Published January 1, 2024
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A recent article by R.L. Solberg, a staunch antinomian who writes books and blogs against Torah-positive beliefs, titled Why Peter’s Vision Is About Food makes the claim that the narrative of Acts 10 absolutely upholds the popular “Christian” view that this passage overturns the Leviticus 11 food laws. In this study I will examine his claims and why they simply are not valid. What I will do is cite a segment of the article, provide a response, and then repeat with the next segment until I reach the end of Mr. Solberg’s claims.
R.L. Solberg:
When it comes to Peter’s vision of the sheet of animals, our Hebrew Roots friends really have just one argument. And that argument, when worked out to its logical conclusion, reveals why Peter’s vision must be speaking about food, rather than Gentiles, being made clean. The vision is recorded in Acts 10.
The next day, as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the housetop about the sixth hour to pray. And he became hungry and wanted something to eat, but while they were preparing it, he fell into a trance and saw the heavens opened and something like a great sheet descending, being let down by its four corners upon the earth. In it were all kinds of animals and reptiles and birds of the air. And there came a voice to him: “Rise, Peter; kill and eat.” But Peter said, “By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean.” And the voice came to him again a second time, “What God has made clean, do not call common.” This happened three times, and the thing was taken up at once to heaven.
Acts 10:9-16, ESVThe interpretation taught in Torahism (aka Torah-observant Christianity, Hebrew Roots) is that, in this passage, Jesus used a vision of unclean animals as an illustration to teach Peter about the Gentiles. And because of what Peter explains to a Gentile just a few verses later, we have to agree that is the proper application of the vision. In verse 28, Peter says, “You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation, but God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean.”
Response:
Solberg’s initial claim here is that we cannot use Peter’s own interpretation of the vision to understand the meaning of it. Instead, it seems we must accept a longstanding “Christian” interpretation of the vision mentioned nowhere in Scripture—whether Acts 10 or anywhere else, there is not a single statement in The Bible that directly tells us either that the vision was indeed about overturning the Leviticus 11 food laws or that Peter was wrong in how he interpreted the vision. He states that those with a Torah-positive hermeneutic that side with Peter’s own interpretation of the vision have this one point to ride our entire theological position on. In reality, there are many points that contribute to the popular “Christian” interpretation of this text is wrong and that it truly is a message to Peter about taking the Gospel to the nations. I will cover some of those points in this message, but if you want to go through a more complete study of these points you can read another article I wrote on this passage titled Get Up Peter! Kill And Eat!
To put it another way: Either one has to reject Peter’s own declaration of what the vision means, which would be taking away from Scripture, or they have to claim that Peter’s vision means both what Peter said it means and something else, which would be adding to Scripture. One way or another people like Solberg are guilty of this. But, I suppose they don’t care because they probably think that commandment doesn’t apply to them either. Imagine what you can make The Bible say if you believe the commandment to not add to or take away from Scripture doesn’t apply to you as a “Christian”!
To this I would say that I would much rather side with what The Bible clearly tells us than what The Bible never tells us. To make the claim that this passage is about overturning the food laws when the text itself says it was about people is nothing but a wild attempt to insist on upholding a popular theological error. But I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself, because Solberg continues on and then comes back to verse 28 further into his message, and so I will do the same.
R.L. Solberg:
“Torah keepers” reject the idea that in this vision, Jesus also taught that God had made all food clean. They insist the subject of eating in the vision was purely an analogy and not intended to teach anything about food. They instead see Jesus commanding Peter to engage with unclean food as a way of metaphorically addressing the real-world issue of Peter interacting with unclean Gentiles. Thus, when Jesus rebukes Peter by saying, “What God has made clean do not call common” (v. 15), He refers to Gentiles, not animals.
Response:
Here Solberg proceeds to make the common mistake of looking at the passage as it is translated into English and from the perspective of popular modern “Christianity”. As noted above, the passage states that Peter was shown a sheet with both clean and unclean animals on it, told to kill and eat, and refused to eat both that which was unclean and that which was common. Most who hold to the idea that the passage overturns the Torah food laws, like Solberg, seem to view common and unclean as synonyms used in a repetitive manner for emphasis. This, however, is not the case.
