My Discipleship Journey

The file below was first created in March-April of 2004. I began to write it as soon as I returned from my first trip to Israel. At the time, I was in a state of enormous turmoil and confusion. So, for my own benefit, I began to write to try to sort through, and make sense of, the jumble of thoughts and emotions that were boiling inside. Of course at that time, I had no idea that in the near future, I would soon get to know and interact with some Jewish people, or that I’d soon become ‘family’ with some of them in a Messianic congregation made up of Jews and Gentiles who worship and serve God together. I also didn’t know that I’d soon have the opportunity to learn more and more about the awesome depths of the Hebrew roots from which the Bible emerges. And, of course, I also had no inkling that seven years later, in 2011, the precious FMM Family of disciples-in-training, as it exists today, would come into being.

Ever since I first wrote this, I’ve kept it to myself. But now I’m sensing that the Lord is nudging me to post it and make it public. I believe the reason why He wants me to make it public at this time is because He knows it is time to sow these seeds. I believe they are the seeds that will help to create some much-needed soul-searching, leading to sudden paradigm-shifts in the minds and hearts of modern day people.

And another reason is to let our Follow Me Family members know that this Follow Me ministry of ours has some pretty deep roots. Those roots first began to do their work in me as early as 1965. That’s when the Lord began to give me insights and promptings that deeply affected me and compelled me to begin to learn about Israel and God’s chosen people. I feel prompted to post these very personal and sensitive admissions and make them public because they do not apply to me alone; they apply to the whole human race! And most specifically, they apply to the Church… to our Lord’s true Last Days disciples. As our Messiah’s awesome climactic Return to Earth draws nearer, the issues discussed in this file will become increasingly relevant and prominent in the hearts of His precious disciples. God will stir these matters up in their hearts, to make them deeply aware of what is at stake; and then, they’ll be better equipped to fulfill the tasks He has assigned to them… when human history (as we know it) begins to reach the final stages of its ultimate, eternal resolution.

Whether we know it or like it, or not, our present generation of disciples has a big handicap! We have to drag the past baggage of all previous Christian generations along with us. And that baggage creates the handicap. People we try to reach out to are very aware of that baggage. And they identify the crimes and outrages and errors and abuse inflicted by past generations… with us today, even though we were not the perpetrators. We may not be guilty of having personally done those things, but nevertheless, those things come to mind and are associated with us, whenever other people see us coming. And so, like it or not, we have to deal with that baggage, and, by the omnipotent Power of the Holy Spirit of God… do what it will take to set things right, so that the world can begin to see our risen Lord, and His people, in a new light, and in more spiritually realistic and authentic, terms.

So, if after you read this, your interest is aroused, and you’d like to pursue these things, please consider consulting the ‘Biblical Meditations’ section of this website. The first article under the Genesis heading is called ‘My Discipleship Journey.’ It’s my personal story and it gives more details about how the Lord has been dealing with me concerning His chosen people. It will help you see more of why God’s Israel, as revealed in Scripture, is of such concern to me, and people like me. Do your best to find out why God’s chosen people hold such an important and special place in His heart. If you do, your worldview and future navigational course may also begin to change drastically.

In April of 2004, as soon as I finished writing out these thoughts, I took steps to see if I could find a Messianic Jewish person with whom to connect, someone that might be able to understand what I was trying to express, and, hopefully, give me some brutally honest feedback. I didn’t know what was happening to me or what to do with it. But instinctively I knew that only a believing, Messianic Jew would be able to understand where I was coming from. And since I had no personal Jewish connections of my own, I asked around, and the name of a man who has since become a major part of my life, was mentioned. So I looked him up in the phone book, called him, tried to explain who I was and what was going on. I asked if he’d be willing to plow through this text and then give me his brutally honest opinion… ‘both barrels’! I asked him not to be ‘nice’ or diplomatic, but to tell me exactly what he thought about what he saw and felt in what I was saying.

At that time, I was in desperate need of help. I didn’t know what was happening to me… so I was very appreciative when this man kindly agreed to try to help. So I emailed him this file. And he said he would read it; then after that, we could meet and discuss it.  And that’s what happened. In a few days he called and told me he’d read the file. So we set up a time for me to visit at his home, and after I arrived, we sat down to talk.

After a few minutes of getting acquainted, he said: “Well, I read what you wrote. And I’d like to ask you something: did you study this anywhere?” And I answered, “No. These are ideas that have been plaguing me for years, but now, all of a sudden, they’re really bugging me! So I’m trying to process them and figure out what’s going on. And I really need help. I need some someone that can even understand what this might be about. And I really need to get some brutally honest feedback to help me figure out whether I’m going crazy, or having a midlife crisis, or undergoing some sort of temporary Gentile ‘mind burp’ that will be gone in a few weeks. And of course it could also be possible that I may be being plagued by demons… or, perhaps even… it might be that God is trying to get my attention and give me a clue about something He wants me to know about!, or something He is going to require me to do”

He nodded, looked down at the floor, and then, after a few moments, he looked at me and said, “Well, the reason I asked the question is, because you seem to have a fairly good grasp of the issues… and… since you didn’t study this in any school, or have any personal background in it, then I would have to conclude that you’re hearing from God… and… I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes!”

Wow…. I certainly didn’t expect him to say something that sounded so ominous! That stopped me in my tracks… but nevertheless, in that context, we continued to discuss these issues. And for a time following that meeting, I remained puzzled and curious as to why he would say he didn’t want to be in my shoes.

But now, in retrospect, I understand more of what he meant. He could see the signs of what was coming as I described my current situation and state of mind. He knew that the Lord was going to require me to make some heavy duty life changes in the near future. And he knew what that would mean to me and my family and what it would do to my entire lifestyle and he knew about all the flack, resistance, suspicion and opposition through which I would have to navigate in the future. He knew my comfort zones would be trashed and I would most probably lose some of my current family and Christian friendships and associations, if I followed through with what I was beginning to see and understand. So, of course, the truth was, he already was in my shoes! What I was soon going to begin to experience, was what he had already been going through, in his own way, from the moment that he, as a Jew, received the shocking lightning bolt of God-given revelation that Yeshua really and truly is the Living Word of God and the Messiah of Israel, and the Lord of the universe that He created out of nothingness! From that moment on, life, as my new Jewish friend had known it, was put to death… and he was forced to follow His Messiah into brand new territory… just the way Abraham, many centuries before him,  had been required to do.

This man was speaking from the experience that every Messianic Jew goes through… the bitter, heartbreaking consequences of the rejection and expulsions many of them experience at the hands their own families, and the cold-hearted ostracizing contempt they receive from many other fellow Jews. And he was also personally aware of how I would be regarded by the deeply entrenched Christian religious, non-Jewish evangelical establishment! Yes, he knew all about those ‘shoes’… because he had been wearing them for several years! He knew what I was in for… he knew that, at that time, I was as naive and clueless and as unprepared as I could be, about what I would soon begin to encounter.

So, as I write this little introduction for you in 2016, I have to say that the matters contained in this booklet are still boiling and evolving within me… even fifty-one years after this process began! It still isn’t over. In fact, I really suspect that it’s just beginning!  So there’s too much involved, more than I could possibly cram into this one piece. So, if you want to learn more, please start asking the Holy Spirit to teach and train you in God’s Biblical ways… and ask Him to guide your steps! And consider looking at the article in the Articles and Teachings section entitled: “Repentance: A Core Boot Camp Issue”, parts 1 & 2. And look in the Exodus section of our website’s ‘Biblical Meditations’ department. There you will find Article No. 16. It also comes in two parts and is entitled, “Israel, the Thorn in the World’s Flesh.” Those offerings, and much of the other material we offer on this website, will add to your understanding of what I am offering here for your consideration concerning the mystery of the relationship between God, His Chosen People, the Church, and the rest of the unbelieving world.

As you will soon see, my first two attempts to connect with Jewish men to whom I reached out, came to nothing. I tried to respond to and correspond with the first man who had sent an email to the ministry I was part of at the time. But he never responded. Strike one! The same thing happened with the second Jewish man. When I tried to connect with him, he ignored my initiatives. Strike two! But the third time I reached out was the charm! On my third try, I hit a home run! This third Jewish man was very kind to me. And made me welcome. Not only that, but he followed up on everything he said he would do and he always makes good on every promise and commitment he makes! And since our first meeting, he has since turned out to be my dear lifelong friend and, as far as I am concerned, he will be a vital part of whatever future I may have left in this world.

So now, my family is part of the Messianic congregation that was entrusted to his care. He is my Covenant friend and ally, and a  consultation source for this Follow Me Ministry. So I want you to know that this ministry grew out of much of what you’ll read about in this article. It is a natural outcropping of all I have learned since joining this congregational family. And what happens as a result of this ministry is part of the fruit that the Lord is producing in the midst of the precious spiritual family into which I and my family have been welcomed and adopted, since 2004.

So, although I was in great turmoil when I first wrote this… by the Lord’s grace, it wasn’t long before He let me know the precise new direction that I had suspected He would require me to take. He led me to my new Jewish friend and mentor, and opened the door and made way for us to become part of our new congregational family and home. So, although when this man and I first met, I was a living mess, our first meeting helped to resolve much of the tension and stress and confusion I had been feeling. At first everything was new and strange, but it didn’t take too long for us to get used to it and then it began to feel natural and comfortable and right.

The atmosphere I absorbed with my new spiritual family and all of the previous experiences served as a forge, or blast furnace, in which the Follow Me material I’ve written was first smelted, shaped and developed. So now that I’ve told you about the wonderful outcome of what happened shortly after I wrote the following booklet, if you happen to be part of our Follow Me Family… I’d like to introduce you to some of your Follow Me Ministry roots!

