If your life is not in jeopardy for what you
believe, you’re probably on the wrong side!
“Indeed, all who want
to live a godly life united with the Messiah Yeshua will be persecuted.” (2Tim 3:12)
It is what you actually believe that determines how you walk out your faith,
“but avoid stupid controversies, genealogies,
quarrels and fights about the Torah; because they are worthless and
futile.” (Titus 3:9)
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Please Note: Nothing on this website should be taken as anti-Church. I am not anti-anything or anyone. I am only pro-Torah, pro-Truth, and pro-Grace. Sometimes the Truth upsets our long-held beliefs. Why isn’t my theology consistent throughout this website?
[Explanations of rabbinic citations are HERE]
Developing a
Systematic Messianic Theology
“The purpose of careful theological formulations is not to put barriers in the way of people who are seeking salvation, but to define clearly the truths upon which genuine [Biblical] faith rests, so that people will not be misled by false doctrines.” [Bowman]
“Jesus Christ” — A False Prophet?
Now that I have your attention with
an intentionally
controversial title …[a]
After wrestling for many years with the issue of why it is so difficult for the Jewish people to accept Yeshua of Nazareth as the promised Jewish Messiah, I now understand that the reason is that they are being faithful to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and to the Torah, which clearly teaches that the distorted caricature that the Church presents as the “Gentile God Jesus Christ” is, in fact, a false prophet!
The Gentile Church, in direct and open disobedience to the Master’s clear command to present the Gospel of the Kingdom (not just the Gospel of Personal Salvation) to the Jew first (Rom 1:16; Acts 3:24-26), has instead done (some intentionally, others unintentionally) virtually everything possible to estrange, exclude, and even persecute the physical relatives of the Man they call “Savior.”
This is an extremely complex issue that is going to take a considerable while for me to be able to properly articulate. My hope and prayer is that when I am finished, those who read it will use the information to drastically improve their ability to effectively present an accurate picture of the Jewish Messiah to His physical family, the Jewish people.
Some issues that I hope to eventually address include:
• Gentile Christians, who have been adopted as sons by faith into the Family of God (Rom. 8:15,23; Rom. 9:3-4; Rom. 11:12-22; Gal. 4:4,5; Eph. 1:3-7), have usurped the birthright of the natural-born sons and literally stolen their inheritance from them through widely-prevalent Replacement Theology.
• Replacement Theology is the heretical teaching that God has set aside Israel because they rejected “Jesus” as the Messiah, and that the Gentile “Church” has therefore replaced Israel as God’s bride (Isa. 54:5,6; Jer. 31:31-32; Isa. 49:18; Isa. 61:10; Isa. 62:5; Jer. 2:32; Jer. 3:1; Ezek. 16:27-37). I was taught this heresy in seminary, and I taught it myself for over 30 years.
• Gentile Christians have systematically and aggressively persecuted the Jewish people in the name of “Jesus Christ” for the past 1,700 years, submitting them to unimaginable atrocities, culminating in the Holocaust and the slaughter of nearly half of all the Jews in the world.
• The Gentile Church has adopted as “truth” anti-Semitic vocabulary and attitudes that most Church members do not even recognize as anti-Semitic. Martin Luther, the founder of Protestant Christianity, was a violent anti-Semite whose writings can easily be directly linked to the Holocaust, and “Hitler saw himself as the German Messiah doing God’s work by destroying the Jew.” He openly claimed that he was only completing the work that Luther had started. To the eastern mind, anyone who is not a Jew, a Muslim Arab, or a member of one of the other major world religions is by default a “Christian.” Therefore (to the eastern mind) Adolph Hitler was a Christian doing the work of the Gentile God Jesus. It can be no wonder, then, that to many Jews, asking them to accept the “Jesus” of the Church is tantamount to asking them to accept Adolf Hitler as the Messiah!
• The Church has almost totally rejected the historic Jewishness of the Messiah and His Apostles, as well as their own totally-Jewish background (roots).
• The “Jesus Christ” whom the Church insists that Jewish people must accept as the Messiah or “burn in hell forever” bears almost no resemblance at all the the historic Yeshua of Nazareth.