When we turn to the original Greek words that are used, the word for “common” is koinos (κοινός) and the word for “unclean” is “akathartos” (ἀκάθαρτος). This is a very important point that must be considered when looking at this passage, one that pretty much destroys the argument that the vision was an overturning of the food laws at all.
The word koinos is used by the apostles to refer to things that are prohibited by man-made traditions. For example, it is the same word used in Mark 7:2 where it says, “And they saw that some of His disciples were eating bread with [koinos] hands, that is, not washed,” and Mark 7:5, “The Pharisees and Torah scholars questioned Yeshua, ‘Why don’t Your disciples walk according to the tradition of the elders? Why do they eat bread with [koinos] hands?’” This is also the word used in Romans 14, another passage sometimes used by proponents of the idea that the food laws no longer apply, showing how that passage too was addressing man-made rules about food and not the Torah prohibitions given by God.
Something interesting about Mark 7, along with the sister passage of Matthew 15, is that some people also defer to these narratives to claim that the food laws are overturned. Of course, if this were true then it would make no sense for Peter, at least a decade later, to be saying in the vision that he never ate anything unclean—because if Yeshua overturned the food laws in Mark 7 and Matthew 15 then surely Peter would have already been enjoying the pagan foods of Rome where swine was at the top of the menu. It seems that Solberg actually recognizes this problem as, in an article he wrote in 2022 titled Thus He Declared All Food Clean, he dares to suggest a “solution” to the problem this causes to his theology. He admits that Yeshua did not say this phrase, but then says that it was added by the author of the Gospel as it was written decades later and, presumably, after Peter had his vision. This is pretty bold to suggest that a Gospel writer, under the divine inspiration of God Himself, would quote Yeshua as saying something He didn’t actually say. This just shows the extent to which these liars in the world of antinomianism will go to make stuff up in order to insist that commandments like the food laws no longer need to be followed.
So, then we have akathartos, which is used of things that God called unclean. In the Gospels and apostolic writings it is used frequently of unclean spirits. However, this word is also used in 2 Corinthians 6:17, where Paul was quoting the prophet Isaiah, and says: “Therefore, come out from among them, and be separate, says Adonai. Touch no [akathartos] thing. Then I will take you in.” Sometimes people will claim a context issue with this, not just with the chapter itself but also with the point that this word is mostly used in the apostolic Scriptures as a reference to unclean spirits. But, again, Paul was quoting Isaiah, and one need only read Isaiah 65:1-5 and 66:17 to know what the prophet would have considered the unclean thing. Also, in Revelation 18:2 this word akathartos is used three times—of unclean spirits, unclean birds, and unclean animals. This proves that in the new covenant, within the beliefs of the apostles themselves, the word applied to all of these equally, and therefore must apply all three to 2 Corinthians 6:17 equally as well. Also, this is the word used in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 within the Greek Septuagint of unclean animals, which is the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek hundreds of years before the life of Yeshua. So, akathartos in Acts 10 refers to that which was actually prohibited by Torah and koinos refers to that which was prohibited by the man-made laws of the Jewish elders, sages, and Pharisees. This is critically important to properly understanding Peter’s vision.
R.L. Solberg:
Those convinced that the Old Covenant dietary commands are still in effect are forced into this interpretation by their precommitments. They must reject any reading in which the subject of the vision (eating unclean animals) is understood as part of its meaning. However, this artificially constrained interpretation is highly problematic for two reasons.
Response:
Before getting into his “two reasons”, I want to look at two things stated in this short paragraph that are problematic. The first is his claim that those of us who believe in a continued mandate to follow the food laws are “forced into this interpretation by our precommitments”. I would say that it’s the other way around. You see, we have the whole counsel of Scripture backing up our position, from Genesis 7 where the distinctions of clean and unclean animals are first mentioned to Revelation 18:2 where they are last mentioned and everything in between.
