Something interesting about
the Messianic movement of the Holy Spirit, taken from Coach McCartney’s
book“Blind Spots” The
relationship between believing Jews and Gentiles carries such enormous
biblical significance that Satan concentrates much of hell’s firepower
on trying to keep the two groups separate, apart, and alienated.
He knows that if he can keep us estranged, he will have a much
easier job keeping all other groups divided.
Even
beyond that, Satan has always stoked a special hatred for the Jews,
the chosen people of God, for through them the Messiah came to “destroy”
the devil (Heb. 2:14). [emphasis mine] Ever since the Lord announced that he would
send a Savior into the world, Satan has tried to wipe out the people
through whom that Savior would come.
It is not mere coincidence that wicked Queen Athaliah managed
to wipe out all of David’s male descendants, except for one (see 2 Kings
11:1-2). Nor is it coincidence that vile Haman tried
to exterminate all the Jews throughout Persia (see Esther 3:6) or that
the evil King Herod tried to do the same thing to all the infant boys
in Bethlehem after Jesus was
born there (see Matthew 2:16). Even
after Satan failed in his many attempts to annihilate the Jews (and
with them, the Messiah), he continued to nurture a furious rage against
God’s chosen people. He nurtures
it still. The
book of Revelation declares how the devil even today continues to hound
and attack and try to snuff out the chosen people of God. It pictures Israel as a woman who gave birth to Jesus Christ and
says Satan “persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male Child” (Rev.
12:13, NKJV). The devil knows
that the Jews remain the chosen people of God and that the Lord will
one day draw all his people to himself [read Zechariah chapters 12 through
14]. Satan especially despises all of God’s chosen
who commit themselves to faith in Jesus Christ, and so Revelation describes
how the devil “was enraged with the woman, and he went to make war with
the rest of her offspring, who keep the commandments of God and have
the testimony of Jesus Christ [could this actually be referring to Messianic
Jewish believers in Jesus Christ, who both are Jewish-Christians, and
Jewish by race? (we Gentile Christians have often equated this verse
to ourselves—maybe Satan’s real rage is for our Jewish-Christian brothers,
and to a smaller degree to ourselves)] Wherever
he can do so, Satan inspires intense hatred against God’s chosen people. On September 11, 2001, America found out how
intense that hatred can burn. On
that day, terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center towers in New
York and part of the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., largely because of
the support the United States has given to Israel through the years.
The devil makes war not only against “the rest of her [Israel’s]
offspring,” but against any who dare to stand with them. Our Messianic Jewish friends warned us about
the consequences of standing with them for good reason! When you get in touch with the purposes of
God and work to unite believing Jews and Gentiles, you will experience
the height of spiritual warfare. But
when you stick with it, victory is yours. We
heard their warnings but went ahead with our invitation anyway. The
week after our Stand In the Gap event, ABC newsman Ted Koppel invited
me to appear on Nightline, his award-winning and highly acclaimed
network program. Shortly before
I was to appear, I injured my back while getting some exercise at the
hotel where the show was to be taped.
The pain grew so intense that I didn’t see how I could go on
the show (by the grace of God I did appear) without some relief.
The hotel doctor prescribed a strong painkiller, but his prescription
produced a reaction in me very similar to an overdose, and I started
to hallucinate. For three or four days I struggled with incredible
emotional turmoil and tangible physical agitation. Satan was just waiting for such an opportunity,
and I entered into what I have concluded was a period of intense spiritual
warfare. I had to fight to keep
my mind, and I have never felt so dismayed in all my life, before or
since. It was horrifying. There is no doubt in my mind that the onslaught
was supernatural and evil. By
the time I returned home, my wife had gone to visit family, and I found
myself alone in the house. That
night I grew so fearful that I called a Christian brother and asked
him to stay with me. We also
called many other Christian friends for prayer support. Shortly
thereafter, Promise Keepers began a nosedive.
We had been filling stadiums; now we were struggling to stay
alive. Internal conflicts erupted throughout our organization.
When we felt God calling us to work in Israel, we spent a year
doing some groundwork. It went nowhere. I remember
this season of my life as a bitterly hard time. What had happened? Had we provoked the highest order of spiritual warfare? Had we been hit with the full force of a spiritual
attack? Only now am I beginning
to piece together the puzzle. Our
Messianic brothers had warned us that a close connection to them would
result in the most intense spiritual warfare that we had ever experienced—and
their words proved deadly accurate.
Yet they also predicted that if we stuck with God’s leading and
continued to encourage God’s children to repair the growing divide in
the church, we would receive a “double blessing.”