 

INSIGHTS FROM MY PAST

Spring, 2004

By John Marquez

Introduction

In recent months, the Lord has obviously, blatantly, been reminding me of things that, at a critical point in my younger days, were profoundly disturbing to me and as a result, my life as I knew it, imploded and suddenly everything changed drastically. But as time went on, I adapted and recovered. And I got busy with other things; so these considerations began to recede into the background of my awareness. But then, all of a sudden a few months ago, in His unfathomable Wisdom, God suddenly brought them back to the forefront of my attention. And now I cannot forget or avoid them.

I’m talking about things that are Biblically Jewish in nature. And I find myself struggling mightily to regain my sense of balance and to try to reorient and stabilize myself. I’m on an emotional roller coaster right now and I feel compelled to pray, read, observe and discuss, so that, hopefully, I can arrive at a deeper level of insight into these areas of Biblical Truth. I need help. I must find a source of feedback that will be competent and trustworthy. I need to find a new sense of direction and explore new possibilities because I strongly suspect that history is repeating itself! Life as I know it is about to crumble around me, and once more, I’m going to have to move into brand new territory. And I know that it is the Lord doing this. He is the one that will require me to make some kind of radical changes. I know that in the near future, I’ll be heading in a brand new direction. But right now, I don’t have a clue as to what that will be.

The issues stirred up by this reawakening are profoundly disconcerting. I’m becoming aware of things about myself of which I was previously unaware. And I am stunned, shocked… and not at all proud of what I’m beginning to realize about myself. I know I must repent. But at present, my question is, ‘How do I do that?’ I think I’m willing. I want to be willing; but, at this point, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what practical form or direction this repentance should take. So I’m groping to regain a sense of orientation and determine which new direction I’m going to have to take in the near future.

After years of dormancy… this ‘Judaic Awareness Era’ of my life suddenly reawakened a few months ago. It happened last September 18, 2003. The Christ-Life/Ultimate Journey ministry, of which I am a part, received an email at its headquarters from a Jewish man. One of my colleagues thought I should be the one to handle it, so, the next day, he forwarded it to me. This is what that unknown Jewish man said:

Subject: How do I fit in?

Message: How does a Jew, a life long Jew, fit into this organization? I do have struggles with life, and the challenges it presents; however, I feel that I will always be a Jew and organizations such as this seem only for Christians. Please let me know your thoughts.

Thanks, (Signature)

As soon as I read this email, I suddenly felt tremendous pain in my chest. It was as if I’d just been harpooned! And suddenly the original wound that was inflicted so long ago, in 1966, reopened and the ‘emotional bleeding’ resumed. And since then, I’ve been struggling mightily to understand why this keeps happening. Why do these things mean so much to me? And why did I struggle so much when I tried to respond to that man’s ‘where do I fit in?’ question?

Well, the truth is this: I struggled to come up with a good answer because I really didn’t have an answer! I did write to him, a couple of times, but he never responded. And recently, I sent two emails to another Jewish man that I met less than a month ago, and he too, has not responded. Their silence is telling me something. I know in my heart that in truth, I have no answer to give to that man’s question… at least not one I’d be proud to give in public, and not one that any Jewish heart would be eager to hear. This is why my soul is in such turmoil. I know these matters are of vital importance to Almighty God, and to my Messiah. God really, really cares about His chosen Blood Covenant Jewish Family! But I have to admit that they have not really been of importance to me. And I’m being forced to admit it at this time. And, as a result of what I’ve just experienced in Israel, I’m experiencing more turmoil than ever. It’s unbearable! That’s why I’m trying to write about it. I need to try to sort out what is going on inside. Perhaps if I can get it out of me and look at it on my computer screen, I can somehow be more detached from it, and analyze and comprehend it more rationally. I need to be able to look at it in a calmer, more dispassionate way. Then, hopefully, I’ll be able to think it through and arrive at a clear decision about the new direction I strongly suspect that God is going to require me to take, in the days to come.

 

An Unexpected Gift

A few months after I read the email from that Jewish man, a good friend of mine that I hadn’t heard from in several months, suddenly called and offered to pay my expenses, if I would agree to complete the quota needed to form a tour group he and several others were trying to assemble and complete. They were planning to go to Israel, and they needed one more person to meet the minimum quota; so my friend thought of me and called. And, because this happened so unexpectedly, and at such an incredibly strategic moment, I was sure that God was behind it. So, suddenly I found myself rushing to try to get a passport and make preparations to be ready by the departure date. And now that I’ve returned from that trip, I am more convinced than ever that the Lord was behind it. He knew there were things I had to see, hear and feel before I could fathom what He has been trying to show me. I know there was no other way that I’d be able to know these things without actually being there to see and hear what He wanted to show me, in person.

We stayed in Israel from late February to early March of this year. And as I write this in early April, I’m still reeling from what I have just experienced. I know the Lord is seeing to it that I come up with an answer that is authentic, an answer that coincides with His heart and His written revelation, and His Last Days Plan! There truly were things I had to see, hear, feel and become aware of over there. And now that I’m trying to process and absorb them, I know that the Lord is intensely serious about waking me up and preparing my heart to do some very deep repenting. So I see the handwriting on my wall… He’s going to require me, in the very near future, to make some enormously radical changes in my heart attitude, direction and lifestyle. This is really scary. But I must pursue it if I’m ever going to resolve the tension I feel and regain some peace of mind and heart. I don’t want to do anything that would force the Lord to leave me behind as He continues to fulfill what He will be doing in the Last Days.

So, I’ll begin this by recalling a significant encounter I had with that Jewish man I recently met in Jerusalem – the second Jewish man who has not responded to my emails. I spent an entire afternoon listening, observing and interacting with him. For the purpose of this article, I’m going to call him, ‘Levi’ but that isn’t his real name.

Levi is an amiable, deeply committed Orthodox Jew that I couldn’t help but respect, admire, and like. He told the non-Jewish Christian tour group of which I was a part that he makes it a point to ‘dialogue with Christians’ because he believes Jews and Christians need to know each other at much deeper levels so we can arrive at a deeper mutual understanding and level of friendship. He even spoke about the Last Days! He said what will happen then, is not going to be a ‘Jewish thing’ or a ‘Christian thing.’ He said, “It’s going to be a God Thing!” I was elated to hear that! My unconsciously arrogant Gentile mind quickly soared to naïve, pompous levels of evangelistic musings. “Can it be that, finally, Jews are beginning to see the Light?” That was the knee-jerk reaction that I felt arising within me.

But now, I realize just how blind and unable I too have been to see that Light, and I cringe with embarrassment. I was automatically assuming that I ‘knew the score’ and had all the answers, and that he might now be about to come over to my way of thinking. But now I see how clueless I was. Don’t misunderstand. I do believe Levi was unwittingly reacting to some preliminary stirrings prompted by the Holy Spirit. I believe he’s being predisposed, along with many others, for an awesome coming move of God that will eventually impact and unite many Jews and Christians as never before. But now I can also see that this certainly will not happen by people conjuring up nice-sounding good intentions or undertaking some shallow good will initiatives and superficial interactions. What has to happen between the Jewish people and the Christian Church has to be something much deeper, something that only Almighty God Himself would be able to originate!

What has to happen will be utterly miraculous and stupendously shocking and unexpected. It won’t come about by the mere wave of a magic wand, or because of fervent human wishful thinking. It will be a monumental, earth-shattering, sovereign intervention of Almighty God, probably forced upon us by a wave of overwhelming tribulations, that will suddenly overwhelm and force us all into a level of repentance we could have never before imagined possible!

And now, I strongly suspect, that most of the people from either side who will be involved in that cosmic Reality-shift, would, at this time, shudder and balk at that prospect if they knew what enormous havoc such an act of God is going to inflict on their current Jewish and non-Jewish ‘business as usual’ comfort zones, and time-honored assumptions, viewpoints and imperatives! If they knew what was going to happen, even to them, they would surely become upset and would probably fall apart, emotionally speaking.

Matthew 24:37-39

“For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away; so will the coming of the Son of Man be.”

Isaiah 55:8-9

“…For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts!”

I believe that in preparation for all that will be happening during this coming Earth-shaking era, something enormous, a great shaking, that is already beginning to take place in the spiritual realms, will eventually completely upset and overturn everyone’s current earthly-bound comfort zones and assumptions that originated in the past. God is up to something that is stupendous and wonderful. And it’s going to transform us and transplant us into a brand new future Reality. Perhaps that is why I am suddenly able to see through the flimsy veneer of that false evangelistic optimism that I felt when I heard the things Levi had to say that day. As I reflect on it now, I see that Judaism and Christendom have much deeper problems to face than I could have ever previously suspected! And, by God’s Grace, and the Power of His Holy Spirit, we will have to be empowered and enabled to address, face and somehow outgrow those problems before we can be included in the ultimate crescendo, finale and fulfillment of God’s eternal Plan in the Last Days. I know that at this point of our journey, none of us can even begin to imagine where we’re going to end up with any credible accuracy.

So, the time for Jewish and non-Jewish believers to begin facing this reality is NOW! That’s why I believe the Lord has been so intent on rattling my cage and rousting me out of the life-long stupor that I can now see we have all inherited and into which each one of us was born and raised to believe and accept!

 

Conflicting Directions and Motives

For reasons I suspect many non-Messianic Jewish people, like Levi, and many non-Jewish Christian people like me, are not going to be willing to face, I am beginning to see that as Levi interacted with us, he was operating on two simultaneous levels that go in opposite directions and work against each other! Consciously, he was telling us of his genuine desire to interact with Christians. He was kind, amiable, enjoyable, personable and brilliant in his expositions to our group. And after meeting with the group, he turned to me and invited me to step outside so we could speak in private. So I went out with him; and we continued to chat privately about the matters I had raised. And after a few minutes, he looked into my eyes, and said with solemn intensity: “Of course you know that you will be returning to Israel, don’t you?” That stunned me because he seemed so prophetically intent when he said it. I didn’t know what to make of it or what to say. So I dumbly nodded in the affirmative. And after we finished our conversation, he cordially shook my hand and agreed to join me in an exchange of e-mail correspondence after my return home. And that’s how we left it.