The thing of it is, Protestant “Christianity” is a 500-year-old faith tradition. Prior to that, the majority of what could be called “Christian religion” was the Roman Catholic faith tradition. And according to the Roman Catholic tradition the change in the food laws is not attributed to Mark 7, Acts 10, 1 Timothy 4, Romans 14, Colossians 2, or anything else in The Bible itself. The Roman Catholic position, as stated in the The Liber Pontificalis, is that a bishop posthumously named a pope by the name of Eleutherius made this change when he said: “no kind of food should be despised by Christians.” This tells us that certainly nobody in the first century would have though Peter’s vision was to declare unclean animals to now be permissible for food. As such, it becomes clear that it is the precommitments of the antinomians who believe the food laws overturned that are forced into their interpretation of the vision.
Think about it. This guy is accusing us of theological bias by allegedly ignoring the popular “Christian” interpretation of the passage, which is clearly being read into the text, and holding to Peter’s own interpretation of the vision. The reality is that people like R.L. Solberg are blatantly dismissing Peter’s interpretation, which is literally part of the narrative, in order to apply his own religious bias and eisegetically read into the text something that isn’t actually stated.
One of the primary rules of hermeneutics—how we properly understand what The Bible says—is that we must use what is made clear to understand what is vague or obscure. None of the popular “proof-text” passages used to support the idea that the food laws are abolished clearly state such. One must read into these passages this belief, a belief that was originally attributed to a post-apostolic period bishop by the Roman Catholic church. This is not only the wrong way to do hermeneutics, but it pushing the line of blasphemy.
The next thing Solberg states is that we who believe the food laws carry forward into new covenant faith is that we: “must reject any reading in which the subject of the vision (eating unclean animals) is understood as part of its meaning.” So, let’s consider other visions we read about in The Bible and then further consider if the literal content of the vision itself was a literal part of the meaning. Think about Joseph’s vision of sheaves of wheat bowing to him. Are we to assume that part of the meaning of this vision was for Joseph to go out to the fields and wait for literal sheaves of wheat to bow to him? Remember, Solberg wants us to read visions in such a way that the subject of the vision is understood as part of its meaning. What about the Pharaoh having the vision of the fat and skinny cows? The interpretation was given that there would be seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine. Was it also part of its meaning that there were seven literal skinny cows eating seven literal fat cows in the Pharaoh’s pastures? Or how about that vision Daniel addressed with the statue made of gold, silver, bronze, iron, and clay? If part of its meaning was the same as Solberg proposes for Peter’s vision, then every “Christian” church in the world should have a replica of this statue, exactly as described in the vision, erected in front of their church and hold a ritual during their church services to wait for a meteor to rain down from heaven and smash it to pieces.
The fact of the matter is that the hermeneutical rule used for Peter’s vision to claim it is about food—that “the subject of the vision (eating unclean animals) is understood as part of its meaning”—and we can now eat whatever we want is only applied to Peter’s vision. This method of understanding is not applied to a single other dream or vision anywhere else in The Bible. This is not only in error, but it’s extremely hypocritical to do this. You do not get to change the rules of hermeneutics as you see fit in order to make The Bible support your views. Either we have to apply this rule to every other dream and vision in The Bible, or we have to deem this rule invalid and cannot apply it to Acts 10 either. Now let’s look at Solbergs “two reasons”.
R.L. Solberg:
First, if the Old Covenant dietary restrictions are still in effect under the New Covenant, then Jesus commanded Peter to break the Mosaic law and sin. Even accounting for the symbolic nature of the vision, Jesus commanded Peter to engage in lawless behavior. Additionally, if the food laws were still in effect, Jesus taught a lie. His statement that God has made those animals clean was untrue. There is no biblical precedent for God giving someone a vision in which He makes a dishonest declaration and commands them to sin against His law. Even taken symbolically in the context of a vision, doing so would violate the character of God.
