If you’ve done much reading here, you are probably aware that I have a problem being brief.  This topic about Paul’s writings could span pages and pages, but my goal is to take a quick look and point out some statements that need to be considered and evaluated.

The typical mainstream church doctrine uses the writings of Paul to state that observing Torah (the law) is no longer required or desired of us.
I have compared these ideas to the very words of Yahuah (God) and Yeshua (Messiah) a number of times. Mainstream doctrine does not line up with the words of the Father nor the words of Messiah.

But… let’s take an independent look at Paul.

First of all, how do we identify a false prophet?
We have to know what that is in order to determine if Paul is a false prophet.

Deuteronomy 13 [entire chapter]
“If there arises among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and he gives you a sign or a wonder, ² and the sign or the wonder comes to pass, of which he spoke to you, saying, ‘Let us go after other gods’—which you have not known—‘and let us serve them,’ ³ you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the Lord your God is testing you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. ⁴ You shall walk after the Lord your God and fear Him, and keep His commandments and obey His voice; you shall serve Him and hold fast to Him. ⁵ But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has spoken in order to turn you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of bondage, to entice you from the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk. So you shall put away the evil from your midst.
⁶ “If your brother, the son of your mother, your son or your daughter, the wife of your bosom, or your friend who is as your own soul, secretly entices you, saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods,’ which you have not known, neither you nor your fathers, ⁷ of the gods of the people which are all around you, near to you or far off from you, from one end of the earth to the other end of the earth, ⁸ you shall not consent to him or listen to him, nor shall your eye pity him, nor shall you spare him or conceal him; ⁹ but you shall surely kill him; your hand shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people. ¹⁰ And you shall stone him with stones until he dies, because he sought to entice you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. ¹¹ So all Israel shall hear and fear, and not again do such wickedness as this among you.
¹² “If you hear someone in one of your cities, which the Lord your God gives you to dwell in, saying, ¹³ ‘Corrupt men have gone out from among you and enticed the inhabitants of their city, saying, “Let us go and serve other gods”’—which you have not known— ¹⁴ then you shall inquire, search out, and ask diligently. And if it is indeed true and certain that such an abomination was committed among you, ¹⁵ you shall surely strike the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, utterly destroying it, all that is in it and its livestock—with the edge of the sword. ¹⁶ And you shall gather all its plunder into the middle of the street, and completely burn with fire the city and all its plunder, for the Lord your God. It shall be a heap forever; it shall not be built again. ¹⁷ So none of the accursed things shall remain in your hand, that the Lord may turn from the fierceness of His anger and show you mercy, have compassion on you and multiply you, just as He swore to your fathers, ¹⁸ because you have listened to the voice of the Lord your God, to keep all His commandments which I command you today, to do what is right in the eyes of the Lord your God.

And Deuteronomy 18:15-22
¹⁵ “The Lord your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from your midst, from your brethren. Him you shall hear, ¹⁶ according to all you desired of the Lord your God in Horeb in the day of the assembly, saying, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God, nor let me see this great fire anymore, lest I die.’
¹⁷ “And the Lord said to me: ‘What they have spoken is good. ¹⁸ I will raise up for them a Prophet like you from among their brethren, and will put My words in His mouth, and He shall speak to them all that I command Him. ¹⁹ And it shall be that whoever will not hear My words, which He speaks in My name, I will require it of him. ²⁰ But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in My name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.’ ²¹ And if you say in your heart, ‘How shall we know the word which the Lord has not spoken?’— ²² when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the thing does not happen or come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him.

Ok, that gives us a good start…
Basically, we can extract three tests from these narratives.
1. If a prophet encourages us to chase after other gods, then they are a false teacher. This also includes using the right name, but teaching a deity that does not match Yahuah or Yeshua in scripture.
Churches can teach all kinds of things about Jesus, but if the things taught do not match His character, the things He did, and the things He said, then it is chasing after other gods, even if the name seems right. (Jeremiah 16:19-20 warns us of this).
2. If a prophet makes a prediction and it does not come to pass, they are a false teacher.
3. If a prophet makes a prediction and it DOES come to pass, but it leads you away from the words Yahuah has given, then they are a false teacher.

Both the Father and the Son taught to keep the commands of God (see my many teachings for direct quotes from scripture).
The mainstream churches teach us that we are no longer to follow the Torah, the law, and they use Paul’s writings to do so.
If you ask your pastor such things, he will go straight to the writings of Paul to back up his teachings, and it will seem to make good sense.
But it only makes sense if:
1. If you do not have a strong knowledge of Torah [first five books of the bible] and Tanakh [the remainder of the Old Testament writings].
2. If you ignore the warning of 2Peter 3:14-18, which states that those who misunderstand Paul’s writings will do so to their own destruction.
3. If you ignore many writings of Paul that uphold keeping and honoring the Torah, the law, the commands of Yahuah.

Here are some quotes of Paul:
Acts 24:14
But this I confess to you, that according to the Way which they call a sect, so I worship the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the Law and in the Prophets.

Acts 25:7-8
When he had come, the Jews who had come down from Jerusalem stood about and laid many serious complaints against Paul, which they could not prove, ⁸ while he answered for himself, “Neither against the law of the Jews, nor against the temple, nor against Caesar have I offended in anything at all.”

