A Warning To Torah Community
Ecclesiastes 1:9-11
⁹ That which has been is what will be,
That which is done is what will be done,
And there is nothing new under the sun.
¹⁰ Is there anything of which it may be said,
“See, this is new”?
It has already been in ancient times before us.
¹¹ There is no remembrance of former things,
Nor will there be any remembrance of things that are to come
By those who will come after.
We are told in Ecclesiastes that events in this life are cyclical.
All that has happened before will happen again.
We are told that people will not remember what came before…
And people will not understand what came before in order to apply it to what will come.
Why could these thoughts be considered a warning to today’s Torah community?
Let’s take a look at it.
As many know, people all around the world, in all walks of life, are returning to Torah. Many are questioning what we’ve been taught for many generations, calling it into question, and wiping the slate clean.
Jeremiah foretold this…
Jeremiah 16:19-20
¹⁹ O Yehova, 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?
Many are learning today that Torah is applicable now, just as it was in ancient times.
This is a good thing.
And it was prophesied, as we are told in Isaiah and Micah.
Isaiah 2:3
Then many peoples will go and say:
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of Yehova,
to the House of the God of Jacob!
Then He will teach us His ways,
and we will walk in His paths.”
For Torah will go forth from Zion
and the word of Yehova from Jerusalem.
Miach 4:1-2
But at the end of days
the mountain of Yehova’s House will be established as chief of the mountains,
and will be raised above the hills.
Peoples will flow up to it.
² Then many nations will go and say:
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of Yehova,
to the House of the God of Jacob!
Then He will direct us in His ways,
and we will walk in His paths.”
For Torah will go forth from Zion,
and the word of Yehova from Jerusalem.
Does everybody understand the background events that make this prophecy necessary? I’ll do a quick summary:
Yehova stated numerous times that if His people, Israel, turned their backs on Him that He would scatter them among all the nations of the earth.
The entire chapter of Leviticus 26 is one such warning (with a promise of return at the end):
Faithfulness Ensures Blessings
³ “If you walk in My statutes, keep My commandments and carry them out, ⁴ then I will give you rains in their season, the land will yield its crops, and the trees of the field will yield their fruit. ⁵ Your threshing will last until grape gathering, the grape gathering will last until the sowing time, you will eat your bread to the full, and live securely in your land.
⁶ “I will bring shalom in the land, and you will lie down, with no one making you afraid. I will remove dangerous beasts from the land and no sword will pass through your land. ⁷ You will chase your enemies and they will fall before you by the sword. ⁸ Five of you will chase 100 and 100 of you will chase 10,000, and your enemies will fall by the sword before you.
⁹ “I will turn toward you, make you fruitful and multiply you, and I will confirm My covenant with you. ¹⁰ You will eat the old harvest and clear out the old because of the new. ¹¹ I will set My Tabernacle among you, and My soul will not abhor you. ¹² I will walk among you and will be your God, and you will be My people. ¹³ I am Yehova your God, who brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, so that you would not be their slaves, and I have broken the bars of your yoke and made you walk upright.
Faithlessness Ensures Misery
¹⁴ “But if you will not listen to Me, nor carry out all these commandments, ¹⁵ and if you reject My statutes and if your soul abhors My ordinances, so that you do not keep all My commandments, but instead break My covenant, ¹⁶ then I will do the following to you in return. I will appoint terror over you, wasting disease and fever that will dim the eyes and cause the soul to pine away. You will sow your seed in vain, because your enemies will eat it. ¹⁷ I will set My face against you and you will be routed before your enemies. Those who hate you will rule over you, and you will flee when no one pursues you.
¹⁸ “If you, in spite of these things, will not listen to Me, then I will chastise you seven times more for your sins. ¹⁹ I will break your pride of power. I will make your sky like iron and your earth like bronze. ²⁰ Also your strength will be spent in vain, for your land will not yield its increase, nor will the trees of the land yield their fruit.
²¹ “if you keep walking contrary to Me and will not listen to Me, then I will multiply the plagues on you seven times like your sins. ²² I will send the wild animals among you, which will rob you of your children, destroy your livestock, and make you so few in number that your roads will become deserted.
²³ “Now if in spite of these things you will not be chastened by Me, but walk contrary to Me instead, ²⁴ then I will also walk contrary to you. Then I will strike you, I Myself, seven times for your sins. ²⁵ I will bring a sword upon you that will execute the vengeance of the covenant, and you will be gathered together inside your cities. I will send the pestilence among you and you will be given into the hand of the enemy. ²⁶ When I break your staff of bread, ten women will bake your bread in one oven, and they will bring back your bread by weight, so that you will eat but not be satisfied.
²⁷ “Yet if in spite of this you will not listen to Me but walk contrary to Me, ²⁸ then I will walk contrary to you in wrath. So I will chastise you seven times for your sins. ²⁹ You will eat the flesh of your sons and you will eat the flesh of your daughters. ³⁰ I will destroy your high places and cut down your altars of incense, cast your dead bodies upon the bodies of your idols, and My soul will abhor you. ³¹ I will lay waste your cities and devastate your sanctuaries. I will not smell your soothing aromas. ³² I will make the land desolate and your enemies settling there will be astonished at it. ³³ I will scatter you among the nations and I will draw out the sword after you. So your land will become a desolation and your cities will become a waste. ³⁴ Then the land will enjoy its Shabbatot all the days of its desolation, while you are in the land of your enemies. Then the land will rest and enjoy its Shabbatot. ³⁵ As long as it lies desolate it will have rest, that rest which it did not have from your Shabbatot, when you lived on it.