Response:
This argument falls apart when we go back to the meanings of koinos and akathartos. As noted, one of these words refers to man-made religious rules and the other to things God actually deemed Himself to be unclean. When we look back at the passage, in the vision God’s response to Peter was always: “Do not call [koinos] what I have made clean.” To further build on what was being said here, the issue of koinos regarding food restrictions in first century Judaism included a man-made rule that if a clean animal and an unclean animal came in contact with each other, then the clean animal would become koinos and therefore also “unfit for human consumption”. In other words, if a pig and a cow rubbed against each other, the cow was just as “unclean” as the pig according to this Pharisaic tradition.
When we put this all together, what God was actually telling Peter in the vision was to kill and eat an animal that was koinos according to Judaism, not to kill and eat an animal that was akathartos according to The Torah. That means that God was not lying to Peter or telling him to sin in the vision and Yeshua was not teaching lies. The people teaching lies are people like R.L. Solberg who don’t do enough research into these topics and simply parrot the mantra of popular “Christianity”, telling those with itching ears what they want to hear, and drawing conclusions from a modern “Christian” understanding of their English translation of The Bible.
R.L. Solberg:
Second, if the food in the vision represents Gentile people, it would create a significant disconnect between its symbolism and its application to the real world. Eating unclean food was prohibited in the Old Covenant law, and fraternizing with Gentiles was not. When Peter told Cornelius and his family, “You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation” (Acts 10:28), the Greek word translated as “unlawful” is athemitone. This term does not refer to the Mosaic law. When the author, Luke, speaks of that law, he uses nomos. The word athemitone, on the other hand, is used to indicate something “not allowed” in the sense of traditions or customs; something considered socially taboo because it violates standards of decency. This is why some English translations use the words “forbidden” (CSB, LEB, NASB), “not allowed” (CEV, GNT), or “wrong” (GW, ISV) rather than the ESV’s “unlawful.”
Response:
Again, this is an argument that is debunked when we look both at the difference between koinos and akathartos and the point of using a consistent hermeneutic in regard to interpreting dreams and visions. Having established that what God was telling Peter to “kill and eat” was koinos and not akathartos, it shows that it is not at all problematic to apply the symbolism that Peter himself applied, in saying that what God told him to eat in the vision was representative of Gentiles. Just as “fraternizing with Gentiles” was not prohibited in The Torah, neither was eating animals that were deemed koinos under first century Judaism. Additionally, again, literally every vision in the rest of The Bible is understood as symbolic of something else. To say that Peter’s vision alone has an exception clause, with zero biblical support for this alleged clause, is extremely irresponsible.
Then Solberg brings up an interesting point that there is a difference between athemitone [unlawful] and nomos [Torah]. He notes that athemitone refers to “traditions or customs”. To be honest, I can’t even figure out how this guy thinks that this point supports his position, as it makes it perfectly clear that Peter’s understanding of the vision is that it addressed the man-made religious rules of first century Judaism. Peter is the one who had the vision. Peter is listed as an apostle. Peter wrote letters that are accepted in the canon of Scripture. And Peter said the vision was about taking the Gospel to Gentiles. Not once did Peter ever state that the vision was also about overturning the Torah food laws. Ultimately, athemitone proves that the entire narrative was against man-made rules and how God’s Law, The Torah, is superior and to be followed even if it means going against “the law of the land”.
R.L. Solberg:
There are no Old Testament laws that forbid Jews from interacting with Gentiles. And the Torah does not teach that the Gentile people are ritually unclean in and of themselves. So, when Jesus said in the vision, “What God has made clean do not call common” (or some translations say: Do not call “impure” or “unclean”), it wouldn’t directly apply to the Gentiles as a people. God did not need to make the Gentiles clean because they were never declared unclean. What was declared unclean in the Torah and, therefore, is subject to being made clean by God were the animals that Jesus commanded Peter to eat. And this is the key to understanding this passage.
