Hey, it's great to see an impassioned response affirming Jesus's deity and the necessity of spiritul warfare, and relying on solid sources like KHouse. Being a c/Christianity moderator, I wanted to try to update you on how this movement is shaping out.

We need to distinguish between those who follow Jesus the Lamb wherever he goes and those who would enslave others again with a yoke of legalism, because both these groups include many of the people studying "Hebrew roots"; yet when the two recognize each other they each have natural animus, and fight to lay claim to be the true bearers of that name. I grew up in traditional churches and still affirm all the creeds and distinctives I've learned, except for one, namely I've been compelled to dissent from certain statements of the Westminster Confession about the ceremonial law. About 20 years ago I realized the natural consequences of the fact that all the OT believers were our forebears and were in full covenant with God and with us: namely, they were our brothers and sisters, and they were not per se followers of the rabbinical and Talmudic Judaism that was one of the two main branches of faith that came from that covenant people. Therefore, when these Israelites offered sacrifices, just as Hebrews says, they were acting in faith just as we do when we offer tithes or share the Lord's table.

Nowadays you're absolutely right that legalists keep their demands vague and often have no idea what they're getting into. In the tradition that Torah has 613 commands, the Jews also say that 240 of them are impossible right now because there is no temple (including all the sacrifices except Passover), but modern "Torah Redux" movements don't talk about that. So just about everybody who's holding their new discovery of some simple mitzvah over your head is doing so for pride and human Brownie points, and you're right it's ironic that the Jews have no respect for someone picking up one or two cute commands (like wearing tzitzith) when they themselves have been trained all their lives that religious Jews have a yoke of all 613 commands. So neither the Christians nor the Jews respect the legalists, and then they think they must be doing legalism right because the whole body of Christ has cut them off like a cancer. But the core is always judging another for failing something one has mastered, when nobody but Jesus could master the whole Torah.

The key is to realize that whenever Paul says "under the law" he's using the word "under" derogatorily to change the base meaning in exactly the same way we do with the suffix "ism": legalism. For Paul, the Torah was a good thing, as it is a way of life for the Jewish people that compares favorably against any other culture's founding documents and way of living; unlike every other culture, the Torah was inspired in such a way that it gives light to every culture, and it also was fully fulfilled by Jesus (there is no command of Torah that Jesus ever disobeyed, abolished, set aside, or neglected in any way). But never in OT or NT was the Torah to be held over another person's head as a yoke of slavery: it was always a guide to teach us how to grow into the moral law. And today we are still learning worldwide how to grow into the fullness of moral law.

So we have legalists (more often Gentile than Jewish) who engage in all this illogic that denies Jesus's fulfillment of Torah on our behalf, and in the year of our Win's history we've done combat with a few of them. But we also have lots more Hebrew-roots believers (probably half a million Jews and millions of Gentiles) who are in the movement out of love and who are learning the ropes, which is that we don't "have to" keep the law (never did), but we are "free to" grow into the law as we desire to please God (always were). This allows us to easily distinguish the two camps: the believers have mastered Romans 14 and have no pressure whatsoever to impose their freedom to grow into the law upon others, while the unbelievers are like (some of) the Pharisees, under such pressure to make converts that the converts inherit double portions of the sonship of Satan from their teachers.

To anon's question, this means that in both groups you typically see acceptance of the easier commands (food, clothing, festivals) but also great vicarious support for the movements in Judaism preparing to build the Third Temple at a moment's notice. (We shouldn't fight over the Temple as it's likely to happen suddenly without our individual control; we should instead be watching the signs, such as the Russia-Iran-Israel war of Ezek. 38-39). I used to wonder how the future temple could be portrayed in the Bible as both good and bad: but it's as simple as the fact that it will be used by both true and false worshippers, until Jesus returns and removes the false. Then whatever he says goes! If Jesus tells me to have a cookout in his honor and follow certain rules about blood-draining and leftovers, you'd better believe I'll obey him! And if he says never to eat meat again, I'll obey him with equal certainty about it being the best for me!

I have no illusions about Medinat Israel, or about its only hope being that there will be a sudden acceptance of Yeshua (Jesus their Messiah, Romans 11). But I also tell people the devil's cabal has infiltrated every major racial and religious group and we should not imbalance our focus upon any. And it's true that legalism among Christians plays into Jewish hands, because (unless they are open to Messiah) their system is legalism itself. But as we learn the beauty of the Torah system of law we take more and more of the Word of God for ourselves and make it a worldwide gift and undercut the Rabbinical Jews' ability to be the sole interpreters of that tradition. This, via the age-old strategy that Paul declassified, will provoke them to such jealousy that many will join back with us, the same covenant people they used to be one with. HTH: I hope you can bookmark c/Christianity for checking in regularly, as topics like these are broadly welcomed.