I had no reason to doubt that Levi meant what he said at that time. Perhaps he assumed I wasn’t serious; but I was; I took him at his word. But now I see that there was something else at work that was concealed beneath his surface-level overt actions. Since my return, I’ve emailed him twice. And he has not responded. And so, I looked him up on the Internet. That’s when I discovered that Levi is actually a full-fledged Orthodox rabbi… an anti-missionary rabbi who is quite active in matters that pertain to Orthodox Judaism in Israel. So now I see why he concealed his true identity all the while he was ‘dialoguing’ with us that afternoon.

Prior to this year, I only thought of Jews as ordinary people. I saw no reason to go out of my way to pursue deep relations with any of them. But now, since the Lord has been so blatant in trying to get my attention and redirect my focus, I have become very aware of Jews – in the light of what their Jewishness means to God, and to them – and now – to me! Before I went to Israel, I already knew something about God’s intense, never-ending Covenant Love for His chosen people, and what an awesome ‘End Times’ destiny He has prepared for them… and through them… for the rest of the world. But that level of understanding was theoretical, academic, detached and impersonal. It didn’t require any personal change-response from me. So when this Israeli went so far out of his way to seek us out, I felt excited. It was my first chance ever, to connect at that level with a real live Jewish person… and an Israeli from Jerusalem no less… who was proactively trying to reach out to us!

I assumed that this had to be God’s doing… orchestrating things in preparation for His Last Days Finale! And that’s why, as we ended our private conversation, I naturally suggested to Levi that we stay in touch by email. And he agreed to do it. But now that I am pondering his subsequent silence,. I am also getting in touch with the depths of my naiveté.

So what went wrong? Why the turnaround in Levi’s behavior? Why such warm proactive cordiality and apparent interest, followed by total silence? It’s not that hard to type a few sentences and click ‘send.’ You have to make a concerted effort to ignore two personal e-mails. And if you do it deliberately, you’re giving the sender a wordless message that screams that, appearances to the contrary, as far as you’re concerned, the door to a real relationship was never really open. That’s what makes me suspect that Levi was operating in two contradictory directions at once. And now I’m curious about something else: He was very cordial to us. But I wonder how cordial he would have been had we been Messianic Jews, and not just a bunch of American Gentiles. I suspect that beneath his friendly, polished surface, Levi was concealing, but yet pursuing, a hidden agenda (just as so many of us do). Let me try to explain what I mean by offering two bits of background information that I believe are giving me some deeper insight. Here’s the first one:

 

Two Simultaneous Covenants?

Just after WWI, a Jewish man, named Franz Rosenzweig, came up with what some call “The Dual Covenant Theory.”  Because I’ve been so ignorant and dense in these matters for most of my life, this is really new territory for me. But as I understand it, Rosenzweig said that Jews do not need to repent or seek salvation because they are already one with God, thanks to their Abrahamic Covenant and Mosaic Law. Didn’t God promise to bless any descendant of Abraham that observed the Law? Yes He did (See Deut. 28)

So, according to this theory, God-loving Orthodox Jews are already completely complete, spiritually speaking. But I see serious flaws in this theory. It assumes that most Jews are actually able to keep the Law and have actually been doing it, for centuries! But according to what God says in His Scriptures, nothing could be further from the Truth! (See Isa. 53; 64:4-7; Jer. 31:31-34; Acts 7:51-53; Rom. 2; 7; Heb. 9:21-23)

No fallen flesh, no child of Adam is able to keep this Law and satisfy God’s Perfect Standards! That’s what I see the Bible saying. Therefore, according to the Torah, all of mankind, Jewish and non-Jewish, must have the same redemptive Messianic, Blood Covering that God sent His Living Word, The Passover Lamb of God, to provide, through Israel, for the entire human race, including the Jewish people! (Lev. 16; 17:10-12 Heb. 9:21-23 This is because, in ourselves, we living-dead children of Adam are utterly incapable of saving, justifying or improving our Sin-corrupted, deviant human nature. God has to do it! And that’s why Abraham said to his son Isaac:

Genesis 22:8

“…God will provide for Himself the Lamb for the burnt offering, my son.”

 

The Wall That Separates Jews From Gentiles

So, perhaps because of this Biblically revealed fact, Rosenzweig’s theory goes so far as to allow that the New Covenant of Jesus Christ may be God-given. But if it is, God intends it for Gentiles only! Thus through their respective Covenants with God, Jews and Gentiles can both be saved. Orthodox Jews are already ‘there’ and the Gentiles now have a chance to join in on the ongoing union with God that the Jewish people have always had. And so this theory continues, in a very subtle way, to make sure that the age-old wall that has separated Jews from non-Jews should remain intact. Since neither Jews nor Gentiles need to concern themselves with the salvation of each other, they can proceed along their merry ways… isolated and apart from one another.

But as I said, to accept this notion one must ignore vast portions of the Hebrew Scriptures and dismiss virtually all of the apostolic New Covenant writings. This concept emerges out of the ‘bloodless’ self-justifying rabbinical Talmudic opinions and traditions that the rabbis call ‘The Oral Torah.’ But that is their rabbinical invention which was created centuries after Moses… to replace what the Romans had destroyed when Israel and her temple and sacrificial system had been leveled, and her people dispersed throughout the world, after the second temple destruction (70 CE). The dual covenant idea says that, thanks to the Mosaic Covenant (which, by the way, God clearly said in Jeremiah 31:32 that the Jewish people had broken), today’s Jews need not be evangelized or called to repentance through the Gospel of Christ crucified and resurrected.

Contrary to what Scripture clearly says, Jews like Levi, claim they do not need not join God in the Restored or New Covenant, even though God had promised that He would make that Covenant with Israel! So if Israel didn’t need another Covenant, why would God say He would make this New Covenant with them? Does that sound as if He thinks they don’t need it? Obviously not. So how can the rabbis claim that, if the New Covenant has any validity at all, it applies only to Gentiles? How can it be said truthfully, that Christians need not concern themselves with the salvation of the Jews and that they should mind their own business and live their own lives, and let the Jews live on their respective side of the wall of partition that they continue to insist has to remain intact so the two groups can remain separated?

“So many peoples and mighty nations will come to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem and to entreat the favor of the Lord.’  Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘In those days ten men from all the nations will grasp the garment of a Jew, saying, “Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.”’” (Zechariah 8:22-23. Emphasis added.)

Scripture also insists that there cannot be any Atonement for Sin without the shedding of blood:

“For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood by reason of the life that makes atonement.’” (Leviticus 17:11. Emphasis added.)

“And in the same way he (the High Priest) sprinkled both the tabernacle and all the vessels of the ministry with the blood. And according to the Law, one may almost say, all things are cleansed with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.

“Therefore it was necessary for the copies of the things in the heavens to be cleansed with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.” (Hebrews 9:21-23. Emphasis added.)

So despite what is clearly indicated by their own Scriptures, anti-missionary rabbis want the two groups to remain separated. They insist that, for Christians to pursue Jews with their ‘Gospel’ would be gross ignorance, bad form and a subtle form of anti-Semitism on the part of the Christians! To try to ‘Christianize’ Jews would, in their opinion, cause the Jewish people to disappear! And that would perpetuate the genocidal aims of monsters like Hitler, and the Holocaust that he unleashed against God’s chosen people!

And when Pre-Tribulation Rapture Christians accept this two covenants theory, they deduce further, that not only do they need not concern themselves with evangelizing Jewish people, but in fact, when the tribulation of the Last Days arrives, they won’t even be here! God will very conveniently ‘rapture’ all true Christians out of this world, before the Last Days troubles begin! Thus they believe that the Jews will be left to face what’s coming, and take the full brunt of it, along with the pagan unbelieving Gentiles!

But all of this ignores the fact that in Ephesians 2:11-14, God revealed through Paul that when our Messiah died on the Cross, He destroyed the ‘wall of division’ that always existed between Jews and Gentiles in the past! And so, theories like Rosenzweig’s, give justification for that wall of partition to be rebuilt and maintained intact! And that is exactly what has happened! The wall that our Messiah died to destroy, has been rebuilt by Scripture-ignoring Jews and Christians, working together to make sure the two groups remain separated and never come together under the Headship of their common Messiah, the Living Word of God!

Levi obviously operates out of that ‘two covenants’ paradigm. He and his colleagues assume that they’re righteous before God. Thus they see no personal need for Christ or His Blood Atonement because they’re Jews, and they love the Torah God gave them, and their hearts remain tender and loving toward Him. So, they ask, how could anyone dare to say that what they offer to God would not be sufficient? To their way of thinking, each group has its respective covenant with God, and Gentiles need not become Jews, nor do Jews need to become Christians. So Levi can ‘live and let live.’ He can dialogue with us Gentiles from a safe distance, from his side of the wall, which, before my trip to Israel, I was still not able to see. I didn’t see it because interacting with Jews never mattered to me before. And because it didn’t matter to me, I too was unwittingly helping to maintain that rebuilt wall! That’s how ‘mindless’ and ‘clueless’ I had been all of my previous years, even though I believed I was ‘walking with God!

 

That Demonic Wall and Why it Must Come Down

But if Christ really is all that He claims to be, He really did destroy the wall of partition! And His Father must have had a vitally important reason for sending Him to  do that! And that is why Christians had better learn to care about this, and live according to this New Covenant Reality that God sent our Messiah to create and put into place! We must understand what it means and what it requires of us as God’s Plan advances to its Ultimate Fulfillment! That two-covenant theory, that many non-Jewish Christians embrace, is a demonic trap! The true Gospel reveals that the Messianic Jews and those non-Jewish believers who embrace Yeshua as Israel’s Messiah are now one – in Him! This is not something we have to try to make happen. IT HAPPENED! IT IS A FACT!