Response:
“There are no Old Testament laws that forbid Jews from interacting with Gentiles.” EXACTLY! That’s the whole point. But you will only “get it” when you look at the contrast of koinos and akathartos. Once you get that down, it becomes clear what the entire point of this passage is about. Peter figured it out. It’s amazing that Peter figured it out, it got documented in the narrative itself, and yet there continues to be people like R.L. Solberg who still don’t know what the passage is saying. “What God has made clean do not call COMMON… koinos… prohibited by man-made religious rules.” Don’t call Gentiles COMMON… koinos… prohibited by man-made religious rules. That’s literally what it says, and someone who claims to be a Bible scholar, like Solberg does, should know that. Heck, he probably does know that and completely ignores it on purpose because it would destroy his whole argument.
“God did not need to make the Gentiles clean because they were never declared unclean.” EXACTLY! Just like God did not need to make clean animals that came into contact with unclean animals “clean again” because He made them clean in the first place. And this is the key to understanding this passage.
R.L. Solberg:
Yahweh’s restrictions on Israel’s diet did not merely serve as a religious observance. They also acted as a practical, day-to-day social barrier to other cultures. The food laws made it difficult for the Israelites to socialize with Gentiles because of the risk of ritual defilement through the unclean foods that were served. They acted as a substantial social obstacle for any Israelite who wanted to remain faithful to the covenant. And we find this social phenomenon at play in Acts 10. Immediately following Peter’s vision, the text says,
Now while Peter was inwardly perplexed as to what the vision that he had seen might mean, behold, the men who were sent by Cornelius, having made inquiry for Simon’s house, stood at the gate and called out to ask whether Simon who was called Peter was lodging there. And while Peter was pondering the vision, the Spirit said to him, “Behold, three men are looking for you. Rise and go down and accompany them without hesitation, for I have sent them.
Acts 10:17-21After Peter came out of the trance, he wondered why God gave him that vision. What did it mean? While he was trying to work it out, Cornelius’ men showed up, and the Holy Spirit helped Peter understand the vision by calling him to action. So he obeyed and visited Cornelius, to whom he ultimately declared, “God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean” (v. 28).
Response:
OK, this is a popular idea presented by pretty much everyone who promotes this position that the food laws do not need to be followed, that these dietary restrictions were to make Israel “set apart” from other nations—the Gentiles. The biggest problem with this position is that The Bible never says this is the reason for the food laws. According to Leviticus 11:44-45 and 20:25-26 the purpose of the food laws is to be holy, just as God is holy. While some would contend that holiness means being set apart, even at that it never specifically says that the purpose of the food laws was for Israel to be distinct from the pagan nations.
Earlier, if you recall, Solberg spoke about violating the character of God. Well, holiness is the character of God, and in these passages it tells us that we must be holy, just as God is holy, through keeping the Torah food laws. So, what would actually violate the character of God is people who claim to be in covenant with God calling themselves “Gentile Christians” and eating things God said not to eat like pork and shellfish.
To take this further, Peter himself cites these same passages. 1 Peter 1:16 says, “For it is written, ‘Be holy, because I am holy.’” Where is it written? Leviticus 11:44-45, 19:2, and 20:25-26. Twice the statement is directly linked with keeping the food laws. Surely Peter, a Jew living in first century Israel, knew exactly what he was saying when he quoted this passage. He didn’t just know it was written, he knew where it was written and he knew the surrounding context—again, directly linked with keeping the food laws. It is believed that the Acts 10 scenario took place roughly a decade after Yeshua ascended back to The Father and 1 Peter was written around 62 to 64 AD. So, if people like Solberg are right in their view, what in the world is Peter doing citing a passage from The Torah that is, before anything else and more than anything else in The Torah, directly linked with keeping the food laws? Not to mention that if The Torah was voided as these people say Peter shouldn’t have been quoting from it at all. You see, it is things just like this that prove these antinomians are clueless and spewing lies.
R.L. Solberg:
The subject of Peter’s vision was unclean animals; it said nothing about Gentiles. How did he come to that conclusion? Because he had been raised as a Torah-observant Jew, Peter inherently understood the impact that the Old Covenant dietary laws had on Jews interacting with Gentiles. He knew that socializing with them was not against God’s law, but eating unclean food was. So when Jesus told him in the vision that God had made all food clean, Peter put two and two together and realized that a significant obstacle between Jews and Gentiles had been removed. The end of the food laws also meant the end of that social barrier. That’s why we find Peter boldly sharing the Gospel in the house of a Gentile.