³⁶ “As for those who remain, I will bring weakness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies, so that the sound of a driven leaf will put them to flight, and they will flee as one flees from the sword and fall, even when no one is pursuing. ³⁷ They will stumble over one another, as if before the sword, when no one pursues, and you will have no strength to stand before your enemies. ³⁸ You will perish among the nations and the land of your enemies will devour you. ³⁹ Those of you who are left in the land of your enemies will rot away because of their iniquity, and because of the iniquities of their fathers they will rot away with them.
Yehova Remembers His Own
⁴⁰ “But if they confess their iniquity and that of their fathers, in the treachery they committed against Me, and how they walked contrary to Me ⁴¹ —in return I walked contrary to them and brought them into the land of their enemies—and if at that time their uncircumcised heart becomes humbled, so that they accept the punishment for their iniquity, ⁴² then I will remember My covenant with Jacob and also My covenant with Isaac and My covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land. ⁴³ But the land will be deserted by them and will enjoy its Shabbatot while it lies desolate without them, and they will accept the punishment of their iniquity, because they rejected My ordinances and their soul abhorred My statutes.
⁴⁴ “Yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them, nor will I hate them into utter destruction, and break My covenant with them, for I am Yehova their God. ⁴⁵ But for their sake I will remember the covenant of their ancestors, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God. I am Yehova.”
⁴⁶ These are the statutes, ordinances and laws, which Yehova made between Himself and Bnei-Yisrael at Mount Sinai by Moses.
The nation of Israel ended up splitting into two separate kingdoms, the House of Israel in the north and the House of Judah to the south. We see this play out in 1Kings chapter 12.
Both kingdoms turned away from Yehova, and turned away from His Ways.
Israel was divorced from the covenant and scattered among all the nations of the earth.
Judah was not divorced from the covenant, but was also punished for their harlotry.
Jeremiah 3:6-10
⁶ Then Yehova said to me in the days of King Josiah: “Have you seen what backsliding Israel did? She went up on every high mountain and under every green tree, and there she committed adultery. ⁷ Yet I thought that after she had done all this she would return to Me. But she did not return. Even her unfaithful sister Judah saw it. ⁸ I noted that when backsliding Israel committed adultery I sent her away and gave her a certificate of divorce. Yet, unfaithful Judah, her sister, did not fear. Instead she also went and committed adultery. ⁹ It happened that through her frivolous prostitution, she polluted the land and committed adultery with stones and with wood. ¹⁰ Yet after all this her unfaithful sister Judah did not return to Me with her whole heart, but only insincerely,” It is a declaration of Yehova.
Both the House of Israel and the House of Judah suffered consequences for their disobedience, however, it is important to note that Israel was divorced from the covenant, while Judah was not divorced.
In Ezekiel 4, we are given the intended time of their punishment.
⁴ “Then you are to lie on your left side, and set on it the punishment of the house of Israel; according to the number of days that you lie on it, you will bear their iniquity. ⁵ I have appointed the years of their punishment to you as a number of days—390 days. So you will bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. ⁶ When you have completed these, you will lie on your right side and bear the iniquity of the house of Judah—40 days—a day for each year, I have appointed to you.
390 years of exile for Israel, and 40 years of exile for Judah.
What kind of exile?
Most people believe this exile is just a physical scattering.
But it is not.
It begins with a physical scattering, but also includes a separation not only from Yehova, but also from the Torah!!
Not only was the original disobedient generation exiled, but also their children!
Hosea 4:6
⁶ My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.
Since you rejected knowledge,
I will also reject you from being My kohen.
Since you forgot the Torah of your God,
just so I will forget your children.
Deuteronomy 28:32
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.”
This is a terrible consequence, but they were forewarned, numerous times.
They were told how to obtain life and blessing:
Deuteronomy 28:1-2
“Now if you listen obediently to the voice of Yehova your God, taking care to do all His commandments that I am commanding you today, Yehova your God will set you on high—above all the nations of the earth. ² Then all these blessings will come upon you and overtake you, if you listen to the voice of Yehova your God…
But they did not listen to His voice.
They did not obey His Words and His Ways.
The terrible consequence is not Yehova’s fault. He warned them not to, and yet, they chose disobedience and its consequences anyway.
And what is the result of their disobeience and scattering?
Deuteronomy 28:62-64
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 Yehova your God. ⁶³ Now just as Yehova rejoiced over you to do you good and to multiply you, so Yehova 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 “Yehova 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.”