• According to the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible, or so-called “Old Testament”), the “Jesus Christ” presented by the Gentile Church is a false prophet and not qualified to be the Jewish Messiah.
The most important issue to resolve is that the “Jesus Christ” of the Church simply never existed. This artificial “Jesus” is a caracature developed over a period of nearly 1,700 years by Gentile theologians who simply had a very poor — if any — understanding of the Jewish culture that existed in the first century. It must be clearly understood that Messianic Judaism and her wayward daughter, the Gentile Church, were thoroughly Jewish for the first 300 years following the Resurrection of Messiah. Here are a few of the most important points in that regard that I discussed at length in my booklet, The Model for the Messianic Community.
1. The Bible is a thoroughly Jewish collection of ancient writings, all of which were written by Jews, in a Jewish place, in the Jewish language, to a Jewish audience.[1] All the writers of the Bible, including both the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible or so-called “Old Testament”) and the Apostolic Writings (the so-called “New Testament”), were Jews. The Bible was recorded (not authored) by Jews, about Jews, to Jews, and for Jews. Dr. Luke, writer of the Gospel account that bears his name and the book of Acts, is often assumed to have been a Gentile. He was a Jew, either natural-born or a proselyte; otherwise he would have had no access to the Temple or the synagogues of his time, and he surely would have not been accepted as Rav Sha'ul’s co-worker.
2. Yeshua, His original Talmidim,[2] and His Shliachim (Emessaries, Apostles) were all born as Jews, lived their entire lives as Jews, and died as fully Torah-pursuant Jews. What other lifestyle could any of them ever even considered?
3. The only “Scriptures” that any of them knew was the Tanakh[3],, or Hebrew Bible, which Gentile Christians refer to as the “Old Testament.” As a friend of mine once pointed out, “The Apostle Paul never preached a single sermon from the New Testament.” The Apostolic Writings, or so-called “New Testament,” did not exist in its present form until they were all long dead and buried.
4. The only form of worship that any of them knew was that of the Temple and Synagogues.
5. Since the people of Israel were the only people on earth to have received direct revelation from the one true God, the only place to learn about Him was in Israel’s Temple/Synagogue environment. Before Messiah came, everyone who was not a Jew was a pagan, thus the word “Gentile” was literally synonymous with “pagan”!
6. From the time of the Exodus out of Egypt through the end of the Second Temple Period, and even until today, non-Jews have always been welcome to participate in Jewish religious life, as long as certain acceptable forms of behavior are observed[4].
7. Yeshua taught that the entire Tanakh speaks of Him (Luke 24:25-27, 44-47; cp. John 1:45). Thus those letters which His Shliachim wrote about His life and ministry and to explain His teachings that they were commissioned to pass on — and which we have received as the Apostolic Writings, or so-called “New Testament”) — can best be considered as God-inspired midrashim (commentaries) on the Tanakh, which enable Believers to properly understand both the Tanakh and Yeshua’s teaching as interpreted by Ruach HaKodesh through the Shliachim.
5. Since Hebrew was the common language of Eretz Yisra'el[5] in the late Second Temple Period[6], and “Koine Greek” was assumed to be the lingua franca of all Goyim (Gentiles) in the then-known world, and since the Gospel was to be delivered “to the Jew first, and also to the Greek,” the case has been made by some very reputable scholars that the Apostolic letters were very probably originally written in Hebrew (the native tongue of all the writers except perhaps Dr. Luke) for transmission to the Jewish Messianic Believers, both in Eretz Yisra'el and in the Diaspora, and were immediately translated into Greek for transmission to the Non-Jewish Messianic Believers. At the very least, the early Church fathers held that the original source document for the Synoptic Gospels was written in Hebrew by Mattityahu[7].
From my formal theological training I had, I believe, developed an understanding of the Scriptures, particularly the “New Testament” Scriptures, that was significantly different from the way they would have most likely been understood by their original recipients.
