EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO GROW A MESSIANIC YESHIVA
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COPYRIGHT, (C) 1981 PHILLIP E. GOBLE
HOW TO POINT TO MOSHIACH IN YOUR RABBI'S BIBLE
REVISED, (C) 1996 COPYRIGHT ARTISTS FOR ISRAEL
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HOW TO POINT TO MOSHIACH IN YOUR RABBI'S BIBLE
ON ASSURANCE OF SALVATION AND AVOIDING FRAUDULENCE AND CONTRADICTION IN JUDAISM IN REGARD TO THE KAPAROS OF EREV YOM KIPPUR
Download an ancient
Orthodox Jewish Mahzor
published by the Hebrew Publishing Company.
Notice particularly MahzorJ.pdf.
Also notice MahzorA.pdf, particularly
noting the last page (page
71) of that pdf file, the middle
part of that last page, specifically the
Hebrew in smaller type, especially
the word before "SAR HAPANIM". Also on
page 17 [two key words "yichud Qudsha,
the unification of the Holy
One, or the Holy Unity"] in mahzorA.pdf,
note the following "BEHOLD I PREPARE MY MOUTH TO
THANK AND PRAISE MY CREATOR IN THE NAME
OF THE HOLY UNITY, BLESSED IS HE,
AND HIS SHECHINAH [I.E. THE RUACH HAKODESH]
BY THE HAND OF HIM WHO IS
HIDDEN AND CONCEALED [I.E. YESHUA SAR
HAPANIM FOUND ON PAGE 71 IN
MAHZORA.PDF] IN THE NAME OF ALL ISRAEL"
NOT A
MESSIANIC BAAL TESHUVA YET BECAUSE YOU STILL HAVEN'T
OBEYED MOSHIACH AND HAVEN'T YET MADE ZIKH GE'TOYVL'T IN
DER MIKVE? AND
DON'T UNDERSTAND
THE RATIONALE OF THIS BIBLE SOCIETY WEBSITE? OR
WHAT PHIL GOBLE IS
DOING HERE?
STOP EVERYTHING AND LOOK AT
THIS NUMBER #1 GOOGLE RATED MESSIANIC VIDEO
LOOK AT COMMENTARY
ARE YOU AN ANTI-MOSHIACH ACTIVIST? NO WONDER YOU ARE DEPRESSED!!!
GIVE IT
UP, BOYS!
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not turn Friday night into EREV SHABBAT?
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ALSO EQUALLY IMPORTANT
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Contents
Foreword by Sid Roth
Preface
PART I: THE BIBLICAL BASIS FOR A MESSIANIC YESHIVA
CHAPTER 1. THE BIBLICAL BASIS FOR A MESSIANIC
YESHIVA, THE MISTAKES OF THE PAST
The Post-Reformation Period,
The Jewish "Outreach Center" Approach,
The Messianic Synagogue Approach,
CHAPTER 2. A JEWISH CONTEXTUAL THEOLOGY FOR A
MESSIANIC YESHIVA
Is this Judaism?
The Moshiach's Kehillah is a Messianic Synagogue,
The Unity of Messianic Judaism,
Judaism with Enough Cultural Elasticity to Disciple Both
Israel and the Nations
CHAPTER 3. : TOWARD A JEWISH CONTEXTUAL
THEOLOGY:
THE COVENANT MEAL OF JUDAISM IN THE TANACH AND THE COVENANT MEAL OF JUDAISM IN THE BRIT CHADASHA The Meaning of the Blood,
The Marriage Motif,
The Peace Motif,
The Eschatological Motif,
CHAPTER 4. TOWARD A JEWISH CONTEXTUAL
THEOLOGY: THE BRIT CHADASHA COVENANT MEAL OF
JUDAISM.
The Nature of the Meal,
The Requirement of Repentance,
Covenant Renewal Through Remembrance,
CHAPTER 5. TOWARD A JEWISH CONTEXTUAL
THEOLOGY: CELEBRATING THE BRIT CHADASHA OF
JUDAISM.
The Seder in the Moshiah's Kehillah,
The Jewishness of the Moshiach's Seder
CHAPTER 6: TOWARD A JEWISH CONTEXTUAL
THEOLOGY: CELEBRATING SHABBAT IN LIGHT OF
THE BRIT CHADASHA PART II: A MESSIANIC YESHIVA -- SUBJECT MATTER,
RESOURCES, AND POSSIBLE MODELS
CHAPTER 7. A MESSIANIC YESHIVA
By Joseph Shulam CHAPTER 8. RABBINIC WRITINGS
By Rachmiel Frydland CHAPTER 9. TRAINING MESSIANIC JEWISH LEADERSHIP
By Daniel Juster CHAPTER 10. PRACTICAL HELP IN CONGREGATION
PLANTING
AND PREACHING By Phillip Goble
CHAPTER 11. PIONEERING A MESSIANIC JEWISH DAY
SCHOOL
By Phillip Goble
CHAPTER 12. STUDYING THE MIKRAOT GEDOLOT IN A
MESSIANIC YESHIVA By Phillip Goble
CHAPTER 13. A VITAL AREA FOR PASTORAL COUNSEL:
IF YOU WERE TO BE
DEPROGRAMMED
By Moishe Rosen
APPENDIX -- BY-LAWS
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
FOREWORD BY SID ROTH
Years ago when I became a Jewish believer in Yehoshua, there was
no such option for me as a Messianic congregation. When I
started attending a congregation I remember my discomfort as the
minister singled me out by saying, "You're Jewish, aren't you?" I
just wanted to blend in. Why did he have to single me out? At
that time there were few Messianic Jews, and the minister was
excited at the novelty of a Jewish believer in his congregation.
It's hard to believe now, but initially as a new believer, I
tried to hide the fact that I was Jewish.
At a picnic of the Messianic Jewish Alliance, several of
the leaders felt the need to start a Messianic synagogue. I was
negative initially. But as an experiment I announced we would
try one Shabbos service. I remember stopping by my Dad's house to
ask his advice. It had been years since I had been to a Friday
night service. My father almost kicked me out of the house. He
said he couldn't understand why all of a sudden I would be
interested in Jewish things after accepting J----.
The next best place to turn to was a Jewish book store,
where I purchased a prayer book. Somehow we got through that
evening. We had twenty brave souls attend that first service
seven years ago and we haven't missed a service since.
Since I was president of the Messianic Jewish Alliance
Washington, D.C. chapter, that made me the logical leader of the
synagogue. I was two years old in the L-rd and knew very
little Scripture.
It was only G-d's mercy that kept our congregation
together over those early years. What about members? Could
gentiles become members? Should we call our spiritual leader,
rabbi? How much Hebrew should be in the service? Do we meet on
Friday and Sunday or Friday and Saturday? Should we wear yamulkahs? What about funerals? Should we use a Jewish cemetery
or would we be permitted?
The questions were endless but G-d resolved them one at
a time. Now there are Messianic synagogues throughout the world.
So many in fact, we have seen the formation of the Union of
Messianic Congregations. Today our congregation, Beth Messiah,
located in Rockville, Maryland, has its own building, day school,
and full time spiritual leader.
I wish I had this book before we started pioneering ...
You are very fortunate. G-d really loves you !
Sid Roth
Founder and Host of the Messianic Vision
PREFACE
A WORD FROM DR. PHILLIP GOBLE
The Kitvei Hakodesh are clear about Klal Yisrael. They will not
change their G-d: they will still believe in the G-d of Avraham,
Yitzchak, and Ya'akov. They will not change their religion. They
will still hold dear to Judaism as their faith. Nevertheless,
the Kitvei Hakodesh are clear: they will be changed by teshuva and hitkhadeshut, all the Jewish people people in the world. And
they will be redeemed. One day they will look up into heaven and
they will see the Kodesh HaKodashim in heaven open, and they will
see not a changing of religions but a changing of Kohanim Gedolim. And in this changing of the guard of the Kohanim Gedolim in the Kodesh HaKodeshim in heaven, they will see a new Kohen Gadol (after the order of Malki-Tzedek) replacing the old Kohen Gadol. But this spiritual revelation will not cause them to
discard their Siddurim or their copies of the Shas. They will
not cancel Bar Mitzvahs or High Holiday Services. They will not
do away with Torah Services on Shabbos. They will still be loyal
to the Sinai Covenant and its mitzvot. They will change very
little, almost nothing as far as their Orthodox Jewish manner of
life is concerned. But they will be changed. They will see him
in heaven, wearing the garments that Caiapha once wore when Caiapha unwittingly ordered the Akedah and had him bound and led
away, carrying the Scapegoat's burden of the evil Olam Hazeh.
They will see him--Rebbe, Melech HaMoshiach Adoneinu Yehoshua,
standing in the Kodesh HaKodashim in Shomayim. They will see him
and they will weep. And the shul and the yeshiva will never be
the same after that. And they will have far better people to
produce materials such as the following, because there will be
thousands and thousands of rabbis and yeshiva scholars weeping as
I have wept for the Jewish people and looking up into heaven and
seeing the changing of the guard of the Kohanim Gedolim in the Kodesh HaKodashim. But, until then, this meager offering is
presented with a prayer and with faith in the Kitvei Hakodesh and
in the Geulah Redemption of Klal Yisrael.
In 1974 I began to see that many congregations were not
willing to change the routine of their style of ministry in order
to reach the Jewish neighborhoods where G-d had placed them. I
saw that new congregations were needed, messianic synagogues, in
those areas. If a congregation worshiping in the style of White
Anglo-Saxon Protestants is placed in the midst of a large
Orthodox Jewish community, something must be done. A new
congregation -- one that will identify in hymnology, liturgy,
architecture, and worshiping style -- must be born. This is not
a matter of deception or underhanded pragmatism. A Jewish
believer can take joy in the practice of the Torah while at the
same time he can have confidence for his salvation not in legal
statutes but in Moshiach (Acts 21:20-26). Sha'ul did this (Act
16:3; 18:18; 21:20-26). An ivory tower theologian or a novice
may not understand that he did, but that doesn't change the fact.
What has been needed for a long time is a comprehensive tool
designed to further the planting and growth of messianic
synagogues and yeshivas. This is why this book was written in
1980. This edition is revised, for now there are many messianic
synagogues throughout the world, and there will be many more in
the future. But this is not really new, for we see messianic
synagogues in Acts 21:20 and Jam.2:2 (see the Orthodox Jewish
Brit Chadasha downloadable at http://www.afii.org/material.htm from the Internet).
So what has been the problem in the intervening years since the
First Century? Choosing the wrong cultural specialist as their
mentor, ministers to Jewish people have in the past typically
tried to mimic Moshiach's Shliach to the Goyim (Sha'ul or Paul)
and have largely ignored his highly successful (cf. Acts 21:20)
cultural counterpart, Moshiach's Shliach to the Jews (James or Ya'akov). Ya'akov was concerned that no "irksome restrictions"
(Acts 15:19) be imposed on Goyim. He would have also been
concerned to have no "irksome restrictions" placed on him and the
Jerusalem Messianic Synagogue of which he was the mashgiach ruchani (spiritual overseer). Can you imagine Ya'akov's reaction
if some Goyim had told his congregation they could no longer
practice the bris milah or be shomer Shabbos? You don't have to
imagine. Just read Acts 21:20-21, where we find that the early
Jewish talmidim (disciples) of Moshiach were shomer mitzvot, and
where we see Ya'akov was quick to correct the lashon hora some
were speaking against the Shaliach Sha'ul, falsely accusing Sha'ul of teaching Jewish people they had to become shmad and
abandon the bris milah and the minhagim (customs) of the Jewish
people in order to follow the Moshiach. Unfortunately, the
dismal history of ministry to Jewish people has been the largely
futile effort to impose the irksome restrictions of Goyishe culture on Jews. Instead of helping plant and lead Brit Chadasha Kehillot, authentic Messianic Synagogues and Yeshivas with
integrity and relevance for the Jewish people like the Shliach Ya'akov (James) did in Jerusalem, ministers to Jewish people
typically function as unwitting modern "Gentilizers," trying to
persuade Jews to assimilate into Goyishe cultural life-style - a
betrayal the Jewish community understandably resists as the
self-destruction and spiritual genocide of Jews as a people. In a
Jewish neighborhood, Messiah's people must become like Jewish
people to win Jewish people (I Cor. 9:20-21), remembering that Moshiach came to bring life to Jewish people, not cultural death. Moshiach came to give them new spiritual life, not change them
from Jews into Goyim. This is axiomatic and fundamental. When a
congregation of Messiah's people finds herself in a Jewish
community she must not shrink from wearing once again her full
Jewish dress, all her old First Century synagogue attire. For
local communities of Messiah's people in Jewish communities to
remain inflexibly groomed for Goyim and then demand that Jews
convert to Gentile ways of life and worship in order for Jewish
people to accept their own Moshiach is the horrific, condemnable,
ancient Judaizing heresy in reverse, and must not be tolerated.
(To learn about this heresy, download Galatians from the Orthodox
Jewish Brit Chadasha translation from our website at
http://www.afii.org/material.htm ).
The philosophy of this book centers on the concept of a people
movement, something the Body of Moshiach received from the Jewish
community in Acts 21:20, when the Shlichut for Yehudim was in
full operation (Gal.2:8-9). A people movement occurs when whole
family units (not just rebels and family misfits) from a
particular cultural group flow into the Body of Adoneinu Moshiach Tzidkeinu. Acts 21:20 says, "You see, brother, how many
thousands of Jewish people there are who believe (in the Messiah
and the Orthodox Judaism of the Brit Chadasha); and they are all
zealous for the Torah (i.e. the Orthodox Judaism of the time,
which predates modern post-Second Temple Judaism)" (Acts 21:20).
Luke 2:42 alludes to our Moshiach's bar mitzva equivalent (see Encyclopaedia Judaica, Vol.4, page 244 for historical background
documentation). Because the Shliach Ya'akov and the first Jewish
believers in our Moshiach worshipped in the shul, kept Shabbos (as well as Yom Rishon), and maintained the peoplehood-sustaining minhagim of the Jewish people, they were
able to effectively encourage a people movement from the Jewish
community. It is true that Sha'ul won a few Jewish people into
his Gentile-accommodating congregations, but as far as the Jewish
people as a people were concerned, to flow into such a cultural
environment was not an attractive option. But then Sha'ul had
the Shlichut mission to the Goyim, he did not have the Shlichut mission to the Yehudim; it was Kefa, Ya'akov and Yochanan (Gal.2:9) who had the Shlichut to the Yehudim and could minister
in such a way as to accommodate the special needs of the Jewish
people as a people. Only the fully operative Messianic Synagogue
community of Ya'akov the Shliach in Yerushalayim could win masses
(see Acts 21:20) from whole segments of the Jewish community.