But Rosenzweig’s theory blinds Jews to Christ’s true identity and His absolutely essential Blood Atonement and Salvation. And it blinds Christians to the fact that they must be grafted onto God’s Abrahamic Olive Tree so that they can become part of the New Covenant that God made with Israel! I’m emphasizing this because God did not make the New Covenant with Gentile Christians. He made it with the very same people He chose in the first place, the people that broke the Mosaic Covenant of Sinai – the Children of Israel! He did not replace them with a second Gentile substitute Covenant Spouse! And so, the non-Jewish Church cannot presume that she has taken Israel’s place as the ‘Apple of God’s Eye’! Nothing will ever take Israel’s place in the sight of God – exactly as she is revealed to be in the Scriptures! To say otherwise would be to accuse God of being a Covenant violator!

Jeremiah 31:31-33

“‘Behold, days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,’ declares the Lord. ‘But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,’ declares the Lord, ‘I will put My Law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people!’” (Emphasis added.)

God requires the two groups to acknowledge what His Living Word made flesh has done, and admit that He has done everything necessary for the two groups to finally become one! He is not going to change this, nor will He ever go back on His Word! Therefore that means that both groups are going to have to change radically, in order to become aligned properly with where God intends to take them both! We must all change and we must accept and embrace one another and learn to live out the spiritual, Christ-created Oneness that God has provided and commissioned for us both! But the two-covenant theory dupes unbelieving Jews into either viewing Yeshua as a demonic deceiver at worst or, at best, as an unnecessary irrelevance. Thus, in the minds and hearts of Jews and Gentiles who take this bait – that damnable wall is allowed to remain as thick and impenetrable as ever. And according to Biblical revelation, that violates God’s will and brushes aside the fulfillment of His heart’s desire and His ultimate plans! How can we Christians ignore this? And how can Israel be a ‘Light to the Gentiles’ as long as she continues to keep hiding behind her side of that wall?

“But now, in Christ Jesus, you (Gentiles) who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our Peace (Shalom), who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, by abolishing in His flesh the enmity, which is the Law of commandments contained in ordinances, so that IN HIMSELF He might make the two into One New Man, thus establishing Peace…” (Ephesians 2:13-15 Amplification and emphasis added.)

 

An Ancient Warning, Concealed beneath Modern PR Trappings

Why do people like Levi maintain the wall? Why did the Orthodox Jews we saw on the plane and encountered in the hotel hallways and dining rooms in Jerusalem during the Sabbath always act as if we Gentiles didn’t even exist? I couldn’t believe what I was seeing! It was like being in a surrealistic movie entitled ‘The Invasion of the Invisible Gentiles.’ The Orthodox Jews on our flight gave every impression that they were convinced that they were the only people on that jam-packed plane! And those we encountered in our hotel during the Sabbath did the very same thing! Why? Why did they insist on looking right through and past, all the Gentiles who were not part of their group – as if we did not exist and were not even present? That’s not an easy thing to do. It takes tremendous focus, concentration and discipline. Imagine going out in public with a group of your close cronies and trying to give the impression to every ‘outsider’ your group encounters that you are all convinced that he or she is not there. Imagine doing it in a convincing manner, and you’ll see what I mean. It would take great effort, discipline and practice to pull that off. I asked Levi about it, and this is what he told us:

“Jews act that way because they don’t trust anybody!”

And, now that I reflect on it, in telling us that, I believe Levi was inadvertently explaining his own subsequent behavior. In a convoluted way, by ignoring my emails, he was doing the very same thing, acting as if I do not exist! He said he wanted to connect with Christians, while at the same time remaining firmly entrenched within a complacent bubble of religious self-righteous ‘otherness.’ Yes, he made eye contact and responded to our questions and interacted with us for one afternoon. And yes, he eagerly agreed to continue to correspond with me by email… but at the same time, with tremendous tact and subtle diplomacy, he was taking great pains to open our eyes to something he had to make us understand. Without ever saying anything explicitly, Levi was shining a beam of embedded implication, deduction and innuendo upon the existence of that enormous invisible ‘wall of separation’ that he fully endorses and embraces. By his subtle behavior, he was admitting that he wants the wall to be maintained in tip-top condition in the minds, hearts and agendas of all true Jews, (among whom he was including himself).

Therefore, for that one afternoon, he allowed us to enter into his ‘Court of the Gentiles.’ And, very kindly and tacitly he tried to make us aware of the ominous warnings above the entrance to what lay beyond, in the Court on the other side of the line that is reserved only for ‘true, believing Jews.’

“Gentiles, stop right here! Do not, under any circumstances, dare to cross this line and invade the ‘Court of the Orthodox Jews!’ If you cross this line, you do so at your own risk!”

We were being given superbly diplomatic notice that no Gentile Christians and their arsenal of ‘cute’ evangelistic schemes and plans would ever be permitted beyond that point. Levi was proclaiming his insistence that spiritually, he and his fellow Orthodox Jews are perfectly okay just the way they are. He used a sprinkling of carefully selected Scripture texts and Talmudic observations to back his position. He was so self-assured that he could even afford to be kind, loving and patient with clueless Gentiles who have no way of understanding such spiritually profound matters. To his way of thinking, he appreciates that many Americans are Israel’s allies. And Israel needs all the help she can get! So it’s okay for us to be as ignorant and air-headed as we are, and do as we please. We can even have our Covenant with God through our Jesus, if we wish. And if it works, more power to us! But he was letting us know at the same time, that religious Jews needn’t bother with such banal considerations since they already enjoy God’s eternal embrace in their ‘For Jews Only’ section of the Holy of holies. He was emphasizing that, when all is said and done, he has the real deal – the original Mosaic Covenant given directly, unmistakably, exclusively and eternally to Jews by Almighty God Himself. And, since God got it right the first time, what they have is perfect and complete and needs nothing from Christianity to legitimize or improve or complete it!

So… that’s why I wonder what Levi really thinks of Messianic Jews! He said he wanted to dialogue with ‘Christians.’ But would he be as amiable with ‘Jewish followers of Yeshua, as he was with us Gentiles? I hardly think so. If I’m right, then from my perspective, Levi was benignly patronizing and lecturing us ‘ignorant’ Gentiles in a genteel attempt to ‘educate’ and warn us to ‘back off’ and not overstep our bounds with his people by indulging in that ignorant, misplaced evangelistic zeal that oozes out of what he perceives as our spiritual blindness and immaturity. He was willing to dialogue with us in the role of ‘security guard’ only – to make sure we kept our proper place and did not invade the sacred space that is reserved only for God’s Jewish chosen people.

Of course some dialogue and interaction is better than nothing. And I was deeply touched by Levi’s effort to reach out to us. That’s what threw me for such an optimistic loop in the first place. We hadn’t sought him. He aggressively came after us, making it a point to tell our tour leader to get us to meet him at a specific time and place. That was extraordinary to my way of seeing things. And that’s why I suspect that, behind the scenes, the Holy Spirit has a lot to do with what Levi is feeling about reaching out to us and caring to do it, despite what he thinks and intends from within his own conscious and subconscious agendas. God’s purpose for this goes much deeper and farther than anything Levi or the rest of us could ever imagine at this point of our journey!

When Levi asked our group if we had any questions, I mentioned that amazing demonstration of apparent rudeness exhibited by the Orthodox Jews that shared our plane and those who converged on our hotel to observe the ‘Shabbat’ (Sabbath). I described what I saw to Levi and pointedly asked him about that behavior and what was behind it. He sighed and looked to heaven saying, ‘I know, I know.’  Then he said, “They act that way because Jews don’t trust ANYBODY, unless they really, really, REALLY get to know you! Because of what they’ve been through, they think act, and react like abused, wounded children. So, living in that ‘bubble’ has become a means of protection and a way of life, for many of them.”

 

The Unbelievable Thickness of ‘The Wall’

I’ve been thinking a lot about Levi’s explanation since I heard him give it. Wow! What a revelation about me that has turned out to be! As soon as he said that, the Holy Spirit began to grab me by the lapels and captivate my attention! Before, I never cared in the least about what Jews think, or how they act. I could shed a tear or two watching Holocaust movies, and then go on about my busy-ness. But that’s as far as it went. That goes to show how thick that wall really is! And it also means that, since I didn’t really care about what they think, I didn’t really care about them, or how they feel, or what terror and suffering and desolation they’ve had to endure, and what damage has been done to their personal and collective soul… to their Jewish minds, hearts, paradigms and lives! So, for the first time in my life, I realize just how profound my emotional and personal disconnection from my Heavenly Father’s priorities have been! I’ve habitually disregarded God’s New Covenant revelations and commands and have done my unwitting bit to maintain my side of The Wall intact, by ignoring and working around God’s chosen people… even though God said the wall that keeps us separated should no longer be there! So now I had my answer:

Jewish people act the way they do toward me, because that’s how I’ve always acted toward them!

Matthew 25:44-46

“Then they themselves also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not take care of You?’ Then He will answer them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’ These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

That’s right, I was just as guilty of looking right through and past them, as if they don’t exist, as those Jews on the plane and in the hotel had been toward me! How could Jews not notice and feel the effects of seeing people like me, consciously or unconsciously, operating in our Gentilized ‘Christian World’, living, acting and interacting as if THEY ARE NOT HERE, even as they continue to live, operate and suffer all around us? But I discovered more! I hadn’t been doing that only to Jewish people. I was doing it to most people! Many of us Gentile Christians even do that to our own spouses, children and family members! And, we also do it to our fellow non-Jewish believers who do not think or operate or worship the way we think they should. So it’s not surprising that, for the most part, we would even ignore and exclude our own fellow believing, Messianic Jewish brethren! Is this not true? Is this not what we have been doing for centuries? Of course we have. We even do it to our own kind, picking and choosing which ‘Christians’ are good enough, and which ones are not worthy of our attention and ‘fellowship’.

