and Despite for the Torah

How 46,000 Denominations Rebuilt What the Cross Demolished
and Demolished What the Cross Fulfilled

 

A Necessary Distinction Before We Begin

This document is not about the body of Christ. The body of Christ, every human being in whom the risen presence of Yeshua (Jesus) dwells, which is every human being, has no blemish, no fault, no stain. The cross accomplished that. Universally. Permanently. Without condition.

This document is about Christianity. The institutional, doctrinal, denominational structure that has claimed to represent the body of Christ for two thousand years while doing something the body of Christ never authorized and the cross never endorsed.

The body of Christ and Christianity are not the same thing. They have never been the same thing. Keeping that distinction clear is not optional. It is the foundation of everything that follows.

 

The Number

There are currently more than 46,000 Christian denominations in the world.

46,000 distinct institutional expressions of a gospel that declared all flesh one in the risen Yeshua. 46,000 separate communities, each with its own statement of faith, its own boundary markers, its own authorized practices, its own definitions of who is inside and who is outside, who has it right and who has it wrong, who is clean and who needs correcting.

46,000 fences.

Each one defended as though it were the foundation of the universe. Each one presented to its adherents as the faithful expression of what the cross accomplished. Each one drawing a line, in doctrine, in practice, in governance, in worship style, in sacramental theology, in eschatology, in any of a thousand other categories, and calling that line the truth.

The cross drew no such lines. The cross tore down lines. The cross demolished the entire structure of authorized categories and boundary markers and institutional mediation that stood between all flesh and YHWH. The cross did not produce 46,000 denominations. Christianity produced 46,000 denominations. And it produced them by doing the one thing the cross had permanently ended, rebuilding the fence.

The cross drew no lines. The cross tore down lines. 46,000 denominations did not come from the cross. They came from the same impulse the cross demolished, the human compulsion to rebuild the fence.

 

What the Cross Actually Did

To understand what Christianity did with the cross it is necessary to understand what the cross actually accomplished, and what it accomplished in relation to two completely different systems that the tradition has never distinguished.

The first system was the Torah of Moshe (Moses). The written covenant. The five books. The prophets. The psalms. Given by YHWH. Signed with his name 6,828 times. Pointing across a thousand years of covenant history toward one arrival, the one whose name meant YHWH saves. This system was holy. This system was true. And the cross fulfilled it. Completely. Finally. The Greek word is telos, goal, destination, completion. Christ is the telos of the Torah. The road reached its destination. The Torah was honored by its fulfillment. It was not destroyed. It was completed.

The second system was the fence law structure, the oral Torah, the rabbinical dogmata, the enacted ordinances and purity regulations that had been layered on top of the written Torah for centuries. This system was not holy. It was not given by YHWH. It was built by human hands around the Torah and presented as its guardian, while actually replacing it. This system declared Gentile contact defiling. It built wall after wall between all flesh and YHWH. It occupied Moses’ seat and executed the fence while Moses himself became invisible behind it. And the cross demolished it. The Greek word is katargeo, to render inoperative, to nullify, to bring to nothing. Ephesians 2:15, abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments expressed in ordinances. Colossians 2:14, canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands, nailing it to the cross.

Telos and katargeo. Two words. Two completely different actions. Two completely different relationships between the cross and the two systems it encountered.

The tradition collapsed them into one reading. And that collapse, that single failure of discernment, is the seed from which all 46,000 denominations grew.

 

The Collapse and What It Produced

When the Gentile world received the gospel of Yeshua it received it without the Hebrew framework that gave the gospel its meaning. It could not read the Torah through Yeshua’s own hermeneutic because it had no access to that hermeneutic. It could not distinguish Moses from the fence around Moses because it had no knowledge of the fence. It could not hear telos as completion and katargeo as demolition because it was reading Paul in Greek translation filtered through categories that had no equivalent in the Hebrew covenant tradition.

And so it read every freedom passage as the same statement. Freedom from the law meant freedom from the Torah. The wall that was demolished was the Jewish covenant. The system that was nailed to the cross was Moses. The old covenant, the Hebrew scriptures, the covenant people, the entire framework of the Torah, was the problem that the gospel had solved.

This reading did two things simultaneously. It demolished what the cross had fulfilled. And it left untouched, and then rebuilt, what the cross had demolished.

The Torah, honored by fulfillment, bearing the divine name across a thousand years of covenant history, the road that delivered humanity to the one it had always been pointing toward, was declared obsolete. Superseded. The Jewish problem. The old thing replaced by the new thing. Despite for the Torah. Built into the foundation of Christian theology before the first century was over.

And the fence, the dogmatic structure, the system of authorized categories and boundary markers and institutional mediation, was rebuilt. Not in Hebrew. In Latin. In Greek. In the language of councils and creeds and sacramental systems and episcopal authority structures. New dogmata. New regulations. New walls between those who had the authorized access and those who did not. New categories of clean and unclean. New systems of mediation claiming to stand between all flesh and YHWH as his authorized guardians.

The fence the cross demolished was rebuilt within a generation. And it has been rebuilt in every generation since. 46,000 times and counting.

The tradition demolished what the cross fulfilled and rebuilt what the cross demolished. Despite for the Torah. Defense of the fence. Built into the foundation of Christian theology before the first century was over.

 

In Defense of the Fence

The Pattern Across 2,000 Years

Every major division in Christian institutional history follows the same pattern. A boundary is drawn. A category is established. A fence is built. And then it is defended, as gospel, as truth, as the faithful preservation of what the cross accomplished.

