openly teach the original doctrines. This group made copies of the Bible over a long period of time. Most all Bible manuscript scholars believe the Old Testament is kept true to the original manuscript, but some say that the New Testament was manipulated a bit here and there to prove the Trinity doctrine and remove a bit of the Jewish flavor. For example, no mention of the Feast is made when Messiah was born. We know that the feast pointed to Messiah coming, yet a tax is placed in the story.
Some scholars take a lot of issue with the changes in the New Testament manuscripts and lose faith in God, but instead of losing one’s faith because of it, we should notice the prophecies fulfilled and how God did not allow them to change His most important teachings.
What does the Bible teach us about how we live our life?
Why are we here? What is the purpose of people being created? That is disputed by well meaning people. Sadly they overlook the overall picture shown throughout the Bible. Do not take a verse here and there out of context to make a doctrine. And remember that God has common sense. He does not do complicated stuff. In fact what He did and does is simple. It is hard for highly intelligent people to understand God’s overall plan.
Before the world was thought of, one known as Satan rebelled against The Heavenly Father. The rebellion against Heavenly Father was bad. Satan wanted to do his own thing. He was selfish. He had hate in his heart. God is love. He wants us to love. Satan is full of hate and wants everyone to hate also.
Now that there was evil in existence, God thought of an idea for creating a being that He could be friends with. BUT, He wanted a being that wanted to be friends with Him, not just another being like an angel who does His biding all the time. He would make a choice of LOVE for this being since Satan had made a choice of hate. So God created people. The people could choose to love or hate. People could choose to spend eternity with God or not.
Before God created the world, He made a blueprint or plan for how the choice of love or hate would work. Since people would be born with an open slate, they would choose some wrong actions at times. That goes along with the free choice. Otherwise there would not really be free choice. So a plan of forgiveness was made. A Messiah would come to teach love, forgiveness and then die in the human’s place, so we could be forgiven. Love does not exist without forgiveness.
Sure enough, Adam chose evil, to do as he was told not to do. All his descendents were under the sin curse. But everyone can choose to love the Creator. Ask forgiveness and follow His word.
So, God our Heavenly Father wants us to love Him. That is not easy to do as we see how Israel struggled time after time to love Him. We get caught in life so easy that we do not even think about how we are treating Him. Since we cannot see Him, it is so easy to just think that we love Him when in truth, we are not showing love the way He wants us to love Him.
How do we know if we love Him?
First, remember how Jesus said that the most important commandment is to love the Heavenly Father.
So, we can look at the Ten Commandments to get an idea of how to love Him. Some people teach that the Ten Commandments were made only for Israel. How would they need to change for us, if that were true? Is it not still valid that God wants us to have no other god in our life? The seventh day Sabbath is about loving God. It is about honoring Him as our creator. There is not any place in the Bible that says ‘do not to honor Heavenly Father as our Creator anymore’. Not even a hint. Many say that they do not think it matters what day we honor. Why was God so unhappy with people in the Bible about His day, if it does not matter? Some want to Honor the Son of God instead. Where is that in the Bible? We are to honor the Son of God on the time of the Christian Passover. That was very important in the Early Church. But over the years people made a new time to say they honor the Son of God. Easter was changed from a non Christian holiday to a Christian holiday. The Christian Passover was outlawed and forgotten by most people. For 1500 years God had a teaching and prophecy called The Passover. It showed how and when we should honor the Messiah for taking our place in death. Also it showed who the Messiah was because He died at the very time the 1500 years of prophecy showed that He would die. Many people today believe that we will observe the Christian Passover, if we want to honor Messiah as the Bible shows us to do.
The rest of the Ten Commandments are about loving our neighbor. The Bible teaches that how we treat other people is how we treat Heavenly Father.
Each commandment five through ten is simply telling how we will act if we love others.
Let’s think about life today and what God might think about how we do things. Sin or we can say selfishness because all sin is selfish. Selfishness causes separation from other people and from the Father. So if selfishness is sin, most fusses with others are full of sin! We are sure that I am not to blame. But human nature is such that most likely both are often selfish. Messiah teaches us how to deal with these problems. Few people want to follow Messiah’s instructions for us when we have problems with each other. Think about this, are you willing to do what Matthew 18 instructs us to do?
If we love, we will not steal, not kill, not hurt other people whether our parents, children, cousin, neighbor or anyone. With what we say or do.
The commandments in the Bible are all good for living a life of peace with each other and the Creator, our Heavenly Father.