Is the Hebrew Roots Movement a Cult?

What to Do If Someone You Love Is In HRM

The conversation probably started innocuously. Your friend, or spouse, or sibling, or parent, mentioned they had been studying the “Hebrew roots” of Christianity. They started talking about the Sabbath, the feasts of Leviticus 23, the dietary laws. They began using the name Yeshua instead of Jesus. They started questioning whether Paul was misunderstood, whether the church had gone badly off course, whether Torah observance was actually what God required of everyone who followed the Messiah.

And somewhere in that conversation, something felt off. Not because the questions were bad questions: some of them are genuinely good ones. But because the framework felt totalizing. Every response you offered was pre-answered. Every objection had already been labeled. You left the conversation feeling like the ground had shifted and you weren’t sure how to get it back.

This article is for that moment. We’re going to answer the cult question honestly; it’s more complicated than a simple yes or no. We’re going to explain why intelligent, sincere, Scripture-loving people get drawn into the Hebrew Roots Movement. We’re going to identify the specific rhetorical and theological moves that make these conversations so difficult. And we’re going to give you a practical framework for staying in relationship and having conversations that actually work.

The Hebrew Roots Movement doesn’t recruit from the streets. It recruits from the pews.

1. What Is the Hebrew Roots Movement?

The Hebrew Roots Movement (HRM) is not a denomination. It has no central leadership, no creed, no formal organizational structure, no headquarters. It spreads through home churches, independent teachers, YouTube channels, podcasts, and social media networks. Its decentralization is both its strength and part of what makes it difficult to pin down.

At its core, the movement holds that Christ’s death did not end or supersede the Mosaic covenant but renewed and internalized it: Torah observance remains the expected pattern of life for all who follow Yeshua, Jewish and Gentile alike. Adherents typically observe the seventh-day Sabbath, the biblical feast calendar of Leviticus 23, and kosher dietary restrictions. Most reject what they characterize as pagan contamination of Christian practice through holidays like Christmas and Easter. Many prefer Hebrew terminology, Yeshua, YHWH, Torah, over their English or Greek equivalents, and some extend this to questioning whether the New Testament was originally written in Greek at all.

The movement’s origins trace to the late 1980s and 1990s, accelerating through the internet era. It differs from Messianic Judaism in a key way: Messianic Judaism is primarily a movement of Jewish believers in Jesus who maintain their cultural and religious identity. Hebrew Roots, by contrast, calls Gentile believers to adopt Torah observance as a universal covenant obligation, something the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 explicitly declined to require.

One of its most prominent teaching ministries is 119 Ministries, whose Pauline Paradox series is among the movement’s most polished and widely distributed apologetic resources. We will engage that material directly in this article, because it is almost certainly what your friend has been watching.

And one foundational point deserves to be stated here at the outset, before the arguments begin: the Old Testament itself, in Psalm 110, already anticipates a priest who will arise after the order of Melchizedek, not Levi. That detail matters enormously. It means that even within the Hebrew Scriptures, the Levitical system was always presented as provisional. The priesthood that was coming would be different in kind, not just degree. And as the book of Hebrews makes explicit, a change of priesthood requires a change of law (Hebrews 7:12). The HRM argument that Torah remains in full covenantal force must reckon with the fact that the Old Testament itself pointed beyond the Levitical system that Torah established.

2. Is It a Cult? The Honest Answer

The word cult is used in two distinct ways, and the distinction matters.

In its theological sense, a cult is a group that departs from orthodox Christian doctrine on essential matters: the nature of God, the person of Christ, the means of salvation. By this definition, the Hebrew Roots Movement occupies contested ground. The more extreme expressions of HRM do deny the Trinity, question the deity of Christ, and drift toward a works-inflected understanding of salvation. But many adherents hold orthodox Christology and insist, correctly, that they are not teaching works-based salvation; only that Torah observance is the expected expression of genuine faith.

In its sociological sense, a cult is a high-control group that uses manipulation, isolation, and thought-control to bind members and discourage independent evaluation. By this definition, HRM does not fit cleanly. There is no central authority figure, no communal living, no financial exploitation in the classical sense. People come and go relatively freely.

The honest answer is: the Hebrew Roots Movement is not technically a cult, but it exhibits cult-adjacent dynamics that every concerned friend or family member should understand.

The warning signs are not in the theology alone. They are in the rhetorical structure: the way disagreement is pre-answered, the way correction is reframed as spiritual failure, and the way the community becomes the primary interpretive authority for Scripture.