Stated simply in modern terms, there are a few Jewish people, and
cumulatively, many Jewish people, who can be won by ordinary
local congregations. But, generally speaking, these local
congregations cannot attract whole family units that flow
in a people movement from the Jewish community. To put it
graphically, a Jewish man is not going to bring his wife and bar mitzva-aged son and bat mitva-aged daughter and orthodox mother
to the ordinary local congregation. If one insists on preaching
the G-d of Israel's Good News to this family unit in a Gentile
style rather than a Messianic style and in a Gentile setting
rather than a Biblical Acts 21:20 synagogue setting, one may very
well not win this family unit. But the Bible once again solves
the problem: the first local assembly or kehillah of Messiah's
people was a messianic synagogue community. In fact, Ya'akov the Shliach calls it such in the original language of his book in
chapter 2, verse 2, (see Greek, Jam.2:2) and a messianic
synagogue community the local kehillah must become again,
whenever it finds itself in a Jewish community. (See "Moshiach's Letter Through the Shliach Ya'akov To The Brit Chadasha Kehillah"
from the Orthodox Jewish Brit Chadasha translation from our
website at http://www.afii.org/material.htm).
What has been needed for a long time is a comprehensive tool
designed to further the planting and growth of messianic
yeshivas, so that leaders of messianic synagogues can be raised
up. This is why this book was written.
Galatians 6:15 and Colossians 3:11 clarify that for Goyim
being born from heaven is what is important, not being physically
born of Jewish stock. However, when Sha'ul speaks of the new
birth, he speaks of becoming a spiritual ben Avraham (son of
Abraham--see Gal.3:7-14; Romans 2:28,29; Philippians 3:3). Hashem has a vested interest in keeping Jewish people Jewish
until the Bias haMoshiach (Coming of Messiah), or else Rebbe, Melech HaMoshiach Adoneinu will be King of the Jews in name only.
Furthermore, it is not possible for Jewish people to fully obey
the Brit Chadasha if they try to do so by apostatizing from the
Sinai Covenant and its mitzvot. This is why cultural
specialization is so crucial in the planting of new ministries
(Galatians 2:9), for the Great Commission of Moshiach commands
that Jewish people be not imperiled as a people, but discipled as
a people. In 1974, when Everything You Need To Grow A Messianic
Synagogue was first published, a wonderful breeze of the Ruach Hakodesh was blowing. It had been blowing since 1967, when the
"Six Day War" made it possible for Israel to absorb East
Jerusalem. This caused a revived interest in the Moshiach among
the Jewish people world-wide, because Yerushalayim was no longer
trodden down by Goyim (see also Luke 21:24) and the stage was
being set for the Fig Tree to blossom (21:29-31) into the Bias Moshiach. A world-wide revival began among the Jewish people,
remarkably also in Los Angeles, where this book was written.
Now, even more is happening. What the Jewish community needs are
thousands of growing synagogues with home Torah studies, yahmakahs, Jewish music, Jewish food, Jewish humor, Jewish
customs, ceremonies, holidays, traditions, testimonies, special
events, and everything revolving around and pointing toward a
very Jewish Moshiach who is Adoneinu. Such synagogues can throw
their doors open wide with the confidence that G-d will fill them
with Jewish souls and also with people who are of non-Jewish
descent but are nevertheless spiritually of the seed of Abraham
(Gal.3:7-14) and of the calling of Ruth, called to Messianic
Jewish ministry. These truly heaven-born believers in Moshiach Adoneinu, unlike many anti-semitic nominal and errant followers,
will love the Jewish people in all their Jewishness. They will
understand that rabbis and synagogues have to change very little,
almost nothing, about their liturgy or their manner of worship or
Jewish lifestyle in order to follow the Moshiach. The book of
Hebrews shows that all rabbis and synagogues have to do to find
redemption in Moshiach is to look up into heaven and see a
changing of the guard of the Kohen Gadol, with Rebbe Melech HaMoshiach Yehoshua the Kohen l'Olam al divrati Malki-Tzedek (Ps.110:4) in the Kodesh HaKodashim in Shomayim. Once they
believe in his kapparah and come into the Brit Chadasha Yom
Kippur experience of hitkhadeshut through chesed rather than zechus, very little else has to be changed. Hashem is only
looking for a change of heart, not a change of religion or a
change of allegiance from the Sinai Covenant and its mitzvot.
However, since this is true, something more than a typical
seminary education is needed for the leaders of such messianic
synagogues. This is why this book and this web-site on the
Internet exists. It is my prayer that G-d will give you, the
reader, the same privilege he gave me, and reward your toil with
good ground and the fruit of a Brit Chadasha-patterned messianic
yeshiva.
In 1975, when I spoke at a special Fuller Seminary
convocation, I felt impressed that G-d would give me several
messianic synagogues in Florida. G-d wanted to prove that what
he was saying in the Scriptures was possible today, that several
congregations could be planted simultaneously in the same area.
And that these congregations could help sustain a Jewish people
movement, providing such things as a potential Jewish marriage
market, so that the Jewish people would have the freedom to keep
their identity as Jews and not assimilate. This is important,
because if the Jewish people totally assimilate and become
non-Jews, so that there are no Jews, then how can Moshiach still
return as King of the Jews? Dr. Donald McGavran, my teacher,
said we should work to see five hundred of these congregations in
the United States, and an equal number overseas. He told me to
get some of the key leaders to help me put together this book, so
that many training centers can merge, and with them many more
congregations.
By 1976, Jewish men from all over the country were calling me in
Florida, telling me they felt led to get into the ministry
because of their faith in Yehoshua, explaining they had somehow
heard about my ministry, asking me if I needed help in Florida.
We began a little Yeshiva class in conjunction with an agape
feast which occurred later the some day, when new believers took
the Moshiach's tevilah. In the Yeshiva class, the Jewish
messianic rabbis brushed up their Hebrew and learned how to turn
Jewish home Torah classes into messianic congregations. I was
reliving Sha'ul's experience in Acts 19:9. When the first
messianic synagogue formed, I was free to turn that congregation
over to a Jewish minister, so that I could go with another Jewish
minister to start another one. In less than three years, three
congregations were formed and growing. What my critics said
couldn't be done, G-d did, using even a person like me, of
non-Jewish background, to show that anyone could do it, with the
help of Hashem. By simply ordering my time in a disciplined way,
one night of visitation ministry, one night of bus ministry, one
day of Yeshiva classes, one night of home Torah classes, one
night of erev Shabbat services, G-d did the rest.
This book shows that there is a way revealed in the Brit Chadasha Scriptures to be loyal to the law without being
unspiritual, to become like Rabbinic Judaism without syncretism,
to become indigenous without Scriptural compromise. The purpose
of the book is to provide a tool to help accelerate the
ingathering of G-d's ancient people in these last days. It is my
prayer that G-d will use it to wake up the Moshiach's World-wide Kehillah to the Great Commission and to the fact that the Good
News is to Israel first and last ! A barukhah on you!
Dr. Phillip E. Goble
New York City
September 24, 1996
PART I?HE BIBLICAL BASIS FOR A
MESSIANIC YESHIVA
CHAPTER ONE: THE MISTAKES OF THE PAST
The centuries between the First Century C.E. and the
"Reformation" (Martin the "Reformer" was no reformer as far as
Jewish ministry was concerned; like others using the name of
Messiah, he managed to set the cause of Jewish ministry back a
few centuries) were indeed dismal ones for Jewish believers.
After the Adriatic war, Jerusalem became a pagan city from which
Jewish believers were barred, just as they were practically
excluded from both the papist houses of worship and the
synagogue. From 135 A.D. until the conquest of Israel by
Mohammad's followers in the 7th century, we hear very little of
Jewish believers, other than a few passing remarks on
certain Ebionites or Nazarenes from such sources as Jerome or Origen or a certain Jewish bishop of Constantia named Epiphanius.
Unfortunately, Eusebius, Constantine, and others were not
guiltless of the charge of fostering an anti-Jewish prejudice
which grew and had tragic consequences. The story of Messianic
Jewish faith from the 7th century to the Reformation is one of
confused religious strategy that ranged all the way from the
enticement of studied polemics in compulsory audience to the
intimidation of forced immersion by threat of death. Thus we move
through the crusades and the inquisitions roughly to the time of
the "Reformation." The historian Hugh Schonfield speaks of the
Jewish believers and how their attempts at ministry might have
been more successful if they had been left alone to present their
case in their own way, but instead often their ministry "was
turned into a massacre by ecclesiastical interference or popular
malice, to the great sorrow of those who were unwittingly
responsible. In the instances of definite fanaticism which have
to be recorded, the harsh polemics and burnings of the Talmud,
one must remember that blasphemy was a much more grievous sin in
those days, that the torment of the damned in hell was a reality
that made any present suffering worthwhile if it could secure
immunity, and that cruelty in word and act was less tampered by
social custom.(l)
It is a matter of record that many Jewish people became
disciples of Yehoshua during this pre-Reformation period.
However, whom to credit with taking the Scriptures to them is
another matter. For example, we have no way of knowing how
instrumental the Dominican preachers were, since many of their
efforts backfired. The overzealous Dominicans were instrumental
in petitioning inquisitorial interference with the Jews in
Ferdinand and Isabella's Spain. Also they were responsible for
engaging Pfefferkorn who in turn initiated Emperor Maximilian's
book confiscation order which brought on untold burnings of the
Talmud and other Jewish writings. Like the Dominican preachers,
the medieval religious world was not the blessing to the Jewish
people it could have been.
THE POST-REFORMATION PERIOD
Then, with the "Reformation" there came to the Jewish
people two forward-thinking defenders, John Reuchlin and Martin
Luther (at least Luther started out as a defender). Reuchlin, a
non-Jewish Hebrew scholar, exhorted against the confiscation of
Jewish writings, and for that plea he was rewarded with a charge
of heresy and branded as an instrument of the devil. Later, in
1523, Martin Luther wrote a treatise showing that Yehoshua was
born a Jew: "Those fools the papists, bishops, sophists, monks,
have formerly so dealt with the Jews, that every good Christian
would rather have been a Jew. And if I had been a Jew, and seen
such stupidity and such blockheads reign in the Christian Church,
I would rather be a pig than a Christian. They have treated the
Jews as if they were dogs, not men, and as if they were fit for
nothing but to be reviled. They are blood relations of our L-rd;
therefore if we respect flesh and blood, the Jews belong to
Messiah more than we. I beg, therefore, my dear Papists, if you
become tired of abusing me as a heretic, that you begin to revile
me as a Jew. Therefore, it is my advice that we should treat them
kindly; but now we drive them by force, treating them
deceitfully or ignominiously, saying they must have Christian
blood to wash away the Jewish stain, and I know not what
nonsense. Also we prohibit them from working amongst us, from
living and having social intercourse with us, forcing them, if
they would remain with us to be usurers."(2)
However, finding that the Jews made little response to
his overtures, Luther turned on them with the most vicious and
scathing anti-Semitism. Here is a quote from another book
entitled Of the Jews and their Lies: "Burn their synagogues and
schools; what will not burn, bury with earth, that neither stone
nor rubbish remain. In like mannner break into and destroy their
houses. Take away all their prayer books and Talmud, in which
are nothing but g-dlessness, lies, cursing and swearing. Forbid
their rabbis to teach on pain of life and limb." (3)
Therefore, for more than two centuries after the
Reformation, scarcely a Protestant voice was heard in behalf of
the salvation of the Jews. A major exception was Phillip Jacob Spener, who was the first to work out a detailed outreach plan
for the Jewish people. Another bright light was Johann Henrich Callenberg, founder of the Callenberg Institute and sometimes
called the father of modern outreach ministry to the Jews.
However, of the surprisingly high number of Jewish
believers in this period we have testimony in DaCosta's book,
Israel and the Gentiles, where he speaks of some five thousand
Jewish believers (4).
The increased number of Jewish believers in 18th century
Europe was the result of a new era in inter-faith relations. In
the early Reformation faith there arose a new consciousness for
the need to proclaim the Good News to the Jewish people. A
symptom of the new era was to regard the methods employed by the
medieval religious world as not at all in keeping with the spirit
of Moshiach. Therefore, there was a gradual relaxation on
synagogue building restrictions, circumcision prohibitions, and
mandatory attendance at sermons in congregations. Here Spener went further. He was an advocate of complete freedom for
the Jews in the exercise of their own religion, an entirely novel
idea even for the pietistic world of that time.
In the Netherlands as early as the Synods of Delft and Leiden, 1677 and 1678, there was action taken on behalf of the
Jews. Not only were ministers to use Hebrew in winning Jewish
people through preaching Moses and the prophets, but also the
professors of seminaries were to emphasize the study of Hebrew by
requiring examinations of their students.
Two extremely important Messianic Jewish believers who
emerged from a later "Jewish Awakening" in the Netherlands were
Abraham Capadose and Isaac DaCosta. Capadose founded the
association of "Friends of Israel in the Hague" in 1846. In 1861 Capadose and DaCosta founded the "Netherland Society for Israel."
These societies were important in promoting prayer services for
the salvation of the Jews in Holland's cities and towns and also
in promoting interest in Jewish outreach.
THE JEWISH "OUTREACH CENTER" APPROACH
In London in 1808 another society was founded, the
"London Society." This became the oldest and most extensive
Jewish outreach organization in the world as well as the mother
of many other societies. With it we see the development of the
so-called "Jewish outreach center" which was developed in its
most grandiose style in London in 1813 on a five acre plot of
ground. When completed, this facility comprised a house of
worship building, a minister's residence, a boys' school and a
girls' school, a college and several residences. This facility
lasted for a period of 70 years during which there were some
1,765 immersions. It was staffed with specially trained
ministers and departmental workers and sought to meet every
exigency which might arise in bringing the Jewish people to their
Messiah. We are surprised, therefore, to find that the
property was disposed of in 1895. A letter from Abraham Capadose provides insight that may help in a postmortem appraisal:
"For I speak from my own experience: the Jewish person has a
natural pre-possession against a man who advertises his desire to
make him change his religion; but he respects a minister of a
congregation. Now...if he could, without being noticed,...would
eagerly hear a sermon ... without that prejudice because the
preaching ... would not have for its express design the
conversion of Israel. Oh, if the houses of worship of Scotland,
of England, of Holland would unite in this, to engage mutually to
announce once a week that there would be a sermon, not for the
Jews, but for the believers, on the prophecies concerning
Messiah, from this or that part of the Hebrew Bible, I am
heartily convinced that we would see quietly coming into the
assembly a number of Jews...(5)
Here we see one of the first criticisms of the so-called
"Jewish outreach center approach" in favor of what has come to be
called the "parish approach." However, in spite of much criticism
of outreach centers unrelated to parishes, non-ecciesiabtically constituted mission societies have set the pattern even for
today. Four of the best known and largest which have operated on
a national or international scale are the American Messianic
Fellowship, Chosen People Ministries, The Friends of Israel
Society, and Hineni Ministries. Lest this be taken as criticism,
the absence of congregations in Jewish ghetto areas in large
cities explains what has often made the outreach station approach
appear to be the only feasible alternative. Rev. J. S. Conning,
Department of Jewish Evangelism, Presby. U.S., has summarized
Jewish outreach methods in the immigrant ghettos of American
cities: "An outreach hall in the crowded Jewish neighborhood,
meetings in Yiddish for adults, street preaching, visitation in
homes, the circulation of Yiddish literature, and the
distribution of relief to the needy (6).