So, after waiting for two thousand years, I suppose Jewry got tired and gave up hoping that we’d ever bring ourselves to notice, much less care for, accept and include them as our own. They got busy learning how to live alone in the ghettoes they became so accustomed to inhabiting. And they developed ways that corresponded to ours, thus, just as we do to them, they ignore us and maintain their side of The Wall. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Aha…I finally saw it! I finally bumped into that Wall, as soon as I realized that… I AM the Wall!

I got back in Jerusalem, what I’d been sending out from America! I’ve gone all my life, blithely pursuing my own self-centered Gentile agenda and ‘minding my own Gentile business’ in everything I’ve done. And since I do that even to family members, neighbors and fellow Christians, and other Gentiles that are different from me in culture, language, skin tone and traditions, I thought nothing of doing that to Jewish people who always tend to keep to themselves. Never did it dawn on me that I was giving to them the very same message that those Jews on the plane and in the hotel, and even dear, lovable Levi, were reflecting back to me! What a message that is to give to a fellow human being:

You Do Not Exist. You Are Not Here. This Is My World and You Have No Part In It!

But now I have to admit what I’ve been doing. I am forced to ponder these things and admit that I’ve been acting like a blind fool. I’ve indulged in relational dynamics that I had never even been aware of throughout my entire life! They were right under my nose all the time! And I had been helping to create and maintain them. But I didn’t have a clue I was doing it, and could not have cared less! And now this sudden realization is utterly overwhelming. And it’s tearing me up inside. God is suddenly relentlessly ‘dialing my number’ and He keeps saying over and over:

“Can You Hear Me Now?”

He is forcing me to wake up to just how desperately He loves and grieves over His beloved Covenant people and how, according to Romans 9, 10, 11 and 12, and Ephesians 2, they… and we Gentile believers in Yeshua… are destined and commanded by God to fit into His End Times Plan—AS ONE! Levi said, “Jews don’t trust anybody!” Was that true? That statement really jarred me, especially because he added, ‘unless they really, really, REALLY get to know you!’ Now that I remember that, I also remember that I felt jolts of guilt and remorse when he said it. How could they have ever gotten close enough to even know my name, much less my heart? What chance had I ever given them to know me? Now, for the first time in my life, I can see my side of ‘The Wall’ and how thick and impenetrable it really is. And I wonder, with fear and trepidation, how many other walls like that have I created and maintained? To how many other people of various ‘kinds’ have I been giving that, ‘YOU DO NOT EXIST’ treatment? And how much of my Lord and Master is in any of that, regardless of who it is that I treat in such a manner?

Many of my Gentile co-believers will instantly assume: “Certainly that Jewish mistrust couldn’t apply to us wonderful, God-loving American Christians, could it? After all, we love Israel, and the Lord destroyed that wall of separation! Paul tells us so. So how could that wall still exist in the minds, hearts, attitude and lifestyles of the Jews? What is their problem?”  Talk about being clueless! The Jewish people don’t even trust Jesus or Paul, so how could they bring themselves to begin to trust us, who claim to be their followers, especially when we continually insist on living apart from them on the opposite side of that wall?

So now that I look back on it, Levi was explaining the behavior of his brethren as if personally, he were different. His manner conveyed a ‘that’s how the other Jewish people are, but as you can see, that doesn’t apply to me. Wasn’t I the one that reached out to you to initiate this dialogue?’ That was the implication. But now that the ‘dialogue’ that he initiated and controlled and orchestrated is over, and I’m back home, Levi is giving me another message. He uses another form of rigid orchestration and tight control that is as thick as that Wall – he ignores my e-mails!  A silent message screams at me from the depths of his Jewish heart. From his side of The Wall, he’s telling me: “I DON’T TRUST YOU EITHER, SO STAY AWAY AND LEAVE ME ALONE!”

“Can YOU Hear ME NOW?”

Levi was at least willing to dialogue and interact at a superficial, highly controlled level. But that was it. He’s not about to open up his heart in personal self-revelation and intimate confidence with a Gentile Christian that he doesn’t know from Adam. Why should he? He knows that if he were to open the door of his heart to a Gentile ‘Bible Thumper,’ sooner or later, my true, inevitable evangelistic agenda would ooze out and I’d attempt to smuggle a bomb containing Christian evangelistic explosives into his family’s heart and soul! And for the life of me, knowing that this is how he sees the situation, I cannot blame him. He has every right to ignore my overture, because the truth is, he is right! He has no reason whatever to trust the likes of me any more than he would trust a suspicious-looking Palestinian, wearing a backpack, at an Israeli border checkpoint! He knows that Christ is my Life and my Agenda! And he’s not at all in the market at this time for what he thinks he knows about what I intend to present to him. So unless God intervenes, personally and directly, why would he ever want to pursue and develop an authentic relationship with me?

But here’s the heart of the matter: Levi is absolutely convinced that we Gentile Christians and our Messianic counterparts have nothing that is real or God-given to teach or share with him and his Orthodox brothers. And, of course, that is where I believe he is dead wrong! Nevertheless, there’s another element that clouds the issue and acts like a veil that is forever before his eyes – in the eyes of many Jews, people like me represent the centuries-long agony that persecuting Christians from the past, and also from the present, have inflicted upon them! Levi and his brethren are not about to trust that! That’s why he gave us that contradictory, crazy-making, codependent-like double message, ‘I really, really want to connect with you, but stay away!’

That turn of events has caused me to do a lot of soul-searching. It has finally dawned on me that Levi’s warm, friendly, cordial façade conceals the fact that he doesn’t trust us either. And because he doesn’t trust us, he can’t accept the One we proclaim! So now, in his own abuse victim way, he’s looking right through and past me, just the way the other Jews on the plane and in the hotel did: “The show is over. Get back to Reality and assume your normal position. You’re home now, so get back on your own side of THE WALL and leave me, and my people, alone! To each of us, the other doesn’t really exist!”

On the plane and in the hotel, and even now, I am looking at a ‘mirror image’ of myself, the reflection of my past behavior. I got a major dose of my own medicine. God is giving me a wake-up call. I can hear Him whispering in my heart, “How do you like it? Do you like how that feels?” I’m seeing a lot of my religious ugliness in this new “Jewish Mirror.” For the first time, I can see it for what it really is. And I see something else. I see myself in what Levi is doing with Gentile Christians! Because of some gut-wrenching personal experience of my own, I see him doing what I once did; only I did it at a much cruder, more primitive level than Levi does it! He’s much more polished, bright, erudite and personable than I. But I recognize the ‘hidden agenda’ similarities in the dynamics of what he’s doing. In his way, he’s doing things that I once did in my way, to and with the very same kind of Gentile Christians that Levi seeks to ‘dialogue’ with these days… while at the same time, making sure they stay on their side of The Wall!

 

My Own Double Agenda

Now I can introduce my second bit of background information:

When I was in my mid-20’s I went through the agony of leaving my position as a newly ordained Catholic priest. I left that and also my place as a member of the religious order of which I had become a part. I had pursued that course since I left home after eighth grade to begin my seminary training. I went through the training, took my perpetual vows, and had already been ordained to the priesthood. But then suddenly, I fell into a sudden crisis of faith that threw me into a tailspin. It was so severe that I felt compelled to leave in 1966. From my perspective, it was the ultimate disaster. And to those that knew me, I was a shocking, dismal failure. I had accomplished all of that by the time I reached my mid-twenties, and suddenly, inexplicably, I poured all of it down the drain!

Needless to say, that experience was inexpressibly painful and gut-wrenchingly traumatic to me and those closest to me. And just prior to my departure, I went through a weeklong series of  excruciating dealings with the Provincial Superior of my province. I was asked to confer with him in his office at the regional headquarters and I readily agreed that such a meeting was necessary. And throughout the meetings we held each day of that week,  he, along with his top advisor who sat next to him during each session, did his level best to try to get me to change my mind.

I was not open to his suggestions. But I did want to depart in a way that would do everything ‘by the book.’ I asked him to help me request the proper permission from Rome. My hope was to receive a formal dispensation from my religious vows and to be allowed to leave the clerical state and return to the lay state. In that way, I could depart honorably and remain a Catholic in good standing. In that case I would be free to marry later on. But my superior adamantly refused to go along with that idea. He was not at all open to negotiating in that direction. I believe that one major reason for that was that, over the years, I had come to be regarded by many in the order who knew me, and by many of my peers in the seminary, as a ‘good example’, a sort of ‘bright light’ model of the way priests and members of the order ought to turn out. It was because of the future promise that many saw in me, that my superiors were mystified, hurt, dismayed and disappointed at my sudden tailspin. (And so was I, for that matter. But that is what happened.)

So my superiors were desperate to avoid the damaging fallout that would surely take place if I left. Ostensibly they met with me to reassure me that they wanted to do whatever it took to help me find my true place and regain my peace of mind. But they too had a hidden agenda. They were determined to do whatever it took to make me stay where I was, and continue to do what I had vowed to do, for their own self-serving purposes. And although I readily admitted that I truly had promised to live as a priest and a member of the order to which we belonged, my situation and orientation had changed drastically. I tried to explain that I had lost my faith in what they believed and what I had once believed. I told them that I could no longer function in that capacity with integrity. But they refused to believe that. Nevertheless, it was true.

 

Disillusionment

I had recently begun to study Scripture. (Strange as it may seem, students in that system didn’t start any formal Scripture study whatsoever until the beginning of their eleventh year of seminary training!) But within a year after beginning to delve into the Bible, I developed a plague of doubts and fell into a state of deep disillusionment. As a result, some very serious erosion began to eat away at the very foundations of the faith I had placed in that religious organization and the system of which I had become so much a part. Suddenly all of the ‘footings’ that were holding up my entire life, literally crumbled and collapsed beneath me. My heart was no longer in what I had just recently committed myself to do! I knew I wouldn’t be able to follow through in it with integrity. That’s why I felt compelled to ‘get off the train as soon as possible’ so to speak. So I asked my superiors to let me leave in the proper way and informed them that since I no longer had cause to live a celibate life that I intended to get married. In reply, they insisted that I had serious mental and moral problems. And for that reason, they refused to help me make connections with the appropriate church bureaucracy in Rome. I believed they were intent on avoiding the disastrous fallout they knew would certainly take place among my peers and the younger brethren that were behind me in the various stages of seminary training… if one of their paragons were to question the faith, leave the order and the priesthood… and get married!

