God replaced the Mosaic Law program with the installation of the Apostle Paul and our current “grace administration,” but most Jews are unaware of this. In vain, devout Jews try to keep the law, which is just how Satan likes it.

According to The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Jewish History and Culture, there are a total of 613 laws in the Old Testament controlling the details of a Jew’s life right down to their choice of underwear.

“If we were operating under the Jews’ law system tonight, a lot of you would have to take your clothes off,” says Jordan in an old study I have on tape. “That’s a pretty frightening thought for most of us. You see, you’re not allowed under the law to wear a garment that has two different kinds of material in it. Dacron and rayon—you couldn’t wear that. If you have a synthetic blouse or shirt and cotton pants, one of them has to go. Now, you do have some liberty—you can choose the color. Hot dog! In fact, you have the liberty to choose the material, just don’t mix any two.”

*****

Jordan recalled attending a Bible conference once in southern Florida being held in the same hotel that a group of Hasidic Jews were meeting for their Friday night Sabbath observance.

“They all had their suits and hats on, you know, and as they began their meeting—the head guy’s got the Torah on his shoulders and he’s doing his prayers,” recalls Jordan. “I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the rituals they do, but they do a lot of bobbing and that kind of weaving and stuff. They’re all walking around praying.

“They started at 6, and at about 9:30, when we were finished, there was a young man who came over to a man from our group standing around in the lobby and asked him if he’d be willing to come down to his room. What this young Jewish guy had done was left his motel room forgetting to keep the door unlocked.

“Now, he can’t work on the Sabbath. It’s considered work to take his key and put it in the door and unlock it. Had he left the door unlocked, it would have been okay to push it open. That wasn’t work supposedly. But unlocking the door was work.

“I thought about that. It seems to me to be more of an expenditure of energy to push the door open than to turn a key. How would you figure out which is which?! Well, the way he knew which was which is he went over and his Rabbi made a decree and told him which was which, and when the two men went into the room, the Jewish fellow asked, ‘Before you go, would you please turn on the light switch for me?’ That was work.

“And so our guy asked him, ‘What are you going to do to turn the light off when you want to go to bed? He answered, ‘Well, I’ll have to sleep with the light on tonight.’

“You think, ‘Isn’t that overdoing it just a little bit?!’ But here’s a guy in fear of his soul who’s intent on following exactly the rules and regulations, and when I look at that, I think, ‘How do you figure out the rules and regulations?!’ How do you figure out, ‘Can I turn the light on or not?’ I mean, I would have stood there at the door and said, ‘I’m shot! I can’t get in because I didn’t put a book behind and leave it open before I left.’

“I would have figured in my mind it’s just as much work to open the door as it is to turn the key to unlock it. What the young guy did is he opened the door and took the clasp so when the door shut it didn’t latch and then he could open the door and go in.

“Now, I’m not talking about the foolishness of the regulation—any regulation can be foolish. The question in my mind would be, ‘If I was him, how would I decide what I should have done? What is a law? What is permissible and what isn’t permissible?’

“And that’s where ‘the tradition of the elders’ developed. Because when you have that kind of system of legalism you can easily get to be overbearing with it and it can easily become the doctrines of men taught as the commandments of God. And that’s what Israel did under the Mosaic Law. That’s what ‘the tradition of the elders’ became.”

*****

Jordan continues, “Some of you (Gentile Christians) come from legalistic religious backgrounds. You got your own rules and lists of things. I’ve got a list of maybe 80 that I’ve heard through the years: Can’t wear wire-rimmed glasses. Can’t wear bell-bottom pants. Oh, and heavens to murgatory, a woman better not wear pants!

“And you can’t go to the movies. Well, you couldn’t go to the movies until television came out. You know, that’s all just like the opening of the door for that young Jewish man. I understand why they let him open the door. What I don’t understand is why he couldn’t unlock the lock. Because, practically speaking, they didn’t want him sleeping in the hall all night.

“I mean, some things just have to give way to practicality. Something can be good and fine as a thing to do, but when you then take it and make a rule and regulation out of it, what you do is you confuse how to do it.”

(Editor’s Note: To be continued . . .)