Rome built the fence in episcopal authority, sacramental necessity, and papal supremacy. Access to the presence of YHWH required the authorized mediation of the ordained priesthood. The fence of the Jerusalem temple, rebuilt in Latin. Defended for a thousand years as the body of Christ.

The Reformation tore down Rome’s fence and immediately built new ones. Luther’s fence ran through justification by faith alone, defined so precisely that anyone who crossed the line in either direction was outside the truth. Zwingli’s fence ran through the Lord’s Supper, bread and wine as symbol only, and anyone who believed otherwise was in error. Calvin’s fence ran through predestination and the sovereignty of God in election, defined so tightly that the community of the elect became its own category of insider and outsider.

Each reformer tore down one fence and built another. Each new fence was defended with the same passion as the one that had been torn down. Each new denomination that emerged from each new fence was convinced it had finally recovered the authentic gospel, the one without a fence, while building the next fence.

The pattern has never stopped. Every revival becomes a denomination. Every denomination develops its fence. Every fence gets defended as truth. And the 46,001st denomination is being formed somewhere in the world today by people who are certain they have finally gotten it right, while drawing the next line, building the next wall, defending the next fence.

 

Despite for the Torah

The Cost of the Collapse

The despite for the Torah that the tradition built into its foundation did not stay abstract. It became the theological justification for the most sustained persecution in human history.

If the Torah was the wall, then the people who carried the Torah were the wall. If the Jewish covenant was the old system that the gospel superseded, then the Jewish people who maintained that covenant were the obstacle. If Moses was the slave covenant that Yeshua came to replace, then the people of Moses were the people of slavery, the people who had rejected their own liberation, the people who stood in the way of the universal gospel by clinging to the thing the gospel had made obsolete.

That theology has a name. Supersessionism. Replacement theology. And it has consequences that are not abstract. They are rivers of blood across two thousand years of European history. The Crusades. The Inquisition. The ghettos. The forced conversions. The pogroms. The Holocaust. Every one of them carried theological justification that traced back, through layers of institutional tradition, to the reading of Ephesians 2 that said the Torah, and therefore the people of the Torah, was the dividing wall that Yeshua came to demolish.

Paul wrote Ephesians 2 to declare the fence demolished. The tradition read Ephesians 2 as the Torah demolished. And the people who carried the Torah paid for that misreading with their lives. For two thousand years. In the name of the one whose name meant YHWH saves. Who was himself a son of Israel. Born of Miriam. Of the tribe of Yehudah (Judah). Of the house of David. Who read the Torah in Hebrew synagogues and declared it fulfilled, not destroyed.

The despite for the Torah that Christianity built into its foundation was not just a theological error. It was a betrayal of the one Christianity claimed to follow. And it was made possible entirely by the failure to distinguish telos from katargeo. The road from the wall. The fulfillment from the demolition. Moses from the fence around Moses.

Paul wrote Ephesians 2 to declare the fence demolished. The tradition read it as the Torah demolished. The people who carried the Torah paid for that misreading with their lives for two thousand years, in the name of the one who was himself a son of Israel.

 

The Body of Christ Has No Fence

The body of Christ, the actual body, the universal indwelling presence of the risen Yeshua in all flesh, has never had a fence. Has never needed one. The cross accomplished everything the fence claimed to be protecting. The presence of YHWH is not mediated by any institution, any denomination, any creed, any sacramental system, any authorized authority structure. It is the accomplished reality of the universal pouring declared by Yoel (Joel) and accomplished at the cross and resurrection. All flesh. No categories. No walls. No authorized insiders and unauthorized outsiders.

This is not a new theology. It is the oldest declaration in the covenant. YHWH said at the burning bush, this is my name forever, to all generations. Not to the authorized community. Not to those who had maintained the right categories. To all generations. The universal declaration of the presence was given before there was a temple, before there was a priesthood, before there was a fence. It was always meant for all flesh. The cross made it permanently, irrevocably, universally available to all flesh.

Christianity built 46,000 fences in front of that declaration. The body of Christ has not built a single one.

The distinction matters. It matters because every person who has ever walked away from a denomination carrying the wound of the fence, the exclusion, the condemnation, the judgment, the boundary that said you are not clean enough or right enough or inside enough, needs to know that what wounded them was not the cross. It was the fence. The thing the cross demolished. Rebuilt by human hands. Defended as gospel. But not gospel. Never gospel.

The gospel is this. The presence of YHWH, the one whose name was declared forever to all generations, the one who manifested through every YHWH-bearing prophet across the covenant history, the one who arrived in full as Yeshua, is the permanent indwelling reality of all flesh. Not earned. Not mediated. Not accessed through the right institution or the right practice or the right doctrinal position. Accomplished. Present. Universal.

No fence required. No fence permitted. The cross said so. From top to bottom. When the veil tore.

 

 

46,000 denominations. 46,000 fences. Each one defended as truth.

 

The cross tore the veil from the top. The presence declared itself accessible to all flesh without mediation, without category, without wall. And Christianity spent two thousand years rebuilding the wall, in defense of the fence, in despite of the Torah, in the name of the one who demolished both.

 

The body of Christ has no fence. It never did. It never will. The cross made sure of that. From the top. Down to the bottom. Permanently. For all flesh.

 

The Gospel Revolution  •  Mike Williams Ministries

William Ethan Massengill  •  Michael Lilborn Williams  •  Daniel Thomas Rouse

Published by Audrey Williams