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August 7, 2011 |
| Messianic Church in Israel | ||
This lesson describes the observations and research of the Messianic Churches that the author experienced while traveling in Israel.
Just as there are many variations of Protestant churches there are many variations of the Messianic churches. So the more specific observations presented here may not apply to every church. "Messianic Judaism is not a "denomination." There is no contemporary founder or leader. No one speaks for all Messianics and many other Messianics might well take exception to [some descriptions], or at least chose to word them differently. There is no headquarters or main center and it isn't governed by a hierarchy or an organization. In some sense, it isn't even defined by its theology."1
The Messianic Church sees the new covenant church as having continuity with the old covenant church. That is, the new covenant does not create a new church or community that is separate from the old covenant church.
But that is what happened. The new covenant church began as a Jewish church asking if gentiles needed to become Jews. But there were not many Jews in the world and as the church added members it mostly added gentiles who knew less and less of Judaism.
Both the old covenant church and the new covenant church made mistakes that lead to the split. The Jewish factors that caused the discontinuity between the churches were:
1. The Jews were very actively trying to turn the new covenant church back into the old covenant church. This caused a lot of trouble and confusion and was not appreciated.
2. The Jews were actively persecuting the new covenant church.
Especially in the area of Rome, the new covenant church began to organize hierarchically, patterned after the successful hierarchy of the Roman government. Unified under one man, which was probably never God's plan for the church, those at the top began to enforce their views on the organization.
1. The church adopted a very anti-Jew perspective2. This can be seen in some of the laws that were created which forbade new covenant church members from associating with old covenant church members.
2. Replacement of the annual Sabbaths of the old covenant with a new set of annual holy days.
3. Moving the weekly Sabbath to Sunday.
Instead of a Christian church that split off, the Messianic Churches see continuity between the two covenants. This is expressed in the symbolism as well. Thus the Messianic movement is an attempt to return the church "to the practice of the Early Believers, where both Jew AND Gentile worshiped the Messiah in accordance with the teachings of Scripture, which, at that time, was what we know now as the Old Testament"3
This continuity in the symbolism is also reflected in an excerpt from a verse that is commonly associated with it. From Romans 11:19 "The branches were cut off that I might be grafted in their place."
Messianic Judaism should not be understood as Judaism or only for Jews. The name expresses that same continuity of covenants. Understood correctly the name means Judaism after the Messiah. Remember that much of the Old Testament is about the coming Messiah, who was a Jew. Many things changed once we received the reality to which the shadows pointed, but this was just another step in God's plan to have a people for himself. Just as the giving of the Mosaic Law was a step.
It's also important to understand that the names Jew and Judaism are poorly chosen. Those names came from the name Judah, one of the tribes of Israel. Israelites would not have called themselves Jews. From their perspective they were just worshipers of the one true God.
The Messianic movement is not like the reformations that have occurred in the Christian Church. Martin Luther's reformation was an attempt to remove the worst practices of the Christian Church, which was entirely Roman Catholic until that time. He was not trying to return the church to first century practices and beliefs. In essence he was trying to put the train back on the tracks rather than starting it over where the tracks started.
The Pentecostal and later Charismatic movements were attempts to return to first century practices and beliefs, but only in one area, gifts of the spirit.
Being a "roots" movement it rejects most of the changes that have occurred in the Christian Church after those roots were established. Here this includes almost everything the Roman Catholic Church has done, as mentioned above.
But at its core it is a full Bible believing church, Old Testament and New. It accepts the inerrancy of Scripture in its original writing and that God has preserved it sufficiently through the ages that its fundamental doctrines can be known.
They believe in a triune God consisting of three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each of whom is fully God. They accept that God is omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, changeless, "holy, righteous, just, faithful, merciful, and loving"4 and the creator of all things.
Yeshua HaMashiach is the Son of God, co-equal and co-eternal with God. "He is the living Word of God, David's promised Messianic Heir, our Savior and Lord, our God and our King. He took on Himself the nature of man through the virgin birth so that He possesses both divine and human natures. [They] believe in His sinless life and perfect obedience to the Law; in His atoning death, burial, bodily resurrection, ascension into heaven, His high priestly work in Heaven for us, and His immanent visible and physical return to the world according to His promise."5
If this sounds like other statements of faith, it should. It differs from Protestant statements of faith no more than any Protestant group's statement of faith differs from another.
The differences come in emphasis and practices. We'll cover some of those here.