Until the disappearance of the first, second and third
settlement communities in the Jewish ghettos of American cities,
the apparent need for traditional Jewish outreach stations did
not lessen.
THE MESSIANIC SYNAGOGUE APPROACH
A critique of the outreach station, however, is that
typically it lacks the body of Jewish believers whose faith is
the proper atmosphere to encourage faith in other Jewish people.
It is naive to say that any one organization or method
offers the best approach. However, a long-neglected and yet
highly promising approach is that of the Messianic synagogue,
because it is Scripturally tested and sanctioned. Unlike the
typical outreach station, the Messianic synagogue does have a
body of believing Jewish talmidim. That their faith is a fertile
environment for Jewish people to come to believe is shown in the
large-scale additions in the early Messianic synagogue community
of Acts (Acts 2:41-47; 5:11, 14; 9:31).
The first important modern Jewish Messianic synagogue
was founded in 1882 by Joseph Rabinowitz. Rabinowitz was born at Resina in 1837 and grew up in Chasidic circles. At 13, he was
betrothed but did not marry until six years later. His future
brother-in-law Jehiel Hershensohn (Lichtenstein)
introduced him to the Brit Chadasha by lending him a Hebrew copy
and remarking that perhaps Yehoshua of Nazareth was the true Moshiach. Rabinowitz took the Hebrew Brit Chadasha to Jerusalem
with him, and, sitting on the Mount of Olives viewing the Mosque
of Omar where formerly the Temple stood, his mind went back over
the tragic history of his people. Why was Israel suffering? The
answer came to him: "The key to the Holy Land is in the hands of
our brother Yehoshua." Filled with the glory of a great vision, Rabinowitz returned to his homeland and was immersed in 1885.
Rather than joining an existing congregation, however, he built a
hall which became a Jewish Messianic synagogue. His sermons
became available in Hebrew, Russian and Yiddish and numbered in
the thousands of copies reaching the masses of the Jews in
eastern Europe.
Thus we see in the Jewish Messianic synagogue not an
imposing of the faith on Jews from without, but a reclamation of
true Messianic faith from within. The Messianic synagogue
which both Lichtenstein and Rabinowitz were instrumental in
reviving perhaps for the first time since the First Century C.E.
was a forerunner of similar modern synagogues rapidly mushrooming
today throughout the Jewish world-wide community.
For centuries Messianic Judaism was not possible as a
coherent, lasting tradition. This was so not because of any
so-called "de-nationalizing" tendency of the faith, but because
of social ostracism on the part of both the Gentile Houses of
Worship and the Synagogue. Then, too, the policy of the medieval
religious world had really been one of anti-Semitic gentilizing which claimed that the Jewish community must collectively and
individually make a complete break with its whole way of life in
order to accept salvation. However, there is a new understanding
among theologians today, the Scriptural concept that people do
not have to commit ethnic suicide by throwing over their culture
or assimilating into another culture in order to become believers
in Yehoshua. The gentilizing of past Jewish outreach efforts is
recognized today for what it is.
Also, from the Jewish side, the Messianic Jew receives
more toleration in the eyes of the Synagogue in our modern day.
In fact, Messianic Faith is not ruled out as a fatal error in
itself, and if it has been conceded that it is all right for
gentiles to come to know the G-d of Israel through Messiah, the
next logical step is that it is also right for Jews to come to
this knowledge through Him. Although many Jewish religious
authorities are not willing to go this far, there are many Jewish
people today who are tolerant of Messianic Jews and more open
than ever before to the claims of Yehoshua.
Modern outreach thinking concedes that there is no one
"Bible-endorsed culture" but that all cultures must be Messianized (brought under the Messiah's influence) by culturally
relevant Messianic congregations. We have black congregations to
minister to the black community, we have Spanish congregations to
minister to the Spanish community. In the same way we must have
Jewish Messianic Synagogues to minister to the Jewish community
and these should surface as such wherever there are bodies of
Jewish believers in Yehoshua. They should be staffed with
Messianic believers, and they should have a non-discriminatory
but culturally sensitive and focused outreach to their own Jewish
communities.
Albert Huisjen has some extremely insightful recommendations for Moshiah's World-wide Kehillah: It "has lost sight of the fact
that concern for the salvation of the Jews rightfully belongs
among its primary consideration. It does not belong at the
perimeter of her outreach programing, where it is now generally
found, but at its very center. Our salvation is not only of the
Jews but, also for the sake of the Jews. Salvation is come to
the Gentiles to provoke the Jews to jealousy. To the Jew first is
a Biblical concept that was first projected in prophecy by Moses,
first practiced by Yehoshua, and first promulgated by Sha'ul. So
we repeat what we have said before, namely: To the Jew first has
a unique continuance so long as the Jews remain in unbelief and
the people of Messiah have temporal existence. If her outreach
to the Jews is to come into its own it must be given its rightful
place in the outreach programming of the people of G-d. How this
might be brought about should be of real concern in the
believer's circles ... For a congregation rightfully to answer to
her calling respecting the Jews, concern for their salvation
should be placed at the center of her interests and outreach
programming. Then in accordance with her organizational
structure an Exhortation should go out from her world leadership
that this be observed alike by all her congregations, her
ministers, her office-bearers, and members throughout the world.
In turn the ministers should pass this pronouncement on to their
respective congregations and exhort them with the goal in mind of
conditioning them to take in the Jewish person whenever contact
with him is made, whether within parish bounds, as a fellow
resident, or in the common ways of life.(7)
In modern times, the best example of just such a topdown world-wide zeal for the Jews as Huisjen advocates was a body of
believers in Scotland in 1838. That body began by overtures to
several presbyteries and then by following up with an enactment
of the General Assembly. A commission studied Jewish outreach
ministries and a mandate was given to the congregations by
official pronouncement that there should be an education of the
entire world-wide fellowship in things Jewish by means, among
other things, of an official correspondence course. Needless to
say, the response was a great response of Jewish people coming to
faith. Nuisjens advocates that something of this nature is
needed in all fellowships throughout the world.
We hope what will turn out to be a great modern breakthrough
occurred November 8, 1974, when a major Protestant denomination's
National Home Outreach department agreed that Jewish people could
form "fully operative" Messianic Synagogues within the Assemblies
of G-d fellowship. Time will tell whether this pledge will be
fulfilled or betrayed. Nevertheless, this historic decision
meant that perhaps for one of the first times since the period
when the Brit Chadasha was written, a World-wide community of
believers was organizationally making room for the kinds of
synagogues that can sustain the Jews both spiritually and
culturally and as a people from generation to generation.
Such a long-awaited rapprochement between Messiah's people and
the Synagogue in the one Body of our Moshiach is the hope of
believers everywhere and is also the all-pervading goal
of this study. It is hoped that all evangelicals will soon find
messianic synagogues among their congregations world-wide, and
that there will be non-denominational or independent messianic
synagogues, as well.
This is not to say that the messianic synagogue method of
ministry is the only way to win Jewish people to their Messiah.
Any local Bible-believing congregation will soon find Jewish
people in attendance, because a great end-time ingathering is
presently underway, and has been since the 1967 Six Day War when
Jerusalem was no longer trodden down by the Gentiles (Luke 21:24)
and the Fig Tree began to blossom (Luke 21:29-31), and Jewish
people are being won anywhere and everywhere. However, just as
in the past maybe only four or five Jewish people might be won in
a given geographical area, now four or five congregations of
Jewish people can quickly be planted in the same location. This
is what G-d proved in my ministry in Florida in 1975-1976. This
is a sign of the lateness of the times (Luke 21:24-31; Matthew
23:39).
The purpose of my first book, Everything You Need to Grow a
Messianic Synagogue, has been misunderstood in some circles. I
wasn't writing a book to tell Jewish ministers the one and only
way they should run their ministry. I wasn't writing a book to
tell Jewish people how Jewish they may or may not be, according
to the Brit Chadasha. My book was just a primer to begin to move
in the direction of an indigenous Jewish congregation and should
be helpful to Jewish people in the initial stages, while they're
feeling their way along. This book can be downloaded from our
website at http://www.afii.org/material.htm on the Internet.
My book does not tell Jewish people they must do anything (except
face the eternal consequences of rejecting the Good News). There
is no legalism in my book, just the strategy of Sha'ul's admonition in I Cor. 9:19-23. Does this mean my book puts Jewish
people back under the law? Absolutely not. A Jewish believer in
Messiah is in essence a new creation. He is in the Olam Hazeh but
not of the Olam Hazeh. He is trusting Moshiach to redeem him,
not a legal statute. His heart and life, allegiance and
authority, mind and spirit, are hidden in heaven with the risen Moshiach. He has died to all but the Olam HaBa, and he has
experienced a new birth into a new eschatological existence. He
has received the Ruach HaKodesh of the Olam HaBa. He comes to
the Torah with joy as someone whom the Moshiach has redeemed.
Since he is in essence a heavenly citizen, an enlightened new
creation (even already in this dying, evil age), a believer is
now free (according to the constraints of holiness and love) to
become like any unenlightened people. The believer is not
lawless (II Peter 3:17), he is under the law of the Moshiach (I Cor. 9:21). His life is not controlled by mere rules, but by a
Holy person, the indwelling Word of G-d, the Moshiach, whose
Spiritual and Scriptural control leads him in a holy life
(Jeremiah 31:31-34; see Colossians 2:20-23).
When an actor becomes like someone else in order to persuade an
audience, it is not a sham. When a believer in the Moshiach becomes like a Jew to win a Jew to the Moshiach, it is not a
hoax. If it is an act done in sincere love, it is an act of
truth, particularly since a believer in Moshiach really is a Ben Avraham, spiritually speaking (Gal.3:7-14). An actor knows when
he is "doing the truth" on stage. He does not literally become
the part (that would be insanity or reincarnation); he becomes
like the part. When a messianic Jew becomes like an orthodox Jew
(under the law), the messianic Jew is not under the law but like
one under the law. A Jewish believer can take joy in the
practice of the Torah while at the same time he can have
confidence for his salvation not in legal statutes but in Moshiach (Acts 21:20-26). Sha'ul was not under the Law (I Cor.
9:20-21, NIV). Therefore, no one can interpret Matthew 5:17-20
and 23:2-3 as meaning that Yehoshua bound the messianic Jews in
Jerusalem under the law, meaning their salvation was through
their own legal efforts rather than through faith in him. Not at
all. Those passages preach against Jewish people assimilating. Moshiach forbade it. To show one's loyalty to traditions while
keeping the ethical demands of the law is not the same as
legalistic bondage without knowledge of Moshiach and salvation.
Neither Moshiach Yehoshua nor Sha'ul advocated the latter. To be
literally under the law means to be outside the Moshiach (unsaved) and depending on legalistic works and self-attained
righteousness. To be like someone under the law is to lead a
similar life style, but for different reasons. If I
legalistically avoid eating pork, or driving on Saturday, because
I feel I'm thereby a superior ethical and religious specimen, I
am under the law. If I avoid pork and Sabbath driving to be able
to have a more credible witness for the Jewish Moshiach to my
unsaved orthodox Jewish neighbors, I'm under Moshiach's Torah and
not under legalistic and self-righteous illusions. An actor sees
the truth and integrity of this kind of "acting" because he sees
the sincere motive and not the artifice. An orthodox Jew who
becomes a believer is not going to offend his Orthodox Jewish
neighbors by breaking the law. However, his motivation is now
based on Moshiach's love, and now not eating pork and not driving
on Shabbos has an even deeper significance to him in Moshiach.
Also, and again I repeat, a Jewish believer can take joy in the
practice of the Torah while at the same time he can have
confidence for his salvation not in legal statutes but in Moshiach (Acts 21:20-26).
Now in Moshiach an Orthodox Jew finds joy in preaching the Besuras haGeulah in an orthodox way. Proof is offered that the
substance of the Good News can be preached in a rabbinic style by
my play, The Rabbi from Tarsus, where Sha'ul preaches the height
and depth of the Good News in a thoroughly rabbinic style, so
that even a chasidic rabbi hearing it might be spiritually
stirred positively or negatively, but not culture-shocked.
Messianic indigenous synagogues that are thoroughly Biblical,
that do not compromise the Good News or its manner of acceptance
(repentance-immersion) that are open to all and led by men who
endeavor not to "culture shock" anyone, Gentile or Jew, reformed
or orthodox, are desperately needed today in the Jewish
communities of the world. These congregations can be multiplied
as quickly as Messianic yeshivas can be organized to equip and
train their leadership. As Jewish leaders are trained, they will
learn through the Messianic yeshivas how to plant a new
congregation, how to preach in a Jewish style with Brit Chadasha substance, how to counsel and minister to the needs of Jewish
people, and how to become a rabbi surrogate able to perform
Jewish weddings, funerals and bar mitzvahs (8). It is hoped that
this book will be of perhaps a little use in multiplying these
yeshivas wherever there are Jewish population centers in the
world.
CHAPTER TWO: A JEWISH CONTEXTUAL
THEOLOGY FOR A MESSIANIC
YESHIVA
IS THIS JUDAISM?
