Dear Reader,
I realize
that the biographical information about the author is supposed to either
come at the end of the book or be printed on either the back cover or dust
jacket, that the author is expected to refer to him/herself in the third
person, and that the author is not supposed to address the reader directly.
But if you will bear with me I would like to do things a bit differently in
this little book.
First of
all, please don’t think of these pages so much as a “book,” but rather as a
personal letter from my heart to yours. I have fairly recently discovered
some concepts that have quite literally changed my life, my understanding
of the Scriptures, and my relationship to my Savior and to His Bride, and I
would like to share some of those with you in hopes that you might also
participate in that wonderful experience.
I suppose
is it only fair that if I expect you to read this letter, you should know a
little about me. After all, if you wrote a letter to me, I would certainly
want to know at least a little bit about you. But if you prefer to skip
over this section, please feel free to do so.
I was
born the son of a Christian minister, and because my parents were obedient
to the Lord’s command to teach His words diligently to their son
(Deuteronomy 6:4-7), I cannot remember the time before I trusted Israel’s
Messiah as my Lord and personal Savior, and I made my “public confession of
faith” and was baptized a few weeks before my sixth birthday.
By the
time I was ten years old, I was teaching the “little kids” Sunday school
class, was elected to my first congregational leadership position (Junior
Deacon) at the age of fifteen, and with only a few years sabbatical have
been serving in congregational leadership for the nearly 44 years that have
passed since then (this is being written in 2004). My first pastoral
position was from 1965 to 1967 as the youth pastor of the chapel at the
U.S. Naval Hospital on Guam. Since then I have held both pastoral and
“lay-leadership” positions in eight congregations in California, West
Virginia, and Tennessee.
I
received my formal theological training (Master of Theology in systematic
theology, Doctor of Theology in cults and comparative religion, and Doctor
of Ministry in Bible college administration and curriculum development) at
conservative evangelical seminaries in California.
For
several years I served one of those schools as Vice President for Academic
Affairs, Chairman of the Curriculum Development and Academic committees,
Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs, and Assistant Dean of
Directed Individualized Studies. I also served as a Professor of Theology,
specializing in systematic theology, comparative religion, and the cults.
For better or worse, I was therefore more or less directly responsible for
helping to shape not only the theological thinking of the students who sat
in my classrooms, but also the overall content of the training that was
received by every student who attended that school for many years
thereafter. That means that, for better or for worse, I was deeply involved
in not only what my own congregation would be taught, but also in what
would be taught to all the congregations served by all the pastors produced
by that school.
Not long
after I left that school to pursue more direct pastoral ministry, I began
noticing what I considered to be some rather severe discrepancies between
what Ruach HaKodesh[1] was teaching me through my personal study of the
Scriptures and what I had learned in my formal theological training and
passed on to my student pastors, particularly regarding the history and
nature of “Christianity” and its relationship to Biblical Judaism. Though I
am certain that it is quite normal and natural for everyone who seriously
studies the Scriptures to modify their peripheral beliefs as Ruach
HaKodesh brings a deeper understanding of G-d’s Word, the discrepancies
that I was discovering were so profound that I was left with a deep,
burning concern that perhaps I had been (though certainly unintentionally)
guilty of the sin that probably most truly committed Bible teachers perhaps
fear above all others—the sin of teaching that which the Bible does not
teach.[2]
It wasn’t
as if these “discrepancies” involved anything that could be considered
“heresy,” or that they could adversely affect anyone’s salvation. But they
did, at least as far as I was personally concerned, have a major influence
on the way that I viewed (a) the Church, Israel, and their relationship to
each other; (b) the relationship of Messiah to His Bride; (c) what
really happened on the first Pentecost after Messiah’s resurrection;
(d) Israel’s supposed rejection of Messiah when He first appeared; (e) the
forms of worship and fellowship that were practiced by the
first-century Believers in Messiah; (f) what the Millennial Kingdom is
going to look and feel like; and even (g) the relationship between the “Old
Testament” and the “New Testament.”
A major
turning point that occurred rather late in my life came when my mother, our
family historian, discovered my paternal grandmother’s genealogical
records.
