Perfectly Good, But Perfectly Wrong

 Isn't it amazing how if you repeat a false claim or a lie often enough it becomes something that people claim to be true.

These words were in an otherwise very good Bible study I was a part of yesterday. 

"Of all the major world religions only Christianity claims its founder was resurrected from the dead."

Do you want to follow me down the rabbit hole?

In the eyes of the God of Israel, God Most High, God the Father, who sent God the Son to be the fully human, fully divine, entity on earth for 33 years, there is no such thing as "Christianity" and since it does not really exist, it was not "founded" on Pentecost.

Pentecost is the Greek name for the Jewish Festival called Shavuot in Hebrew.

In English when I look at a tree, I call it tree, but if I were French I would call it arbre. My point is, it is still a tree even though different languages have different words for it. The dividing of the languages was a curse from God Most High. 

So "Pentecost" was a Jewish festival being celebrated by Jewish believers in the God of Israel. Shavuot is a fascinating study, the fourth of the seven annual feasts and the one commemorating the giving of the Torah to the Jewish people. Obedience to the Torah given by God is one of the things that separates the ethnic Jewish people from the rest of the nations, the gentiles. There is a Jewish teaching that says the stone tablets carried their own weight down the mountain after Moses received them from God, that blesses me mightily, because it indicates the beautiful truth that the Law was never meant to be a weight that we had to carry. God empowers it with the ability to carry itself in us. 

What did happen on the Shavuot after the resurrection of Yeshua? 

The Holy Spirit was poured out on all those gathered in the upper room. This event is a fulfillment of one of the things to be accomplished by the Messiah of Israel. God the Spirit now enables the body of the followers of the Messiah of Israel to obey and follow Him, to the glory of the Father. We "bear the Name" in the midst of the nations and our lives point them to the God of Israel. 

If we are reading the Bible with the thought that there is an Old Testament and a New Testament you are perfectly good, because even the highly regarded King James Bible has those pages dividing the book so it must be true, right? Wrong! The new covenant spoken of in Jeremiah and Hebrews is a covenant made with Israel and Judah, kind of hard to make that something that just gets started at the Pentecost after the resurrection and is centered on gentiles and a "church"! Well NOT JUST HARD, THE WORD I AM LOOKING FOR IS IMPOSSIBLE!

If we read 1 Peter 1:10,11 "10 Concerning this salvation the prophets, who prophesied about this gracious gift of deliverance prepared for you, sought wisdom and searched carefully for understanding, 11 trying to make out the kind of person or the appointed time concerning which the Spirit of the Messiah within them was giving them and more clarity, as he told them ahead of time about the things that the Messiah was destined to suffer and the glorious things that would follow these sufferings." We can see that the prophets as individuals had the Spirit of the Messiah, the Holy Spirit in them, the "pouring out" on this Shavuot was different because it was a lot of people all at once who were then empowered to proclaim and live out of the resurrection life of the Messiah. 

I can't even begin to understand or communicate how the resurrection of the Jewish Messiah changed everything, but that change was the fulfillment of what the prophets of spoken and when He returns it will be the fulfillment of ALL the prophets have spoken. He will stand on the physical location the Mount of Olives in the physical land of Israel and He will see to it that ALL Israel (a distinct ethnic people) is saved. 

New would be more clearly stated as fulfilled. The idea that the sovereign God of the universe would have to go to a plan B after establishing His everlasting covenant with Abraham is patently ridiculous.

Individual gentiles who believe and trust in the Messiah of Israel are grafted into the already existing vine of Israel and they have nothing to boast in. Nothing about being a gentile is worth boasting in.

  

Messiah's Community - a history

 Awhile back I thought it would be good to look at the history of the "church", the mostly gentile attempt, to have an organized following of God on the earth.  Well after listening to another persons attempt to do that, I honestly didn't see any fruit in it, so I kind of turned the whole thing upside down, started off from a place that acknowledges that "church" is a horrible translation of the Greek word ecclesia.  Ecclesia is basically just gathering so a rioting mob is called ecclesia, the people gathered around Moses in the wilderness are ecclesia and the followers of the Jewish sect are an ecclesia, the difference being who or what is the central focus and reason for the gathering so the very best translation of ecclesia when it is referencing the disciples of Yeshua is Messiah's community.  With that lead in this is what I posted in my facebook group Love Truth.

  First of all "ecclesia" should not be translated church and the idea that something new started on Pentecost (a Jewish holiday, being celebrated, by Jews, in Jerusalem) is patently ridiculous. God in His amazing faithfulness and sovereign plan has preserved a remnant of people, called out ones, whose focus, purpose and life is given over to the glory of God. He called out Abraham from among the nations, He pushed the promise through to Isaac and then to Jacob and through Jacob's sons who grew into the nation of Israel. His ultimate plan on the Day of the Lord is to bring in every living descendant of Jacob as a nation. This will demonstrate both His power and His faithfulness as they believe in and trust the One whom they had pierced, as a nation, born in one day! So he has had called out ones all along the way prior to Yeshua they were almost all descendants of Jacob or rare gentiles brought in to preserve the line of Jacob so that Yeshua could come from the tribe of Judah as prophesied. The Hebrew word for these called out ones is Kahal and it is the equivalent of ecclesia. So properly translated in our day "church" would be dropped and we would be known as Messiah's community. This translation would place us, grafted into Messiah's already existing plan for Israel. This translation would press humility upon gentiles who have an annoying tendency to build things and put their own name on them, which is what the appellation "church" has become. (other examples, King James Bible, Assembly of God, Church of God, Joe Blow ministries, etc) So the history of Messiah's community is, God at great price to Himself has reached into humanity and called out, chosen, to work through certain vessels who are convinced of their own deadness and inadequacy. At any point where power or prestige in this evil age has been obtained the glory of God has been compromised by the glory of man and the true remnant has had to withdraw and form something smaller and weaker than what they left. That smaller weaker gathering is Messiah's community and they are known by their love and by the fact that though they are in this evil age, they are not a part of the world system. The actual history is a repetitive picture of small groups through out the earth who shun power in this evil age, and long for the return of the King, the restoration of His throne and His people Israel. And today, Messiah's Community is one day closer to welcoming Messiah onto this earth!