This point was ever so starkly brought to my attention several years ago through a piece of Sunday school literature which came across my desk. It was written for grade school children and produced by a leading denominational publishing house. The part which caught my eye was a full-page drawing of Jesus. He was depicted as a boy and shown going up steps leading into a building. Underneath the drawing was this caption: ‘Jesus was a good Christian boy who went to church every Sunday.’ I scarcely could believe my eyes! Here were three glaring errors in one sentence: Jesus was a Christian, not a Jew; he attended church, not synagogue; and he went on Sunday, not the Sabbath. On seeing this I thought to myself, if this is what is being taught in certain church schools among the young, no wonder a problem persists today among many Christian adults. These Christians fail to grasp the Jewishness of Jesus and the Jewish background to the New Testament writings.[8]
Additionally, according to the teachings of the Gentile Church that I studied in seminary, “Jesus” regularly violated the Torah and encouraged others to do likewise, and He and the Apostles actually taught against the Torah; for example, “You have heard that it was said … But I say to you …” (Matt 5:27; Matt 5:38; Matt 5:43); “… you weigh men down with burdens hard to bear …” (Luke 11:46), “… a yoke which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear …” (Acts 15:10); etc.
So, clearly, the “Jesus” who stopped being a Jew when He established the Gentile Church is clearly far different from the totally Torah-observant Yeshua of the original Apostolic Writings.
So what are the specific issues that Jews have with Christianity and with the “Jesus” that is presented by the Church? I’m going to try to address these issues from a Jewish prespective.
1. The Christian “god” is clearly not the God of the Tanakh.
Because most Christians are totally incapable of intelligently articulating the true Biblical doctrine of the triune nature of God, what they actually teach is that there are three gods.
If one delves deeply into the understanding of the nature of HaShem as held by most Gentile Christians, what one discovers is indeed an erroneous tri-theistic (three individuals) rather than a triune (three-in-one) concept of God.
Many (or perhaps even most) of these individuals think of “God the Father” as the fierce desert God of the so-called “Old Testament” Who gave Moses a set of laws so complex and unreasonable that nobody could ever obey them, Who provided the death penalty for something so trivial as sassing one’s parents, and Who was anxiously awaiting the opportunity to slay the transgressors.
Most Christians conceive of “God the Son” as:
- the baby Who began His existence in a manger in Bethlehem, surrounded by sheep, cattle, shepherds, and wise men, and maybe even an angel or two;
- Who is somehow both God and man (though they are not sure when or how He became God);
- Who created a new religion called “Christianity” to replace the error of Judaism; and
- Who taught that the Torah was abolished in favor of a new set of laws that were “written on the heart” and which pretty much allow one to do whatever one wants as long as one believes that “Jesus” died for their sins and was resurrected and will some day return to earth to reign as King for a thousand years and then take them all to heaven for eternity.
And when it comes to “The Holy Spirit” there are so many different concepts that there is no clear consensus of opinion within “Christianity.” For some, the Holy Spirit is a force or power of God that somehow “inhabits” or “possesses” Christians and gives them special supernatural powers or gifts; many believe that this particular function of the Spirit was only for the spread of the Gospel until the so-called “New Testament” was completed and then that function ceased. When I was a child I once had a pastor who had a Doctor of Divinity degree and who, when questioned about the Holy Spirit, generally replied with something akin to, “Well, we really don't know much about it so we just avoid the subject.” [READ MORE]
This concept of three gods (or even a “three-headed” god) as presented by the Church, especially the “Gentile God Jesus,” is heresy according to the Bible! If “Jesus” is a god, He is clearly “another god.” If the Christian god is actually three gods, he is clearly not the God of the Bible.