Acts 18:20-21
When they asked him to stay a longer time with them, he did not consent, ²¹ but took leave of them, saying, “I must by all means keep this coming feast in Jerusalem; but I will return again to you, God willing.” And he sailed from Ephesus.
[documented proof that Paul kept the moedim, the appointed times of Yahuah, given to us in Leviticus 23 — well after the death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Messiah].

Colossians 2:16-17
So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, ¹⁷ which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ.  [Paul says to let no one judge you for keeping Torah ~~ this is often used by the church to teach that Paul is saying to let no one judge you for not keeping Torah, but this does not line up with the many things that Paul has stated throughout his writings].

Romans 2:12-13
¹² For as many as have sinned without law will also perish without law, and as many as have sinned in the law will be judged by the law ¹³ (for not the hearers of the law are just in the sight of God, but the doers of the law will be justified;

Romans 2:21-24
²¹ You, therefore, who teach another, do you not teach yourself? You who preach that a man should not steal, do you steal? ²² You who say, “Do not commit adultery,” do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? ²³ You who make your boast in the law, do you dishonor God through breaking the law? ²⁴ For “the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you,” as it is written.
[Paul chastises the Jews for breaking the law and setting a bad example before Gentiles].

Romans 3:20
Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.
Romans 7:7
⁷ What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, “You shall not covet.”
[Paul states that we define sin with the law]
This matches 1John 3:4
Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness.

Romans 3:31
Do we then make void the law through faith? Certainly not! On the contrary, we establish the law.

Romans 6:15-16
 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Certainly not! ¹⁶ Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness? 

Romans 7:12
Therefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good.

Romans 7:22
For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man.

That is enough for now…  This is supposed to be a short lesson.
Long after Messiah came and went:
Paul upholds the commands.
Paul upholds the feast days of Yahuah.
Paul upholds the law, the Torah.

But his writings are hard to understand, as Peter warns in 2Peter 3:14-18.  We can easily be mislead into thinking Paul speaks against the Torah, but only if we do not have a solid understanding of Torah and Tanakh.

For example:
Psalms 89:30-37
“If his sons forsake My law
And do not walk in My judgments,
³¹ If they break My statutes
And do not keep My commandments,
³² Then I will punish their transgression with the rod,
And their iniquity with stripes.
³³ Nevertheless My loving kindness I will not utterly take from him,
Nor allow My faithfulness to fail.
³⁴ My covenant I will not break,
Nor alter the word that has gone out of My lips.
³⁵ Once I have sworn by My holiness;
I will not lie to David:
³⁶ His seed shall endure forever,
And his throne as the sun before Me;
³⁷ It shall be established forever like the moon,
Even like the faithful witness in the sky.”

Specifically, verse 34 tells us that Yahuah will not break His covenant, and He will not change the word that He gave.
The Torah stands, and is not changed.
Messiah tells us in Matthew 5 that not a single pen stroke of the law, the Torah, will change until heaven and earth pass away.

Malachi 3:6 tells us that Yahuah does not change:
“For I am the Lord, I do not change…”

Numbers 23:19
God is not a man who lies,
or a son of man who changes his mind!

John 1:14 tells us that Yeshua Messiah is the word become flesh.
And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us. 
Hebrews 13:8 tells us that Messiah never has changed and never will change:
Yeshua the Messiah is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
If Messiah is the Word, and Messiah never changes, then that means the Word never changes.

In Torah, we are told ‘the law’ is given to both the Israelites and to the strangers among them.  It is not just for ancient Israel.
In Torah, we are told by Yahuah Himself that His instructions, His commands, His law, is forever, for all generations, never-ending, and a perpetual covenant.

So to wrap up this longer-than-sixty-seconds bible lesson, we have to read Paul’s writings within the context of Torah.
If Yahuah said things are forever, for all generations, and scripture tells us that God never changes His mind, and that the Word never changes, then it is not possible for the writings of Paul to be used to change everything.
Paul changed nothing.  But his writings are misunderstood and are taught incorrectly as a result.
Paul is not a false prophet, but his words are taught falsely.

I’ve mentioned the warning Peter gave about this.  Let’s take a look at it:
2Peter 3:14-18
Therefore, loved ones, while you are looking for these things, make every effort to be found in peace, spotless and blameless before Him. ¹⁵ Bear in mind that the patience of our Lord means salvation—just as our dearly loved brother Paul also wrote to you with the wisdom given to him. ¹⁶ He speaks about these matters in all of his letters. Some things in them are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist (as they also do with the rest of the Scriptures)—to their own destruction.
¹⁷ Since you already know all this, loved ones, be on your guard so that you are not led astray by the error of the lawless and lose your sure footing. ¹⁸ Instead, keep growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Yeshua the Messiah. To Him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity! Amen.

Did you catch that?
If we twist Paul’s writings and the scriptures (at the time, Torah and Tanakh only), then it will result in our destruction.
That is bad, not good.
In verse 17, he details it even more for us, just in case we did not understand:
Do not be led astray by the lawless.

This topic could take hours to thoroughly explore it properly.
This is just a brief introduction, hoping that it will inspire you to do more study.
Mainstream church doctrine stating that ‘the law’ is no longer applicable is built upon the misunderstood and mis-taught writings of Paul.  If we are to believe this teaching and this doctrine, it would require Yahuah to be a liar, which He is not.
It would require Yahuah to change His mind, which scripture says He does not.
It would require Yahuah to change His words, which scripture says He does not.
Since Messiah is the word become flesh, mainstream doctrine would require Messiah and the Word to change, and scripture says they do not change.

Please, think about these ideas and pray about these ideas.