Let’s focus on the House of Israel…
Their exile, separation from Yehova and separation from the understanding of Torah, was to last 390 years.
But we are told they did not repent and turn back to Yehova.
What does the Torah tell us about the unrepentant?
Leviticus 26:18
⁸ “If you, in spite of these things, will not listen to Me, then I will chastise you seven times more for your sins.”
Leviticus 26:21
^{“if you keep walking contrary to Me and will not listen to Me, then I will} multiply the plagues on you seven times like your sins.”
Leviticus 26:23-24
²³ “Now if in spite of these things you will not be chastened by Me, but walk contrary to Me instead, ²⁴ then I will also walk contrary to you. Then I will strike you, I Myself, seven times for your sins.”
Leviticus 26:28
²⁷ “Yet if in spite of this you will not listen to Me but walk contrary to Me, ²⁸ then I will walk contrary to you in wrath. So I will chastise you seven times for your sins.”
If one is unrepentant and does not turn back to Yehova, then consequences are multiplied by seven.
The House of Israel was to be scattered and exiled, both physically and spiritually, for 390 years. But they did not repent, and in accordance with Torah instruction, their consequence became 2730 years!!
As men and women, we cannot fully understand the idea of 2730 years.
It is just a number.
We understand years and decades.
I’m not even sure we understand full lifetimes, until we reach the end of our own.
We do not have the capability to understand 2730 years in our own sliver of existence. Many of us do not even know the names of our great-grandparents –– and that is only 3 generations, maybe 60-80 years ago.
Do you understand what I am showing you?
An exile of 2730 years is horrific and beyond comprehension!
And yet, it is spelled out for us in the scriptures.
The House of Israel chose disobedience.
The House of Israel chose to not repent.
The House of Israel chose to not turn back to Yehova.
This physical and spiritual exile began in approximately 720BC when the Assyrians defeated Israel, captured them, and began to scatter them among all the nations of the earth.
If we add 2730 years duration to this time period, we see that the exile ended in 2009/2010 timeframe!!
Yes, we are living at a time of great significance in biblical history/prophecy!
We are alive to witness the House of Israel regain understanding of the Torah and be called back into covenant with Yehova!!
I have experienced this calling, to return to Yehova and His Words and His Ways!!
This is fascinating and praise worthy!!
If this is a good thing [and it is] then why would I title this article “A Warning To Torah Community”?
Do you remember how we began this study?
Ecclesiastes 1:9
⁹ That which has been is what will be,
That which is done is what will be done,
And there is nothing new under the sun.
What example in ancient times do we have in the scriptures where Torah was given to Israel?
The Exodus story.
The Torah was given to Israel [and to the strangers among them, the mixed-multitude] on Mt. Sinai.
There were over 600,000 Hebrew men, plus the women and children, plus the mixed-multitude who came out of Mitsrayim [Egypt] with them and chose to be part of Israel.
How many adults of these several million people made it to the promise land?
Two.
Exactly two men of this original generation made it into the promise land.
Joshua and Caleb.
That’s it.
The nation of Israel made a golden calf and worshipped it almost immediately!!
Yehova wanted to destroy them, but He relented.
And the people continued in disobedience from there, never ending their rebellion and lack of faith.
All throughout the Exodus story, we see the people rebelling against Yehova.
And He struck them all down, save Joshua and Caleb.
Numbers 14:26-30
²⁶ Yehova then said to Moses and Aaron saying, ²⁷ “How long will this wicked community be grumbling against Me? I have heard the complaints of Bnei-Yisrael grumbling against Me. ²⁸ So tell them, ‘As surely as I live,’ says Yehova, ‘I will do to you just as I heard you say in My ears. ²⁹ In this very wilderness your bodies will drop—every one of you 20 years of age and older who was numbered in the census and grumbled against Me. ³⁰ Not one of you will enter the land about which I lifted My hand to make home for you—except Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun.
Why were Joshua and Caleb allowed to enter the promise land?
Numbers 32:11-13
¹¹ ‘The men who came out of Egypt, from 20 years old and upward, will not see the land I promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, for they have not followed after Me with a whole heart— ¹² except Caleb son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite and Joshua son of Nun, for they were wholehearted after Yehova.’ ¹³ The anger of Yehova burned against Israel and He caused them to wander in the wilderness 40 years until all the generation doing that evil in Yehova’s sight was gone.
Joshua and Caleb followed Yehova wholly and completely.
They were included in the promise because they followed Him wholeheartedly.
This is the standard that is set for us:
We are to follow Yehova wholeheartedly.
Completely.
Not a little.
Not when it is convenient.
Not when we feel like it.
We are to have complete faith and follow Him all the time, in everything that we do, say, and think.
We are to follow completely.
Lest we fall in the wilderness.
Deuteronomy 13:1
“Whatever I command you, you must take care to do—you are not to add to it or take away from it.”
Deuteronomy 13:4-5
“…for Yehova your God is testing you, to find out whether you love Yehova your God with all your heart and with all your soul. ⁵ Yehova your God you will follow and Him you will fear. His commandments you will keep, to His voice you will listen, Him you will serve and to Him you will cling.”
We are a new generation.
We are the first generation following the 2730 year curse and exile, to be given the Torah, and understanding of the Torah.
And this is the warning I have for Torah community:
Will we cling to Yehova?
Will we add to His Word?
Will we take away from His Word?
Will we walk His path, not turning to the right or to the left?
Deuteronomy 5:29-30
²⁹ “So you must take care to do as Yehova your God has commanded you—do not turn aside to the right or to the left. ³⁰ You are to walk in all the way that Yehova your God has commanded you, so that you may live and it may be well with you…”
The Torah was given to Israel at Mt Sinai.
They were given this charge:
Deuteronomy 30:19-20
¹⁹ “I call the heavens and the earth to witness about you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Therefore choose life so that you and your descendants may live, ²⁰ by loving Yehova your God, listening to His voice, and clinging to Him. For He is your life and the length of your days, that you may dwell on the land that Yehova swore to your fathers—to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob—to give them.
Yehova is asking for our complete and total faith and obedience.
It brings life and blessing, while disobedience brings death and curse.
Why is this important?
It isn’t just so that we can enter our promise land (kingdom of heaven), but so that our descendants might live. Our children.
Remember Hosea…
Since you forgot the Torah of your God,
just so I will forget your children.
We must follow Yehova completely!!
Deuteronomy 12:28
Take care and listen to ALL THESE WORDS that I am commanding you, so that it may go well with you and your children after you forever, when you do what is good and right in the eyes of Yehova your God.
We are just like the children of the Exodus.
We are being given the Torah.
Will we guard it and protect it, walking in ALL of His ways?
Or will we stray from it, only doing the parts we like?
Will we stray from it, only following His ways when convenient?
Will we turn our backs on Yehova if we see something shiny, or if we think we know better?

