Is it possible for a loving God to turn His back on people?
This is a tough question.
People generally don’t like to consider these types of ideas.
Why would I even bring this up?
What kind of craziness passes through my head?

In recent discussions regarding the direct quotes of Messiah, calling into question the status of the mainstream church, someone noted that “my idea” would mean no one was saved for over two thousand years.
Let’s explore this more, using scripture…

First of all, I do not get to decide who is saved and who is not saved.
This responsibility belongs to Yeshua Messiah.
Matthew 28:18
And Yeshua came up to them and spoke to them, saying, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.”
In my research and sharing of scripture, I am not trying to condemn anyone.  I am simply sharing the warnings that few seem to know about.  I do this to help others…
But how could my “study of scripture” result in the idea that no one was saved for over two thousand years, as my friend put it?
Let’s take a look at the words of our Creator:

Deuteronomy 31:20
²⁰ “For when I bring them to the land flowing with milk and honey that I swore to their fathers, and they eat and are satisfied and grow fat—then they will turn to other gods and serve them, and they will spurn Me and break My covenant.”

Yehova predicts (if you can call His omniscient knowing a prediction) that the people would serve other gods and break His covenant.
He knows this will happen.

Mosheh also knows this will happen, as shown by his words in Deuteronomy 31:29
²⁹ For I know that after my death you will certainly act corruptly and turn aside from the way I have commanded you. So evil will fall upon you in the latter days, because you will do what is evil in the sight of Adonai, provoking Him to anger by the work of your hands.”

The question is this:
What happens to the people when they break His covenant?
In Deuteronomy 28, Yehova outlines the blessings for following His instructions, and He also outlines the curses for disobedience.
Here are the scriptures telling us about the curses:

Deuteronomy 28:15-69
Curses for Disobedience
¹⁵ “But if you will not listen to the voice of Adonai your God, to take care to do all His mitzvot and statutes that I am commanding you today, all these curses will come on you and overtake you:
¹⁶ “Cursed will you be in the city, and cursed will you be in the field.
¹⁷ “Cursed will be your basket and your kneading bowl.
¹⁸ “Cursed will be the fruit of your womb, the produce of your soil, the increase of your herd and the young of your flock.
¹⁹ “Cursed will you be when you come in, and cursed will you be when you go out.
²⁰ “Adonai will send on you cursing, confusion and frustration in every undertaking of your hand that you will do—until you are destroyed and perish quickly, because of the evil of your deeds by which you have abandoned Me. ²¹ Adonai will make the plague cling to you, until He has put an end to you from the land that you are going in to possess. ²² Adonai will strike you with weakness, fever, inflammation, fiery heat, the sword, blight and mildew—they will pursue you until you perish. ²³ Your sky above your head will be bronze, and the earth beneath you iron. ²⁴ Adonai will make the rain of your land powder and dust—it will come down on you from the heavens, until you are destroyed.
²⁵ “Adonai will bring you to defeat before your enemies. You will go out one way against them and flee seven ways before them. You will become a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth. ²⁶ Your carcass will be food for every bird of the heavens and beast of the earth, and there will be no one to frighten them away.
²⁷ “Adonai will strike you with the boils of Egypt, with hemorrhoids, with scabs and with itching, from which you cannot be healed.
²⁸ “Adonai will strike you with madness, with blindness, and with confusion of heart. ²⁹ You will grope at noon as the blind person gropes in darkness, and you will not prosper in your ways. You will be only oppressed and robbed all the time, and there will be no one to save you.
³⁰ “You will become engaged to a woman, but another man will sleep with her. You will build a house, but you will not dwell in it. You will plant a vineyard, but you will not put it to use. ³¹ Your ox will be slaughtered before your eyes, but you will not eat of it. Your donkey will be stolen in front of you, and it will not be returned to you. Your sheep will be given to your enemies, and you will have no one to save you.
³² “Your sons and daughters will be given to another people while your eyes look on, longing for them all day long—but your hand will be powerless. ³³ A people you do not know will eat up the produce of your soil and all your labor, and you will be only oppressed and crushed all the time. ³⁴ You will be driven mad by the sight that your eyes will see.
³⁵ “Adonai will strike you on the knees and thighs with severe boils, from which you cannot be healed—from the sole of your foot to the crown of your head.
³⁶ “Adonai will bring you and the king you set over you to a nation you and your fathers have not known—and there you will serve other gods, wood and stone. ³⁷ You will become a horror, a proverb, and a byword—among all the peoples where Adonai will drive you.
³⁸ “Much seed you will take out to the field—but little will you bring in, for the locust will eat it up. ³⁹ Vineyards you will plant and tend—but wine you will not drink or bring in, for the worm will devour it. ⁴⁰ Olive trees you will have in all your territory—but oil you will not rub on yourself, for your olives will drop off. ⁴¹ Sons and daughters you will father—but they will not be yours, for they will go into captivity. ⁴² All your trees and the produce of your soil the whirring locust will possess.
⁴³ “The outsider who is in your midst will rise up higher and higher above you, and you will go down lower and lower. ⁴⁴ He will lend to you, but you will not lend to him; he will become the head and you will become the tail.
⁴⁵ “All these curses will come upon you and pursue you and overtake you until you are destroyed—because you did not listen to the voice of Adonai your God, to keep His mitzvot and statutes that He commanded you. ⁴⁶ They will be a sign and a wonder on you and your descendants forever. ⁴⁷ Instead of serving Adonai your God with joy and goodness of heart, out of the abundance of everything, ⁴⁸ you will serve your enemies, whom Adonai will send against you, in hunger and thirst, in nakedness and lacking everything; and He will put an iron yoke on your neck until He has destroyed you.
⁴⁹ “Adonai will raise up a nation against you from far away, from the end of the earth, just as the eagle swoops down—a nation whose language you will not understand, ⁵⁰ a brazen-faced nation that will not respect the old or be gracious to the young. ⁵¹ It will devour the offspring of your livestock and the produce of your soil, until you are destroyed. It will not leave behind for you grain, new wine, or oil, the increase of your herds or the young of your flock, until it ruins you. ⁵² It will besiege you within all your town gates throughout your land, until your high and fortified walls—that you trusted in—come down. It will besiege you within all your gates throughout your land that Adonai your God has given you.
⁵³ “You will eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of your sons and daughters Adonai your God has given you, in the siege and stress with which your enemies will distress you. ⁵⁴ The most tender and delicate man among you—his eye will become evil against his brother and the wife of his bosom and the rest of his children that he has left. ⁵⁵ He will not give to a single one of them from his children’s flesh that he will eat, because nothing else is left for him in the siege and stress with which your enemy will distress you within all your town gates. ⁵⁶ The tender and delicate woman among you, who never ventured to set the sole of her foot on the ground out of delicateness and tenderness—her eye will become evil against the husband of her bosom and her son and daughter. ⁵⁷ For in secret she will eat her afterbirth that issues from between her legs and the children she bears, for lack of anything else in the siege and stress with which your enemy will distress you within all your gates.
⁵⁸ “If you do not take care to do all the words of this Torah, the things written in this scroll, to fear this glorious and awesome Name, Adonai your God, ⁵⁹ then Adonai will make your plagues and the plagues of your descendants extraordinary—terrible and prolonged plagues, severe and prolonged illnesses. ⁶⁰ He will bring back on you all the diseases of Egypt that you were afraid of, and they will cling to you. ⁶¹ Also every illness and plague that is not written in the scroll of this Torah, Adonai will bring on you, until you are destroyed.
⁶² “You will be left few in number, instead of being like the stars of the sky in number—because you did not listen to the voice of Adonai your God. ⁶³ Now just as Adonai rejoiced over you to do you good and to multiply you, so Adonai will rejoice over you to ruin and destroy you; and you will be uprooted from the land that you are going in to possess.
⁶⁴ “Adonai will scatter you among all peoples from the one end of the earth to the other, and there you will serve other gods—wood and stone—that you and your fathers have not known. ⁶⁵ Among these nations you will find no rest, and there will be no rest for the sole of your foot. But there Adonai will give you a trembling heart and failing eyes, and a despairing spirit.
⁶⁶ “Your life will hang in the balance before you; you will be afraid night and day, and you will have no assurance of your life. ⁶⁷ In the morning you will say, ‘If only it were evening!’ and at evening you will say, ‘If only it were morning!”—from the fear of your heart that you will fear and the sight of your eyes that you will see. ⁶⁸ Adonai will bring you back to Egypt in ships, by the way that I said to you, ‘You will not see it again.’ There you will sell yourselves to your enemies as slaves and maids, but there will be no buyer.”
Renewing the Covenant
⁶⁹ These are the words of the covenant that Adonai commanded Moses to make with Bnei-Yisrael in the land of Moab, in addition to the covenant He made with them at Horeb.