The god of the Christians breaks his covenants, divorces his bride, and marries another bride. This is clearly not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob!
a. No devout Jew can accept this “other god.”[9]
(1) The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob declares clearly that He is one (not three)
Sh'ma, Yisra'el! ADONAI Eloheinu, ADONAI echad [Hear, Isra'el! ADONAI our God, ADONAI is one]; and you are to love ADONAI your God with all your heart, all your being and all your resources. (Deut 6:4-5)
Yeshua answered, “The most important [mitzvah, commandment] is, ‘Sh'ma Yisra'el, ADONAI Eloheinu, ADONAI echad [Hear, O Isra'el, ADONAI our God, ADONAI is one], and you are to love ADONAI your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your understanding and with all your strength.’” (Mark 12:29-30)
(2) There is no other god but ADONAI (therefore, the “Christian god” is a false god)
Remember things that happened at the beginning, long ago - that I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me. (Isa 46:9)
You will know that I am with Isra'el and that I am ADONAI your God, and that there is no other. Then My people will never again be shamed. (Joel 2:27)
This was shown to you, so that you would know that ADONAI is God, and there is no other beside Him. (Deut 4:35)
know today, and establish it in your heart, that ADONAI is God in heaven above and on earth below - there is no other. (Deut 4:39)
Then all the peoples of the earth will know that ADONAI is God; there is no other. (1 Kings 8:60)
Don't be frightened, don't be afraid - Didn't I tell you this long ago? I foretold it, and you are My witnesses. Is there any God besides Me? There is no other Rock - I know of none." (Isa 44:8)
I am ADONAI; there is no other; besides me there is no God. I am arming you, although you don't know Me, (Isa 45:5)
Here is what ADONAI says: "The earnings of Egypt, the commerce of Ethiopia, and men of stature from S'va will come over to you and become yours; they will come in chains and follow you. They will prostrate themselves before you; they will pray to you: 'Surely God is with you; there is no other, other gods are nothing.'" (Isa 45:14)
For thus says ADONAI, who created the heavens, God, who shaped and made the earth, who established and created it not to be chaos, but formed it to be lived in: "I am ADONAI; there is no other. (Isa 45:18)
Let them stand and present their case! Indeed, let them take counsel together. Who foretold this long ago, announced it in times gone by? Wasn't it I, ADONAI? There is no other God besides Me, a just God and a Savior; there is none besides Me. (Isa 45:21)
Look to me, and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God; there is no other. (Isa 45:22)
(3) ADONAI (not “Jesus”) is Israel’s Savior
… ADONAI is my Rock, my Fortress and Deliverer, the God who is my Rock, in whom I find shelter, my Shield, the Power that saves me, my Stronghold and my Refuge. My Savior, You have saved me from violence. (2 Sam 22:2-3)
Now I call on You, God, for You will answer me. Turn Your ear to me, hear my words. Show how wonderful is Your grace, Savior of those who seek at Your right hand refuge from their foes. (Psa 17:6-7)
Do not hide Your face from me, don't turn Your servant away in anger. You are my help; don't abandon me; don't leave me, God my Savior. (Psa 27:9)
My soul, why are you so downcast? Why are you groaning inside me? Hope in God, since I will praise Him again for being my Savior and God. (Psa 42:11; Psa 43:5)
For I am ADONAI, your God, the Holy One of Isra'el, your Savior - I have given Egypt as your ransom, Ethiopia and S'va for you. (Isa 43:3)
Truly, you are a God who hides Himself, God of Isra'el, Savior! (Isa 45:15)
Let them stand and present their case! Indeed, let them take counsel together. Who foretold this long ago, announced it in times gone by? Wasn't it I, ADONAI? There is no other God besides me, a just God and a Savior; there is none besides Me. (Isa 45:21)
I will feed those oppressing you with their own flesh; they will be drunk on their own blood as with wine. Then everyone will know that I, ADONAI, am your Savior and your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Ya'akov." (Isa 49:26)
You will drink the milk of nations, you will nurse at royal breasts and know that I, ADONAI, am your Savior, your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Ya'akov. (Isa 60:16)
Still, I am ADONAI your God, from the land of Egypt; and you don't know any God but Me or, other than Me, any Savior. (Hos 13:4)
ADONAI your God is right there with you, as a mighty Savior. He will rejoice over you and be glad, He will be silent in His love, He will shout over you with joy. (Zeph 3:17)
I will recall the grace of ADONAI and the praises of ADONAI, because of all that ADONAI has granted us and His great goodness toward the house of Isra'el, which He bestowed on them in keeping with His mercy, in keeping with the greatness of His grace. For He said, “They are indeed My people, children who are not disloyal.” So He became their Savior. (Isa 63:7-8)
(4) Israel is commanded to have nothing to do with any gods other than ADONAI.
