Why I Chose the Noahide Laws

Like most in the south I grew up in a Christian home. It was a Sabbatarian type of denomination (Worldwide Church of God – Herbert W. Armstrong). We kept the weekly seventh day Sabbath, followed the clean and unclean meat diet of the Old Testament and our annual holidays followed Leviticus 23. We did not keep any of the traditional Christian ways or traditions. While in that church we did learn many good things that we still practice to this day.

 

In 1995 under its new leadership, the denomination abandoned the founder’s ways and changed over to traditional Christian practices and thinking. Basically our spiritual rug had been pulled out from under us leaving us spiritual orphans.

 

This would become the beginning of our spiritual journey.

 

I had never visited any other churches except for attending funerals. They were all pagan temples to us and having been left no choice I was on the hunt for a spiritual home.

 

We ended up at a Pentecostal church which turned out to be the mother church of the Church of God – Cleveland, Tennessee. After a few short years, we entered into ministerial training and took on an Associate Pastor’s position in a small church in Chattanooga.

 

After 3 Years, we burned out and wanted Sabbath back. We were told that we did not get one, that we were in the ministry now. Not wanting to be traditional Christians anymore, we left that church and sometime afterward I resigned my credentials with the denomination.

 

By the first of the next year I had discovered the Messianic Christians online and saw that their beliefs were closer to what we grew up with but with a Jewish flare.

 

We attended a small Messianic congregation some 80 miles north of us until we found a home bible study group in our home town studying the Artscroll Stone Chumash.

 

We attended the bible study and over time it became a congregation.

 

Because I had been an associate pastor, I became one of the rotating teachers and taught a Thursday night class. As I continued, more and more of the material for my lessons came from Orthodox Jewish sources. Needless to say that got me in trouble that led me to leaving that group.

 

Shortly thereafter, I started getting phone calls that the congregation had folded. Some of the folks asked us to start a home study group.

 

One Saturday, a lady raised her hand and asked me about Yeshua. I asked her back, “What about him?” This happened for a few weeks until I gave in and told them I would look into it.

 

I had a Jewish friend who had wanted me in the past to look into Rabbi Tovia Singer’s Let’s Get Biblical series. So I found all his lectures online and with my bible, notepad and computer, went through them all. It was during one of those lectures that he mentioned Ezekiel 18. This caught my ear. So I took my Artscroll Tanach and read the chapter over and over. Once the message came to me, I got up and faced Israel and prayed. I confessed that I had been praying to the wrong one, I denounced Christianity and their god. This frightened me because I did not know what to do next.

 

When my wife and daughters came home I told them and showed them and praise God they were with me in my new understanding.

 

The only thing I knew to do was become Jewish, as this is where our beliefs fell. So we set out studying for conversion. My wife and I bought a lot of books, started attending synagogues and studying with rabbis. This went on for 6+ years. We put our house on the market and finally found a Jewish community to move to, all we needed to do was contact the rabbi and tell them we were moving there as soon as the house sold.

 

One of the questions you are asked during the conversion process is, “Why do you want to convert?” Truthfully, for us the more we learned, the answer changed.

 

At the onset of this quest we were asked by one rabbi why we did not just live as Noahides and keep the Noahide Laws. All we knew was that 7 laws was not enough and without knowing or understanding the Noahide Laws and life, rejected them. It is my belief that many people coming to Judaism and rejecting the Noahide Laws are in the same boat. I think Noahide Studies need should be a requirement for those who wish to convert to Judaism.

 

One day before the sale of our house I was sitting on the front porch pondering the age old question. “Why do I want to convert?”

 

My mind drifted to a particular line in Psalms, “My soul waits in silence for you God…”

 

I got up and got my Artscroll Psalms and looked up the psalm. In reading it I found the following:

 

Psalm 62:6-8

 

Only for God wait thou in stillness, my soul; for from Him cometh my hope. He only is my rock and my salvation, my high tower, I shall not be moved. Upon God rests my salvation and my glory; the rock of my strength, and my refuge, is in God.

 

As I pondered the above, I asked myself – if I already had these things in God, then what would conversion add that I did not already have?” The only thing I could think of was more commandments.

   

My daughters both came to mind. They were not converting but backed my wife and I 100% in our decision. But I knew that afterward our relationship with them and any new grandchildren would forever change. They did not know, but I did, that spiritually they would not be my children any more. The Creator had given us a very wonderful relationship with both our daughters and I was about to give this up to be something else.

 

In my mind the thought came to me that I was spiritually sacrificing my children and grandchildren to be closer to God. Then it hit me that He hates child sacrifice. And to me this is what conversion was going to cause me to do.

 

It is from these two areas that my wife and I chose the Noahide Laws over conversion.

 

Terry W. Hayes