The Messianic movement , law and the Sabbath

Many People are getting interested in the above and there is much confusion out there. I want to give an answer to each from a Biblical perspective and do it in a way that is as brief as possible using a letter I received recently .

I want to begin by stating that we will use the Bible as our sole authority, and as the only rule of faith and practice.

This is a letter that I received as a response to my testimony on you tube.

“How are you? I hope you’re doing very well! I just saw your video ‘How I found the Jewish Messiah in Israel’... and I really liked it a lot and I’m also very happy that you found Yeshua to be the Messiah of Israel...

As a non-Jewish Christian I always had believed in the Jesus of Christianity but over recent years I started to more and more find out about Yeshua as a Jew who was loyal to the Torah and who is the Mashiach of Israel... since a couple of years now I changed my day of weekly rest from Sunday to Shabbat (Saturday) and I do not eat the meat of non-kosher animals any longer...

Actually the reason I’m writing this to you is because I wonder how you look at this thing... do you observe Torah? And also what do you think about non-Jewish believers in Yeshua as the Messiah observing Torah?

I hope you will reply to my questions...”

Yes ,my video is titled “ How I found the Jewish Messiah in Israel”

When I became a believer I printed my testimony and placed it in all the mailboxes where I lived in Manchester, it was originally called “How I found peace in Israel”. You should have seen the nonsense they printed about me in the local Jewish newspaper, and because it mentioned that I went to a village called Kefar Habad and that the rabbi I visited there convinced me more that Jesus was the Messiah, the Habad movement wanted to sue me. Back to the title -

I talk about Yeshua (Jesus ) being the Jewish Messiah because He is but I also believe he is the Messiah for all the world , for Jews and Gentiles.

When we talk about Messiah we could as easily say the Christ, both words come from the same root but different languages, Hebrew Mashiach means the “anointed one” and Greek Christos, also “the anointed one”. Different words but the same meaning. The anointed one is the one to be anointed, prophet, priest and king. In the Bible we find people that held two of these offices but never anyone who held three, until Yeshua came along.

We can call the anointed one, Yeshua, or we can call him Jesus, different names because of language but the same person, and whichever name we use when talking about the Messiah we are talking about the same person .

1.       “As a non-Jewish Christian”

Let me begin by saying that the most important thing is that you are a Christian, so am I. The word Christian is used three times in the Bible

Acts 11:26 26:28, 1 Peter 4:16 , so there is nothing wrong with using it, it just means a follower of Yeshua , a disciple of the Messiah , someone who believes in Yeshua as Lord and Saviour. The Good news is that the wall between Jews and Gentiles has been removed and now we are one in the Messiah. Eph 2

The Church(Ecclesia) is not Jewish and it is not Gentile , it is Messianic or Christian , the body of the Messiah , he has one body and not two. Some Jewish believers prefer to use the term “messianic” rather than “Christian” because of the connotations and misunderstandings the word “Christian” has for most Jews.

2.       “I always had believed in the Jesus of Christianity but over recent years I started to more and more find out about Yeshua as a Jew who was loyal to the Torah and who is the Mashiach of Israel...”

There is only one Jesus, the Jesus of History the Jesus of the Gospels. If you read the Gospels you will see that Jesus is Jewish .

I agree there is a lot of bad teaching out there and that many churches try to divorce Jesus from His Jewish origins.

So we need to get back to the Bible, yes, it is wonderful that Jesus kept the Torah and all the demands of the law, if he did not he could not be the Messiah , sinless , spotless lamb of God and His sacrifice would be worthless. He is the Messiah of Israel but also of the whole world, the Savior of the world .I say to people that you can’t be a follower of Jesus and hate Jews because if you hate all Jews you hate Jesus.

3.       “since a couple of years now I changed my day of weekly rest from Sunday to Shabbat (Saturday)”

I think that its good you believe the Bible and rest, we are not machines and we have a command from creation to rest one day a week.

The Sabbath is the Saturday, it comes from the Hebrew ,Shabbat, which means to rest but there always is a but in everything, let me ask a question ,which is the day that the early church met on?

It is said that the early church met on Saturday and later on Constantine instituted the Sunday as the day of worship, because, it is said, that he worshipped the sun God. You can say that if you worship on Sunday you also worship the Sun god.

That’s such a strong argument, but I think it is as strong as a piece of straw or even a straw man. Taken to the logical extreme you could say those who worship on Saturday worship Saturn, see the origins of the name.