Here are the specific dynamics that place HRM in cult-adjacent territory:

Pre-emptive inoculation against correction

HRM teaching consistently frames external disagreement as evidence of spiritual deficiency in the objector. In the Pauline Paradox series, the listener is told repeatedly that if this teaching doesn’t bother them, they are either fleshly, unteachable, or not truly Spirit-led. Anyone who pushes back has been pre-labeled before they open their mouth. This is a classic thought-terminating technique.

The majority-is-wrong framework

The movement builds an epistemological structure in which the fact that mainstream Christianity disagrees is itself evidence that mainstream Christianity is wrong, just as the Pharisees were wrong, just as the Catholic Church was wrong before the Reformation. This makes the movement’s own minority position self-confirming. The smaller and more isolated the community, the more right it must be.

Reframing disagreement as lawlessness

Theological objection to HRM positions is consistently characterized not as a different interpretation but as a moral failure: lawlessness, rebellion against God, nullifying the Word. This collapses the distinction between doctrinal disagreement and spiritual apostasy. It makes leaving the framework feel like leaving God.

Progressive separation from outside community

As Torah observance is adopted, different holidays, different food restrictions, different Sabbath practices, the natural social consequence is increasing separation from family members, former church communities, and friends who do not share the framework. This is rarely stated as a goal, but it is a consistent outcome.

When a theological system makes every exit feel like rebellion against God, that is a control structure, regardless of what it teaches about salvation.

3. Why Good People Get Drawn In

This is the section that most articles on HRM skip, and it’s the most important one for anyone trying to maintain a relationship with someone inside the movement.

The Hebrew Roots Movement does not primarily recruit nominal Christians or the theologically indifferent. It recruits serious, Scripture-hungry believers who feel that something has been missing from their faith. The hunger it exploits is real and legitimate.

Consider what HRM offers someone who is genuinely seeking:

• A sense that the whole Bible matters: that the Old Testament is not merely background history but living instruction
• A richly textured worship calendar, the feasts, the Sabbath, rhythms of rest and celebration that feel ancient and grounded
• A Jewish Jesus: Yeshua in his first-century context, not a westernized Sunday-morning abstraction
• A community of people who take Scripture seriously enough to let it cost them something
• An answer to the genuine thinness of much contemporary evangelical Christianity

None of these desires are wrong. In fact, they are admirable. The tragedy of HRM is that it takes genuine spiritual hunger and channels it into a framework that cannot bear the weight of the New Testament’s own testimony.

The writer of Hebrews describes the Mosaic system as “a shadow of the good things that are coming, not the realities themselves” (Hebrews 10:1). The shadow was always meant to point forward to the substance. Your friend is reaching for the shadow with great sincerity, not realizing that the substance has arrived. That distinction shapes everything about how you should approach the conversation.

When you sit down with your friend, the single most important thing to remember is this: their desire to take God’s Word seriously, to honor the whole Scripture, to live a faith that costs something, is not the problem. The problem is the framework they have been given for pursuing those desires. You are not trying to talk them out of loving Torah. You are trying to show them that the substance has arrived, and the shadow’s job is now to illuminate what it was always pointing toward.

4. The Theological Architecture: What They Actually Argue

Before we get to the conversation guide, you need to understand the argument’s structure. The HRM case is more sophisticated than it appears, and walking into the conversation without understanding the load-bearing walls will leave you constantly off-balance.

The definitional collapse

The entire HRM argument depends on treating “the Law of God,” “what Moses wrote,” “Torah,” “the commandments,” and “the Word of God” as fully interchangeable. They are not. HRM teaching never distinguishes between the moral law, the Mosaic covenant as a whole, the ceremonial system, or the civil code. Everything is collapsed into one undifferentiated thing. If you touch any part of it, you have nullified all of it. This is how every New Testament text about the Law’s fulfillment gets neutralized before it is examined.

The Matthew 5:17 anchor

This is the verse the entire movement builds on: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.”

HRM reads “fulfill” as “confirm and perpetuate.” They read “until heaven and earth disappear” as a future condition not yet met. But notice what they consistently omit: the second condition in the same verse, “until everything is accomplished.” Jesus uses two conditions. The Greek word for “fulfill” (pleroo) appears sixteen times in Matthew and always means completion, not perpetuation. And in John 19:30, Jesus’ final word from the cross is tetelestai: “it is finished,” the same semantic field as “accomplished.” The condition was met. HRM simply omits half the verse.