You are to have no other gods before me. (Exod 20:3; Deut 5:7)
Pay attention to everything I have said to you; do not invoke the names of other gods or even let them be heard crossing your lips. (Exod 23:13)
You are not to follow other gods, chosen from the gods of the peoples around you; (Deuty 6:14)
For He will turn your children away from following Me in order to serve other gods. If this happens, the anger of ADONAI will flare up against you, and He will quickly destroy you. (Deut 7:4)
If you forget ADONAI your God, follow other gods and serve and worship them, I am warning you in advance today that you will certainly perish. (Deut 8:19)
But be careful not to let yourselves be seduced, so that you turn aside, serving other gods and worshipping them. (Deut 11:16)
and the curse, if you don't listen to the mitzvot of ADONAI your God, but turn aside from the way I am ordering you today and follow other gods that you have not known. (Deut 11:28)
by going and serving other gods and worshipping them, the sun, the moon, or anything in the sky - something I have forbidden - (Deut 17:3)
But if a prophet presumptuously speaks a word in my name which I didn't order him to say, or if he speaks in the name of other gods, then that prophet must die. (Deut 18:20)
and not turn away from any of the words I am ordering you today, neither to the right nor to the left, to follow after other gods and serve them. (Deut 28:14)
But if your heart turns away, if you refuse to listen, if you are drawn away to prostrate yourselves before other gods and serve them; (Deut 30:17)
But I will be hiding My face from them because of all the evil they will have done in turning to other gods. (Deut 31:18)
certain scoundrels have sprung up among you and have drawn away the inhabitants of their city by saying, “Let's go and serve other gods, which you haven't known,” (Deut 13:13)
When you violate the covenant of ADONAI your God, which He ordered you to obey, and go and serve other gods and worship them, then the anger of ADONAI will blaze up against you; and you will perish quickly from the good land which He has given you! (Josh 23:16)
The people answered, “Far be it from us that we would abandon ADONAI to serve other gods.” (Josh 24:16)
They abandoned ADONAI, the God of their fathers, Who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods, selected from the gods of the peoples around them, and worshipped them; this made ADONAI angry. (Jud 2:12)
Yet they did not pay attention to their Jud, but made whores of themselves to other gods and worshipped them; they quickly turned away from the path on which their ancestors had walked, the way of obeying ADONAI’s mitzvot - they failed to do this. (Jud 2:17)
Yet you abandoned Me and served other gods; therefore I will not rescue you any more. (Jud 10:13)
Please, now, may my lord the king hear what his servant is saying. If it is ADONAI who has stirred you up against me, let him receive an offering. But if it's human beings, then a curse on them before ADONAI! - because, as things stand today, they have driven me out, so that I can no longer share in ADONAI’s inheritance - they've said, 'Go, serve other gods!' (1Sam 26:19)
But if you turn away from following me, you or your children, and do not observe My mitzvot and regulations which I have set before you, and go and serve other gods, worshipping them; (1Kings 9:6)
But the answer will be, 'It's because they abandoned ADONAI their God, who brought their ancestors out of the land of Egypt, and took hold of other gods, worshipping and serving them; this is why ADONAI brought all these calamities on them.' (1Kings 9:9)
You are to observe forever the laws, rulings, Torah and mitzvah which He wrote for you. You are not to fear other gods, (2Kings 17:37)
I will pronounce My judgments against them for all their wickedness in abandoning Me, offering incense to other gods and worshipping what their own hands made. (Jer 1:16)
if you stop oppressing foreigners, orphans and widows; if you stop shedding innocent blood in this place; and if you stop following other gods, to your own harm; (Jer 7:6)
I will ruin this evil people, who refuse to hear my words and live according to their own stubborn inclinations, who go after other gods to serve and worship them. They will be like this loincloth, which is useless for anything. (Jer 13:10)
then you are to say to them, 'It is because your ancestors abandoned me, says ADONAI, and went after other gods, serving and worshipping them, but abandoned me and did not keep my Torah. (Jer 16:11)