Wow!!! Really?
Did you read those curses?
Even more importantly, do you believe these curses?
Let’s highlight a couple phrases that pertain to the topic of this study:
⁵⁸ “If you do not take care to do all the words of this Torah, the things written in this scroll, to fear this glorious and awesome Name, Adonai your God, ⁵⁹ then Adonai will make your plagues and the plagues of your descendants extraordinary—terrible and prolonged plagues, severe and prolonged illnesses.
And this:
⁶² “You will be left few in number, instead of being like the stars of the sky in number—because you did not listen to the voice of Adonai your God.
And this:
⁶⁴ “Adonai will scatter you among all peoples from the one end of the earth to the other, and there you will serve other gods—wood and stone—that you and your fathers have not known. 

Yehova says these curses will affect both these people and their descendants!!
Yehova says they will be few in number.

Hosea summarizes all of this is just a short statement:
Hosea 4:6
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.
Since you rejected knowledge,
    I will also reject you from being My saints.
Since you forgot the Torah of your God,
    just so I will forget your children.

Hosea says that the children of the people will be forgotten by Him, our Elohim.
Yehova says He will reject the people from being His saints.
Who are the saints?
Revelation 14:12 [NKJV]
Here is the patience of the saints; here are those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.

This is what disobedience looks like.
This is what exile looks like.
It is horrific.
Rejection by Yehova!!
In fact, this is exactly what Messiah told us as well:
Matthew 7:21-23
²³ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’
In Matthew 7, Messiah is not making up new doctrine, or creating a new warning.  He is simply repeating what the Father has already said.

Some people think the punishment for disobedience, being scattered among the nations, is all about being subjected to rule by their enemies.
While this is true, here is an even worse part of this punishment:
The people are exiled from Yehova and His ways…

I have given a very small sample of scripture regarding this punishment for disobedience, but we could spend hours and hours looking at other scriptures by the prophets.
The exile and banishment of the people are well documented in scripture, and the consequences are terrible.

Is this the fault of Yehova?
No, it is not.
Yehova gave instructions to the people, and told them how they would be blessed by simply following those instructions.
The curses, though…
It is the fault of the people, for turning away from Him.
It is the fault of the people for forgetting His Torah.

Proverbs 3:1-2
My son, do not forget my law,
But let your heart keep my commands;
² For length of days and long life
And peace they will add to you.

Psalm 119:18-21
¹⁸ Open my eyes, that I may see
Wondrous things from Your law.
¹⁹ I am a stranger in the earth;
Do not hide Your commandments from me.
²⁰ My soul breaks with longing
For Your judgments at all times.
²¹ You rebuke the proud—the cursed,
Who stray from Your commandments.

We are barely scratching the surface of what scripture says will happen to us if we turn away from Yehova.
In this incredibly small sampling of scriptures, we have learned the following:

1.  Disobedience leads to curse and death.
2.  Disobedience leads to exile, separation from Yehova.
3.  Separation from Yehova affects the descendants as well as the original offenders.
4.  What is the result of forgetting the Torah?  Destruction of people… This is serious business!!

The curses of disobedience affect the descendants according to scripture, but for how long? Let’s take a brief look at this (again, many hours and days could be spent on this one topic alone).

We see that the ten tribes were divorced from their covenant with Yehova in Jeremiah 3:8
⁸ Then I saw that for all the causes for which backsliding Israel had committed adultery, I had put her away and given her a certificate of divorce…
And we see this further into Jeremiah 3
‘I will not remain angry forever.
Only acknowledge your iniquity,
That you have transgressed against the Lord your God,
And have scattered your charms
To alien deities under every green tree,
And you have not obeyed My voice,’ says the Lord.