One of the first things that a messianic Jewish student
or teacher in a messianic yeshiva must do is to arrive at a
thoroughly Jewish contextual theology that does not compromise
the Word of G-d. Judging from Acts 24:10-21, there can be little
doubt that one of Luke's objects in writing Acts is to show that
the religion which has since been given a post-Biblical label is
in fact the true Jewish "way," the true Jewish religion -- true
Judaism, and is therefore rightfully the religion licita. Luke
emphasizes that even the shliach to the Gentiles knows his
religion is most relevant to Jews. Sha'ul is depicted by Luke as
a rabbi who always goes to his own people first, and does not
normally turn to the Gentiles until he has first been rejected by
the Jews. Sha'ul is pointedly shown to be a practicing Jew who
takes vows (Acts 18:18), and is eager to celebrate the Jewish
feasts in Jerusalem (Acts 18:21; 20:6, 16), even willing to
purify himself in the Beis Hamikdash (Acts 21:17-27).
Furthermore, Acts 23:6-10 indicates that the Judaism of Sha'ul has more in common with the Judaism of the Pharisees than even
the Pharisees and Sadducees have with one another. Acts 2:46
asserts that from the very beginning this Derech Hashem, Derech Tzaddikim, this true Judaism, was loyal to the Beis Hamikdash,
where, significantly, the Gentile outreach commission was given
(Acts 22:17-21). Luke notes that it is only Sha'ul's enemies
that refer to his religion as a Jewish "sect," while Sha'ul himself argues in Acts 24:14 that he worships the G-d of their
fathers and believes the Torah and the prophets. Thus Luke
demonstrates that Sha'ul's Biblical Judaism is without taint.
Then Sha'ul himself zeroes in on a basic tenant of Judaism, the
doctrine of the hope of the Techiyas Hamesim (resurrection of the
dead) upon which Sha'ul bases his claim to Jewish orthodoxy.
Those Jews who believe the Jewish doctrine of the resurrection of
the dead and will listen to Sha'ul's testimony regarding the
resurrected Moshiach Yehoshua will accept his authoritative
teaching as true Judaism. Those who refuse to believe the
doctrine of the resurrection historically fulfilled in Yehoshua will deny Sha'ul's teaching. But Luke makes it clear that if
Jews reject the interpretation of Judaism of Moshiach's Shluchim and personal knowledge of Hashem through the Moshiach, they
reject true Judaism (Luke 10:22). Luke records Kefa saying as
much in Acts 3:22-24 where Kefa quotes from Deu. 18:15-16 that
Moses declared that anyone who would not listen to the Prophet
that G-d would raise up would be extirpated from Israel. This
warning is sounded by Kefa immediately after his argument that
G-d has raised Yehoshua from the dead. Arguing somewhat
similarly, Sha'ul defends his life in Acts 24:14-15 by defending
the orthodoxy of his religion based an the generally accepted
doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. Just as Kefa claimed
that David spoke as a prophet predicting the resurrection of the Moshiach (Acts 2:30-32), so Sha'ul says to King Agrippa (Acts
26:2-8), in arguing that the Moshiach is the first to rise from
the dead, "Do you believe the prophets?"
Because Luke is the only one of the four authors of the Besuras haGeulah who both begins and ends his Good News in the Beis Hamikdash, it is clear that Luke is asserting that in a real
sense Biblical Faith is but a further extension of the national
religion of the Jewish people. For Luke's history tells the
story of how the spiritual sheerit (remnant) from the Jews finds
added to itself a spiritual remnant from the nations to form a
nation not of the Olam HaBah, the people of the Jerusalem above.
This does not mean that national Israel is replaced. No, G-d is
dealing with her as well, giving her her land in 1948, and
bringing her to salvation as well (see Romans chps 9-11). That
Luke is arguing that Biblical Faith is true Judaism is shown by
Luke's describing the Shliach to the Gentiles as a Beis Hamikdash-loyal rabbi who "asserts nothing beyond what was
foretold by the prophets and by Moses, that the Moshiach must
suffer and that he, the first to rise from the dead would
announce the dawn to Israel and to the Gentiles (Acts 26:23)."
Here Sha'ul, as a Bible-believing rabbi, is asserting the truth
of Isaiah 42:6; 49:6; 53. Luke draws out the irony in Acts
26:6-8 that it is for the hope of the resurrection, the hope for
which Jewish people are worshiping G-d with intense devotion day
and night, for this very hope that Sha'ul is impeached (and
impeached by Jews, of all people). Thus Luke drives home the
point that this religion is Judaism in the truest sense of the
word, and the People who should be the first to recognize it are
somehow blind to the fact.
For Luke the true "remnant" Jews are not those who are
uncircumcised in heart (Acts 7:5, 13), because they reject the
teaching of Moshiach's Shluchim. Rather, the true "remnant" Jews
are those who accept this teaching and submit to Moshiach's tevilah, meet consistantly to hear the teaching, and to share in
the common life, to break bread, and to daven (Acts 2:42).
Especially significant is the "breaking of bread" when one
remembers that for Luke the L-rd's Supper emerges from a Pesach seder and has the same central covenantal significance (Luke
22:7-8, 20). Also, it should be carefully noted that for Luke the Moshiach's tevilah is the initiation rite of faith whereby the
nations must be discipled and whereby all men, Jews and Gentiles
alike, must receive through faith the all important gift of the Ruach Hakodesh without which there is no membership in the true
eschatological people of Redemption (Acts 2:38, 39; Luke 3:7-9;
24:47). According to Luke (Acts 2:1), on Yom Rishon morning, Shavuos (Pentecost), 30 C.E., the proclamation went forth that if
Jews were to remain committed to the true faith of Judaism, they
must personally commit themselves to the Moshiach of Judaism.
Since the key ritual for making proselytes to Judaism had
been a tevilah mikveh immersion, the risen Moshiach Yehoshua commanded his followers to go into all the world, making
proselytes to messianic Judaism by means of a tevilah in the name
of the G-d of Israel.(l)
Today there is a great deal of confusion in the Jewish
community as to who is a true Jew, since there is no unanimity
discernible among Jews along even racial, religious, political,
or national lines. Some Jews want to believe that there is some
sense in which the Jewish people are a race, yet there are
Japanese Jews. Many Jews would like to define themselves along
religious lines, and yet there are Jewish atheists. Of course,
many want to believe that the Jewish people are united as a
nation, and yet an American Jew knows he's not an Israeli.
Therefore, many Jewish people do not really knew who the real
Jews are.
However, the Brit Chadasha does knew who the Jews are. Sha'ul asserts quite clearly that the true Jew is the one whose
praise (a play on words since Yehudah and Hodah are a play on
words between "Judah" and "praise") is of G-d (Romans 2.-29), who
has been circumcised of his "flesh," his unregenerate nature, by
the miracle of hitkhadeshut (regeneration) (Col.2:11-13), thus
becoming a spiritual child of Abraham by faith (Gal. 3:7), and
therefore a true Jew (Phil. 3:3). Such are "sons of the
covenant," the Brit Chadasha covenant where the Torah is written
on the heart (Jer. 31:31-34). The Bible holds out the hope in
Romans chp. 11 that this miracle will happen en masse to Israel
in the last days, thereby giving a cautionary warning to Gentiles
when they try to abrogate to themselves the promises and
privileges extended in Scripture to the genealogical seed of
Abraham, although Gentile followers of Moshiach are also
spiritual Bnei Avraham (Gal.3:7-14).
But, being able to trace your genealogy to Abraham is not enough.
Ishmael could do this. So could Esau. For, as both the Torah
and the Tenach show, G-d intended to "mark off" as his own not
merely people who were circumcised physically but "in their
hearts" (Deu. 10:16). So strong is this teaching that G-d
threatens to destroy any Jew who is not spiritually circumcised
(Jer. 4:4). Such a one will be shut out of Jerusalem (Isa.
52:1), as well as the L-rd's sanctuary (Ezek. 44:7, 9) and
salvation (Deu. 30:6). For not all G-d's physical people are his
spiritual children (Rom. 9:6). In Gen. 17, circumcision (bris milah) is the covenant sign of G-d's choosing out and marking men
for his own. But in the Brit Chadasha the gift of the Ruach Hakodesh, without which a man does not belong to the Moshiach (Rom. 6:9), is offered in connection with faith and Moshiach's tevilah (Acts 2:38), which is identified (when it is an act of
faith witnessing to regeneration's spiritual surgery of the
"flesh") with Moshiach's way of circumcision (Col. 2:11-12).
Many people do not know that Judaism used to be a outreach
religion, and that the official leaders of Judaism were both
zealous and apparently somewhat successful at making proselytes
at the time of Yehoshua. (2) Therefore the outreach of Yehoshua did not arise in a vacuum. It received the legacy of the zealous
Jewish proselytizing movement, to which it added the
world-shaking power of the Ruach Hakodesh in order to make more
proselytes to Messianic Judaism than anyone ever dreamed
possible. According to ancient tradition, (3) the first
proselytes to the Jewish faith were gentiles, Abraham and Sarah,
and through their descendants, G-d intended to proselytize the
nations (Gen. 12:3). Thus it was that Judaism was carried to all
peoples, Jews and Gentiles alike, by the followers of Yehoshua.
For Yehoshua immersed Judaism with the Ruach Hakodesh and brought
G-d's people the Good News of the Kingdom which Judaism had for
so long been waiting to take to the world (Matt. 28:19).
Therefore the Good News of Messianic Judaism is that the hope of
Israel has been fulfilled, the Moshiach has come, the
resurrection has already begun through him -- Yehoshua Ha Mashiach, who has already begun to pour out the Ruach Hakodesh on
his followers; consequently, the people from every nation may
receive the Ruach Hakodesh and be assured of their own personal
coming resurrection by obeying the Moshiach of Israel as their
L-rd and King.
Just how Jewish our Biblical Faith is is made obvious by the
startling fact that, judging from the epistles of Sha'ul, people
who had been heathen just a short time before were expected to be
able to understand the complex rabbinic style argumentation of
their author (e.g. Gal. 4:21). These people can no longer be
considered heathen (I Cor 12:2. Theologically they must be able
to think like Jews. Therefore, it is no mere spiritualization to
say that Sha'ul's proselytes were in some sense grafted in like
Ruth and given a Jewish heart.(4) For how could one fully
understand the Besuras haGeulah without entering into a full
understanding of the soul of Israel? If one rejects this
conclusion, one is left with the absurd idea that only the false
teachers (judaizers of Galatia) could make true proselytes out
of the Gentiles.
That Luke is aware of the gentile follower of Moshiach and his
privileged status as a proselyte is obvious in the fact that for
him the L-rd's Supper emerges from a Pesach seder. Whereas
uncircumcised men could not sit at table with Jews (Acts 11:1-3),
circumcised men who were uncircumcised at heart (Acts 7:51)
excluded themselves from the privilege of sitting at the Brit Chadasha Pesach seder" (Acts 13:46). Those of the natural Jews
who rejected the privilege of entering into a Brit Chadasha with
the G-d of Israel condemned themselves as unworthy of Chayyei Olam and forfeited their privileged status to the Gentiles, the
wild olive branches grafted into the Chosen People of G-d.
Turning from Luke to the broader theological perspective of our
Biblical Faith as true Judaism, it is hardly necessary to belabor
the point that the Judaism taught in the Brit Chadasha preserves
the essentials of the faith of Israel that other kinds of Judaism
have largely lost. For example, Messianic Judaism teaches
Biblical monotheism, that the L-rd our G-d is echad (Deu. 6:4).
The English translation of the Zohar by Soncino Press (2nd
Edition, 1984) conveniently leaves out a controversial passage
about the "threeness" of Hashem. When we look at the original
language in Zohar Vol.3 Ha'azinu page 288b, we see the omitted
text, which, comments on Daniel 7:13, where the Son of Man Moshiach comes to the Ancient of Days. The Zohar says, "The
Ancient One is described as being two (TAV-RESH-YUD-FINAL NOON,
Aramaic for "two")." G-d and the Moshiach, called by Daniel "the
Ancient of Days" and "the Son of Man" are obviously a picture of
G-d as "two" in the Bible, and the Zohar owns up to this fact,
calling G-d "two." Two sentences prior to that on the same page,
the original language of the text of the Zohar says, "The Ancient
Holy One [i.e. G-d, Daniel 7:13] is found with three
(TAV-LAMMED-TAV, Aramaic for "three") heads or chiefs
(RESH-YUD-SHIN-YUD-FINAL NOON Aramaic for "heads"), which are
united in One (CHET-DALET Aramaic for "one")." Here we have a
picture in the Zohar of the raz (mystery) of G-d's unity, the
distinct havayot (subsistences, modes of being) in Adonoy Echad.
It says somewhere that Moshiach, even though his was the form of
the mode of being of Elohim, nevertheless, he humbled himself and
took the form of the mode of being of a servant, the "Tzaddik Avdi" of YESHAYAH (ISAIAH) 53:11.
Here the Zohar helps us understand the Tanakh, because
the Ruach Hakodesh is with Hashem at creation, says BERESHIS (GENESIS) 1:1-2, but so is the Dvar Hashem, according to Tehillim (Psalm) 33:6. Now the Dvar Hashem (Word of G-d) is worshiped,
according to Tehillim 56:11 (10), which would be idolatry if the Dvar Hashem did not partake of Hashem's quality of "G-dness,"
which can also be said of the Moshiach, who, unlike the idols in
Daniel 3:18, is worshiped by all peoples in Daniel 7:14 (cf. the
Aramaic word PAY-LAMMED-CHET is in both passages, which means "to
pay reverence to deity, worship"). The fact that Tehillim 56:11(10) and Daniel 7:14 speak of both the Dvar Hashem and the Moshiach as worthy of reverence as deity is more understandable
if it is remembered that G-d's Chochmah (Wisdom) is his
instrument in creation, according to Tehillim (Psalm) 104:24 and Mishle (Proverbs) 3:19. But G-d's Chochmah, like the Moshiach,
is referred to as the Ben haElohim (Mishle 30:4; cf. Tehillim 2:7), leading us to conclude that they are one and the same. In Moshiach, Hashem's eternal Chochmah comes down from heaven and
walks on this earth and confronts mankind in person. In the
beginning the Dvar Hashem, the Moshiach, was with Hashem, and the Dvar Hashem, the Moshiach, had the form of the mode of being of
G-d! And the Dvar hashem came on the scene of the Olam Hazeh as
a man!
So Hashem is Echad, but in his unity there are distinct havayot (subsistences, modes of being) so that Elohim Avinu distinquished from Moshiach and is not Moshiach, and Moshiach is
not the Ruach Hakodesh. Yet, at the same time, there is an
interpersonal fellowship in G-d's personhood, such that, when He
creates Man in his image, G-d does not create a solitary monad
alone on an island, because G-d is not a monad alone in the
cosmos. On the contrary, G-d creates male-and-female capable of
conceiving offspring, and thus the threeness of this
interpersonal fellowhip of
male-and-female-capable-of-conceiving-offspring on earth (see BERESHIS or GENESIS 2:24; 4:1) reflects a threeness in the
interpersonal fellowship of the One G-d of Israel.