There is also a significant interpretive layer worth considering here. In Second Temple Jewish cosmology, “heaven and earth” was frequently used as shorthand for the Temple in Jerusalem: the place where heaven literally met earth, where the presence of God dwelled among his people. Scholars including N.T. Wright have noted that Jesus’ Olivet Discourse, delivered within view of the Temple (Matthew 24), is saturated with this same imagery. If “heaven and earth” refers to the Temple system rather than the physical cosmos, then Jesus was saying the Law stands until the Temple system is accomplished, completed, and superseded. The Temple was destroyed in 70 AD. More importantly, Jesus himself is the new Temple (John 2:19-21), the place where heaven and earth now meet. This reading doesn’t stand alone as the only interpretation, but it adds significant weight to the case that Matthew 5:18 is not the guarantee of perpetual Torah observance that HRM claims.

The Jeremiah 31:33 argument, examined closely

This is the proof text that sounds most compelling, and it deserves careful handling because it is quoted constantly and superficially.

“But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” (Jeremiah 31:33)

HRM reads this as proof that the New Covenant simply relocates the Mosaic Law from stone tablets to the human heart. Same law, new address. Torah observance continues; it just becomes internal rather than external.

But this reading requires ignoring the verse immediately before it, which is the most important context in the passage:

“It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them.” (Jeremiah 31:32)

Jeremiah does not say the New Covenant is the Mosaic Covenant internalized. He says it is explicitly “not like” the Mosaic Covenant. The contrast is the point. Something genuinely new is coming, not a renewal of Sinai but its fulfillment and supersession.

And this is not an isolated text. At the Last Supper, Jesus raises the cup and says: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you” (Luke 22:20). He is quoting Jeremiah 31 directly, and calling what he is inaugurating new. Centuries earlier, through Isaiah, God had already declared: “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah 43:19). The newness is not incidental; it is the announcement.

HRM responds to this by arguing that God’s unchanging nature means his covenant arrangements cannot change. But this is a category error. God’s character does not change; his covenantal administration across redemptive history clearly does. The covenant with Abraham was not the covenant with Moses. The covenant with Moses was not the covenant with David. The New Covenant, announced by Jeremiah, inaugurated by Jesus, and interpreted by Hebrews, is not the same covenant repeated in a new format. It is something genuinely new, built on better promises (Hebrews 8:6).

The book of Hebrews quotes Jeremiah 31 at length in chapter 8, and its interpretive point could not be more direct:

“By calling this covenant ‘new,’ he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear.” (Hebrews 8:13)

Writing the law on the heart is not relocating the Sinai covenant. It is the fulfillment of what the Sinai covenant was always pointing toward: a people who obey not from external compulsion but from inward transformation by the Spirit. This is precisely what Paul argues in Romans 8:3-4: the Spirit produces in believers what the Law demanded but could never generate on its own.

The HRM use of Jeremiah 31:33 depends on the reader not reading Jeremiah 31:32.

The isolation of Paul

By the end of Part 1 of the Pauline Paradox series, Paul has been strategically set up as a lone outlier: the only source of “law-abolishing” doctrine, and the reader is being prepared to have Paul reinterpreted rather than taken at face value. This is the structural agenda of the series.

But Paul is not a lone voice. The book of Hebrews, whether Pauline or not, makes the same argument at greater length and with greater technical precision. The Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 made the same ruling. John’s Gospel runs on fulfillment language throughout. The attempt to isolate Paul as a single aberrant voice requires ignoring the New Testament’s internal consistency on this question.

When confronted with Acts 15 or Hebrews, HRM teaching responds that these texts are also being misinterpreted: that Acts 15 only addressed circumcision-as-means-of-salvation, not Torah observance generally, and that Paul’s letters mean something other than what they plainly say. This is the epistemological trap: every text that challenges HRM is reinterpreted away, and the reinterpretation is presented as the deeper reading that mainstream Christianity has missed for two thousand years. At some point, the honest question becomes: what would it take to falsify this position? If no text can challenge it, it is not exegesis. It is a closed system.

The Deuteronomy 13 trap

HRM teaching sometimes implies that Jesus himself would qualify as a false prophet under Deuteronomy 13 if he changed the Law. This argument is designed to make any modification of Torah seem not just incorrect but blasphemous.

But Deuteronomy 13 is about prophets who lead Israel to worship other gods, not a blanket prohibition on any development in redemptive history. By HRM’s own application of this test, Jeremiah would be a false prophet for announcing a New Covenant. The author of Hebrews would be a false prophet. The argument proves far more than HRM intends, and they never follow it to its conclusion.

