Pondering the Armstrongist Torah Redo: The Confessions of a Former Festival Advisor

 

Staircase to the Southern Gate of the Second Temple (Fair Use)

 

Pondering the Armstrongist Torah Redo

The Confessions of a Former Festival Advisor

By Scout

לָשׂוּם אֶת שְׁמוֹ שָׁם (Hebrew, “to place his name”)

 

At one time, I was the Festival Advisor for the small WCG congregation I used to attend.  I was a part of the regime.  It is now high time for me to do penance.  This is the time of year when many of the little apocalyptic Millerite denominations that cascaded from the collapse of Armstrongism will encourage members to start festival planning.  So, it is the season.  In this writing, I refer to the Feast of Tabernacles (FOT or Sukkoth) because it illustrates some of the issues with the way that Armstrongism re-implemented the Torah in a new rendition. 

The History of Re-imagining the Torah

I will first discuss Rabbinic Judaism. I believe this is an important preface because I think many Armstrongists view the observance of the Torah as what happens in their local Jewish Congregation.  The Jews keep all the Holy Days locally.  But that was forced by the Destruction of the Temple in 70 AD during the Great Tribulation. 

The Torah is bound to a gathering place for worship.  The place was a tabernacle in the wilderness and then it became the First Temple, then the Second Temple.  The watershed event in the history of Torah observance was the loss of the Second Temple to Roman destruction in 70 AD, well after the introduction of the New Covenant.   The Judaic response to this truncation was to repackage the Torah sans Temple for local synagogue praxis.  This was inaugurated by prominent Pharisee Yohanan ben Zakkai (lived circa 1-80 AD; there are various spellings of his name) who had the endorsement of the Roman conquerors, particularly Vespasian.  Ben Zakkai had credibility because he and his faction were not seen by the Romans as a part of the Jewish Revolt.  Ben Zakkai assembled the Bet Din in Jamnia, a city to the west of Jerusalem on the Mediterranean coast and they repackaged the Torah to function without a Temple for synagogue liturgy.  One of Ben Zakkai’s guiding principles was that “deeds of love” had replaced sacrifices. 

Then, for Rabbinic Judaism, there is the issue of God having placed his name at the now destroyed Second Temple.  The placing of God’s name at a particular location is referred to by scholars as “the centralizing formula.”  According to researcher Zvi Koenigsberg the rabbis noted that the locations (called “high places”) varied in the time prior to the Temple and saw that as a principle that permitted multiple locations to be chosen. 

This collection of events, briefly stated, is the source of Rabbinic Judaism that most North American Gentiles are familiar with. A further sidebar issue is whether in the formation of Armstrongism the praxis of Rabbinic Judaism was copied, explicitly or implicitly, or if a separate but similar repackaging of the Torah sans Temple occurred.  I will not seek to address that issue in this writing.  What is known is that how God placed his name on the worship location to which the Torah is bound was of a different character among Armstrongists than what is depicted in the Bible.  The Bible asserts a high revelation in which God himself spoke the place where his name would dwell.  In Armstrongism, there was a low revelation in which HWA saw that circumstances were pointing to Big Sandy (also referred to as Gladewater) as the place where God’s name would dwell and this provided a valid location for Sukkoth observance.  The former revelation is documented in the Bible and the latter is documented in Armstrongist literature and, if it is credible at all, has only denominational scope. 

In both Rabbinic Judaism and Armstrongism, the Torah was uncoupled from the Temple without a precise Biblical model that I can discern to support this action.  Scripture does not anticipate the need to reassign the placing of God’s name.  The leaders of the Bet Din sat in Moses’ Seat but how did that authority extend to this uncoupling?  And where is the Biblical authority for Armstrongists to tamper with the placement of God’s name?  These are questions that need answers from those who would perpetuate Torah observance without the Temple.  The uncoupling of the Torah from the Temple seems to be a case that is yet to be built.

The Problem of the Temple-centric Torah

The Armstrongist rendition of the Torah fails the jot-and-tittle test (Matthew 5:18).  When Jesus made that well-known jot-and-tittle statement, he was referring to the full law as delivered in the Pentateuch.  This was a practice that was Temple-centric.  The FOT involved Temple sacrifices which became no longer binding under the New Covenant after the sacrifice of Jesus, but the Torah also prescribed that this was one of three occasions when the Israelite males were to come before God for worship at the location where he placed his name and this requirement would not have been abrogated by the sacrifice of Jesus.   And God placed his name at the Temple in Jerusalem.  So, if you believe the Torah is still binding on Christians, the sacrifices became passé under the New Covenant but the command to appear at the right place did not.  So, a big jot passed from the law in the Torah sans Temple repackaging by Armstrongism. 

The Temple-centric Torah still exists.  It lies fallow in everyone’s Bible.  Nobody can fully observe the Torah because the Temple is gone and has never been rebuilt.  And the Temple in Jerusalem was the place that God placed his name and this continued until 70 AD and that designation was never rescinded.  In fact, God stated the following in 2 Chronicles 7:16 regarding the placement of his name: “For now I have chosen and consecrated this house so that my name may be there forever; my eyes and my heart will be there for all time.”  In these prophetic words, God apparently did not anticipate placing his name in Big Sandy, Texas or Squaw Valley, California.