Response:
This is nothing more than trying to rationalize away the passage to be about something it’s not about and making stuff up to insist that the passage overturns the food laws. Peter said the vision taught him to not call people unclean. Nothing anywhere in the narrative says that “the real meaning” was that it’s now OK to eat unclean meat so that a social barrier could be removed. Sadly, this is what people like Solberg do. They have absolutely no idea how to read The Bible in context, and they are so determined to prove that passages like this do away with the very commandments of God that they stop at nothing to concoct nonsensical diatribes like this.
Solberg says the reason Peter concluded the vision meant to not call people unclean is because he was Jewish and so he obviously knew the dietary laws were at the center of the segregation of Jew and Gentile. Here’s the problem with this.
In The Torah Exodus 12:49 says, “The same Torah applies to the native as well as the outsider who dwells among you,” and Numbers 15:16 says, “The same Torah and the same regulations will apply to both you and the outsider residing among you.” The word outsider in these passages is the Hebrew ger (גר), and it is the Hebrew word that refers to individual Gentiles. This means that according to The Torah, Gentiles are supposed to enter into covenant with God and begin following The Torah if there is to be fellowship in the community of God’s people. This is the exact opposite of this anti-Torah view that we need to reject The Torah in order to have fellowship with the world. Additionally, Ecclesiastes 12:13 in one translation says, “A final word, when all has been heard: Fear God and keep His mitzvot! For this applies to all mankind,” and in another translation reads, “Here is the final conclusion, now that you have heard everything: fear God, and keep his mitzvot; this is what being human is all about.” So, following The Torah applies to all people and is what being human is all about. Again, quite the opposite of what people like Solberg want us to believe.
The correct way, according to The Bible, to break the social barrier and have fellowship is to call people to repent, enter into Torah-keeping covenant through faith in Yeshua, and then have fellowship. It is not to reject The Torah and go out and do what the unsaved Gentiles do and have one big happy party of worldliness and sin with no regard for The Torah of God.
R.L. Solberg’s Conclusion:
If the Old Covenant dietary restrictions are still in effect, then in Peter’s vision, Jesus commanded him to break the law and sin, and He lied about God making all food clean. This is why I find the interpretation taught by our Hebrew Roots friends flawed and untenable. On top of that, the Torah does not teach that Gentiles are inherently unclean. So the phrase “What God has made clean” wouldn’t directly apply to them. But it would certainly apply to the animals they ate.
Jesus had lifted the Old Covenant dietary restrictions. And because they were no longer in effect, Jewish believers in Jesus—like Peter, Paul, Barnabas, and the rest—could now freely associate with Gentiles and share the Gospel with no concern about social barriers and ritual defilement. Thus, Peter’s vision in Acts 10 harmonizes with all the other NT passages that teach those food commands had served their God-intended purpose and come to an end under the New Covenant (Mark 7:19, Rom. 14, 1 Cor. 10:25-30, Col. 2:16-17, 1 Tim. 4:1-5, etc.).
My Conclusion:
Yeshua did not lie or tell Peter to break The Torah and sin, as I have shown. He was telling Peter, in the vision, to eat what was already clean and only deemed impure according to Pharisaical laws. The phrase “What God has made clean” does apply to Gentiles because the key word is koinos, not akathartos. The passage does not lift the Old Covenant dietary restrictions and the way to freely associate with Gentiles would be, as directed in The Torah, to call them to repent and enter into Torah-keeping covenant faith. The social barrier is sin, and the only way to tear it down is to get people to repent of their sin. And sin is defined in 1 John 3:4 as “breaking, transgressing, violating The Torah”. Neither Acts 10 nor any of the other often used passages (Mark 7:19, Romans 14, 1 Corinthians 10:25-30, Colossians 2:16-17, 1 Timothy 4:1-5, etc.) override the Torah food laws. I have prepared full studies on most of these passages that further prove that they do not support the idea that the food laws no longer apply.