We think we may be on the threshold of that blessing right now. Through
these experiences, coupled with a close reading of Scripture, we believe
that we have identified the key to repairing the growing divide in the
church. We’re convinced that we will succeed in
our efforts at reconciliation only when we focus our attention on the
rift most highlighted in Scripture: the breach between believing Jews
and Gentiles. [emphasis mine] All others are subordinate to this one. Our mission is to rally the church and repair the divide…
A HISTORY OF DIVISION For the first many years of the Christian era, believing
Jews made up the vast majority of the church. Not until the time of Acts 10, when God showed
Peter that he intended to share the Good News of Christ with the Gentile
world, did the church intentionally begin to reach out to non-Jews. We
read in Acts 13 that the Holy Spirit set apart Paul and Barnabas to
take the gospel to the Gentiles. And
by Acts 15, the church had to call a historic council meeting to decide
whether Gentiles had to be circumcised and obey the law of Moses in
order to be saved. The Jerusalem Council quickly endorsed Peter’s
words that both Jew and Gentile were saved through the grace of the
Lord Jesus Christ (v. 11), and the Gentiles were asked, not commanded
(v. 28) to observe several essentials, later reduced to four: abstain
from idolatry; fornication; bloodshed; and abstain from things strangled
[taken from F.F. Bruce, The Book of Acts] Within
a few decades, the ethnic makeup of the church changed drastically. Largely due to the powerful ministry of Paul,
converted Gentiles began to outnumber, and then overwhelmingly outnumber,
their believing Jewish brethren. The
trend continued for hundreds of years until the church was completely
devoid of Messianic Jewish presence.
Indeed, the historic church officially rejected its Jewish roots
and a Messianic Jewish influence, particularly expressed through the
two Nicene church councils of the fourth and seventh centuries. Church
history reveals that by the time of the Reformation in the sixteenth
century, evangelism to the Jewish people had nearly died out. In fact, prior to the Reformation the church had implemented a “forced”
conversion policy toward Jewish people. An anti-Jewish attitude in the church continued after the Reformation
because Martin Luther and others expected many Jewish men and women
to welcome the reformed message of the gospel.
When it did not get a warm reception, Luther wrote several anti-Semitic
tracts, including “Against the Jews.”
Throughout the following centuries, frequent pogroms (organized
massacres) against Jews broke out in many European nations, often in
the name of Christ. Even in
the twentieth century, Adolf Hitler quoted Martin Luther to justify
his efforts to exterminate the Jews.
In this way, Christianity became repulsive to the vast majority
of Jewish people. Approximately
thirty years ago, some of this attitude began to change in the church
and there was evidence of a growing receptivity of the gospel among
Jewish people. Through the efforts of groups such as Jews
for Jesus, the gospel began once more to spread among the Jews. Out of this revival developed an ever-growing
force called the Messianic movement. Prior to its emergence, Jews who became believers in Christ were
expected to observe Christianity according to the patterns developed
among Gentile believers. All
customs, traditions, and actions recognized as Jewish were considered
heretical or at least biblically inappropriate, as the practices were
[erroneously] thought to relate to law rather than grace.
For this reason, few Jews accepted Christ because they assumed
such a choice meant giving up every tradition that marked them as Jews. Most
Gentile believers know little about the Messianic movement, and some
who are aware of it write it off as a cult or as an “oddball branch
of Christianity” without the courtesy of investigation. The Messianic
movement, however, offered the faith of Yeshua (Jesus) without requiring
anyone to give up traditions and practices that Jesus himself observed
(the feast of Hanukkah, for example, is mentioned in John 10:22 [and
Christians often overlook that Yeshua kept the Sabbath and all of the
Old Testament Holy Days, as did the 12 apostles on into and throughout
the lifetime of the Jerusalem Church of God—the original Christian church
and first Messianic congregation in history.]). This growing movement [which started about
30 years ago] struggles greatly for acceptance by the Gentile majority
of Christendom. Most Gentile
believers know little about the Messianic movement, and some who are
aware write it off as a cult or as an “oddball branch of Christianity”
without the courtesy of investigation. As
a result of such direct and indirect rejection, the divide in the body
of Christ, which has existed since early centuries, continues to be
perpetuated between believing Jews and believing Gentiles.
This divide is both racial and spiritual. And while Messianic Jews probably represent the smallest segment
of the body of Christ in the United States, in my view they represent
the biggest spiritual dynamic. Let
me tell you why. After
seventeen centuries of the absence of Messianic Jews in the church,
God is beginning to restore the Messianic Jewish community (the Church
of the Circumcision) to the body of Christ.