I cannot find any place in scripture where the placement of God’s name in Jerusalem is rescinded.  2 Chronicles 7:16, quoted above, refers to the First Temple.  God abandoned that Temple (Ezekiel 10:18) and it was destroyed by the Babylonians.  But God’s name was still placed there even though God’s presence was not there and there was no physical structure.  We know this name placement had continuity because Darius stated the following concerning the proposed Second Temple (Ezra 6:12): “And the God that hath caused his name to dwell there destroy all kings and people, that shall put to their hand to alter and to destroy this house of God which is at Jerusalem.”   The continuity of the name placement extends into the New Heavens and New Earth because in Rev. 21:22 it states that there will be a New Jerusalem and God the Father and God the Son will be the Temple in that city.  A city that is eternal.  The placement of the name in Jerusalem survived national upheavals, destructions, captivities, loss of physical structure but it will continue into perpetuity.  Given this history and prophesied future, it is staggering that some believe that God would place his name at Wisconsin Dells or Tucson. 

The Temple Returns

In 1 Chronicles 7:16 quoted above, did God disclose that he could not really tell the future?  Did he not foresee the destruction of the first Temple or the Second Temple?  God actually creates reality so it is impossible that he would not see down the corridors of time and into the future.  God’s name continued to be placed in Jerusalem even though the physical structure of the Second Temple was destroyed in the Tribulation.  There has been a replacement for the Temple that was destroyed in 70 AD.  We are told of this in John 2:19-22 that Jesus said: “’Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.  The Jews then said, ‘This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?’ But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.”  How about that? The disciples did not, with a spirit of unbelief, turn to the Book of Ezekiel chapters 40 through 48 and tell the resurrected Jesus that he was wrong – that there was going to be another physical Temple building.  Since the Gospel of John and the Epistle to the Ephesians were roughly contemporary, it is like that the early church understood the full import of Jesus as the Temple. To seal the deal, the Levitical Priesthood, based in the Temple, was replaced (Hebrews 7:12).  And further, Christ as the Temple was attested by Jesus himself in John 2:19-22, Christ as the Temple was attested by Paul in Ephesians 2:20-22 and by John of Patmos in Revelation 21:22. In the mouths of two or three witnesses a thing is established.  

In spite of all this evidence, amazingly, there are those who claim the Torah is forever and written on their hearts (Hoeh says that the eternal law of God includes the Ten Commandments and also the “statutes and laws” derived from them in his article titled “Which Old Testament Laws Should We Keep Today?”) and that the Levitical Priesthood and the sacrificial system will be restored (Ezekiel 44:15) in the Millennium all based on the idea of Ezekiel’s Temple. So, it is worth having a look at Ezekiel’s Temple.  The account of it is starts in Ezekiel 40 but finishes in Revelation 21 and 22.  I will turn to that topic next. 

Ezekiel’s Temple and the Apokatastasis

Ezekiel delivered a lengthy prophecy (Ezekiel 40-48) that is a detailed description of an unbuilt Temple.  The passage describes a being giving the description of the Temple to Ezekiel.  The being says the message of the description is for Israel which was then in exile in Babylon.  Otherwise, the being does not provide any information about the purpose of the description. In particular, the being does not assert that it is a plan for a future physical Temple.  Consequently, there are many interpretations of this passage. 

The meaning of the passage about this imaginary Temple is problematical.  I will present what I think is the most plausible theory. Briefly, at the close of Ezekiel’s description of the Temple, he describes a river of healing waters that proceeds from beneath the threshold of a door to the Temple (Ezekiel 47:1-12). This description is repeated by John of Patmos in the Book of Revelation (Revelation 22:1-5).  Ezekiel and John are using the same imagery.  The connection is undeniable. John seems to provide a gloss on Ezekiel’s Temple writing.  But John of Patmos, a few sentences earlier in Rev. 21:22, makes an explicit statement about the Temple: “I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.”  What this means is that Ezekiel’s imaginary Temple is a symbol of God the Father and Jesus Christ according to John of Patmos.  In the Apokatastasis, there is the renewal of all things prophesied by Jesus when he walked the earth (Matt. 19:28).  Jesus is the Temple renewed, and this renewed Temple in the person of Jesus is not attended by the Levitical Priesthood but the Elect are the priests of that Age (1 Peter 2:9). 

Where the Data Leads

My penitential confession. The Torah has an unbreachable linkage to the Temple through Holy Day observation. The three major Holy Days required sacrifices and that all the males of Israel appear before God at the place where he put his name. The curtain fell on the Torah in its physical implementation in 70 AD when the Temple was destroyed in the Tribulation.  The physical Temple in the interval after the Crucifixion and before 70 AD had already been superseded by Jesus as the new Temple.  The physical destruction of the Temple just underscored this supersession. So, then the Torah as an integrated package of liturgy and praxis could no longer be kept.  All subsequent renditions of the Torah innovated by men are partially truncated without the Temple.  (Somebody needs to convince me that re-inventing the Torah sans Temple is a God-ordained directive rather than a pathology.) Proclaiming that the Temple is no longer required because there are no longer any sacrifices overlooks the fact that there were other Temple activities that are still executable.  Abrogating the sacrifices does not uncouple the Torah from the Temple.  The Torah and the Temple stand together or fall together. Ezekiel’s Temple does not proclaim a revitalization of the Torah, sacrifices and Levitical Priesthood but symbolizes God the Father and the Son who gave us the New Covenant with a new High Priest and a new priesthood and the Law of Christ.

 

Note:  Let me hasten to add that it is my exegeted position that there is nothing wrong with keeping any of the Holy Days. Knock yourself out.  I feel that it is highly probable that the Jerusalem Church in the First Century observed the Holy Days and some Temple worship prior to 70 AD.  Observation of a Holy Days can have pedagogical value if observed from a New Covenant perspective.  What is blatant heresy is to declare that Holy Day observance is required for salvation.  Circumcision is the canonical case against this view.