This is not Tritheism. Messianic Jews who believe the
Biblical data in the Tanakh are sometimes accused by their
detractors of tritheism. People who are making up religions have
a simple doctrine and are proud of its simplicity. But G-d is
not simple, and this is His Biblical revelation of Himself, from
literally the first three verses of the Bible, as Gen. 1:1-3 are
explained by Tehillim (Psalm) 33:6. G-d from the beginning
explains himself as the Creator who is God and Dvar Hashem and Ruach Hakodesh, and we are left to either take it or leave it.
Since an infinite G-d cannot be fully comprehended by finite
human beings, we are advised to take it by faith.
In G-d's revelation of Himself to Abraham Avinu, it says in Bereshis 18:1 that Hashem "appeared" to Abraham at Mamre. Then Bereshis 18:2 says that Abraham lifted his eyes to see this
appearance of Hashem, and "Hinei! sh'lo-SHAH ah-nah-SHEM (three
men)!" is what Abraham saw! But three? Who can love without a
beloved? And the love that proceeds from the One who loves to
the One who is loved is One that is not strictly identical with
either the One who loves or the One who is loved. But can One
plus One plus One equal not three but One?
But does Messianic Judaism actually teach monotheism, that the
L-rd our G-d is one L-rd? Of course! How could it be Judaism if
it didn't? However, the Jewish Scriptures themselves teach that
G-d has a complexity in His unity. The Hebrew word signifying
G-d's complex unity is "echad," not the word "yachid." The Torah
does not say, "Shema, Yisroel, Adonoi Eloheinu, Adonoi, Yachid."
The Shema, which utters G-d's name three different times in the Shema, says that the L-rd is "echad." In Bereshis (Genesis) 2:24,
G-d says that when a man marries a woman the two become "echad,"
one. It says, V'HAYU L'VASAR ECHAD ("And they will be as echad flesh, one flesh." Two can be as one! It does not say that a man
by himself, a man "yachid," is one flesh. It does not say that a
woman by herself, a woman "yachid," is one flesh. No, it says
that a man and woman in marriage is echad, one flesh. Two can be
one! Does this defy arithmetic? One plus one equals not two,
but one? The point is that this is a complex one, not a simple
one. Yechezkel (Ezekiel) says that two sticks can become ets echad (one stick)--see Yechezkel 37:17 In the case of a male and
a female, a simple one would mean something else other than a
complex unity. But a marriage is echad, because it is a complex
unity of not one but two human beings joined into a complex unity
of one. This is a complex and not a simple unity, for if it were
simple, the two would become absolutely only one, one human
being! On the other hand, in Shofetim (Judges) 11:34, Jephthah's only daughter is simply, absolutely one, the only child, the sum
of his children totaling one human being, so the Bible refers to
her with the Hebrew word "yachid." The truth is, G-d has always
had a complexity in his unity, because G-d has always had his Ruach Hakodesh (Holy Spirit) and his powerful, creative, personal Dvar Hashem, His Word, his Chochmah, his Wisdom, his agent in
creation and redemption (Tehillim 104:24; 8:32-36), the Oman
(Craftsman), the Ben haElohim at his side (Mishle 30:4; 8:30)
appointed from eternity (Mishle 8:23). The figure of a son
toiling by the side of his father was a familiar one (Mishle 8:30; 30:4), and is an arresting metaphor for God's primordial
Wisdom toiling creatively in the beginning with G-d (Mishle 8:30;
30:4). Likewise, Tehillim 2:7, 89:27-28, Yeshayah 9:(5)6 are
passages where the Moshiach is pictured as G-d's Son, his Bekhor,
his Heir. And in Daniel 7:13-14 the Moshiach is seen coming in
the clouds of Divine Glory. The other term is zero'a (arm),
shown to be used in creation in Yirmeyah 32:17 and identified
with Moshiach in Isaiah 53:1. On page 577 in Ha'azinu of the Zohar, the text speaks about the Ruach of Hashem. The Ruach Hakodesh, whom G-d's people grieved (Yeshayah 63:10), is the same Ruach Hakodesh resting upon Moshiach (Yeshayah 11:2). In the same
way that the lowest of the three types of Battei Din must have
three judges and yet a Bet Din with three judges is only one Bet
Din, not three Battei Din, so also G-d, though complex in His
personhood, is one G-d, not three G-ds. And we must all stand
before the Bet Din of Elohim Avinu and Moshiach Ben HaElohim and
the Ruach Hakodesh, who are pictured together in Yeshayah 63:10-16. In this passage we hear about Elohim Avinu (Yeshayah 63:16), and Hashem's zero'a (Arm, identified with Moshiach ten
chapters previously in Yeshayah 53:1), and the Ruach Hakodesh (Yeshayah 63:10-11). For in the same way that a triangle can have
three angles and still be only one triangle, not three triangles,
or in the same way that a human being can have his self and his
self-seeing spirit and his self-expressing mind and yet can be
only one man and not three men, so Hashem Elohim Avinu can have
his Dvar Hashem Moshiach and his Ruach Hakodesh and still be only
one G-d, not three G-ds. One plus one plus one equals not three,
but one, a complex unity of one--not a simple one but a complex
one. In the Kedusha (Yeshayah 6:3) we acknowledge this complexity
in unity everytime we read "Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh" in the Prayerbook. The One G-d of Israel sent his one and only Personal Dvar Hashem among us as the Moshiach, in order to make an
eternal kapparah (blood covering) for our sin so that from G-d's Ruach Hakodesh we might receive Chayyei Olam (Eternal Life) from Elohim Avinu and become adopted as a Bri'a Chadasha, a New
Creation in Moshiach. This was G-d's gift of ahavah (love) to
us, so that he could with mercy and justice forgive us and bring
us into a new order of life. However, G-d's gracious provision
through his Dvar Hashem the Moshiach Adoneinu has forced the
whole world into a crisis of decision. When we look into the
Jewish face of Moshiach Adoneinu, we are confronted eye to eye by
the Dvar Hashem himself. We cannot obey the G-d of Israel nor
can we receive his Ruach Hakodesh unless we obey G-d's Word-become-Man, Moshiach Adoneinu. Therefore, the task of Moshiach's Judaism is to lead people to follow the Jewish Messiah
in order that they may receive the Ruach Hakodesh and Chayyei Olam.
The sacriligious Arians did not follow the Moshiach Adoneinu.
They taught the anti-Biblical notion that Moshiach is a created
being. However, our Redeemer cannot be a mere creature. J.W.'s and other modern Arians refuse to confess and believe Yeshayah (Isaiah) 48:16, which says, "The Sovereign L-rd has sent me with
his Spirit." The "me" here is the Avdi Tzaddik, the Servant of
the L-rd (Isaiah 53:11), the Moshiach; see Isaiah 42:1-7, 49:1-7;
50:4-9; and 52:13-53:12. Here you have G-d, Moshiach, and the Ruach Hakodesh. This is not a trivial doctrine. Isaiah 50:10
says that whoever "does not obey the word of His servant" will
"lie down in torment" (Isaiah 50:11), which is a phrase shown
clearly to refer to Gehinnom in Isaiah 66:24 and Daniel 12:2. So
all modern Arians, regardless of what proud names they give to
their religious creeds, need to realize that their rebellion
against the Word of G-d will be punished by the torments of Gehinnom.
Those who really do follow Moshiach Adoneinu, and are not errant
or ignorant hypocrites (as some of his so-called followers have
been), confess this doctrine in the Brit Chadasha found in
Mt.28:19-20; Joh.14:26; 15:26; II Cor.13:13; I Pet.1:2 and
elsewhere. The Name of Elohim Avinu (Isaiah 63:16; 64:8) is
conjoined with that of the Ben haElohim Moshiach and the Ruach Hakodesh in Holy Scripture.
For references to the Moshiach, whose supernatural entrance and
exit from the Olam Hazeh points to his nature, see the following:
Gen.3:15; 12:2-3; 28:14; 49:10; Ex.12:46; Num 21:8-9; 24:17-19;
Deut.18:15-19; 21:23; II Sam.7:12-28; I Chr.17:23-27; Job 19:25;
Psa.2:1-12; 16:8-10; 22:1,7-8,18; 27:12; 31:5; 34:20; 35:11;
38:11; 40:6-8; 41:9; 45:2,6-7; 49:15; 68:18; 69:4,9; 72:1-19;
78:2; 89:3-4,18-37; 102:24-27; 110:1-7; 118:22,23,26; 132:11;
Prov.30:4; Isa.6:9-10; 7:14; 8:14-15; 8:18; 9:1-9; 11:1-10;
16:4-5; 22:21-24; 25:8; 28:16; 29:18; 35:4-10; 40:3-11; 49:1-6;
50:6; 60:1-3; 61:1-3; 63:1-6; 65:17-25; Jer.23:5-6; 30:9; 31:15;
31:31-34; 33:15-17; Ezek 17:22-24; 34:23-24: Dan.2:44-45;
7:13-14; 9:24-27; Hos.11:1; Jonah 1:17; Mic.4:1-8; 5:1-5;
Zec.9:9-10; 11:12-13; 12:10; 13:6-7; Mal.3:1; 4:1-6.
For references to the Ruach Hakodesh, see the following:
Gen. 1:1-2; Job 33:1-4; Isa. 11:1-2; 32; 14-18; 42:1-2; 44:1-4;
59:21; 61:1-3; Ezek.37:12-14; 39:29; Joel 2:28-32 (Heb.Bible Joel
3:1-5); Num.11:25-29; I Sam. 10:5-13; II Sam.23:1-4; I Chr.12:18;
II Chr.15:1-2; 24:20; Neh.9:20;,30; Ezek 8:3; Dan.4:9; Micah 3:8;
Zech 7:12; Hag.2:4-5; Zech 4:6; Gen.41:38-39; Num 11:16-17; 24:2;
27:15-21; Deut. 34:9; Jdg.3:9-10; 6:34-35; 11:29; 13:24-25;
14:6,19; 15:14; I Sam.11:6-7; II Ki.2:1-18; I Chr.28:11-19;
Ezek 2:1-2; Ps.51:10-12; Ezek.36:24-30; I Sam.19:18-24;
Exo.31:1-11; I Sam.16:13-14; Ps.106:32-33; Isa.63:10-14;
Psa.139:7
Those who take G-d at his Word become true spiritual Bnei Avraham and love our Jewish people just as they love our Jewish
Messiah. They also confess the Shema, that Adonoi, Eloheynoo, Adonoi Echad. Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh is He (Isaiah 6:3). Maimonides makes the unbiblical assertion in the second article
of his "Thirteen principles of the faith" (5) that G-d is yachid (a simple unity), but no such assertion is ever made in the
Bible, where G-d is always referred to as echad (complex unity).
(6) G-d is not yachid. G-d is unique but not univalent, a
complex unity. If G-d's unity were as simple as Maimonides would
have us believe, it would not be possible for G-d to say of
Himself both "me...and him" when referring to His being pierced,
showing a personal complexity in Himself as the Adonoi Echad in
Zechariah 12:10, so that both the first person and the third
person are distinct in the Echad, and the third person is One and
Only, unique, Yachid. Moreover, if true Judaism is to be judged
by Biblical standards, what is often called "pure monotheism" (7)
is in reality impure and unbiblical and even "unjewish."
Besides Biblical monotheism, the other essentials of the faith of
Israel are not lost in Messianic Judaism although they have been
largely lost or neglected in other kinds of Judaism. For example
Messianic Judaism maintains in the death of Yehoshua the Torah's
demand for blood sacrifice: "It is the blood that maketh an
atonement for the soul" (Lev. 17:11). Moreover, the Beis Hamikdash of Moshiach's body, housing his spirit -- though torn
down by men -- has been raised by G-d. Messianic Judaism also
preserves the true significance of such Jewish institutions as
the kehuna (priesthood), the chacham (sage), and the navi (prophet) and such Jewish doctrines as those concerning the
Messianic King (Melech haMoshiach), the Ruach Hakodesh (Holy
Spirit), and Yeshu'at Eloheynu (Salvation). Through the
resurrection from the dead of the great priest (Heb. 7:24), sage
(Matt. 12:42), prophet (John 7:40), and Messianic King (John
7:41) Yehoshua, and through the coming of the Ruach Hakodesh on Shavuos A.D. 30, all these essentials of Judaism are imperishably
maintained.
THE MOSHIACH'S BRIT CHADASHA KEHILLAH IS A MESSIANIC
SYNAGOGUE
Modern scholars such as Bousset, Oesterley, Baumstark and Werner
have shown that the early Messianic community functioned
liturgically very much like a synagogue. In fact, the Moshiach's kehillah is referred to as a synagogue by both Ya'akov (Jas. 2:2)
and also frequently by such fathers as Ignatius and Theophilus of
Antioch. In Luke 4:16f the synagogue is the birthplace of the
proclamation of the Besuras haGeulah, for it is here that Yehoshua first begins to preach. As we have seen, Luke is not
giving the history of a new religion which he juxtaposes over
against the old religion. Rather he is telling the story of the
true religion and how Judaism opened beyond the Beis Hamikdash and Jerusalem to the ends of the earth so that Gentiles could be
received into the true faith of Judaism and be saved. In fact,
one could say that the story of Luke-Acts is the story of how the
synagogue opened its doors to the world. For Acts tells the
story of the world-wide Messianic Synagogue of Yehoshua, at first
composed exclusively of physical Jews and then, as the Ruach Hakodesh overflowed Jerusalem and spilled out onto the world,
comprising bnei Avraham (Gal.3:7-14) from every race on earth.
That the congregations Sha'ul founded are Messianic synagogues is
clear from Luke's narrative. In fact, the unreceptive synagogues
(which prove to be non-messianic synagogues as far as Yehoshua is
concerned) force Sha'ul to find new meeting places for his
authoritative teaching, and therefore it is the fault of an
influential minority of Jews that the true way within Judaism
becomes separate from the already established synagogue buildings
in the diaspora. Although these newly established Messianic
synagogues of Sha'ul are populated mostly by Gentiles, the fact
that they are headed up by a rabbi and that they were, despite
their heavy Gentile constituency, nevertheless clearly
competitive with non-Messianic synagogues, explains the
persecution (Acts 17:5; 1 Thes. 1:6) which they endured at the
hands of representatives from other synagogues. All of this goes
to show that even the congregations of Sha'ul, despite their
cultural elasticity to Gentiles, were identifiable, even to
hostile Jews, as synagogues. How much more like a synagogue must
have been the primitive Jerusalem Kehillah of Moshiach! For
these Jewish believers in Yehoshua are described in Acts
as not only loyal to but also zealous for the Beis Hamikdash and
the Torah (Acts 21:20).