5. What Not to Say

Most well-intentioned conversations with HRM adherents fail in the first five minutes. Here is what doesn’t work:

“That’s a cult.”

Even if the cult-adjacent dynamics are real, leading with this label triggers defensiveness and ends the conversation before it starts. It also allows your friend to dismiss everything you say as uninformed. Save the cult-dynamics observation for a much later conversation, after trust is established.

“You’re being deceived.”

This may be true. It is not useful. The HRM framework has already told them that anyone who says this is spiritually blind or fleshly. You are confirming the script they were given.

Arguing from church authority or tradition

HRM was built specifically to resist this move. The entire structure of their argument is that tradition is untrustworthy and only Scripture matters. If you appeal to what your denomination teaches, or what most Christians have believed for two thousand years, you have handed them their best response.

Getting angry or dismissive

Your friend genuinely believes they have found something true and important, and that they love you enough to share it. Meeting that with contempt guarantees they retreat deeper into the community that affirmed them.

Trying to win the whole argument in one conversation

You won’t. The framework is comprehensive and the inoculation against objection is deep. Anyone who has spent serious time with the Pauline Paradox series has pre-answered most of what you will bring. The goal of any single conversation is not victory; it is planting a question they cannot stop thinking about.

6. What Actually Works: A Conversation Framework

The conversations that actually move people, slowly, over time, tend to share a few characteristics.

Start with the hunger, not the error

Before you address any theology, name what you see in them: “I can see that you want a faith that takes the whole Bible seriously. I want that too. I’m not trying to talk you out of loving Scripture.” This is not manipulation; it is true. And it opens a conversation instead of closing one.

Ask clarifying questions before making counter-arguments

HRM adherents are trained to answer objections. They are less prepared for genuine curiosity. Questions like these tend to create productive friction:

• “Which Jews are keeping the Law you’re asking me to follow, and by whose authority did they determine which of the 613 still apply?” This exposes the filtering problem without attacking their faith.
• “If Jesus’ death and resurrection didn’t change our covenant relationship to the Mosaic Law in any meaningful way, what exactly did it accomplish?” This is the central question. Ask it genuinely and wait for the answer.
• “You mentioned Jeremiah 31:33. Can we read verse 32 together?” Don’t explain. Just read it together and ask what they think the contrast means.
• “In Acts 15, why do you think the apostles, who were Torah-observant Jewish believers, chose not to require Torah observance of Gentiles?” The Jerusalem Council is the hardest text for HRM to account for.
• “When Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9:20 that he became like a Jew to win Jews, what does that tell us about why he kept Torah?” This invites them to reckon with Paul’s own explanation of his behavior.

Focus on one text at a time

Don’t try to cover Romans, Galatians, Hebrews, Acts 15, and Matthew 5 in a single conversation. Pick one. Read it together. Stay with it. The goal is not to overwhelm; it is to create a moment where the text says something they can’t easily dismiss.

The Matthew 5:18 move

If they cite the jot and tittle passage, ask them to read the whole verse aloud, including the second half: “until everything is accomplished.” Then ask: “What do you think Jesus meant by ‘accomplished’? And do you think anything was accomplished at the cross?” Do not argue. Ask.

Turn the epistemology back on itself

The Hebrew Roots Movement’s own stated standard is that everything must be testable against the Word of God, and that any teaching which cannot be corrected by Scripture is suspect. Apply that standard to the framework itself. Ask your friend: “What would it look like if this teaching were wrong? Which verse, if you read it clearly, would cause you to reconsider?” If there is no answer, if every challenging text has already been pre-explained away, then the framework has made itself immune to the very test it demands of everyone else. A system that cannot be falsified by its own standard is not a Bible-based movement. It is a closed loop.

This is not a rhetorical trick. It is the most honest question you can ask. And it is one the movement’s own teaching claims to welcome.

Name the rhetorical structure, when the time is right

At some point, not in the first conversation but eventually, it is worth observing: “I noticed that in the teaching you shared with me, anyone who disagrees is described as fleshly or unteachable. Does that concern you at all?” A person who genuinely loves truth should be able to sit with that question. Someone who cannot is in a system that has closed itself off from the very correction it demands of others.

You are not trying to argue them out. You are trying to create enough honest friction that the questions don’t go away when the conversation ends.

7. Staying in the Relationship Long-Term

Most people do not leave HRM quickly. The community is warm, the framework is comprehensive, and the investment is substantial: learning Hebrew terms, restructuring holidays, changing diet, rebuilding a social world. Leaving means admitting that the investment was misplaced. That is genuinely hard.