The Messiah King of Israel and Messiah's Community

 A friend posted this quote

 

“It is the duty of every minister of Christ to explain the mystery of Israel. It is a part of our holy religion. It belongs to the counsel of God. It is inseparably connected with the truth as it is in Jesus.”

—Adolph Saphir

A person replied ““The duty of every minister is to explain the mystery of Israel”. While certainly Israel had a big part to play, and seems to have a place in eschatology, I can find no Apostolic command for future ministers to emphasize such a thing. The duty of every minister, according to Apostolic doctrine, is to preach Jesus Christ.”

It is important to realize that , that response flows from literally hundreds of years of teaching that tries to create a new category called “church” with a new head called “Christ” and followers called “Christians”.  This new thing that was birthed at Pentecost has as its goal, individual salvation.  That salvation has Jesus as your helper in this life and an opportunity to connect to other believers in a not too binding way.   Mainly you are saved and can look forward to heaven where everything is good.

Jesus/Yeshua is actually the long-awaited, long-prophesied, Messiah  King of Israel.  Both Mary and John the Baptist’s father, Zechariah emphasize this truth in the early chapters of Luke.  Paul always made it a point to go into synagogues when he went into new towns to preach this Messiah  King to the Jews who had thousands of years of the Law and the prophets built into their lives.  Jesus said to go to the Jew first because they would be best able to tie all this together for the gentiles so that they would have  the perspective of all the works that God had been doing through Abraham and His descendants.  Paul does make it clear that you don’t have to be Jewish to be saved from the wrath to come by the saving work of Jesus on the cross, all who believe are saved, but Paul never converts from being a Jew who is teaching and displaying this message to the Jews and the gentiles.

Did you notice how all the examples of faith in Hebrews 11 are Jewish believers?  Did you notice how “church” is used in Acts  7:38 “This is he, that was in the church in the wilderness with the angel which spake to him in the mount Sina, and with our fathers: who received the lively oracles to give unto us:”  

Messiah’s community would be the very best translation for ekklesia from the Greek.  Messiah’s community would keep us connected to our Jewish heritage.  As followers of the crucified Messiah we would know that our home is not in this age, we are not to get comfortable here, we live knowing that there is a final reckoning coming for this age, when all the evil, disease, and death will be eliminated.  Our lives joined intimately with other disciples of the Lamb, point to a future Kingdom ruled by the Messiah King.  Death and the trials of this age do not define or control us, we are free. 

The self-sacrificial love within Messiah’s community is a powerful draw to those around us.  Ultimately our debt to Israel as gentile followers of the Messiah flows out of us as a willingness to pay whatever cost to see them come to a place where they can see the One whom they have pierced and turn to Him with their whole heart.  We are so connected to the heart of the Messiah King that we count it a privilege to be used in any way to reconnect Him to His chosen people.  

Isaiah 35:3 “Strengthen the limp hands,

make firm the wobbly knees.

4 

Say to those with anxious heart,

“Be strong, have no fear!”

Behold, your God!

Vengeance is coming!

God’s recompense—it is coming!

Then He will save you.

5 

Then the eyes of the blind will be opened

and the ears of the deaf unstopped.

6 

Then the lame will leap like a deer,

and the tongue of the mute will sing.

For water will burst forth in the desert

    and streams in the wilderness.

Pentecost the Birth of the Church, Uhhh, No!

Let me share a little parable.
Once upon a time a poor man was
sitting on a curb.
Another man came by who had
been working most of the day in
the sun, hard work that wore his
body down.  His employer paid
him and gave him a $100 bonus.


The working man gave that
$100 to the poor man.


As the working man was walking
away, he heard the poor man
exclaim.  Look everyone, "The birth
of a $100 bill."


With absolutely no appreciation
for where the money had come from
the poor man began to spin a false story
where the $100 had been given
directly to him by the employer.


He began to celebrate this day
as the "birthday of his $100 bill."


The poor man wondered why the
working man was not interested
in his story of the $100 bill!


So the Hebrew festival of Pentecost, first fruits, resulted in the first fruits of the Messiah's mission.
Many Jewish followers of God, came to believe in the Messiah.  A remnant from the chosen people
began the journey of becoming the sect of the Nazarene within Judaism.  All the way up in chapter 15 of the book of Acts this Jewish sect is still in the process of adjusting to the presence of the Gentiles and trying to show them the way to be gathered into the Father's chosen people.  He is faithful and true, His gifts and calling are irrevocable, there is no need for a new body, the mission of the Messiah of the God of Israel was not to reject Israel, isn't that obvious?  Go back and read Mary's excited proclamation when she realized she was carrying the Messiah.  Go back and read how Zechariah the father of John the Baptist exploded in praise and prophecy when his tongue was loosed.  This Messiah is the long awaited Redeemer of Israel.  Our privilege is to be included in their blessing.  We are grafted in to their vine, supported by their root, and this is meant to keep us gentiles in a place of humility and service, but alas, we have made up a story about our $100 bill and at this point we have begun to believe our own lie, and the result is arrogance that stinks to high heaven!