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Lead me in Your truth and teach me - Psalm 25:5

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Articles: Introducing the First Covenant

Central to the purpose of the Bible, the First Covenant's seven touchstone principles constitute the foundation of civilization (as the United States Congress has declared. See the official Resolution below).

Noah, Meet Jacob

First Covenant spirituality and observance

In ancient times the Children of Israel called them "God-fearers." In modern times, after the Holocaust and destruction of the Jews in Europe, Israel called those few heroic souls who tried to save their fellows from the Nazis' genocide "righteous gentiles." The righteous men and women of every nation, according to the Hebrew Revolutionary Tradition, are blessed. Today, those who actively try to keep the seven eternal principles which constitute the basic, ancient Universal Law are frequently called Noahides.

[A scholarly conversation, including the articles Man of Faith and Man of Law and Legalism and Spirituality. Ten papers posted before January, 2007. Papers by Alan W. Cecil, Jeremy Lawson, Adam Penrod, Michael Dallen, and Rev. Jack E. Saunders]

Biblical studies/Torah studies

Suppose you come from the vast majority of humankind, the more than 99.75 (!) percent of humanity which isn't Jewish. In Hebrew thinking, you're a gentile, a Noahide, one of the non-Hebrew descendants of Noah. One who studies the Universal Law and the First Covenant sincerely, in order to come closer to God, receives infinite blessings. He or she can, according to the Torah, expect to attain the same spiritual and moral heights as Israel's own very High Priest.

From Genesis to 9/11, Islam, Israel,
the World and Amalek

One can learn a lot about God, the Creator of all things, from the Bible. Black-letter Scripture itself teaches - this will strike some readers as almost unbelievable - that He has friends and He also has enemies! He blesses those who bless the People of Israel and curses those who curse them (Genesis 12:3, 27:29). Indeed, the people of Israel are "chosen," the Bible teaches (Isaiah 41:9), not for privilege but for service. Yet Jews are just people, with all the good and bad that goes with that. But collectively, interacting individually with other human beings, they constitute an irresistible force for holiness on Earth. Whether individual Jewish people choose to or not, as a people, they serve God as a unique instrument: they challenge humankind, they provoke, inspire and upset the world; collectively, they help make humankind more human.

Christians should consider that Isaiah's "suffering servant of the Lord" (Isaiah 53) isn't just one deceased Jew, Jesus (or Yeshua). Rather, it is Jesus' people, the Jewish people. It isn't just one man, Jesus, who serves each generation as God's Torah incarnate - as a living Torah. Rather, the God of Jesus chose to incarnate His Divine Torah, His sublime Way, in a whole people, an eternal people - Israel.

As for those people who bless the People of Israel, they themselves are blessed. It is a Biblical guarantee.

As for the enemies of Israel, who seek to destroy the Jews, even to the extent of exterminating Jewish children, that unholy spirit is represented in the Bible by Amalek (Exodus 17:18). Amalek is a remarkable concept. Not every enemy of Israel is Amalek, but Amalek, particularly, hates and envies Israel - and, in fact, anyone who has God's blessing. Amalek lives practically besides itself feeling wronged and jealous. In every generation, those who incarnate this spirit - the Nazis, particularly in the 1930s and '40s; Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and their ilk today - make themselves God's enemies. (See Deuteronomy 25:17-19). They have no pity and stop at nothing. They condemn themselves. They make the world more brutal.

Today, the reborn State of Israel is perpetually in the news. That this tiny nation, smaller than some American counties - with fewer people than Chicago, should be so obsessively hated by so many hundreds of millions of people, shows God's hand in history. Those who hate Israel so intensely make themselves the enemies of God and man. This phenomenon is explored in the articles below.

Every statement in Articles does not necessarily reflect the entire viewpoint of the First Covenant Foundation, its members or trustees.                       

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The Rainbow Covenant: Torah and the Seven Universal Laws

Mankind cannot rise to the essential principles on which society must rest unless it meets with Israel. And Israel cannot fathom the depths of its own Tradition unless it meets with mankind.
Rabbi Elijah Benamozegh (1901, 1823-1900)


 

 

 

 

 

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