It's important to keep in mind that if the majority of Jews in a
particular synagogue accepted the teaching of Moshiach's shluchim, they did not thereby cease being a synagogue, any more
than the Jews of Beroea in Acts 17:11 would have ceased to be
synagogue members had they in fact determined that "these things
were so." The earliest Messianic communities continued the
"traditional mode of worship to which they had been accustomed in
the synagogue."(8) The "prayers" of Acts 2: 42 would not exclude
the Shema and the Amidah which all Jews prayed daily.
Therefore, it's important to remember that the first Jerusalem
believers were worshiping like Orthodox or Chassidic Jews, in shul, and in the Beis Hamikdash, and on Shabbes. They were
worshiping in fully operative synagogues and Jewish house shtiblekh, which should be fairly clear from the fact that there
were among them not only many kohanim (Acts 6:7) but also many
believers who were zealous for the Torah (Acts 21:20).
Because she has so completely lost the Jewish flavor of her early
worship life, the Moshiach's Kehillah today does not recognize
herself as a Messianic synagogue; therefore, she does not see the
obvious priority and relevance that the Besuras haGeulah should
have to the Jews. For if the Moshiach's Kehillah really
understood herself to be a Messianic synagogue, then, of all
peoples, she would be directing her Besuras haGeulah to the Jew
first.
THE UNITY OF MESSIANIC JUDAISM
When Sha'ul was expelled from a synagogue in the diaspora he
invariably planted another synagogue in the same town, a
Messianic synagogue which acknowledged Yehoshua as the Moshiach Adoneinu. These synagogues did not make cultural conversion to
Judaism a qualification for salvation, but these
gentile-dominated Messianic synagogues, even though they
did not live the life-style the Torah made possible, kept their
theological unity with the law-zealous Jewish Messianic synagogue
community in Jerusalem. They maintained a relationship of
brotherhood with the kadoshim at Jerusalem in order to witness to
their unity in the one Ani Ma'amin of Israel. The Brit Chadasha depicts Messianic Judaism as sustaining its unity despite its
cultural diversity through the fact that the shluchim were
cooperating cultural specialists (Gal. 2:9). That is, Sha'ul and
Barnabas and Ya'akov and Kefa remained in contact and affirmed
their theological accord despite the varied cultural expression
that theological truth found among their constituencies.(9) The
Brit Chadasha Pesach meal of the Moshiach's Seudah comprised the
center of the common worship life of both the
gentile-accommodating Messianic synagogues of Sha'ul and the
Jewish-accommodating Messianic synagogues of Ya'akov and Kefa.
The "collection" is one piece of evidence we have for the contact
that the Jewish believers in Jerusalem maintained with the
Gentile believers of Sha'ul's outreach in the diaspora.
Furthermore, in Gal. 2:2 we see Sha'ul submitting his Besuras haGeulah to the shluchim to the Jews "that he might not run in
vain," and we see Sha'ul keeping amicable relations with Ya'akov,
even to the point of acquiescing to his request (Acts 21:23f)
that Sha'ul should go to the Beis Hamikdash and make take part in
a service to maintain his (and their) credibility with the local
Jewish community. They were not only orthodox Jews, that wanted
to be perceived as such, no matter how many Gentiles were coming
to faith throughout the world.
The basic unity among the shluchim has been undermined by those
who attempt to see a theological disagreement about the law
between Sha'ul on the one hand, and Ya'akov and Kefa on the
other. This basic difference begins in the minds of many
scholars with Stephen (Stephanos) whom Schmithals, Haenchen,
Brandon and others attempt to make into an Shabbos desecrating,
pork-eating, Torah-liberated antinomian. (10) Schmithals asserts
that it is "incredible in view of the variety of Messianic
expectations in orthodox Judaism, that the Messianic hope of the
believers in Yehoshua -- which was moreover politically harmless
-- could have been the cause of bloody persecution."(11)
Therefore, for Schmithals, if Stephen wasn't stoned to death
because he advocated a Messianic faith free from the law then the
violent reaction he stimulated is wholly inexplicable. Haenchen also believes this and says as much in his commentary on Acts.
(12) However, the difficulty is that nowhere in Acts does Stephen
attack the law. Furthermore, the question of the validity of an
expression of Judaism which did not impose the ceremonial law on
Gentiles would appear to be a later issue that could be
theologically developed only in the diaspora and in a field of
intense outreach to Gentiles. To overcome this difficulty some
scholars have postulated quite gratuitously a Hellenistic
Messianic outreach preceding Stephen and developing outside
Jerusalem which influenced Stephen and gave him his anti-Torah
antinomian philosophy.
However, there is plenty in Stephen's speech to make the
Sanhedrin murderously angry without postulating any such
extraneous irritation. What was so enraging about Stephen was
not his undermining of the Torah. Nowhere does the Brit Chadasha record any Jew advocating that his fellow countrymen repudiate
the Holy Torah. This would have meant ethnic and ethical
suicide for the Jewish people and cultural treachery of the
highest order. Furthermore, it is unpatriotic to speak lashon hora against one's national religion and the Book of the Covenant
that bound the Holy People to their Holy G-d. Stephen was
undermining not the Holy Torah but the entire contemporary
religious attitude of his people, for Stephen asserted that since Yehoshua is the Moshiach of Judaism and many of these Jews with
their religion rejected the Moshiach of Judaism, then their
religion was not true Judaism and in fact they were resisting the Ruach Hakodesh and were heathen at Heart (Acts 7:51-53). Such a stabbingly blunt confrontation with the religious leaders on his
nation could do nothing else but force the Jewish people in the
Sanhedrin to either accept what he was saying as true or to
violently reject it as blasphemy and heresy for which he deserved
death. Kefa had preached something of the same thing when he
warned in Acts 3:23 that all Jews who rejected the Prophet that
Moses talked about would be cut off from Israel. However,
"Hebrew" Jewish believers appear to have been considerably less
abrasive than the "Hellenist" Jewish believers in their
presentation of the Besuras haGeulah and the fact that the former
were Aramaic-speaking Jewish natives rather than Greek speaking
Jewish immigrants may have worked somewhat to their favor as
well. With Stephen, then, the jarring fact begins to be asserted
in Jerusalem that where there is no true teaching of Moshiach's shluchim there is no true Judaism. Or, to put it another way, a
Judaism which is unreceptive to the Ruach Hakodesh and the Moshiach is not Judaism at all, for where there is no commitment
to the Moshiach, there is no commitment to true Judaism, for the Moshiach is the covenant of Judaism (Isa. 42:6). Stephen is not
being "anti-Judaic,"(13) but is voicing the warning of He.
2:28,29 and Ro. 9:6 in Acts 7:51 when Stephen calls the Sanhedrin
"heathen still at heart" (NEB), because they are resisting the Ruach Hakodesh by rejecting the Moshiach Yehoshua (Acts 7:52) in
favor of the Beis Hamikdash and the Torah, which they in their
blindness have subverted (Acts 7:49, 52). See Rev. 3:9.
Therefore, if it can be shown that Stephen was not a Shabbos desecrating, pork-eating, Torah-rejecting antinomian, and if it
can be shown that the religion of Ya'akov, which involved
Torah-zealous Jews (Acts 21:20), was as validly "Messianic" as
the religion of Sha'ul, then it can be shown that early Messianic
Faith was not an antinomian reaction to Judaism. Unfortunately Ya'akov, the half-brother of Moshiach, has been given
very unsympathetic treatments by several modern scholars. He is
seen to be the one who "ousted Kefa from his original primacy,"
the one who plotted to lead Sha'ul into a trap in Acts 21 to get
him out of the way, and the one who was manipulating the judaizers from Jerusalem but who was so clever and so powerful
that Sha'ul was supposedly afraid to take him to task by name.
(14) However, it is interesting that every commentator who wants
to present Ya'akov unsympathetically has to undermine the
credibility of Luke. Luke makes it clear (Acts 15:24) that Ya'akov would repudiate any interpretation of the men "from Ya'akov" (Gal.2:12) which would imply that he himself sent the judaizers. Moreover, Gal. 2:1-4 shows that at a very early
period the Moshiach's shluchim in Jerusalem did not argue with Sha'ul's Besuras haGeulah to the Gentiles, even though that Besuras haGeulah disregarded the law as a means to salvation.
They understood that the Gentiles waited for the Moshiach's torah
or teaching (Isa. 42:4), the Good News, which would supersede
Moses' law (Deu. 18:19). However, "false brethren" among them
disagreed and some of these men may have publicly urged against Sha'ul because they feared persecution against the Jewish
outreach in Jerusalem at the hands of their own people
(Gal. 5:11). Since a "Jew" at that time was by definition loyal
to the Torah, it may well be that Sha'ul does not criticize Ya'akov in any of the epistles of Sha'ul, because Sha'ul realized
that Ya'akov would and could not publicly condemn anyone
who was loyal and zealous with regard to the Holy Torah, and to
have fellowship with uncircumcised Gentiles would seem to be a
compromise. It is a testimony to the wisdom and the courage of Ya'akov that he, the head of the law-zealous Messianic Jewish
community in Jerusalem, despite all the pressure that must have
been on him to the contrary, advocated that there be no "irksome
restrictions" placed on Gentiles (Acts 15:19), which meant that
Gentiles would not have to submit to circumcision nor depend on
keeping the Law as the condition for their covenant loyalty
leading to their salvation (Gal. 5:3). If Luke's report (Acts
15:19-24) is correct, then, Sha'ul must have been impressed that Ya'akov and he were preaching the very same Besuras haGeulah. If
we may assume that the epistle of Ya'akov was written by Ya'akov,
then we see that he had anything but a heterodox doctrine of the
person of Moshiach. The Moshiach Yehoshua of Ya'akov is both Adoneinu and reigns in glory to come again (Jas. 5:8) as Judge
(Jas. 5:9). There can be no doubt that Ya'akov preaches the same Besuras haGeulah as Sha'ul, for in Jas. 1:21 he speaks of the
implanted word that is able to save your soul, a reference to the
implanted law of the Brit Chadasha (Jer. 31:33). Ya'akov'
allusion to the law of Lev. 19:18 as the "kingly law" (Jas. 2:8)
must include a reference to the King of Israel, which for Ya'akov is Yehoshua (Jas. 1:1). A law-loyal Jew of the synagogue, whose
teaching is grounded in the authority of Yehoshua, Adoneinu and Moshiach, Ya'akov saw that the event of Moshiach's coming had
made all the more pernicious exclusivistic snobbery (Jas. 2:1-9)
and that the wall between Jews and non-Jews had been broken down.
Therefore, Ya'akov did not impose circumcision on the Gentile
Titus (Gal. 2:3), but instead resolved to impose "no irksome
restrictions" on non-Jews (Acts 15:19). Ya'akov must have prayed
for and received much wisdom (Jas. 1:5) to be a faultless and
devout conformist to Judaism, daily frequenting the Beis Hamikdash courts for the observances of Judaism, and yet at the
same time to understand that these were Messianic privileges, not
burdens to be thrust upon Gentile proselytes as the precondition
for their salvation. Not only was Ya'akov an extremely wise man,
he was above reproach, both according to his personal religion
and even ceremonial criteria. Yet the Besuras haGeulah Ya'akov preaches in his epistle does not make its appeal on ceremonial
criteria, but on the ethical demand of his Torah. Here Ya'akov follows Moshiach Yehoshua, whose appeal was always ethical and
for whom the perfect law of liberty, the kingly law of love both
for G-d and for one's fellow man, was the goal of Judaism.
Therefore, in Ya'akov we see modeled the power of Yehoshua to
make a man an even better orthodox Jew, from anyone's estimate,
one whose love for G-d is manifest by his devotion to both the
Torah and the Spirit of the law, which is the Good News of G-d's Chesed in the Moshiach.
Moreover, like Sha'ul, Ya'akov knows that saving emunah is not empty lip service but is active in ahavah (agape). (15)
Both men gain a hearing from unbelievers by displaying the fruit
of the Ruach Hakodesh, (16) though Ya'akov and Sha'ul used
different cultural strategies, Sha'ul putting himself outside the
law though not outside the law of the Moshiach to win non-Jews, Ya'akov putting himself as if he were under the law to win
law-abiding Jews (I Cor. 9:19-23), though in fact he is under the
kingly law of ahavah (agape) (Jas. 2:8). Sha'ul would not
dispute Ya'akov that we are justified by works and not by emunah alone (17) unless it can be shown that Ya'akov means by "works"
not "emunah active in ahavah (agape)" (Gal. 5:6), but the works
of the law. For the latter to be true, Acts 15:19 would have to
be judged a Lucan fiction since here Ya'akov is represented as
acceding to Gentile liberation from the Covenant observances of
the Holy Torah of His Holy People.
However, it is crucially important that this liberation from the
law not be termed antinomianism, for neither Sha'ul nor Ya'akov is an antinomian. Unfortunately, Sha'ul's views concerning the
law were susceptible to misunderstanding and abuse. (18) And just
as Sha'ul's view of the law has been misunderstood, so has Ya'akov's. Neither Sha'ul nor Ya'akov offers the law in itself
as a means to salvation (Jas. 2:10; Gal. 3:10). Both men speak
of the "torah of freedom" (Jas.
1:25; 2:12; 1 Cor. 9:21) in a way that implies Moshiach (Jas.
2:1; Ro. 8:2), and Ya'akov, no less than Sha'ul, emphasizes the
need for emunah (Jas. 1:3, 6; 5:15), for ahavah (agape)
toward G-d (Jas. 1:1), and being reborn from above (Jas. 1:21).
The epistle of Ya'akov constitutes a re-evaluation of Judaism,
but not in terms of its ceremonial dimension, for both Ya'akov, Yehoshua, and Sha'ul kept the ceremonial law and proved thereby
that the Messianic life is not antithetical with a life lived in
loyalty to the Torah. This question is settled for once and for
all in Acts chapter 21 (Act 21:24; cf. 21:26). However, since
the Judaism of Ya'akov is controlled by the authority of Moshiach and by the Ruach Hakodesh, he brings to his Judaism a new depth
and power of ethics and ahavah (agape) which reveal a fulfillment
of all that Judaism intended to bring. The great ethical heart
of Ya'akov reminds one of an Amos or a Micah and especially of Yehoshua. But the epistle of Ya'akov reveals more than
courageous preaching against evil in high places. We see also in Ya'akov the possibility for a new Am Berit brotherhood within
Judaism, one that is held together not merely by a common
allegiance to various cultural traditions and legal demands, but
one that is held together by the ahavah (agape) of the Moshiach. Ya'akov practiced the law as he worked to create this brotherhood
among his people, even as he cooperated with Sha'ul's outreach to
create brotherhood between Jews and non-Jews.