Here is what the long game looks like:

• Maintain the relationship even when they try to re-engage you in the argument. You can decline to debate and still stay close. “I’ve shared what I think, and I know you’ve heard it. I’d rather talk about your life than argue theology every time we see each other.”
• Pray for them specifically and tell them you do. This is not a tactic. It is the right thing to do, and they need to know someone outside the framework genuinely cares about them.
• Watch for the moment of doubt. People inside HRM often have private questions they don’t voice in community. If your friend surfaces a doubt, even obliquely, that is not the moment to debate. That is the moment to ask more questions and listen more carefully.
• Don’t give ultimatums about the relationship. Isolation accelerates entrenchment. Your continued presence as someone who loves them and disagrees with them is itself a form of witness.
• Be patient on a timeline measured in years, not conversations.

8. The Theological Bottom Line

For those who want the condensed version of the exegetical case, the points that matter most in the conversation:

The New Covenant, as announced in Jeremiah 31:31-34, is explicitly described as “not like” the Mosaic Covenant (v. 32). Verse 32 is as important as verse 33. The newness is the point, and the book of Hebrews confirms it: “By calling this covenant ‘new,’ he has made the first one obsolete” (Hebrews 8:13).

Matthew 5:17-18 contains two conditions for the Law’s permanence: until heaven and earth pass away, and until everything is accomplished. Jesus declared the accomplishment from the cross (John 19:30). HRM consistently cites the first condition and omits the second. Additionally, “heaven and earth” in Second Temple Jewish usage frequently referred to the Temple system itself, the place where heaven literally met earth, which Jesus declared himself to be (John 2:19-21).

The Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 convened specifically to settle whether Gentile believers must keep the Mosaic Law. The ruling was minimalist by design: four requirements, not the Sabbath, not circumcision, not the feast calendar. The most Torah-observant believers in history had the opportunity to require Torah observance of all followers of Yeshua, and they declined. HRM argues this only addressed circumcision-as-salvation, but James’s ruling is broader than that: it issued a total list of requirements. If the answer to a maximal question is four items, the maximal question has been answered.

Paul’s own Torah observance, documented in Acts, is explained by Paul himself in 1 Corinthians 9:20 as missiological strategy, not covenant obligation. He became like a Jew to win Jews. He was not bound to it; he chose it as a bridge. When HRM says Paul must have been Torah-observant, Paul’s own words tell us exactly why, and it is not what HRM claims.

Psalm 110 already anticipates, within the Hebrew Scriptures themselves, a priest after the order of Melchizedek rather than Levi. The Levitical system was always provisional, always pointing beyond itself. Hebrews 7:12 draws the explicit conclusion: a change of priesthood requires a change of law. Jesus, from the tribe of Judah, could not serve under the Levitical system. His appointment as High Priest is not compatible with the Mosaic Law remaining in full covenantal force. This argument is rooted entirely in the Old Testament.

The Law was holy, righteous, and good. It was given for a specific purpose, to a specific people, for a specific period: to preserve the line through which Messiah would come, to make sin visible, to awaken the need for grace, and to cast the forward shadow of everything Christ would be and do. It was never the destination. It was always the road.

“Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.” (Colossians 2:16-17)

Conclusion: What Your Friend Needs Most

Your friend does not primarily need a better argument. They need someone who loves them enough to stay in the conversation, patient enough to plant questions rather than demand answers, and secure enough in their own faith to disagree without contempt.

The Hebrew Roots Movement is not populated by stupid people or bad people. It is populated by people who love Scripture and wanted more than what they were getting. That impulse is not wrong. The framework they were handed is.

The New Covenant is not less than the Mosaic Law. It is what the Mosaic Law was always reaching toward: a people with the law written on their hearts, animated by the Spirit, bearing the fruit the Law always pointed to but could never produce. That is not a diminishment of Torah. That is its fulfillment.

And that is the good news worth staying in the conversation to share.

FURTHER READING

L. Solberg, Torahism: Are Christians Required to Keep the Torah? (2019). Written by a former Hebrew Roots adherent; the most thorough and fair-minded engagement with the movement’s arguments available.

For the foundational exegetical case on the Mosaic Law and New Covenant believers, see our companion article: Should Christians Follow the Mosaic Law? at levaire.com.

For the broader covenantal framework underlying this discussion, see: Dispensationalism vs. Covenantalism at levaire.com.