From our study of the birth and early childhood of Messianic Judaism, we should be able to draw the following conclusions:

1. Yeshua, His Talmidim, and His Shliachim were all born as Jews, lived their entire lives as Jews, and died as Torah-observant Jews. What other life-style could any of them ever even considered?

2. The only “Scriptures” that any of them knew was the Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible.

3. The only form of worship that any of them knew was that of the Temple and Synagogues.

4. Since Israel was the only people on earth to have received revelation from the one true G-d, the only place to learn about Him was in Israel’s Temple/Synagogue environment.

5. Neither Yeshua nor His Shliachim had any intention of starting a “new religion,” but only of explaining and modeling Biblical Judaism as G-d intended it to be.

6. When Ruach HaKodesh came at Pentecost, those upon whom He fell, and those who came to trust in Messiah that day and in the months and years following, did not stop being Jews; neither has any Jew who has ever embraced Messiah stopped being a Jew.

7. With the possible (though I think very unlikely) exception of Dr. Luke who, if not actually Jewish-born was most certainly a proselyte to Judaism, all the writers of the B’rit Hadasha were Torah-observant Jews.

8. Yeshua taught that the entire Tanakh speaks of Him (Luke 24:25-27, 44-47; cp. John 1:45). He also said that if we do not believe (or understand) what Moshe wrote (the Torah), we could not believe (or understand) what He, Yeshua, taught (John 5:46-47). Thus the 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 B’rit Hadasha—can in a very real sense be considered as G-d-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.

9. Since Hebrew was the common language of Eretz Yisra'el [the Land of Israel] in the late Second Temple Period,[124] and “Koine” Greek was the lingua franca[125] of all Goyim 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 letters of the B’rit Hadasha 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.[126] See Appendix B.

10. Though not all Jews believed that Yeshua was the Messiah, the Jews did not categorically reject their Messiah as is commonly taught. Within less than 20 years after Yeshua’s resurrection, perhaps as much as 30 to 40 percent of the entire city of Jerusalem had become Messianic, as had multiplied tens of thousands of Jews in the Diaspora. There was a far greater percentage of Messianic Believers among first-century Judaism than there is today among the general population of “Christian” America.

11. The Shliachim never established “churches” as we know them, but only declared to all Israel (and to anyone else who would receive the Truth) that Yeshua of Nazareth was the resurrected Messiah promised by G-d through the Prophets, and that the Goyim (Gentiles) were invited to fully participate in the G-d, the Covenants, the Torah, the Land, the People, and the Redemption of Israel.

12. From the Exodus from Egypt up 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 basic forms of “acceptable behavior” are observed.

13. The decree of the Jerusalem Council did not exempt Gentile Converts from Torah, only from circumcision. The Talmud, or “Oral Torah,” to which Yeshua referred as “tradition of men” (Mark 7:5-13), although valuable for our understanding, comes from men and not from G-d, and has never been binding upon either Jew or Gentile. Gentile Converts to Messianic Judaism could either go through the formal “conversion” process (including circumcision) and thereby “become Jews” [Proselytes or Converts] and fully embrace all the requirements of halakah if they desired to, or they could remain in fellowship with the synagogue as Messianic G-d-Fearers and embrace that extent of halakah they had learned [provided, of course, that the “Minimum Requirements” were observed]. Being obedient to at least the moral requirements of Torah, however, was never in question, as G-d’s divine instruction never changes.

14. For at least the first 45 to 50 years following the Resurrection, Jews, Gentile Converts, and G-d-Fearers all met together in the same Synagogues. After the Birkat ha Minim was introduced into the liturgy (ca. 89-90 CE), it is likely that the first totally Messianic synagogues began to appear, and this process was most certainly greatly accelerated by the declaration of Simon bar Kochba as the Messiah (ca. 135 CE) and expulsion from the Synagogue of those Messianic Jews who refused to acknowledge him as such.

15. God has never repealed the fourth commandment which establishes the seventh day of the week as Shabbat (the Sabbath), nor has He ever condoned the first day of the week as the “appropriate” day of worship. From the giving of the Torah at Sinai to the Council of Nicea in 325 CE, the “Lord’s Day” was observed as the seventh-day Shabbat. Yeshua confirmed this by declaring Himself as “the Lord of Shabbat” (Matthew 12:8; Mark 2:28; Luke 6:5), thus demonstrating that the seventh-day Shabbat (and not the “first day of the week”) was His day, the Lord’s Day. Whenever Messianic Believers are spoken of in the B’rit Hadasha as being together on “the first day of the week” it was for the Havdalah observance which began shortly (about 40-45 minutes) after sunset on Saturday evening (according to the western calendar), marking the end of Shabbat and the beginning of the first day of the week.

16. It was not until Constantine blended Roman Paganism with Messianic Judaism that “Christianity” or “the Church” as we now know it came into being. With this hybrid religion being the official state religion of the Roman Empire, and every citizen of the empire being a part of this religion, Messianic Jews were suddenly a very small minority of what had suddenly become “Christianity.”[127]

Thus we can see that “the church” as we now know it bears almost no resemblance at all to the Body of Messiah as it existed for the first 300 years following the Resurrection, and Scripture tells us that in the Olam Haba, or the Messianic Kingdom, Messiah will reign from His throne in Jerusalem, Temple worship will be reestablished, people from all the nations will come up to Jerusalem to worship, and the Jewish people will be the leaders of the religious life.

