Exodus 19:17:  “And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet with God; and they stood at the nether part of the mount.”

Do you ever have a question about God or the Bible and you go to your pastor and ask him about it.  He of course gives you an answer.  I have met very few pastors who will openly say: “I don’t know.”  We had an old saying in seminary; “If you convince ‘em, then confuse ‘em.”  But your pastor gives you an answer and you walk away scratching your head thinking: “Yeah, maybe, could be, but it just doesn’t settle it in my spirit.” So you go the professor of your denominational Bible College or seminary and of course he will never admit he has no answer and his answer will be something to the effect, “Well, you have to understand that if you use epistemology as a pre-supposition to neo orthodoxy then…”  Of course you walk away saying; “I don’t know what the answer is but at least I know there is one out there because he sure acted like he had an answer and if I decide to get a PhD perhaps I will understand it.”  Then of course you go to your commentaries, traditional and TV evangelist commentaries, and you read their answers which still leave you scratching your head thinking: “Yeah, maybe, could be, but it just doesn’t settle it in my spirit.”

I have many questions that I have asked for years and never found an answer within my Christian community. Oh, there were answers but none that really settled it in my spirit. This is why I have spent so much time reading the Jewish Talmud.  Somehow the answers to many questions about my Christianity that my Christian leaders were unable to answer are found in the Talmud.   Today I was reading in the Talmud in Shabbat 88a.  I found an answer to a question that has plagued me for years.  You see as I grew to understand more and more of God’s heart and the love He has for us, I could not understand why we Christians infuse unbelievers with the fear of going to hell or being left behind as coercion to get them saved. Would not preaching the love of God be enough, do we need to instill fear into people.  More so, is a sinner’s prayer and repentance really valid if offered under duress. I mean the person is only accepting Jesus as his Savior to save his own gizzard.

In Exodus 19:17 we learn that the people of God assembled at the foot or base of Mt. Sinai to receive the law.  But wait, it does not say in the Hebrew that they stood at the foot or base of the Mt. Sinai, it says they stood  bethchethith beneath or underneath it.  This comes from the root word tavach which means underneath.   Of course no Christian translator worth his PhD is going to translate that as standing beneath or underneath the mountain.  I mean God would literally have to pick the mountain up and hold it over the people.  That is ridiculous almost as ridiculous as having the faith of a grain of mustard seed and telling a mountain to be cast into the sea.   I wonder, could Jesus have been making a reference to this event?  I digress, back to the study. Naturally translators will not translate the passage that way, they will say at the foot of the mountain. I mean that makes more sense even if the word that is used is tavach and clearly means underneath.  Who is going to be foolish enough to believe God actually picked up a mountain and held over the heads of the people declaring that if they followed the law they will have the faith to say to this mountain be removed.  In declaring their faith by agreeing to follow the Torah or the law they were able to command the mountain to be removed from over their heads.  Of course it is ridiculous to think that two thousand years later the Messiah would reference this crazy event under Mt. Sinai by saying in Mark 11:23:  “For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. Or again in  Matthew 17:20 And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.”

Surely Jesus was only giving an illustration, He could not have been referring to a real event. Or could He?  You explain to me why the writer used the word tavach underneath and not the word yalad which means at the foot of or beside? The ancient sages and rabbis don’t try to explain it away like we Christians of little faith try to do.  They actually teach in the Talmud that God picked up the mountain and held it over the heads of the people until they showed their faith to command it to be removed and that the disciples and other Jews around Jesus who heard His teachings on moving mountains actually believed that such an event took place in their history.

That brings us to the question as to why would God dangle a mountain over the heads of his people to get them to ratify the law.  I mean isn’t that coercion? That is literally saying, “Ok, you’ve got faith as the grain of mustard seed right now but you had better use it or I will drop this mountain and the nation will be nothing but a grease spot.”  That would be like threatening someone with hell and saying; “Well, you have enough faith to believe in a hell, how about using that faith as a grain of mustard seed which sparks a belief in hell to accept Jesus as your personal Savior?”   The Talmud teaches that God had to put them into a fearful situation to exercise their faith at this early stage of their development as a nation of God.  One thousand years later we find that in Esther 9:27: “The Jews ordained, and took upon them, and upon their seed, and upon all such as joined themselves unto them, so as it should not fail, that they would keep these two days according to their writing, and according to their [appointed] time every year;” The Talmud interprets this as the Jews reaffirming their divine law and the faith they exercised to accept it was established and accepted, not out of fear but out of love for God.  Just as someone accepting Jesus because they are afraid of going to hell will one day mature to accepting their relationship with God out of love and not fear of going to hell.

So in the words of the old evangelist, let’s start scaring people into heaven.

Please don’t forget to check Chaim’s latest book just released by Whitaker