Driven by that fear, they did everything in their power to pressure me to stay. It soon became obvious that they weren’t concerned for me and for my future wellbeing. They were focusing on maintaining damage control at any cost! But I too was trying to prevent damage… the damage I would do if I stayed in and could no longer promote what the order expected me to promote! And so we were at an impasse. And the effort of my major superior to manipulate, threaten and control me had a counter-productive effect. It pushed me all the way over the edge of unbelief… and right out the door.

When he realized that his weeklong campaign to persuade me to stay had failed, the superior pulled out his ultimate ‘doomsday weapon.’ He opened a desk drawer and took out an official document that Catholic Canon Law calls a ‘Formal Obedience.’ He handed it to me. That document gave him authority to formally impose a spiritually binding command on me by virtue of the vow of perpetual obedience I had taken as a member of his religious order. I had to obey whatever the document said, under pain of mortal sin and excommunication from the Church. So, the time for surface niceties was over. He pulled out his ‘spiritual cannon’ and aimed it at me, hoping to scare me into staying (whether I believed in what I was doing or not).

That’s when I realized he had never been dealing in good faith. That document had already been completely filled out. All it lacked was his finalizing signature! So all that time he had it primed, loaded and ready to be pulled out of the desk drawer as a last resort! They had obviously been hoping it wouldn’t come to this, but they were obviously prepared to do whatever it took to make sure the matter ended the way they had already determined it had to be. That document painted me into a corner. The only honorable choice open now was to allow them to force me to remain – thanks to that supposedly Divine mandate this major superior had just imposed on me. But by this time, far too much relational damage had been done. The thought of staying in such a hostile, controlling environment on those terms would have been like agreeing to a life sentence in an institution for the insane, with no hope of release. I knew that if I stayed, I would really snap and go crazy. But on the other hand, if I left, I’d commit a mortal sin against the Christian God and would be automatically excommunicated from the Church. My family and friends would be devastated and publicly disgraced. And if I died in that disobedient, unrepentant state, then, according to the faith in which I could no longer trust, God would send me straight to Hell! So either way, regardless of whether I stayed or left, I would be damned.

So I decided to follow my heart, since I believed that’s what God, if there really was a God, would judge. Even if I had stayed and gone through the motions, my heart would have been in total rebellion. The superiors might have been satisfied. But God would have really had grounds to send me to Hell for such hypocrisy and deceit! It was a lose-lose situation. So I left that piece of paper on his desk, turned around, and left my past for good. And it has proven to be a decision that I have never regretted… not even for one second… over the intervening decades.

But, as I was walking out of that office for the last time, the superior called my name. I looked back at him and that’s when he pulled the lanyard of his cannon. He pointed his finger at my face and said, “You are a JUDAS!” Then he added: “You are going to inflict an early death on your parents, and thousands of people are going to go to Hell because of your betrayal of God and the Church and your priestly calling!… And if you ever do get married, it won’t even last five years!” And his final blow was: “And if you should ever came to your senses, and realize what you’ve done by walking out on Jesus Christ, you too will probably commit suicide!”

That was the last thing he said to me that day. At that moment, I felt so stunned, numb and punchy that I believed I was too far-gone to even care. But I was wrong. After a few months, I found out just how deeply his curse-like projectile had embedded itself into my heart. It was as if he had downloaded a demonic virus that invaded and contaminated my mental and neurological ‘hard drive.’ For years afterward, the fallout of that curse, twisted and contaminated my entire existence with toxic, soul murdering effect. I can’t help but wonder how much of Christ was actually in that interchange and whether that man was acting under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, or whether he was driven by some other, controlling, inquisitorial religious spirit that I’m sure he would have never admitted to having.

At any rate, that curse began to eat away at my soul and corrode my heart in a most frightening and mystifying way that continued for the next fifteen years. A few months after my departure, I began to experience a recurring nightmare that would plague me anywhere from one to five times a week. It was always the same dream, an endless, ‘You are a Judas! You betrayed and walked out on God, and you’ll surely go to Hell for it’ kind of vicious cycle.

During waking hours, I tried to disconnect from the desolation I felt by various numb-out methods. But once I fell asleep, I couldn’t control it. That damning, heart-shredding endless loop of hopelessness and despair would ooze up from my depths. After about a year, I began to develop agoraphobic symptoms. And, sometimes, I’d feel suicidal. At those times I’d gulp down several glasses of whiskey to knock myself out. And I used other fast, readily available ways to temporarily disconnect my brain from the unbearable desolation. It was the same dream over and over. And the thought of being a Judas, with no hope of ever being accepted or loved again by God in this life, or the one to come, was more than I could bear. It generated a sense of despair and desolation that I could never verbally describe. So, in an attempt to retain at least a semblance of dignity and hope, I developed a massive denial system and some numb-out techniques in hopes of creating my own alternate reality system to ‘justify’ my devastating decision.

So now… as I ponder what I saw Levi doing in Jerusalem… I see similarities between what he and the other anti-missionary rabbis have been doing in relation to Yeshua and the Gospel of Salvation for centuries, and what I began to do in those days when I was struggling with the demons in my soul. We are both, in our own ways, victims of the same system! And we developed our own ways of trying to survive after what happened to us. When they deal with Christians… they remember all the things that happened in the past, the blood libels, the Inquisition with its torture and gruesome executions, the expulsions and confiscations of Jewish properties, the pogroms, and being forced to live in squalid ghettoes, etc. etc..

The Jewish people remember that much of that was done to them by Christians who forced their ancestors to renounce their faith and undergo forced baptism rituals under pain of torture, imprisonment and even death. It was Christians that took Jewish properties from their owners and used them for themselves. It was Christians that expelled entire Jewish communities from their homes and from the countries in which they had lived for centuries. It was Christians that had done those things… in the name of their ‘Jesus’. And so now, although such blatant persecution may not be actively pursued at this time, people Like Levi wrestle with how they should deal with ‘Christians’… peacefully… and with as much amity as possible… but yet, be able to keep a safe distance.

 

How Can You Make Jesus Go Away?

But Levi is caught up in his own equally enormous and controlling religious system! His Judaism has a history that is just as enormous and traditional and, very often, as controlling as the system I left! And I’m beginning to see that he would take a stance that was similar to that of my religious superior, toward any Jew who would decide to believe, embrace and follow Yeshua as his or her Messiah! He too is intent on surviving and maintaining ‘damage control.’ He too strives to control the minds and thoughts of the people with whom he does not agree. So… in that sense… we were both in the same boat!

But also, like me, no matter what Levi says or does, he’ll never be able to make the resurrected Yeshua go away! No matter how suave, erudite and sophisticated Levi is, he will never succeed in erasing God’s Living Word made flesh from his consciousness. Yeshua will not go away; He is here to stay! He’s real and He’s truly risen from the dead… and He has been given ALL AUTHORITY in Heaven and on Earth by His Heavenly Father! So… He’s right here, right now, with all of us… whether anybody likes it or not!

As I reflect on what Levi’s hidden agenda must be, I can see even more. I can sense that the same grim religious determination and drive to survive that is in him, is something that at one time was also driving me! Levi tries to protect and maintain his religious system the way my former religious superior tried to protect and maintain his! But I did the same thing to maintain my anti-religion system! To justify the decision I had made, I lumped all Christians together and kept trying to ‘build a case’ against them by reading anti-Christian books and dabbling with Zen Buddhism, martial arts and other New Age, non-Christian versions of ‘spirituality.’ I tried to find errors and inconsistencies in the Bible to disprove Christian legitimacy, as I understood it. And whenever evangelistic-minded Christians would knock at my door to ‘save me,’ I was filled with resentment at their presumptive arrogance. They didn’t know me from Adam, nor did they care to. If I allowed it, they’d barge in and begin messing with my head, according to their peculiar, preset denominational strategies. They intended to pounce on me (as I was seeing it) just like my former religious superiors had done – to convince me of their agenda – not out of any personal concern for me, but to accomplish their own predetermined, desperation-driven religious agendas. I’m sure that’s also how Levi perceives the Christians that come looking for him, trying to get him to change his mind.

But after I left the priesthood, I was no different. Just as many Jews have done, I created and maintained a wall of my own… to protect the open, bleeding, agony-causing wounds that were festering in my tortured, mangled soul. I felt justified in doing whatever it took to protect myself. I would mess with the heads of the people who came after me before they could mess with mine. Levi confided to us that he experiences many evangelistic Christian initiatives on the part of people that are intent on trying to get him ‘saved’.  They hand him all kinds of books, pamphlets and tracts with a myriad of denominational slants. That’s probably what prompted him to begin thinking of beating them to the punch in the first place. But he is suave; he doesn’t argue or attack. He told us that he reads everything Christians give him! That of course was his unspoken way of letting us know how well informed and prepared he is to deal with every possible denominational slant, approach and theology. He was telling us not to even think of moving in the direction of trying to get him to change over to our way of thinking and believing. He let us know that he’ll never go there, and nothing we might try to do or say will be able to take him by surprise.

That is how he yanks Christians off of their familiar territory, and onto his. He does most of the talking and follows his predetermined hidden agenda, which has already been decided upon in advance. Thus he amiably protects and maintains his side of The Wall, and any evangelistic thrusts that Christians may be plotting to send in his direction are thus effectively nipped in the bud.

So he’s not interested in learning anything new or in humbling himself before Almighty God in a willingness to leave his comfort zone and follow God into the Great Unknown. He’s intent on protecting and maintaining his religious traditions and Judaism’s status quo… and surviving as a Jew, as he and his fellow modern Orthodox believers understand what ‘Jewishness’ is. And they do all of that … from the perceived safety provided from their Jewish side of The Wall! So… many from among the two groups, Jews and Christians, are doing exactly the same thing. They are mirroring each other, from their own respective sides of that Wall.