From the Menorah Ministries website, we get the following explanations: "Most Messianics are much more 'zealous for the Law (Torah)' than their Gentile Christian counterparts. In this, they are following the example of the first century Messianic Jew, who were also 'zealous for Torah' (Acts 15:19-21 and 21:17-27)."
"[But] no Messianic believes that the Law saves in any way shape or form. [They] follow the Law because [they] CAN - enabled by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit - not because [they] MUST. Our obedience is an expression of our love and gratitude to God, an acknowledgement that His ways are right and just - good and holy. It is also a blessing to us that we cannot possibly experience outside of that obedience"6
Messianics prefer to use the correct names for places and people. Therefore they use Yeshua HaMashiach instead of Jesus the Christ. The name Jesus is a badly butchered double translation (to Greek, then to English) of the Messiah's real name. Christ is an anglicized version of the Greek word Christos which is a translation of Messiah, meaning anointed one. Therefore they do not refer to themselves as Christians but as Messianics.
Because of the double translation mentioned above, New Testament names are very distant from their true pronunciations. This is especially a problem for Messianics in Israel who might live in a town called Kfar Nahum and find that the Bible calls it Capernaum.
Another good example of this is the name Peter. The Hebrew / Aramaic name was really Kaypha, which means Rock. All Hebrew / Aramaic names have meanings. When translated to Greek this became Petra, which also means Rock. But when the translation was done to English, a language where names have no meaning, instead of calling him Rock (as in Rock Hudson) or Stone (as in Stone Phillips) they called him Peter. Therefore they chose a name had neither the sound nor the meaning of the original.
You might think this is unimportant but it turns out that one of the main pillars of the Roman Catholic Church is built on this poor translation.
The Messianic Church, at least in Israel, de-emphasizes the cross as symbolism. This does not mean that they do not accept the role of the cross and crucifixion in salvation. It only means that the symbolism is generally avoided. This is because so many of the bad things that were done to the Jews through history were done by people carrying Christian crosses.
Instead the fish is more commonly used as a symbol and this is seen in the Messianic symbol shown above
Again "from Menorah Ministries: Messianic Jews recognize the seventh day--Saturday--as being the Sabbath (Gen. 2:1-3; Ex. 20:8- I1; 32:12-17). The Sabbath is even mentioned more in the N.T. than all the other days of the week combined. There is no mention in the Scripture of the Sabbath being changed to any other day of the week---a fact recognized by the Catholic Church. Although there are various levels of observance of the Shabbat (Sabbath) among Messianic Jews, the Shabbat is still the day of choice for worshipping the Most High. It is also seen as the perpetual sign spoken of in Exodus. (31:13-16)--pointing back to the original state of the creation---and forward to the time spoken of by the author of Hebrews (4:3) when we shall enter into the reality of the Sabbath rest – 'Shabbat Shabbaton.'"7
Some Messianics, especially the Jews among them, observe the Sabbath just as Jews do, with all sorts of rituals and traditions consisting of certain things to be said and done, none of which are Biblically supported. There is nothing wrong with this as long as it falls within the intent of the Sabbath. But the Jews have had a history of remembering the traditions and forgetting the intent.
On the topic of holidays, a word that comes from holy days, the answer is: "[Messianics] only celebrate Scripturally commanded holy days. Neither Christmas nor Easter are the actual days for the events they propose to celebrate. [Messianics], rather, celebrate the actual days of the birth and resurrection of Yeshua, which were already scheduled in the Feasts of Israel. Messianics believe that ALL followers of the Messiah would benefit from a return to this 'biblical lifestyle.'"8
This last point is disputable within the Messianic community. Not whether the pagan days should be celebrated but whether the Lord's Feasts are a required observance.
But the Messianic community is united on the idea that if you have a choice between
which would you choose?
Rather than ask questions I will do what I can to answer any questions you may have.
1 http://www.foundationsmin.org/studies/messianic.htm
2 Council of Laodicia http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3806.htm Esp. Canons 29, 37, and 38
3 http://www.foundationsmin.org/studies/messianic.htm
4 http://www.foundationsmin.org/studies/messianic.htm
5 http://www.foundationsmin.org/studies/messianic.htm
6 http://www.foundationsmin.org/studies/messianic.htm quoting from http://www.menorah.org
7 http://www.foundationsmin.org/studies/messianic.htm quoting from http://www.menorah.org
8 http://www.foundationsmin.org/studies/messianic.htm quoting from http://www.messianicbureau.org