It is clear that the reason why the early church met on Sunday is because that is the day that the Lord Jesus, (Yeshua Adonenu) rose from the dead. Look up the references in the New covenant and you will see. The Romans never worshipped on a Sunday, they did not even have a seven day week , do some research check these things out !

I hope to speak further in the future and explain the true meaning of the Shabbat (Sabbath) according to the scriptures

4.       “and I do not eat the meat of non-kosher animals any longer...”

I met an Adventist a few days ago and I asked him if it is a sin to eat pork and he said yes. I think we have to follow what the Bible says,

The kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, it is not in the external. The Apostle Paul, a Jew, said in 1 tim 4 “3 forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. 4 For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving; 5 for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer. “

So it is not a sin to eat pork, the dietary laws where part of the former system, and they had there purpose, which was to keep a holy people separate from other nations. Now under the new covenant, we don’t follow the old dietary laws, we also do not follow the old priesthood , nor the sacrifices, but we do follow the moral law which never changes. The ceremonial law was just a shadow and the body is the Messiah. What do we prefer, a picture of a loved one or the person themselves? The Messiah has come and we don’t need the picture anymore as the Messiah said, “its not what goes into the mouth which defiles a man but which comes out of the mouth, this defiles the man” (Matt 15.11).

If anyone has any questions please comment on the blog and we will give an answer as soon as possible

Is anyone not biased?

I met a man recently who is visiting Israel, and is doing some research on the opinion of Christian Arabs in the Holy Land. This man is an academic with a Ph.D., and tells me that people in the academic club are those who do their research and only talk about what they are certain about. I don’t agree. Just because you think you are an academic it does not necessarily mean your research is accurate.

Everyone has a world-view and looks at the world through the glasses of their own world view. In my humble opinion the Christian is the one who has been liberated to see the world as it really is and sees reality and all the information and facts that agree with the Christian world-view. Let me prove my point that we are all biased and are all world-view influenced . I went out into the streets of Jerusalem and asked people who is the most famous Jew. By the way if you don’t know who the most famous Jew is you have a problem. Is it Karl Marks? Moses? Einstein? or Jesus? Yes, it is the Lord Jesus! So I asked people in the streets and most people knew it was Jesus and tried to avoid the answer, why? Because it went against their world-view .

Getting back to the man doing research, I took him to the old city to meet some Arabs and to see what they think about Israel. We are told that most Christian Arabs believe in the destruction of Israel. I think it is not true at all. We went to one man who is a relative of the late terrorist and communist leader , George Habash, who died recently in Amman, Jordan . He had a picture of Mr. Habash on his shop door. Does he hate Israel and want the destruction of Israel? No. Does he think Israel is better than the Arab countries? Yes. While we were in the shop a man who was drunk and had a problem with alcohol entered and called George a freedom fighter, I then began to talk about how it is wrong to kill. I asked where is George today? He is in hell because he was an unrepentant sinner whose hands were full of blood. If you die where will you be? No one has ever come back from the dead! He said, you are wrong, I know someone who died and on the third day He rose from the dead, and if you follow Him you will love your enemies. The relative of Mr. Habash said that if we were in an Arab country and asked and talked freely like in Israel then we would be going down to the police station. His brother is disabled and receives a car and social benefits from the state, if he was living in an Arab country he would get nothing at all!

We then went to visit another family. The husband is from Baghdad and the wife is from Shekem. The husband is a believer in the bible and said that the land according to the Bible belongs to the Jewish people and if anyone thinks otherwise they are ignorant of what is written in the Bible. The wife also came out in a positive way toward Israel. I asked another man I know, he and his brother own a shop and both of them support Israel. I know a few evangelical Christians who are very political and even have a map of Palestine in their church, in their unconverted days they were doing things against Israel and even went to prison. They speak out against the wall and talk about checkpoints and the suffering of the Palestinian people, and I think they are hypocrites because they have taken up Israeli citizenship and have all the medical insurance and hospitalization and unemployment benefits that come with it. I think if you receive citizenship from a country, you should be loyal to that country or leave immediately!

In the old city of Jerusalem I met the son of the late Mufti of Jerusalem who every Friday called for the destruction of Israel but when sick and dying he went to an Israeli hospital for treatment. His son had in his shop a political picture against the USA, and when he told me he agreed with terror attacks within Israel I never went to change money with him again. Sadly many people change money in his shop. In conclusion Israel with all its faults and size is one of the best countries in the middle-east and maybe the world.