This revival of the gospel among Jewish people is unprecedented
apart from the book of Acts. The
Jewish revival is nothing short of a miracle and certainly represents
the work of the Holy Spirit in preparation for the return of Jesus Christ. [Coach McCartney saw the same thing I did and
neither of us compared notes. I
saw this by becoming a member of a Messianic congregation and from internet
contacts I had developed amongst Messianic believers in Israel where
the movement is spreading in ways conventional Gentile Christianity
never could.] One of the
major issues that faces the church today is its receptivity toward our
Jewish brethren. Our brothers, the Messianic Jews, have been
rejected by their own community for their faith in Jesus, the Messiah. Rather
than receiving this community of Jewish believers with enthusiasm and
love, the church has viewed them with suspicion and reluctance. One way to illustrate this point
is through the analogy of the olive tree used in Romans 11. The Jewish branches that were cut off because
of unbelief are now returning to their own olive tree. The wild olives (Gentiles) that were grafted
in to the Jewish tree because of their belief have occupied this tree
for seventeen centuries without much thought of the natural branches. They also have forgotten that they were grafted
in[to the Jewish olive tree]. With
the return of the natural branches [by the direct agency of the Holy
Spirit], the grafted-in branches feel some discomfort and embarrassment
and even unbelief. This
can be compared to the owner of a home [the natural branches of the
olive tree] welcoming strangers [the Gentiles] into his home just before
leaving on a long journey. When
the original owner returns after such a long absence, it is very difficult
for the original strangers, who have now come to accept this home as
their sole possession, to accept that they need to make room for the
original owner and even to give him the place of honor.
It is likewise difficult for the original owner to return and
find that he must now conform to the strangers’ ways.
It is only by God’s grace that any of us occupy any part of God’s
house, but Scripture tells us to give “honor to whom honor is due” (Rom.
13:7, NRSV). Personally, I rejoice in the return of my elder
brothers of the Messianic Jewish community.
TEARING DOWN THE WALL Do you like a good mystery? The Bible does, although it uses the term mystery
more to describe a long-hidden secret, now revealed. The
apostle Paul uses the word mystery to refer to a divine secret
that “in other ages was not made known to the sons of men, as it has
now been revealed by the Spirit to His holy apostles and prophets” (Ephesians
3:5, NKJV). And what is this mystery? Just this: “that through the gospel the Gentiles
are heirs together with Israel, members together of one
body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus” (v. 6). [emphasis mine] Paul
proclaimed that God had commissioned him as an apostle “to make plain
to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past
was kept hidden in God” (v.9). And
what was God’s purpose in revealing this mystery?
What did he hope to accomplish?
Paul answers, “His intent was that now, through the church, the
manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities
in the heavenly realms” (v. 10). God
did not want to create two church bodies but one. He had no intention of creating one church for Jews and a separate
one for Gentiles. He planned
for both ethnic groups to come together as one, in a single body, and
thereby show the powers of heaven the depth and breadth of his awesome
wisdom. We do not diminish today’s intense struggles
between Anglo, African American, Hispanic, Asian, and Native American
believers; rather, we believe there is a core issue in The Great Divide. Paul
did not want his Gentile friends to forget what an astonishing thing
God had done to pull off such a miracle.
The apostle reminded them what they were formerly:
You were separate from Christ,
excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants
of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who were far away have been brought
near through the blood of Christ. For
he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed
the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh
the [sterns: “enmity of the”] law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new
man out of two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile
both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their
hostility. (Eph. 2:12-16)
At Calvary, Jesus broke down the dividing
wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile in order to make both groups
one, thus establishing peace. The
Bible therefore gives no warrant for the growing divide between these
two groups of believers.
TOP BUTTON ON THE SHIRT OF CHRISTIAN
UNITY The apostle continues his thoughts
on mysteries in Romans 10-11. There
he tells his friends that God has saved the Gentiles “to make Israel
envious” (11:11). He adds, “I
do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers, so that you
may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until
the full number of the Gentiles has come in.
And so all Israel will be saved” (11:25-26). Paul does not want Gentile believers to look down on unbelieving
Jews because they have so far missed the grace of God in Christ.
Instead, he encourages them to live in such a way that God’s
chosen people will see and receive the riches available in Jesus.
Paul himself says, “I make much of my ministry in the hope that
I may somehow arouse my own people to envy and save some of them” (11:13-14). This is God’s declared plan for the church. But how can we provoke Jewish men or women
to envy if we have no relationship with them?
And how can we reach unbelieving Jews if we don’t even
have a relationship with believing Jews?