There is no consistency among antinomians in regard to passages like Acts 10. While people like Solberg believe this passage proves the point, Michael Brown, a popular theologian who holds certain anti-Torah views and believes that “Christians” do not have to follow the food laws, has stated in a video message titled Should Christians Keep The Dietary Laws? that Mark 7 and Acts 10 simply do not support this idea at all, saying that after Yeshua made his statements in Mark 7 the disciples didn’t go out and start eating unclean things and that after the vision Peter didn’t go out and start eating unclean things. Of course, Brown then goes on to say that there is no directive in the so-called “New Testament” for Gentiles to follow the food laws, stating that this somehow means “Christians” have no requirement to follow them. Well, there is also no directive in the writings of the apostles for Gentiles or “Christians” to keep the Torah prohibition against having sex with animals, so under Brown’s logic “Christians” should have sex with animals too. That really is just how easy these anti-Torah arguments crumble when you apply the whole counsel of Scripture and common sense.
There is, however, full agreement among pronomians regarding what Acts 10 and the other “proof-text” passages say. The Bible says that God is not the author of confusion, so if there is a position for which there is confusion—the anti-Torah view—and a position where there is full agreement—the Torah-positive view—it should be pretty obvious which one is correct.
The biggest problem with all claims that the food laws no longer need to be followed is Genesis 3:1-5. In the passage it says that there was something God said not to eat, along came the serpent—which is revealed to be none other that Satan himself in Revelation 12:9—who leads people to eat the very thing God said not to eat, and sin entered the world we live in. This is serious. Today there are these people like R.L. Solberg who are doing everything they can to convince people that they can it things God said not to eat. “Nobody is going to hell for eating pork and shellfish or anything else” they say. It sounds a whole lot like that serpent saying: “You will not surely die if you eat the fruit of this tree.”
Then the last thing the serpent did was to convince people that they needed to eat what God said not to eat so they could be like God. That’s what this issue always comes down to. Whether it’s the food laws, debate about The Sabbath and Feast Days, or anything else regarding a commandment of God, it’s about a desire to “be like God”. Either you, by faith that God is God, keep His commandments or you are your own god declaring that you don’t have to follow The Torah. It’s no different than the fall of Lucifer in Isaiah 14: “I will ascend to heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. I will sit upon the mount of meeting, in the uttermost parts of the north. I will ascend above the high places of the clouds—I will make myself like Elyon.”
No other theological position so closely aligns with what the serpent said in Genesis 3 than the belief that the Torah food laws do not apply to “Christians”. When people like R.L. Solberg declare that they do not have to follow the commandment of God and go to any extent possible to explain away why they think this, they have taken the place of the Edenic serpent and declared by their own beliefs: “I will make myself like God.” If you are reading this and happen to be a proponent of Solberg or others like him, all I would ask is that you seriously evaluate the pronomian or Torah-positive position on matters like the food laws and see what makes more sense—obeying the commandments of God the way Yeshua taught or going against the commandments the way Satan, the serpent, taught. These crafty wordsmiths create very clever explanations against the commandments of God, but so did Satan in Eden. I realize there will always be passages that are difficult to understand because the anti-Torah crowds have done a lot to make these portions of Scripture appear to overturn other portions of Scripture. But if we do an honest assessment of the whole counsel of Scripture, the only position that ever makes good sense is the Torah-positive one.
When you read Scripture using the four basic rules of hermeneutics—where Scripture itself, the surrounding context, the writer’s intent, and what is clear applied to what it vague are all used to understand it—and the points that there is a lawless one, Satan, who leads people against The Torah and The Righteous One, Yeshua, who leads people to follow The Torah as your primary methods of discerning what The Bible says you will easily see that these anti-Torah people like R.L. Solberg are always wrong. They think, through their Replacement Theology, that their “Christian church” has replaced covenant Israel, but in reality they are the replacement of the serpent in Eden trying to get people to fall for the same trick: Did God really say? You won’t die or go to hell over that. You will become like God. Don’t fall for it. Follow The Bible and follow Yeshua through keeping The Torah of Yah.
Blessings and Shalom
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