The deep Jewish chassidus of Ya'akov earned him respect
from every sector of the Jewish community of first century
Israel. Apparently only the wealthy Sadducean Beis Hamikdash party, whose calloused neglect of the poor brought them under the
severe censure of Ya'akov, were against him. Nevertheless, Ya'akov became known as "Ya'akov the Just," and was given a
status of pre-eminent respect not only among Jewish believers in Yehoshua but also among other Jews, so that the new movement with
Judaism was left in peace to build itself up by increasing in
numbers. Therefore, while Sha'ul provoked the Jews to jealousy by
winning some Jews and many G-d-fearing non-Jews away from the
unbelieving synagogues, the Messianic synagogue community of Ya'akov provoked Jews to jealousy by winning large numbers of kohanim (Acts 6:7) and Perushim (Acts 21:20) into the synagogues
that were permeated by the authoritative teaching of Yehoshua even though they were fully operative in loyalty to the Torah. Moshiach Yehoshua was the center of the worship life of
this community because the mikveh tevilah and the Moshiach's "Seder" were the primary Jewish rituals that incorporated
unbelievers coming to teshuvah into Ya'akov's Messianic synagogue kahal. Yet at the same time, those who entered the Messianic
community via the mikveh and the "Seder" also remained credible
members of the Jewish community by their loyal attendance at Beis Hamikdash and synagogue. Therefore, there was no cultural
"irksome restriction" that would stop a Jewish people movement
and would keep kohanim and Perushim from joining the Moshiach's Kehillah, since the Jerusalem Moshiach's Kehillah was a Messianic
synagogue community.
Furthermore, since Ya'akov's equally valid form of Biblical
Judaism was loyal to the Torah, we cannot then say that Sha'ul was an antinomian. For in the Brit Chadasha, Sha'ul is seen
hurrying back to Jerusalem to have chavurah fellowship with these
law-zealous kadoshim, to even demonstrate his loyalty to the law
with them (Acts 20:16), since the Jewish festivals were
prescribed by the Torah (Lev.23:4-8). Furthermore, Sha'ul could
hardly have begun persecuting the Moshiach's Kehillah because of
a misapprehension that the Jerusalem Moshiach's Kehillah was
antinomian, since there is no evidence that the religion of that
community in Jerusalem was non-frum in any way (see Acts 21:20).
Rather, Sha'ul's initial persecution finds adequate motivation is
his desire to suppress the assertion that a cursed dead man is
the Moshiach, the Holy One of Judaism, the goal and continuing
center of the religion of his people. That this "Yehoshua"
Judaism was gaining a large following sparked the zeal and fervor
of Sha'ul's attack, for he knew that such a growing movement of
heretics could not be allowed to spread to other cities. Later,
when Sha'ul became the Shliach to the non-Jews, his quarrel was
not with Torah-loyal Jews. His controversy was with certain soteriologically heretical Jewish preachers who were apparently
undermining the Besuras haGeulah and putting a stumbling
block in the path of non-Jews by asserting that salvation was not
in believing in Moshiach alone, but in getting circumcised and
keeping the entire law. Whether these men believed this because
they feared persecution by their own people in Jerusalem or
because they genuinely believed that man, by keeping the law, can
please G-d and thus save himself does not matter. What does
matter is that Sha'ul has no quarrel with Kefa and Ya'akov, and
that he is not preaching a different Besuras haGeulah. Sha'ul himself was loyal to the law and remained a practicing Jew
(19) who did not gentilize Jewish people, but rather even
performed rabbinic ministry for them (Acts 16:3). Yet, he
refused to be a separatist, both in regard to table fellowship
between Jewish and non-Jewish believers in the same congregation
(Gal. 2:14), and also in regard to the world-wide Moshiach's Kehillah and its relations with the law-zealous Jerusalem
Messianic synagogue community (Ro. 15:31). In Gal. 2:3 we see
that a similar desire on the part of Ya'akov also meant that in
the Moshiach's Kehillah at Jerusalem there was no exclusivistic separation between non-Jewish and Jewish believers. Undoubtedly
Titus, when he stayed in Jerusalem with Sha'ul, was allowed to
have communion with the Jewish believers even though he was not
circumcised. We see also in Acts 15 that Ya'akov is so concerned
that Jews and non-Jews be able to continue to have table
fellowship with one another in the Body of Yehoshua that he lays
down just a few minimal rules that will make table fellowship
between non-Jews and kosher Jews possible. Sha'ul's equal
concern is shown in Gal. 2:11-14 where Sha'ul asserts that the
unity in the Moshiach must not be compromised by Jews withdrawing
from table fellowship with non-Jews. Sha'ul's great reverence for the Torah meant that even though he
loved the Torah he did not depend on his own legal rectitude for
salvation. He was eager to show by both actions and speech that
he was a zealous and orthodox Jew. (20) However, under the
tension of the heretical soteriology of the judaizers, Sha'ul had
to hammer out a theology for Judaism wherein the yoke of the
Torah was not confusingly and unscripturally imposed on Sha'ul's heathen proselytes to Judaism. The Tanach itself did not demand
that Gentiles be yoked to the Torah, but should wait for Moshiach's teaching (Isaiah 42:4). Ya'akov agreed with Sha'ul's theology in principle (Acts 15:10-20, 24), since it was
understood that when the Moshiach came, the world would receive
his law, his torah or teaching. No one -- Jewish person or
non-Jewish person -- could find salvation if the yoke of the Moshiach's law were not taken (Deu. 18:19; 1 Cor. 9:20-21; Matt,
11:29).
Moreover, because the messianic congregations of Sha'ul were
stripped down to quickly accommodate people of non-Jewish culture
and because the few Jewish believers in such an environment may
have relaxed their Jewish scruples, Sha'ul would be open to
attack by Jews as encouraging Torah-desecrating antinomianism
(Acts 21:21), despite the fact that there is no hint in any of
his epistles written to his non-Jewish outreach congregations
that he ever taught Jewish people to repudiate their sacred
traditions. Anyone who quotes Gal. 4:8-10, Col. 2:16-17, or
Romans 14:5-6 to prove that the Jewish festivals are forbidden to
Jewish believers in Yehoshua is reading the Bible entirely out of
context. Sha'ul is not addressing these epistles to Jewish
believers who are celebrating these days in the name of the Yehoshua; therefore, his words cannot be taken as criticism of
believers who are celebrating these days in the name of Yehoshua.
Against Brandon, (21) Ya'akov does not question Sha'ul's Jewish
orthodoxy in Acts 21:20-22. Rather, Ya'akov warns Sha'ul that
thousands of law-zealous yet born-again Jewish believers in Yeshua have been led to question Sha'ul's Jewish loyalty, that he
has been teaching Jews in the diaspora to betray their religion.
It can well be imagined that there was tremendous pressure on Ya'akov to repudiate Sha'ul, and that he certainly might have
thought that not to repudiate Sha'ul would completely destroy his
credibility with the local Jewish community. However, there is
no hint in Luke or in the epistles that Ya'akov ever repudiated Sha'ul. Rather, according to Luke, Ya'akov was zealous to see Sha'ul reestablish confidence in the "Derekh Hashem" (the "Way")
among both the law-zealous Messianic Jewish believers and
unbelievers in Jerusalem.
Many modern scholars distort Ya'akov' position, Brandon thinks
he detects in Ya'akov a suspicion of Sha'ul because for Brandon
the logic of Sha'ul's theology made the "peculiar religious
status claimed by Judaism of absolutely no effect," (22)
However, in Romans 11:25-26 Sha'ul asserts the truth of a
"mystery," that the hardening of Israel has always been partial,
until the full number of Gentiles would come in, and then the
whole of Israel would be saved. So the "peculiar religious
status" of the Jew is relevant to Sha'ul's view of the plan of
salvation, Furthermore, Ya'akov was concerned that true Judaism,
the Judaism of Yehoshua conveyed to the world through the
teaching of Moshiach's Shluchim, should be seen in the right kind
of light by the Jewish community, that this Judaism should be
seen to allow Jews to remain loyal to the Torah even as it
allowed Gentiles to become engrafted into Judaism without
becoming culturally Jewish. Both men understood that the Great
Commission (Matt. 28:19) was to disciple the nations, not transculturate them, For Sha'ul and his Gentile mission to be
repudiated because Sha'ul was considered to be a heretical Jew
would have been just as destructive to the Judaism of Ya'akov which included the Gentile mission as it would be to Sha'ul. Sha'ul understood just as clearly as Ya'akov that a man must live
like a Torah-loyal Jew in order to win Torah-loyal Jews (I Cor.
9:20). Therefore, Sha'ul's life was directed not only by the
Torah (he was a Jew and at that time to be a Jew meant to be
loyal to Torah and to live a lifestyle whereby one practiced the
Torah), but also Sha'ul was led by the Ruach Hakodesh in the
interests of the Besuras Hageulah. Had Sha'ul been the
antinomian Jew he is often made out to be, (23) he would never
have circumcised Timothy. Sha'ul would say that followers of Moshiach are free from the letter of the law (Gal. 3:10-13), but
are not free to shirk their responsibility to put themselves "as
if" under that law to win those Jews (I Cor. 9:20) who are under
the letter of the law. This putting oneself "as if" under the
law to win those who are under the law is something that
followers of Moshiach have largely refused to do for the past
2,000 years, and this is why Messianic synagogue communities have
almost entirely disappeared with Ya'akov.
JUDAISM WITH ENOUGH CULTURAL ELASTICITY TO DISCIPLE
BOTH ISRAEL
AND THE NATIONS
As we have seen, Sha'ul's religion is not a Biblical faith "free
from law. "(24) It is Judaism accommodating Gentile culture. In
fact, Sha'ul's Judaism has plenty of room for the law. Sha'ul is
even willing to sacrifice his life if necessary in order to keep
in fellowship with law-zealous Messianic Jews to whom he returns
at the end of the book of Acts (Acts 21:13; Rom.15:30, 31). For Sha'ul, Ya'akov and the shluchim are a kind of spiritual
substitute for an apostate Sanhedrin which does not accept the
authority of their teaching that Yehoshua is L-rd and Messiah. Sha'ul never forgets that his Besuras Hageulah is not only his
but also that of the Jewish shluchim in Jerusalem. Therefore, in
spite of all of his assertions of his independent authority as Moshiach's shliach, he nevertheless freely submits to Ya'akov and
to the shluchim at Jerusalem "that his Besuras Hageulah might not
be preached in vain" (Gal.2:2).
What we see in Acts 15 is the legitimization of two cultural
streams within the one body of Yehoshua, for there Ya'akov lays
down the Holiness Code of the Tanach as the groundrules making
possible table fellowship between Jews and Non-Jews. (25) The
picture of Judaism we have here is of two non-exclusivistic,
mutually-fellowshipping, yet culturally different streams within
the one body of Yehoshua. The guidelines laid down in Acts
15:19-20 can be summarized in what Sha'ul said, "It is good
neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor to do anything that
makes your brother stumble" (Rom 14:21). In a Gentile situation,
Jews should not offend Gentiles by withdrawing from them (Gal.
2:11-12), and in a Jewish situation, Gentiles should be willing
to eat only what will not offend Jews. In this way every man
does what is pleasing to his brother and not to himself to
promote the unity in the Messiah (Rom 14:13-15).
However, because the ceremonial law is culturally foreign to
Gentiles, it is often naively assumed to be burdensome to all and
antithetical to the freedom of a Biblical Faith which can be
valid only if it is ceremonially antinomian. To Gentiles a more
or less Torah-loyal form of Biblical Faith (call it Messianic
Judaism) is either unimaginable or inferior. However, the
Jewish-accommodating Judaism of Ya'akov is just as "Biblical" as
the Gentile-accommodating Judaism of Sha'ul. Neither relied upon
the law for justification or communion. Simply there were
Messianic bodies within Judaism who, because their congregants
were Jews, lived a lifestyle loyal to the Torah, whereas also
within the one Body of our L-rd there were synagogues that,
because their congregants were Gentiles, did not observe the
ceremonial law. Since Acts presents the Moshiach's Brit Chadasha Kehillah essentially as a unity with its center in what could
only be described as a fully operative Jerusalem Messianic
synagogue community (Acts 21:20), then there is every reason that
Gentile followers of Moshiach should understand that their
religion is Judaism, Judaism which has accommodated itself to
Non-Jews and must not be constrained from accommodating itself
fully to Jews. The ironic situation of modern times is that,
although initially Torah-loyal Jews allowed Non-Jews to enter
Judaism without being ceremonially bound to the entire ceremonial
law of the Torah, now there are those who would attempt to
redefine the faith so that it has no room for Torah-loyal Jews,
only ceremonially "antinomian Jews and Gentiles." So zealous is
one Gentile scholar to assert the irreconciliation of "Torah
Judaism" with "Antinomian Christianity" that he depicts
Hellenistic Christianity as antinomian from the beginning, even
though this requires postulating a Hellenistic "Christianity"
which preceded Stephen and originated outside Jerusalem. (26) In
this way Gentile followers of Moshiach forget that it is not they
who sustain the root, but it is the root (rooted in both the
ethical and the ceremonial law) that sustains them (Rom. 11:18).
To Sha'ul, the Jew was the true and original object of G-d's concern, and Gentiles were grafted on to become spiritual Bnei Avraham (Gal.3:7-14) and true -- though non-transculturated --proselytes to the Messianic faith of Israel. This is why
spiritual Bnei Avraham must never make themselves superior to the
natural branches (Rom. 11:18), for G-d has not rejected the
Jewish people he foreknew (Rom. 11:2). The plan of salvation
that Sha'ul sketches in Romans chps. 9-11 is that Non-Jews
temporarily supplant the non-remnant of Israel (Rom.9:24-29) like
Jacob did Esau (Rom. 9:10-l3). But the Jewish remnant is not
supplanted (Rom. 11:1-5), and when the full number of Non-Jews
has come in and the partial hardening of Israel is over, the
Jewish remnant will expand so that it can be said in fact that
all Israel will be saved (Rom.11:25-32). Therefore, for Sha'ul the success of the Gentile mission is never seen as an end in
itself but as a means to provoke the Jews to jealousy that they
too might be saved (Rom.11:11). In fact, for Sha'ul as for other
Biblical writers(27) the hope of the spiritual revival and
salvation of the Jews is fraught with the very eschatological
excitement of the Messiah's final coming, and this must be kept
in mind lest Acts 13:46 and 28:29 be interpreted to mean that Sha'ul believed G-d was finished with the Jews.