[Greco-Roman Christianity has been not only missing the boat
on this one for 17 hundred years, they’ve been contributing to the pogroms
and anti-Semitism that has raged over those past 17 hundred years. And the rest of Christianity has been infected
with this attitude without realizing it, an attitude that directly goes
against what Paul has spoken about in Romans 11.] I strongly believe that this is the core reconciliation
issue facing the church today. The growing divide between believing Jews and Gentiles
violates Scripture and is a huge spiritual problem. Except where profound theological
differences separate believers, virtually all of the rest of the divisions
in the body are relational, whether they involve Latinos, African Americans,
Asians, Native Americans, whites, denominational concerns, or other
issues. While Scripture speaks
to all divisions, the relationship between believing Jews and Gentiles
is specifically addressed. The
most critical divide, the one to be addressed first, is this growing
rift. It’s not a good idea to put on a shirt by fastening the
middle buttons first. When you
do, the frequent result is misalignment.
If, however, you begin by fastening the top buttonhole, all the
other buttons and holes line up perfectly.
I believe that the relationship between believing Jews and Gentiles
is the top button on the shirt of Christian unity.
SOMETHING BROKE
Recent events have convinced me
that the Lord has been preparing us all along to encourage and help
the church to come together as one.
I have known for a long time that Promise Keepers is a peacekeeping
ministry, and I am starting to see more clearly how God may want this
ministry to help bring his sons together. Just a few days ago I returned home from a Messianic Jewish
conference [Messiah Conference 2002] at which I gave a short message. My Jewish friends introduced me like this:
“No one has reached out to us in seventeen hundred years like Promise
Keepers.” Just before I delivered my message, I felt tremendous spiritual
warfare raging all around—and then tremendous peace. God used it to show me that this work of reconciliation
is the most important thing we have ever done. Something broke that day in the heavenlies.
What happens next is going to change the church.
I know it in my heart. This important focus on reconciliation between Messianic Jewish
believers and Gentile believers is a new priority for all of us here
at Promise Keepers. I have prayed
earnestly about its significance and asked God to show me the best way
to approach it. I’m still in
the process of figuring out the best approach. In the meantime, we’ll continue our ongoing work of reconciling
different ethnic groups, emphasizing the divide between urban and suburban
church…God is orchestrating marvelous things in our day. And when he orchestrates them in advance, we
get no credit—I learned that lesson years ago as a football coach. I’m neither a prophet nor a son of a prophet,
but I believe I can see something of what God plans to do among us. In Matthew 24, Jesus predicts that the influence of the evil
one will vastly increase in the last days. He says that the love of most Christians will grow cold because
of an increase in lawlessness (v.12).
I believe that God is choosing this time to bring together believing
Jews and Gentiles so that we may triumph in this dark day. Together we have enough power and resources to advance God’s kingdom—but
not if we remain fragmented. Promise Keepers, we often say, “is dedicated to igniting and
uniting men to be passionate followers of Jesus Christ.” Our mission is and always has been to ignite
and unite; but while the first is happening, the second is not. The first key to uniting, the second to becoming
the formidable force God wants us to be, is linking up with the Messianic
Jewish community. And when that
happens, says Paul, “through the church, the manifold wisdom of God
should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms”
(Eph. 3:10). Meanwhile,
we on earth will reap untold blessings.” [pp. 23-33]
Coach also says this on page 129,
paragraphs 2-5, “Messianic Jewish believers have felt shut out of the
church for seventeen hundred years!
Why don’t we know that they feel this way?
Because they are so effectively shut out that we are never near
enough to them for long enough to hear them.
This kind of hurt doesn’t get shared easily or quickly. For friends to risk being this vulnerable with
each other takes a lot of time, trust, and patience. When I spoke with one Anglo friend about this issue, he admitted,
“Everything within me wants to defend myself. You say that these guys are crying out for
justice. I’ve sat with every
one of the guys you mention but one.
You’ve helped me to see that I’ve never cried with them.” Do you know why my friend never cried with these men? It’s because he’s never reached Level Four
[a Level Four Relationship, described in this chapter of Coach’s book]
with any of them…Relationships are the only things that truly “work”
in repairing the division in the church.
Events apart from relationships do not work; when the event is
over, so are the relationships. And
so is the healing.” [p. 129]
[these excerpts taken from pp.
23-33, Blind Spots, by Bill McCartney, Tyndale House Publishers,
Inc. Wheaton, Illinois. Blind
Spots is available at http://www.Christianbooks.com or http://www.amazon.com for about $12.00. These excerpts are what Coach Bill McCartney
of Promise Keepers has to say about the Messianic movement of the Holy
Spirit. Messianic Jewish congregations were all over
the eastern half of the Roman empire for the first three hundreds years
of Christian history--now they’re back, all over the United States,
and spreading around the world, and back into Israel. |
|||