A divorce from the covenant occurred, but Yehova says He will not remain angry forever.
We find out how long the people are to be banished in Ezekiel 4:4-7
⁴ “Lie also on your left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it. According to the number of the days that you lie on it, you shall bear their iniquity. ⁵ For I have laid on you the years of their iniquity, according to the number of the days, three hundred and ninety days; so you shall bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. ⁶ And when you have completed them, lie again on your right side; then you shall bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days. I have laid on you a day for each year.

The house of Judah gets 40 years, and the house of Israel gets 390 years!! That is a long time, but it gets worse!
Torah requires the unrepentant to have their punishment multiplied by seven.
Since Israel did not repent, their punishment/exile is multiplied by seven, becoming a whopping 2730 year exile!!
This began in about 820BC when the Assyrians defeated the house of Israel and began scattering them.
That means the punishment ended in approximately 2009/2010, which is when many people all around the world began returning to Torah.

Here is the thing to remember:
The 2730 year punishment of the people is not Yehova’s fault.
It is the fault of the people, who turned away from Him, serving other gods and forgetting His Torah.

Here is what scripture says about the restoration [just one of many, many references in scripture]:
Hosea 6:1-3
A Call to Repentance
6 Come, and let us return to the Lord;
For He has torn, but He will heal us;
He has stricken, but He will bind us up.
² After two days He will revive us;
On the third day He will raise us up,
That we may live in His sight.
³ Let us know,
Let us pursue the knowledge of the Lord.
His going forth is established as the morning;
He will come to us like the rain,
Like the latter and former rain to the earth.

In many instances, a day in scripture equates to either a year, or to one thousand years.
In this scripture in Hosea, if the days mentioned are a thousand years, it matches the punishment of 2730 years.
The people are banished for the first 2 days (2000 years) and are restored during the third day (during the third 1000 years).

Am I saying that no one was “saved” for this span of time?
Was no one saved during the 2730 year banishment?
No, I am not saying that.
I am not Yehova.
I do not have the authority to decide who is saved and who is not saved.
What I am doing, is showing what scripture says about these things.
Men will say it is not possible for Yehova to turn His back on people.
Men say things that make the “importance and significance of men” a higher priority than the words of Yehova.

The few words I’ve shared from scripture in this article show us that, yes, it is possible that Yehova would turn His back on the people.
Not because He is unloving, but because He is just.
He told the people in advance what would happen if they forsake Him, and yet, they chose to forsake Him and his instructions anyway.
The negative consequences were chosen by the people, with complete knowledge of what would happen.

In today’s church culture, this idea comes across as ridiculous.
People think this idea is absurd, but it is spoken by Yehova, and then we see it play out before our eyes in the Word.
Why do we consider it absurd when we find evidence of it in the inspired word of God?

But still…
It just isn’t possible, right?
There is no way hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people could be separated from God.
Right?
Jeremiah speaks of the world’s religious systems in end times:
Jeremiah 16:19-20
¹⁹ O Lord, my strength and my fortress,
My refuge in the day of affliction,
The Gentiles shall come to You
From the ends of the earth and say,
“Surely our fathers have inherited lies,
Worthlessness and unprofitable things.”
²⁰ Will a man make gods for himself,
Which are not gods?

Jeremiah, who is speaking the words of Yehova, states that the Gentiles will one day realize they have been taught nothing but lies.
We are seeing this come to life right now.
People are “waking up” and returning to Torah, the ways of the Father.
But most are not willing to explore this idea, let alone accept it.
Most reject these thoughts, even though it is all written down for us so that we might know.
Messiah spoke of this problem, when He stated who will not be in the kingdom of heaven.
Revelation 22:15
But outside are dogs and sorcerers and sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and whoever loves and practices a lie.

“…whoever loves and practices a lie.”
What if the lies He is speaking of are the lies that Jeremiah described?

I fully understand the ideas I’m presenting here are hard to swallow.
I would encourage you to study the scriptures before you reject them out of hand.
I have no authority.
I am in charge of no one.
I am in charge of nothing.
I do not make these kinds of decisions.

But the word is truth.
If difficult concepts are presented in and supported by scripture, we need to study and evaluate, and request understanding through prayer.