 

A Hellenized View of Christ

When I was doing what Levi is doing, I perceived that the aggressive, controlling evangelicals coming after me didn’t give a fig about me personally. So, when they rang my doorbell, I’d invite them in like Levi does, and would feign interest in what they had to say. Then I’d lead them into my pre-set firing range. And when they entered my ‘killing zone’ and I had them centered in my ‘crosshairs’ I’d ‘amicably’ blow holes in their offerings, and ask innocent-sounding questions about the Bible that I knew they wouldn’t be able to answer. I was cold blooded in my aim to befuddle them so they’d be forced to leave with their tails between their legs. I wasn’t seeking Truth, nor did I care about them. I was grinding a huge axe and trying to erect an impassable wall to hold them at bay. I clawed at their faith so they’d leave me alone and never come back. And when they did, my desolation would abate for a short while and I’d feel justified and vindicated… until the next time that demonic nightmare reappeared and the agony started all over again. So now I wonder what kind of nightmares the Presence of the risen Yeshua causes Levi and the other anti-missionary rabbis to have! Is the thought of Him, and what they’ve done to Him haunting them… the way it once haunted me?

Many Christians sincerely do their best to present the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And many of the people they are trying to ‘save’ will, in their ignorance, naively assume that the ‘testimonies’ these Christians are giving are exact, accurate representations of the Christ they claim to represent. But that can be a serious error! The trouble is that many Christians focus only on their own viewpoints and inherited backgrounds and personal good intentions. But they fail to take into account that, historically, their various preferred sectarian understandings of the Gospel might have very possibly become seriously skewed and flawed by previous generations! I say that because many of the commonly held modern views they embrace have, in the distant past, been blatantly uprooted from their Biblical underpinnings. They have been ‘Hellenized’ and greatly distorted over the centuries. They don’t realize how far away from the original Biblical/Israelite roots and footings of the Faith many of their revered, very influential, non-Jewish spiritual forefathers (‘Fathers of the Church’ and ‘Reformers of the Church’) had actually strayed! Nevertheless, if you should dig into what actually happened historically, you will see that this is precisely what took place, thanks to influential anti-Jewish leaders like Augustine, John Chrysostom, the emperor Constantine, and chroniclers like Eusebius. A huge derailment took place centuries ago, thanks to the rebuilding of that Wall of Separation!

Thus their influence, and that of their successors, who also added alien things to the mix, are embedded within many ‘contaminated’ modern understandings and versions of the ‘Christian Jesus.’ They present an image of the Lord that is a totally Jew-less, non-Biblical, Gentilized presentation of a ‘Christ’ that is a disfiguration of Israel’s Messiah, as He was originally revealed in Israel’s God-given Scriptures! And thus He is utterly unrecognizable and totally unacceptable to most of His fellow Israelites! (And, as if that weren’t bad enough… I ask you to examine what God Himself told Israel to do in Deuteronomy 13, when future teachings they encountered would conflict with what He had given to them through Moses!)

So, it seems obvious that most modern day Christians are not at all aware of these issues; or else, they do not remember or take them into account. So they act as if the gruesome reality of all of the monstrous persecutions that earlier generations within Christendom have inflicted on the Jewish people throughout history do not exist. But beloved, as long as we remain willingly blind to this, we remain historically clueless. Nor will we realize that, to most Jews, the evangelizing Christians standing before them represent a gross deviation from their Scriptures… as they have come to understand them. Christians that appear before them now, to their minds, are dragging behind them all of that bloody historical ‘baggage’ left behind by former generations of Christians. And as long as we fail to take these things seriously into account, we’ll fail to realize and admit that a great deal of the historical persecution and bloodshed inflicted on the Jews was done by so-called ‘Christians’, in the name of the ‘Gentilized’ Christian versions of that Israel-forsaking god that so many modern ‘believers’ continue to proclaim! And that is why so many modern individual testimonies of Jesus become lost in the maelstrom of that historical unscriptural corporate error, abuse and bloodshed… and all of the division, confusion, strife, callousness and resentment that past events generated between the two groups throughout the past two millennia! So now I understand some of what Levi was saying, when he told us:

“Jews act that way because they don’t trust ANYBODY!”

In addition to this, many individual evangelical presentations emerge from soulish initiatives, rather than by the Power and Direction of the Holy Spirit. In that case, they are not true, valid, God-endorsed representations of the Living Person – Yeshua, the Messiah. They are soul-driven, manipulative, sectarian ploys generated by well-meaning, impersonal, Hellenized evangelistic programs. But much of that is nothing more than ‘religious flesh!’ When the Holy Spirit actually commissions and empowers people to reveal the Message contained and fulfilled in and by God’s Living Word, His beloved Son, it matches perfectly everything that has already been embedded within God’s written Word! Thus it is a truly authentic, God-given revelation of His real, living Messiah, imparted and validated by the Spirit of God! But if it’s just a twisted version of God’s Truth… it is powerless because it is mere religious flesh. And what comes through will be a grotesque caricature that the original Jewish first century apostles of Yeshua would not have been able to recognize!

During my fifteen year ‘Judas Period’ I wasn’t seriously striving to serve God! I wasn’t trying to be cool, or nice, or impressive because of my presumed erudition. What I was really doing was… desperately trying to survive! The fear and shame and desolation I couldn’t stop feeling drove me to try to dismantle all the different, seemingly contradictory ‘Christ presentations’ that came at me from all those different denominational directions. I was trying to avoid having to feel the still open, festering, inner lacerations of profound Judas-level guilt, shame and condemnation that I couldn’t manage or escape! So I did whatever I could to control my experiences and interactions so that I could prevent any new and deeper irritation of the wounds in my soul from taking place. The Messiah I had recently begun to see in the Scriptures did not at all coincide with what I had experienced in my seminary experience or in my religious superior’s office. That poor man’s ‘canned’ religious representation of ‘Jesus’ made the Lord out to be grotesquely abusive and controlling! If that was what really came to us from God, then, I felt I had no choice but to jump off of that speeding train as soon as possible! At that time, I was not equipped to know what to do about the discrepancies I was seeing. So all I could think of doing was to shut down and say: “Count me out!” And that is why I left. I did it before I did any more damage to people that looked up to me, and to people that I truly loved and cared about. And I did it primarily, to try to prevent any more damage from being done to me!

So my reactions to ‘Jesus’ and ‘the Gospel’, at that time, were generated and driven by my toxic levels of shame and paranoia, and the fear those things generated in me and drove me to obsess over my own need for self-preservation! I had become utterly convinced that the organizational ‘Christ’ I was rejecting wasn’t real. It was something false, something man-made, prompted by a religious, controlling, inquisitorial thing, rather than a Divine Person come to forgive, cleanse, enlighten and set demon-oppressed captives free. And that’s no doubt how many anti-missionary rabbis and their students and followers see it too. And now, because of my own recent experiences, I am really beginning to understand and sympathize with them. And that’s why I feel closer to them, than I am to that religious ‘thing’ I left behind.

To survive amid the desolation that my nightmare kept regenerating, I felt compelled to try to prove that ‘the religious thing’ I had rejected was false. If I could do that, I thought I’d succeed in tearing the ‘Judas Identity’ out of my tortured soul! If I could prove that such a version of Jesus was unreal, then maybe that nightmare would stop coming back and I’d no longer have to bear the load of being the betrayer of the One that was sent to me by God! It had never been my intention to betray Him! But even so, if I could erase Him and make Him go away, then maybe I’d be able to stop this ongoing Hell and achieve a modicum of peace, or at least perhaps, oblivion.

Could that be what people like Levi are doing? Could they be trying to erase ‘Jesus’ in reaction to what myriads of so-called ‘Christians’ have accused the Jewish people of doing? Haven’t they been hounded and tortured for centuries by the accusations that Christians keep hurling at them about being ‘God murderers’ and ‘Killers of their own Messiah?’ How are they supposed to react to that? How would you react to it? Would that kind of approach make you want embrace, and agree with, and even join the ranks of your accusers? No… most likely you’d feel compelled to build a wall and hide behind it too. And so now… I’m amazed that someone like Levi could even feel prompted to give us the time of day!

I know what I was really doing in my ‘dialogues’ with Christians who dared to enter my space. I didn’t want to connect with them any more than they wanted to connect with me! We each had our own agendas and comfort zones and we were both trying to gain the upper hand over each other. They might have shown interest in me had I ‘repented’ and embraced their way of thinking. But if I disagreed, I knew they would write me off, shake the dust from their sandals, turn away, and never look back. They expected me to change radically… but they were not about to change a thing about themselves… so we could venture forth to explore the new, yet unknown territory of the uncharted future… TOGETHER!

So instead of being willing to venture out with me, so we could both go into the Great Unknown together, and engage in a two-way mutual interchange as comrades exploring new vistas on an adventure under God’s Authority, they expected me to do all of the changing and suffering. To me it was apparent that most of those people were actually intent on destroying my current belief system so they could replace it with theirs, and then they would begin to crow about how they had ‘led another sinner to the Lord.. But they really did not care about me, or take into account, what my ‘conversion’ would do to me, and to my personal life and my family circumstances! If I had dared to do that, it would not have cost them a thing! Only I would have been required to die to myself and radically change. But I was no better than they. And I didn’t really care about them either. So I was grimly using them to try to justify my recent life-shattering decision… to myself!

And now I’m beginning to see, and even feel, how, for centuries, so-called ‘Christians’ have made life utterly miserable for Levi’s people! So I see some of what is probably behind what Levi is doing. It’s what I used to do. He’s maintaining a wall for defense… grinding a hidden axe… just as I did. He’s defending his beloved heritage, his people, his Orthodox faith, and… at the same time… protecting all the unhealed wounds that continue to fester in his wounded Jewish soul and those  of his people. And, maybe, he’s also trying to salve the pain of his own doubts concerning his position with Yeshua… while he tries to generate good will and positive PR on behalf of the poor, beleaguered nation of Israel, that always has to ‘live under the gun’.

