Has the Professing Church Misunderstood the Apostle Paul?

What was the point of Paul's epistles? Were they brand new information, superceding the Tenakh and God's original plan and purpose? Did God change HIS mind and decide that what HE had told Moses was now all wrong and that HE'D made a mistake and now has decided to use Paul to set it right?

I don't think so.

As I continue to study Paul's epistles, inspired by the Holy Spirit, I have come to the realization that what Paul is doing is not something new. He is, in fact, setting things in order. But not the way in which it has been taught for centuries. He is not the original replacement thelogy teacher.In Paul's day, as it is now, there were Jews coming to the realization that Yeshua was Messiah and there were gentiles coming to that saving knowledge as well. Both have come to the same Messiah with the same truth and plan equally for each. HIS Torah (Law) is the way they are to live. For the Jew he must learn to cast off those traditions of the Mishna that disallowed inclusion of the gentiles without their becoming a part of the Jewish nation. He had reject those traditions that made the commandments of God of no effect, as Yeshua spoke of in Matthew 15. The Jew had to learn to live with his brother, the new Gentile believer, in Torah community, and in return the Gentile had to learn to live with his new Jewish brother. The basis for the community is the Word of God; the commandments.

For the new gentile believer in Messiah, he had to walk away from the pagan practices that kept him alienated from the true living God. That was his first order of business in order to be able to live in the community. As he grew in the grace and knowledge of the LORD, rejecting paganism, and through the study and teaching of Moses (Acts 15:29-21) he would become aTorah keeping member of the community. Paul's letters were teaching both Jew and gentile, born again, disciples of Yeshua how to live in Torah community according to God's Torah, without the inclusion of pagan practices or traditions of the Jews that made God's commands of no effect. Not for salvation, but so that each would be obedient by faith to God's commands and be blessed by the doing.

God, then and now, is calling out people from every ethnic group to abandon their practices that are in opposition to the Truth of God's Word. To the Jew He is saying, "Come out of those man-made rabbinic traditions, commandments, and doctrines of men, and enter into full relationship with ME, according to the Truth of MY Word. To the Gentile He is saying, "Abandon those man-made pagan traditions, and commandments and doctrines of men, and enter into full relationship with ME, according to the Truth of MY Word.

It truly comes down to Man's Law versus God's Law. Man always gravitates to laws of his own making for one reason or another. Sometimes they start out with good intentions. But before long they take a life of their own and end up residing in a place of authority equal to God's written Word. The Jews did this with their oral law, which became the Mishna, and then the Talmud. The modern day professing church has done, and continues to do the same thing. We have established our own set of rituals, methods of worship, and have assimilated practices that are pagan in origin and are in opposition to God's Word.

No, Paul was not the original replacement theology teacher. Paul was simply teaching the people, through his letters, using the Hebrew Scriptures as his text, and warning them - Jew and Gentile - to come out of man-made religion and come into the light of God's written Word.