Rather, for Sha'ul the true faith of Judaism is proliferated
throughout the world as congregations are called out of the old
synagogues to form new synagogues thriving on the teaching of Moshiach's shluchim and on the charisma of the Ruach Hakodesh.
However, the men who direct the planting of those new synagogues
are not insensitive to cultural diversity and therefore recognize
the need and in fact the necessity of cultural specialization in
their work along ethnogeographic lines. Ya'akov assumed the
Jewish outreach work in Jerusalem while Kefa and Yochanan went to
the Jews in the diaspora. (28) Likewise, although he was the Shliach to the Non-Jews, Sha'ul always went to the synagogue
first. He realized that even though he was the Shliach to the
Gentiles, he was still planting synagogues. Yet, because he was
a specialist in Gentile missions, the synagogues he planted were
specifically designed to accommodate Gentiles. For example,
these synagogues would probably not celebrate all the Jewish
festivals, and they would certainly not circumcise Gentile
babies, avoiding the practices the Jewish-accommodating
synagogues of Ya'akov and Kefa would allow. Since Jews and
Gentiles don't live similar lifestyles and since the one religion
of both Ya'akov and Sha'ul permeated all of life, the synagogues
that were planted by Ya'akov, Kefa and Sha'ul had to accommodate
these cultural differences. This was so, even though Ya'akov and Sha'ul were concerned that the synagogues remain in fellowship
with one another and that neither place any "irksome
restrictions" on the other.
Within the Body of Yehoshua, then, there is only one Besuras Hageulah, but it has different cultural expressions. Since the
office of Moshiach's shliach implied cultural specialization
(Gal. 2:7-lO), a mashgiach ruchani under Ya'akov must surely have
functioned more like a rabbi than, for example, one under Sha'ul.
Therefore, in Acts 21:20 we see the possibility of a "Biblical"
ministry by Jews among their own people which allows for all the
scripturally compatible observances of the Jewish religion,
including the practice of the Bris Milah, as well as the bar
mitzvah, (29) and the observance of all the Jewish holidays.
The Messianic synagogues planted by Sha'ul were stripped down to
put no greater burden on the Non-Jews than that they celebrate
their Messianic faith through the Jewish rituals of the mikveh and the Moshiach's "Seder," and that they adopt the Jewish
scriptures as the ethical guideline for their life. The First
Century men in the office of Moshiach's shliach took culture
seriously, recognizing that theology can never ignore culture
though culture must always bow to theology.
Therefore, the picture of the religion of Ya'akov and Sha'ul given us by the Brit Chadasha is not a Jewish religion "designed
to serve the essentiality of Judaism while admitting a qualified
possibility of Gentile participation in the new faith."(3O)
Rather, the religion of the Brit Chadasha is one in which the law
of love allows both a radical accommodation to Jewish culture and
a radical accommodation to Non-Jewish culture, where the Torah
may be both adhered to by Besuras Hageulah-believing Jews and
where the Torah is not ceremonially imposed on Besuras Hageulah-believing Non-Jews. However, because the congregations
of Sha'ul were designed to accommodate Gentiles and avoided
imposing Jewish distinctives on them, these same congregations
were destined to have extremely limited cultural appeal to the
Jewish community. For these Non-Jewish synagogues were stripped
of the vital culture-sustaining traditions (the bar mitzvah, the shabbat and festival services, etc.) that, generation after
generation, a normal Jewish synagogue offers the Jewish community
for her cultural sustenance as a people.
For Gentiles, the law means one thing: a heretical and futile
effort to win salvation. However, for Jewish people the law has
a different purpose than is often supposed. Jews are not in the
business of spending all their time trying to figure out a nice
heretical way to get salvation. Jews are in the business of
sustaining themselves culturally as a people, a people that does
not become extinct through assimilation, and the law helps them
to do that. When the Jewish mother does the things that the law
says she should do, she is helping to sustain her ethnic
consciousness as a Jew and passing this on to her children. Does
anyone think that the Jews could have sustained themselves
ethnically as a people all these millennia without the law?
Could the Jews have remained Jews if, instead of bar mitzvahing and Sabbathing and koshering all this time, they spent their days
intermarrying, eating pork chops and playing hillbilly guitars?
Strumming hillbilly guitars (or even singing Lutheran hymns)
would not have kept the Jewish people Jewish. Besides the Jewish
home, the religious institution for promoting the cultural
identity of the Jewish people has for thousands of years been the
synagogue. Unlike the modern Gentile house of worship, the
synagogue does not force Jewish people to find their cultural
identity outside her sacred walls. For this reason,
the synagogue, together with the Jewish home, is the great
reservoir for the religious and cultural survival of the Jewish
people. This was also true of that messianic synagogue community
which was the early kehillah of Moshiach, for we read in Acts
21:20 that the first believers in Yehoshua were "zealous for the
law." They worshipped in the synagogue as Jews and their faith
in Yehoshua did not lead them to reject the law and the Jewish
lifestyle that the law insured them: rather, their faith in Yehoshua made them even more zealous to be loyal Jews who raised
their children to be Jews. Thus the early Kehillah of Moshiach accommodated great people movements from the Jewish community
(Acts 2:41; 5:14; 6:7; 21:20); there was no lack of cultural
commitment to frighten unsaved Jews away. Indeed, her zeal for
the law encouraged unsaved Jews to have zeal for the L-rd Yehoshua.
Anyone attending a synagogue today is likely to see the bar
mitzvah candidates sitting up front on the platform with the
rabbi. This eloquent picture intends to say to the Jewish
congregation that if Jewish people will come to the synagogue
every week, the synagogue will keep them Jewish and their
children will be culturally incorporated into the Jewish
community when they reach the age bf their religious majority.
The bar mitzvah ceremony is very old and functionally it has had
its equivalent from the very earliest times. When Yehoshua was
blessed by the sages upon the occasion of his twelfth birthday,
we can assume that the ceremony was the functional equivalent of
a bar mitzvah at that time, because it was the custom during the
period of the Second Temple for the sages to bless a Jewish child
who had reached his first fast day at age twelve or thirteen.
(31) This would surely mean that it was very much a part of the
life of the first Kehillah of Moshiach in Jerusalem to have the
children of the law-zealous messianic Jewish believers in Yehoshua go into the Beis Hamikdash and have this bar
mitzvah-equivalent ceremony. Therefore, faith in Yehoshua was
not for the Jew in the First Century a road to cultural
assimilation because the first Kehillah of Moshiach had room in
her life for Jewish culture and even for the bar mitzvah!
Of course, when a Gentile reads this, he may have a tendency to
think that these First Century Acts 21:20 Jews in Jerusalem who
had their children bar mitzvahed even as they taught them that Yehoshua was the Moshiach must have been leading schizophrenic
lives where they did some things entirely as Jews and other
things entirely as Bible believers, with the former being
entirely dispensible. One can readily see why Gentiles would
feel this way. Gentiles may not want to see their own children
bar mitzvahed because they may not have a "Ruth" consciousness of
what it means to be culturally incorporated into the Jewish
community. However, Jewish people are not Gentiles, and since G-d
has a vested interest in keeping Jewish people Jewish until Moshiach, the King of the Jews, returns, it must have been very
important to G-d that there be a messianic synagogue community in
Jerusalem for Jewish people to become incorporated into once they
discovered that Yehoshua is the Moshiach.
The Gentile-accommodating congregations of Sha'ul could not
sustain Jewish people culturally because the congregations of Sha'ul were stripped of the very culture-sustaining traditions
that are vital to the survival of the Jewish people but a
stumbling block to the salvation of the Gentiles. Therefore, how
tragic it is that the centuries have not seen men after the
tradition of Ya'akov, the Shliach to the Jews, pioneering
messianic synagogue communities among the Jewish people. Somehow
the Jewish cultural specialization nearly died with Ya'akov and
with him nearly died the messianic synagogue movement which has
only recently found new life all over the world. One can only
lament that both rabbis and ministers have not read Acts 21:20-21
more carefully: "You see how many thousands there are among the
Jews of those who have believed: they are all zealous for the
law, and they have been told about you that you teach all the
Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses telling them not
to circumcise their children nor observe their customs. What
then is to be done?" In Acts 28:17, Sha'ul gives his position to
a Jewish audience in Rome: "Brethren, though I had done nothing
against the people or the minhagim (customs) of Avoteinu (our
fathers), yet I was delivered prisoner from Jerusalem into the
hands of the Romans." And elsewhere Sha'ul affirms "to the Jew
I became like the Jew to win Jews; to those under the law I
became like one under the law -- though not being myself under
the law -- that I might win those under the law" (I Corinthians
9:20). If only rabbis and ministers had read those verses with
discernment, there may have been many, many more Jewish children
that would have been bar mitzvahed in the body of Moshiach and
might have come to know the Supreme Living Rabbi as their Moshiach. Both the rabbis and the ministers will stand G-d's judgment for this, because the Scripture says "Let not many of
you become teachers, my brethren, for you know that we who teach
shall be judged with greater strictness" (Ya'akov 3:1).
Unscriptural teaching both within the community of Moshiach's people and within the rabbinic community have militated against
large-scale people movements from the Jewish community into the
body of Moshiach.
Even Sha'ul, the head of the Gentile mission, knew how to
circumcise the Jewish boy Timothy in order to put Timothy "as if"
he were under the law that he might win those who are under the
letter of the law. Note that the operation of circumclslon that Sha'ul performed is part of his "Bible-believing" ministry since Sha'ul does it in order that Timothy might win the Jews in that
area to the Moshiach of the Bible! (Acts 16:3). Tragically,
there will be no large-scale people movement from the Jewish
community until there are thousands of messianic synagogues led
by messianic teachers who know not only how to preach the Besuras Hageulah and how to administer Moshiach's tevilah, but also how
to supervise the circumcision of Jewish babies as well as how to
perform the ceremony of cultural incorporation found in the bar
and bat mitzvah.
A Friday evening service, even a Shabbos Torah service, is
critically important not only because many Jewish people take
Exodus 20:8-11 seriously and want to keep the sabbath, but also
because the Hebrew prayers of the synagogue liturgy provide an
appropriate setting for the bar and bat mitzvah services as well
as the other vital culture-sustaining traditions of the
synagogue. Thus, when the Moshiach's Kehillah finds herself in a
Jewish neighborhood she must take cultural specialization as
seriously as the shluchim did (Galatians 2:9), and become a fully
operative messianic synagogue with Shabbos services. Only in
this way will she give opportunity for large-scale Jewish people
movements into the Body of Yehoshua as whole Jewish families and
webs of relatives and friends join messianic synagogues where
they can celebrate their faith in Yehoshua as Jews and sustain
their cultural identity from generation to generation even as
they are sustained in their spiritual life as believers.
There are those who would concede that messianic synagogues are
not guilty of "judaizing" when they allow Jewish believers to
celebrate their faith in Yehoshua through Jewish customs and
traditions and raise their children as Jews. Granted, messianic
synagogue planters are not judaizers, since judaizing is
requiring someone to keep the ceremonial law in order to be
saved. Using the ceremonial law to sustain one's culture is not
the same as using the ceremonial law to win salvation, and there
are many critics who would have to concede this. Nevertheless,
these same people might quote verses like Galatians 3:28 ("There
is neither Jew nor Greek ... male nor female") or Galatians 6:15
("For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation") and use these to try to
dismiss the entire case for a messianic synagogue or for Jewish
people being committed to their own culture. But to use a text
which shows that being spiritually reborn is the only thing that
ultimately matters for an individual soul to argue against the
cultural specialization of the Shluchim (Galatians 2:9) is
hazardous in the extreme. Why did G-d have men set aside to be shluchim to the Jews and other men set aside to be shluchim to
the Gentiles if there is no difference between the Jew or
Gentile? Obviously, there is a difference just as there is a
difference between men and women.
Moreover, Acts 21:19-21 warns against anyone teaching Jewish
people not to circumcise their children or not to celebrate their
customs or not to keep the law of Moses. And nowhere in the
epistles of Sha'ul can it be found that Sha'ul taught Jewish
people to repudiate their Jewish heritage. On the contrary, the
book of Acts presents Sha'ul as a temple-loyal rabbi who performs
circumcision and and worships in the temple and keeps the Jewish
holidays with his Jewish brethren in the L-rd in Jerusalem. The Sha'ul of the Brit Chadasha is a Gentile-rescuing rabbi, not a
Torah-free libertine!
It would be a misinterpretation of the book of Hebrews to see its
author's intent as a call for cultic reform. There are those who
would so interpret Hebrews 8:13: "In speaking of a new covenant
he treats the first as obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete
and growing old is ready to vanish away." It would be reading
into the book more than is there to draw from the author's
typological comparisons a call for Jewish believers in Moshiach to divorce themselves from the observances of the Torah's
ceremonial law. The author's message is theologically-ethically
oriented, aimed at persuading his readers to keep their Brit Chadasha faith and messianic zeal and the author has no
discernable interest in purifying or reforming the observances of
Judaism or in taking his readers to task for their involvement in
taboo Jewish rituals. The question of a strategy of using Torah
observances to lead Jewish people to a Brit Chadasha faith, a
method plainly recommended in I Corinthians 9:19-20 ("to those
under the law I became like one under the law, though not being
myself under the law, that I might win those under the law") is
not addressed by the author of Hebrews and therefore his words
cannot be taken as criticism of such a strategy.
The rejection of Jewish culture in Moshiach's Kehillah has
confounded and confused many Jewish minds. When the ordinary
Jewish person attends a Gentile-style congregation and hears the
minister speak of how the Jews killed Messiah, he reads into the
situation a rejection not only of himself, his people, and his
heritage, but of his culture as well. He hears, in effect,
something like this: "We don't like you Jews; and we don't like
your Jewish customs or your Jewish ways of doing things." It's
as though someone is saying to him, "Not only did you kill
Messiah, but your whole religion is wrong in every way, as is
your culture and heritage."
It is easy to see how this type of confusion would put a Jewish
person into a defensive posture.
We see this phenomenon of confusion in the Book of Acts where
certain Jewish people in Jerusalem were extremely puzzled by the
strange Gentile style that the congregations of Sha'ul were
beginning to take o