We are told that there is nothing new under the sun.
As it was in ancient days, so it will be again.
We see this concept played out in scripture time and time again.
We are now the generation living during a monumental time spoken of in scripture.
Will we repeat history, just as Ecclesiastes says?
Will we fail to heed His Word?
Or will we follow Him wholly and completely?
We are being given an opportunity like no other!!
We live in THE VERY GENERATION when Yehova is giving His Torah back to the people!!! Just as we saw in Isaiah 2 and Micah 4!!
Will we embrace it and follow Him completely, wholeheartedly?
Or will we follow in the path of the Exodus generation and fail?
Will we all drop in the wilderness, not seeing our promise land (the kingdom of heaven)?
I urge all of you, myself included, to be like Joshua and Caleb.
Take all of the Words of Yehova to heart.
Take them seriously.
Do not mix in the traditions and thoughts of Judaism.
Do not add the traditions and thoughts from mainstream Christianity.
Follow Him.
Cling to Him.
Do not be lukewarm and fall in the wilderness.

Please do not error as described in Isaiah 30:1
“Oh, the rebellious children”
—it is a declaration of Yehova—
“Who carry out a plan, but not Mine,
and make an alliance, but not of My Ruach,
so they may add sin to sin…”
And remember…
The Exodus generation who fell in the wilderness was a Torah Observant community.

And please keep in mind how much Yehova and Yeshua hated the traditions of men.

If your Torah walk includes the traditions of Judaism that are not given in scripture, repent and separate from it.

Do not add to nor take away from His Word!!

If your Torah walk includes having one foot in the truth and one foot in lawless Christianity, repent of it and separate from it!!

Do not add to nor take away from His Word!!

I pray for life and blessing for you by clinging to ALL THAT HE HAS COMMANDED!