My
paternal grandfather had died when I was in my early teens. His father had
been a Scottish cabin boy who was adopted by an Englishman, and we had
virtually no way of discovering anything about his ancestors. My
grandmother had died when my father was in his early teens, and neither my
father nor his father knew anything about Grandmother’s ancestors. The
courthouse in their town had burned to the ground when my father was young,
and all the vital records had been lost. It must have been about the time
that I was starting seminary that my mother finally discovered a book that
contained Grandmother’s ancestry, and it contained a record of both her
marriage to my grandfather and the birth of my father.
The most
startling revelation for me was that literally hundreds of the people in
Grandmother’s family tree (including her direct lineage—and thus my direct
lineage) had thoroughly Jewish names dating as far back as 1448 England.[3] Though I certainly couldn’t pass the Government of
Israel’s current test for “who is a Jew” because my mother’s ancestry is
not clearly Jewish, there is no doubt that the blood of Avraham, Yitzchak,
and Ya`akov[4] flows in my veins—some of the same blood that my
Messiah shed for me! Armed with this information, I began trying to look at
the Scriptures through “Jewish eyes”—to really understand the Scriptures as
they would have been understood by their human authors and by those who
originally received them.
The
results were truly amazing! The Scriptures opened up to me in a way that I
had never seen before. I certainly don’t pretend to have all the answers
yet, and I don’t expect to have them this side of Eternity. But what I do
have as a result of this personal quest is such a fresh, new excitement
about my faith and my relationship to my Messiah and His Bride that, at
least for me, the experience must be somewhat like what being “born again”
as an adult feels like!
I invite
you to go along for this amazing ride!
But be
warned; as we progress through our journey together, some of the things
that you will read may surprise you as they did me. Some things may upset
you, as they did me. Some things may even offend you. Please be assured
that it is not my intent to offend anyone, nor is it my intent to accuse or
unduly criticize anyone, or to coerce anyone to my way of thinking. I only
want to share what I have learned in the hope that this little volume will
achieve these three goals:
1. To encourage my Jewish mishpachah[5] to set aside their feelings about
“Gentile Christians” and freely embrace their Messiah while retaining their
precious Jewish lifestyle.
2. To educate (but absolutely not to condemn) my Gentile Christian brothers
and sisters about the many pagan practices and “traditions of the elders”
that have contaminated the “Church,” and to encourage them to embrace the
thoroughly Jewish roots of their faith.
3. To in some small way contribute to the healing of the rift between the
Church and the Synagogue, that the words of Ephesians 2:14 may be
fulfilled, and that Jew and Gentile may truly become one in the Messiah.
Ephesians 2:14
For he himself … has made us both one and has broken down the m’chitzah
which divided us. (CJB)
For He Himself … made both
groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall. (NAS)
Romans 12:4,5
For just as there are many parts that compose one body, but
the parts don’t all have the same function; so there are many of us, and in
union with the Messiah we comprise one body, with each of us belonging to
the others. (CJB)
For just as we have many
members in one body and all the members do not have the same function, so
we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of
another. (NAS)
Galatians 3:28, 29
[In Messiah] there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither
slave nor freeman, neither male nor female; for in union with the Messiah
Yeshua, you are all one. Also, if you belong to the Messiah, you are seed
of Avraham and heirs according to the promise.
(CJB)
[In Christ] there is neither
Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male
nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to
Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to promise.
(NAS)
1 Corinthians 10:32, 33
Do
not be an obstacle to anyone—not to Jews, not to Gentiles, and not to G-d’s
Messianic Community. Just as I try to please everyone in everything I do,
not looking out for my own interests but for those of the many, so that
they may be saved; (CJB)
Give no offense either to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of G-d; just
as I also please all men in all things, not seeking my own profit but the
profit of the many, so that they may be saved. (NAS)
Granted, much of the information presented
herein is highly speculative and is certainly open to interpretations other
than my own. Be that as it may, the fact remains that there is nobody alive
today who was around to actually observe what the Messianic Community[6] of the first century actually looked like, and 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.