That is to say, the life-style in the Messianic Kingdom, the Millennium, will be virtually identical to the life-style of the Messianic Community for the first 300 years of its existence, with the addition of the Restored Temple. As the Prophets have written:

But in the acharit-hayamim[128] it will come about that the mountain of ADONAI’s house [the Millennial Temple on Mount Zion in Jerusalem from which Yeshua HaMashiach will rein physically for a thousand years] will be established as the most important mountain. It will be regarded more highly than the other hills, and peoples will stream there. Many Gentiles will go and say, “Come, let’s go up to the mountain of ADONAI, to the house of the G-d of Ya`akov! He will teach us about his ways, and we will walk in his paths.” For out of Tziyon[129] will go forth Torah, the word of ADONAI from Yerushalayim.[130] He will judge between many peoples and arbitrate for many nations far away. Then they will hammer their swords into plow-blades and their spears into pruning-knives; nations will not raise swords at each other, and they will no longer learn war. Instead, each person will sit under his vine and fig tree, with no one to upset him, for the mouth of ADONAI-Tzva’ot[131] has spoken. … I will make the lame a remnant and those who were driven off a strong nation.” ADONAI will rule them on Mount Tziyon from that time forth and forever.” (Micah 4:1-4,7; cp. Isaiah 2:2-4)

ADONAI-Tzva’ot says, “The fast days of the fourth, fifth, seventh and tenth months are to become times of joy, gladness and cheer for the house of Y’hudah.[132] Therefore, love truth and peace.” ADONAI-Tzva’ot says, “In the future, peoples and inhabitants of many cities will come; the inhabitants of one city will travel to another and say, ‘We must go to ask ADONAI’s favor and consult ADONAI-Tzva’ot. I’ll go too.’” Yes, many peoples and powerful nations will come to consult ADONAI-Tzva’ot in Yerushalayim and to ask ADONAI’s favor.” ADONAI-Tzva’ot says, “When that time comes, ten men will take hold—speaking all the languages of the nations—will grab hold of the cloak[133] of a Jew[134] and say, ‘We want to go with you, because we have heard that G-d is with you.’” (Zechariah 8:19-23)

Although it is clearly evident that Micah, Isaiah, and Zechariah were writing of the Olam Haba, the Messianic Kingdom, since the liberation of Jerusalem during the 1967 Six-Day War we have seen the beginning, or the birth pangs, of the Kingdom Age.

In spite of being attacked by six Islamic nations with overwhelming odds, Israel was miraculously preserved by G-d’s intervention. In just six days, out-gunned by nearly 24 to 1 (based on total estimated population of all countries involved), tiny Israel had soundly defeated all her surrounding nations and nearly doubled her geographical area, having driven back her enemies far into their own countries.

Since that war, Jewish people from all over the world have been flooding into Israel in fulfillment of G-d’s promise to return His people to His land. According to a Zola Levitt Presents broadcast in May of 2004, slightly over half of the world’s Jewish population now resides in Israel. In 2000 and 2004, symbolic Paschal Lamb sacrifices were made on the Hill of Hananiah and the Mount of Olives, respectively, both within view of the site of the Holy of Holies.[135] And the list goes on.

Many have said that the olam hazeh (the world which now is) is provided as a “school” in which each person is given the opportunity to decide whether or not he or she chooses to live forever under the Kingship of G-d in the Olam Haba (the world which is to come) and, if so, to learn the proper way to live there.

If the life-style of the Messianic Kingdom, when Messiah reigns physically from His throne in Jerusalem, is going to be the same as the life-style of the early Messianic Community, does it not stand to reason that this is the life-style that He would prefer us to live now? And if we plan on living forever in the Olam Haba, the future Kingdom of G-d, in the life-style of the early Messianic Community, doesn’t it only make good sense to start learning how to live that life-style right now, right here in the olam hazeh?

As I said at the beginning of our journey together, much of the information I have presented here is highly speculative and is certainly open to interpretations other than my own. But still, to my mind, it would have been a very strange thing indeed for Jewish believers in a Jewish Messiah, steeped in centuries of Jewish culture and led by Jewish Rabbis (the Apostles) equipped with Jewish Scriptures, to have constructed anything remotely resembling today’s predominantly Gentile church.

Many Christian congregations like to refer to themselves as a “first-century church” and they earnestly strive to live that life-style as they understand it. If you are a Believer in Yeshua as Israel’s Messiah who earnestly wishes to live as a true “first century Believer,” it my hope and prayer that this brief study would encourage you to carefully reevaluate your faith and practice in light of what the first-century Messianic Community actually looked like, and what the Messianic Kingdom and the Olam Haba is also going to look like. The answers you seek, the “first century church” that you are looking to be like, may be found in the pages of the Torah!

Chapte 13. Summary and Conclusions

Chapte 13.
Summary and Conclusions