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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 Jesusdid.
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 chosenpeople.
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 abandonedthem."
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 ofcovenant.
From the book Win Every Battle, by Michael L. Galiga.
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For one year we were joining and learning in a Messianic Synagogue. At the beginning we have wondered why God put us there. 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 an excerpt from the book Win Every Battle by Michael L. Galiga. It didn't take long to read this book. Immediately the Holy Spirit impressed us that this book is 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.
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