(5) False prophets are to be put to death and their message is to be ignored
If a prophet or someone who gets messages while dreaming arises among you and he gives you a sign or wonder, and the sign or wonder comes about as he predicted when he said, “Let's follow other gods, which you have not known; and let us serve them,” you are not to listen to what that prophet or dreamer says. For ADONAI your God is testing you, in order to find out whether you really do love ADONAI your God with all your heart and being. You are to follow ADONAI your God, fear Him, obey his mitzvot, listen to what He says, serve Him and cling to Him; and that prophet or dreamer is to be put to death; because he urged rebellion against ADONAI your God, Who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you from a life of slavery; in order to seduce you away from the path ADONAI your God ordered you to follow. This is how you are to rid your community of this wickedness. If your brother the son of your mother, or your son, or your daughter, or your wife whom you love, or your friend who means as much to you as yourself, secretly tries to entice you to go and serve other gods, which you haven't known, neither you nor your ancestors - gods of the peoples surrounding you, whether near or far away from you, anywhere in the world - you are not to consent, and you are not to listen to him; and you must not pity him or spare him; and you may not conceal him. (Deut. 13:1-8)
But if a prophet presumptuously speaks a word in My name which I didn't order him to say, or if he speaks in the name of other gods, then that prophet must die. You may be wondering, “How are we to know if a word has not been spoken by ADONAI?” When a prophet speaks in the name of ADONAI, and the prediction does not come true - that is, the word is not fulfilled -then ADONAI did not speak that word. The prophet who said it spoke presumptuously; you have nothing to fear from him. (Deut 18:20-22)
(6) How Israel will recognize a false prophet
The false prophet entices God’s people to follow other gods (Deut 13:2; 18:20)
The false prophet counsels God’s people into rebellion against Him. (Deut 13:5)
The false prophet seduces God’s people from the commandments. (Deut. 13:5)
The false prophet claims to speak in the name of ADONAI and what he says does not come about or come true (Deut. 18:22)
2. Why the “Jesus” of the Church is a false prophet.
The false prophet entices God’s people to follow other gods (Deut 13:2; 18:20). The “Jesus” of the Church (according to the Church) entices his followers to follow either three gods or a three-headed god, clearly none of which is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
The false prophet counsels God’s people into rebellion against Him (Deut 13:5). The false prophet seduces God’s people from the commandments of Torah (Deut. 13:5). The “Jesus” of the Church abolished God’s loving instruction, the Torah, and “nailed it to His cross.”
The Jesus of the Church (according to the Church) started a new religion, and all of his disciples converted away from Torah-observant Judaism to a Torah-free Christianity.
The “Jesus” of the Church abolished God’s moadim, His Appointed Times (Shabbat, Passover, Unleavened Bread, Firstfruits, Pentecost, the Feast of Trumpets, Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacles) and replaced them with three pagan “holy” days: Sunday (“the venerable day of the sun, i.e. the Roman sun god); Christmas (Saturnalia, the feast day of the Roman god Saturn), and Easter (the feast day of the pagan goddess Ishtar); and Satan’s high holy day, Halloween, is celebrated by many Christians and tolerated by most.
3. Why the “Jesus” of the Church is disqualified from being the Messiah
The Messiah of the Tanakh will be a Torah-observant Jew. The “Jesus” of the Church constantly violated Torah and encouraged others to do so. Since “sin” is defined as “a violation of Torah” then the “Jesus” of the Church was a sinner and thus disqualified from being Messiah. The “Jesus” of the Church is obviously a Gentile because he has a Greek name, as did both of his parents, and most pictures of him are pictures of an Anglo-Saxon.
Since (according to the Church) the “Jesus” of the Church taught his disciples that the Torah is obsolete and there is no need for them to keep ADONAI’s mitzvot (commandments), then he clearly taught against God’s covenant, and therefore was disqualified as Israel’s Messiah.
