Our Christian Heritage
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To better
understand covenants, we'll go back in time to when God made a
covenant with Abraham. God promised Abraham a son and said that
through him the whole world would be blessed. When he was 100 years
old, Abraham's son Isaac was born. One of Isaac's descendants was
Jesus, who offered Himself as the ultimate sacrifice for our sins. No
one in the history of mankind has blessed the world as Jesus
did.
Abraham's descendants
through Isaac became Israel, the people we know as Jews. Some
Christians believe what's called the "replacement theory",
which says that God's covenant with the Jews was replaced with His
covenant with the Church. God cannot lie and will not break covenant;
therefore His covenant with Abraham's descendants still stands. They
are God's chosen people and will always be God's chosen
people.
However, this replacement
theology is, in part, what has robbed the Church of its power. All
you have to do is read the New Testament to see that the early Church
operated in great power with signs, miracles, and wonders. Not only
did they heal the sick, they preached the Gospel and 3000 people were
added to the Church in a single day. What happened? While we do still
see signs, wonders, and miracles, they are rare by anyone's standard,
and the Church as a whole doesn't experience them. However, when
people who are properly aligned to the Living God and understand
their authority in Christ speak, this same power is released.
The
explanation of the problem of powerlessness is found in the Bible. In
Romans 11:17-27, God made our relationship with Israel clear. Yes,
Israel. He likened the Jews to an olive tree and said that we, the
Christ followers, were grafted into it.
With
that in mind, remember that almost all of the early Church were
Jewish converts. By age six, many Jewish children had memorized most,
if not all, the Torah. They had a rich, deep heritage based on God's
law. When the Gospel spread, the later converts were pagans who had
been taught Greek philosophy. Those new believers began blending
Christianity with their pagan beliefs.
One
man, Origin, is considered to be the most influential theologian of
the early Church. He took principles of Neo-Platonism, which included
elements of mysticism and some Judaic and Christian concepts, and
blended them into theology. He also blended stoicism, an ancient
Greek religion that equates God with the totality of the universe. He
created a system to interpret the Bible using allegory and
spiritualization. He was the originator of the concept that God had
rejected the Jews and replaced them with the Church.
Another
man who did immeasurable damage to the Gospel was Augustine, who is
considered the founder of theology. According to Columbia
Encyclopedia, Augustine incorporated
Plato's doctrines and Neo-Platonism into Christian theology. As a
consequence, salvation was redefined. The Bible said, "We
believe in
Jesus." The Greek mindset said, "We believe that..."
Changing one word caused people to believe heaven was reserved for
the doctrinally correct, which splintered the Church into different
groups supporting different theologies of salvation. This sparked
more than 1700 years of doctrinal war within the Church, draining it
of power.
Prior to this, the
Church had been the recipient of thousands of years of Jewish
history. Sometime around the sixth century the Messianic Church died,
and we dropped our Jewish roots. In other words, we cut off the
branch we're grafted into! When this happened, the Church as a whole
lost the power and the signs, wonders, and miracles that the early
Church enjoyed.
There are
churches, such as Bethel Church in Redding California, pastored by
Bill Johnson, that operate with signs and wonders. I believe this is
in part because they have re-grafted themselves into the tree of
their Jewish roots. Of course, there are others, but the miraculous
has become the minority and the exception rather than the rule in the
Church today. I believe that very soon there will be a tipping point
where the Church as a whole will re-graft ourselves back into the
olive tree, and then the power will flow as it did in the times of
Pentecost.
Our Lord is a God of
restoration, and in the sixteenth century, He restored the doctrine
of salvation. In the eighteenth century, there was a restoration of
holiness. In the twentieth century, there was the restoration of
gifts. But we as a Church have not re-grafted ourselves back into the
tree. The sap hasn't run into our branch in at least 1400 years, so
we have no power. We must repent for trying to make ourselves the
root when God said we were a branch grafted into the olive tree,
which was Israel.
In reality,
Origin and Augustine were the worst enemies of the Church. Because of
their teaching, we divorced our Jewish heritage and married paganism.
Now we must divorce paganism and remarry our Jewish roots. When we do
that, the scales will fall off the eyes of the Jews, and the
Messianic Church will explode in growth. The Gentiles and the Jews
together will become the One New Man that Paul described in Ephesians
2:11-17, "Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles
by birth and called 'uncircumcision' (that done in the body by the
hands of men) -- remember that at the time 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 once 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 law with its
commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself
one new man out of the 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."
One
key strategy for winning every battle is to look deep into your heart
and repent if there is any anti-Semitism there. Why? When you oppose
Israel, even in your heart, you are opposing Israel's covenant
partner -- God. The truth is that you won't win any battles if you
find yourself opposing God. You will win every battle if God is
fighting on your behalf.
There's
something else dangerous about anti-Semitism. The Bible says that one
day Jesus will return just as He left. People get excited about that
without stopping to consider who Jesus was on earth. He was Jewish
rabbi. That means He will return as a Jewish rabbi.
"Wait
a minute, Mike," you might say, "look what happened to the
Jews during the Holocaust. It looks to me like God abandoned
them."
God will never
abandon the Jewish people, because of His covenant with Abraham.
However, when they rebelled against God and worshiped idols, they
stepped outside of God's protection, and the devil tried to kill
them. In spite of their sin, God not only saved them, He kept His
promise to give them back their land and restore Israel as a
nation.
That's how faithful God
is to His chosen people. In addition to the personal judgment we each
face after death, the Bible says that God will judge each nation on
earth. How will He judge them? They will be judged by how they
treated Israel. Part of the reason the United States has been so
blessed by God is because, historically, we have been a friend and
ally to Israel.
None of this
makes sense until you begin to grasp the concept of
covenant.
From the book Win Every Battle, by Michael L. Galiga.
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For the past year We have wondered why God put us in a Messianic Synagogue. Although it
was evident that becoming educated in the Torah is one of the key
factors, it has never seemed that this was the only factor. There is
more. The preceding discussion is is an excerpt from the book Win
Every Battle by Michael L. Galiga. We saw him on TV and immediately the Holy Spirit impressed us
that we should have this book. It didn't take long to read. It's a
good book.
In order to understand the entire Bible, it is essential to understand the first five books of the Bible. These five books are also know as the Torah or Mosaic Laws. It is from these books that the rest of the Bible is founded upon. The Torah is far more intellectual and deep than most people realize. Much of this gets lost in modern translations.
If you are interested to learn more, then go to http://rootsofthemessiah.com/ and give them your email address. We did that and every Friday they are sending us a Torah teaching.