Thus, the “Jesus” of the Church is clearly a false prophet and therefore cannot possibly be the Messiah. Continually trying to “evangelize” Jews by pushing the “Jesus” of the Church down their throats is an extreme form of anti-Semitism and only leads to greater resistance. The faithful Jew will remain faithful to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and to the Torah, no matter what you say.
Instead, the Church needs to learn about the true Messiah of the Tanakh, the historical Rabbi Yeshua Ben-David Who was an absolutely, 100% Torah-observant tzaddik (righteous person) — the only Person Who has ever kept the Torah perfectly — Who came not to start a new religion but to fix what was wrong with an old religion, and who never taught anything but Torah in its perfect application.
Please keep coming back to check on the progress of this project.
a. This is an extremely difficult issue to adequately address, and as of this writing (02/02/21) I have been working on it — on and off — for about a year, and I’m just not satisfied that I am dealing with it clearly enough. Ever since the Jewish “denomination” that followed Yeshua, called HaDerek (the Way [of Yeshua]), was merged with the Roman version of the Babylonian Mystery Religion by the first Pope, Constantine, in the early fourth century to form “Christianity,” adherents have be taught that “the Church” came into existence on the first Pentecost after Yeshua’s resurrection and replaces Judaism as the center of God’s economy, neither of which is at all true. The “Church” didn’t come into existence until the Council of Nicea in 327, and it does not in any way replace Israel. It is extremely difficult for me to try to correct nearly 1,700 years of really bad Bible teaching without sounding like some cultist denouncing the Church. That is not my intent at all. So what you will read on this page is really an ongoing draft that I will hopefully be able to finish before Yeshua returns to establish the Olam Haba. [BACK]
1. It can be argued that the letters of Rav Sha'ul (Paul) were written to Gentiles. However, those non-Jewish followers of the Jewish Messiah were living a totally Jewish lifestyle, under Jewish leadership, and worshipping and studying in a Jewish Synagague in which the Torah was read and expounded every Shabbat (Acts 15:19-21). [BACK]
2. Talmidim is the Hebrew word for disciples. The Scriptures make a distinction between Messiah’s Talmidim (Disciples) and Shliachim (Apostles). The Talmidim would include all those who have followed the Messiah from the first century to the present; the term Shliachim refers to those eye-witnesses to the Resurrection who were specifically commissioned and sent by Messiah to be the ambassadors from His Kingdom to the first-century world. [BACK]
3. Tanakh is an acronym (TaNaKh) for the three divisions of the Hebrew Bible: Torah (the five Books of Moshe, or “Law”), Nevi'im (Prophets), Kituvim (Writings). Please see the Glossary for more information. [BACK]
4. For more information about non-Jewish people in Judaism, see Tracy R. Rich on the Internet, “Synagogues, Shuls and Temples,” www.jewfaq.org/shul.htm#Gentiles. [BACK]
5. The Land of Israel. [BACK]
6. “One way that the Jewish people resisted the pagan influence of Greece was by maintaining loyalty to the law of God and by speaking their native language. In the letter of Aristeas, for example, we discover a reference to the language of the people. The language of the Torah, Hebrew, is said to be the language of the people, though some have confused this with Aramaic. While it would not be correct to say that Hebrew was the only language understood and spoken by the Jewish people during the time of Jesus, there is abundant evidence that indeed the people’s holy books, prayers, studies in the classroom, parables, and quite naturally, then, their everyday speech, was conducted in the language of the Bible— Hebrew.” (Young, Brad. Jesus the Jewish Theologian. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1999, p. 263.) For more information on the Hebrew source for the Apostolic Scriptures, please see Appendix B and Appendix C of The Model. [BACK]
7. Mattityahu is the actual Hebrew name of the Apostle Matthew. [BACK]
8. Marvin R. Wilson in the Foreword to Jesus the Jewish Theologian by Brad H. Young. Peabody MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1995, p. xvii. I have personally seen versions of this same illustration in the literature of several different denominations. [BACK]
9. Unless otherwise stated, all Scripture quotations are from the Complete Jewish Bible. [BACK]
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ANXIOUSLY WATCHING FOR MASHIACH’S RETURN,
SPEEDILY AND IN OUR DAY. MARANA, TA!