 

Enter: THE TRUTH HIMSELF!

So what is the real, Truth-based answer? Where would I be now, if that had been all there was to my story? Which Jesus is the real one? Is there a real Jesus? If there is, which of the thousands of available versions is He? Is He the Catholic Jesus, or the Baptist or Presbyterian or Lutheran or Pentecostal version? Is the ‘Gentiles only’ version of Jesus the right one? Is Levi’s Orthodox Jewish version the right one? Well, the answer is: He is none of the above! It would be impossible for any of us to come to know the real Jesus, if all there is to Him is that vast array of conflicting opinions, promoted by the huge variety of people that argue, disagree and squabble with each other!

So let’s look at it another way: if all of that theology, speculation and religiosity and organized man-controlled ‘Buffet’ were to cease and disappear… would anything of substance remain? Would there still be a Creator God, a God who speaks His creative Living Word, and through that Word, causes what He says to come in to being? Or does any existence that God has only depend upon, and rise out of, what poor grossly limited human beings might see, hear, feel, imagine, think, say and do?

Isaiah 55:8-9

“‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.'”

We make gods that are fashioned out of our own limited understanding and perspectives. And so those gods are made in our own image and likeness! Gentiles make Yeshua out to be a Gentile.  And anti-missionary rabbis, like Levi, make the ‘Jesus Christ’ the non-Jewish Church presents to them, out to be a thoroughly misguided Jew that was assimilated by the Gentile world and was twisted into a flaming, Torah-rejecting heretic! And atheists make a god out of their pet opinions and systems of unbelief! The list of all the other false gods and religions goes on and on…

But, beloved… is there a real Living God that goes much deeper than any of that? Is there an Eternal Being that transcends all of that man-created ‘stuff’? Is there a Being whose existence and nature have no connection with what creatures do, or fail to do? The Yeshua I know is completely different than anything I’ve ever read or imagined or heard people say about Him. He is totally  OTHER in relation to all of that. All the studies, debates, opinions, speculations and wars about Yeshua that exist in this world, won’t ever really save anyone or change anything! It doesn’t matter how much ‘dialogue’ or ‘controversy’ we engage in, if all we’re talking about are the products of our own heads, imaginations, opinions and personal hopes! None of that created stuff is the Real God – not even close! None of that has any real, transformative spiritual Fire Power! I had experiences and opinions and dialogues on the basis of what those things had done to shape and form me. But all of that was a product of fallen human souls, and deeply wounded souls at that! I was being driven by my hidden personal agenda, that haunting, recurring nightmare was all that I cared about at that time! My motivation came as a result of some very bad experiences I had with other very limited, and perhaps, equally-wounded people! And, even as I encountered them, at the same time, I was secretly indulging my hidden, mind-numbing addiction techniques to numb the shame and dull the pain that kept torturing my soul!

So how could anything I said or did, at that self-absorbed level, change anyone else? And how could what the other people around me, say or do anything that would make any real difference to me? None of what any of us does can save, or even essentially change, anyone else! So, if that’s all there is to all of humanity’s squabbling and tug of war activity…then we are all going to remain utterly stuck! And we’re all doomed to go down the tubes… together! So, I know I was hopelessly stuck during all of those fifteen miserable years! All I could do was to try to medicate my tortured soul with phony New Age ‘spirituality’ techniques and alcohol, pornography, and focusing on my ‘day job’ and dabbling in Zen Buddhism and other forms of ‘mysticism’ and Japanese Karate and other martial arts. And none of that ever ‘worked!’

But thanks be to God… the Resurrected Lord Yeshua, (Jesus), the Living Word of God made flesh, does not depend on or originate from any of that! He is our Eternal Creator, Sustainer and Supplier! He doesn’t depend on us; we originate from and depend upon Him! He is The Truth that is independent of anything created. The Reality and Existence and claims and promises of the Living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob come to us solely by and through His Living Word… who is the Underlying Foundational Basis of all created Reality! And He is the Living Word that became flesh, like us, and He contains the complete Fullness and Nature of Almighty God! So no created mind could ever stretch itself enough to be able to define or actually comprehend Him and all that He truly IS!

I learned this when suddenly, despite all of my efforts to try to get as far away as I possibly could from ‘Jesus Christ’ as I knew Him, my life, as it had been to that point was suddenly and shockingly stripped, exposed and crucified by His Living Truth! The Lord Himself suddenly invaded my space, uninvited and unannounced. Without any warning, He suddenly made His risen, living Presence known to me. At the time I was at home, all alone, putting my newly laundered underwear into a dresser drawer. That’s when He came for me and exploded all over my spirit, soul and body, and my past, present and future… and there was nothing I could say or do about it! He revealed Himself to me, as I’d never known Him before – directly, truly, vividly, personally, powerfully and yet, most tenderly. Every doubt, opinion and argument I had stashed away in my personal arsenal suddenly evaporated!

Now it was obvious and undeniable: He is utterly REAL! His tangible electrifying Loving Presence totally overwhelmed and restored me – and He bonded me to Himself! Yes, finally I knew that He is real, and risen from the dead, and irrefutably PRESENT! Now I could know Him as He really is, through the Holy Spirit – just as the Scriptures had revealed Him to be. And this resurrected Messiah, this Living Person, was and is, and always will be – absolutely indefinable and unexplainable, and unpredictable and supremely, uncontrollably UNFORGETTABLE!

Jeremiah 31:33-34

“‘They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,’ declares the Lord, ‘for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more!’” (Emphasis added.)

On that awesome day, that heart-murdering Judas nightmare that had tortured me for so long disappeared, never to return! And on that day the Lord also delivered me from my mind-altering, mood-numbing addictions – alcohol, pornography, mind games and hyper-busyness. One moment I was a total slave to those things, and the next moment… I was completely free of their allure! Thus the Lord let me know that I was not hallucinating; nor was it mere wishful thinking. It was His life-transforming Authority and Power that I cannot explain, control or deny, setting me free and embracing and accepting me! And His self-revelation continues. He is an ongoing, progressive, never-ending Amazement. And He keeps challenging and pruning me, even as He continues to heal and bless me, and the others who also know Him personally in this New Covenant way. He is with us all, protecting, supplying and loving us all at the very same time… as much as we are willing to allow!

That initial encounter, which He initiated, took place in late November of 1982. That was the beginning… the first step turning point. That day I begged Him to forgive me and take me back. And He readily responded – in such a gracious, spectacularly loving way that I will never be able to adequately put it into words. I was in the utter depths of despair… and suddenly He took me to the mountaintops! God’s Living Truth took me far beyond the ground of any theological speculation, or religious technique, tradition, formula, or debate that the Levi’s of this world could ever imagine or propose. They have a lot of head knowledge and long-standing religious traditions… but I was hit by the Lightning of Yeshua’s Resurrection Invasion, and enfolded by His Everlasting Lovingkindness. The cleansing, purifying Lovingkindness of God was cascading all over me, as if I was standing beneath Victoria Falls… and hearing and feeling it roaring and crashing down upon me! So, the difference between the two is enormous. Yeshua’s Resurrection Reality goes far, far beyond conformity to man-made opinions, views, traditions, systems or organizations.

God’s Living Truth is Reality Personified! And He is as real as a lightning bolt! His Living Word is the Wellspring and the Ground and Substance of our entire being! The Fullness of God’s Truth and Reality is fully contained within this Person – Yeshua, the risen Lord of Glory! And the difference between what He is, and what men think or say that He is, is like the difference between a dry, boring mid-afternoon college auditorium lecture about electricity… as opposed to what happens when you actually have a ‘hot,’ live cable in your hands and your body experiences ‘the juice’ flowing throughout it… as it shakes you and  crackles and lights you up with its tremendous surges of Divine Voltage passing into you and through you! It is something no one could ever adequately put into words! But once it happens to you, no matter what anyone else may say, do or prefer… no one in existence will ever again be able to take that away from you or convince you intellectually that He isn’t real and truly PRESENT!

So, like many others who are blessed to know Him, I too was taken far beyond anything that kind, lovable, very bright Levi has ever yet known. On that fateful day, when He came after me… I had my first encounter with the Jewish Rabbi of all rabbis. I began to know the One who Saul of Tarsus (another rabbi) had also encountered on the road to Damascus. And Saul of Tarsus (Paul) had something very different to say about Yeshua. It is far different from what all the Levi’s of this present time are able to imagine or say. This is what Paul said of the risen Lord:

Colossians 1:15-20

“He is the Image of the Invisible God, the Firstborn of all Creation. For, by Him, all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. He is also Head of the Body, the Church (with no walls); and He is the Beginning, the Firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have First Place in Everything! For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the Fullness to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things on Earth or things in Heaven!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)

 

Transformed by His Perfect Reality and Love

This is the kind of electrifying Living Truth and Reality you encounter when you’re in the Perfect Presence of Messiah Yeshua. He is the Living, Creative Word of the Living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the true Anointed King of all Israel and the Lord of all Creation! He is real and risen from the dead and totally present, everywhere, to those who have received the Spirit-imparted spiritual faculties needed with which to perceive Him! And He has proven Himself to me to be absolutely Airtight in His Credibility and Dependability. He is Eternally, Dynamically Alive! His Love is Selfless and Eternal and Life Giving! His Love will transform and compel you and make you desperate to entrust yourself to Him with airtight, everlasting, 100% submission, hope and outrageous trust and confidence! And once you know Him, you feel no need to hide behind any walls. There is no more need to be ashamed or afraid… of anything!

Philippians 4:12-13

“I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.” 

The Living Messiah, the Anointed One of God, is the One that every human is created by, and created for. And only in knowing Him, can we also know the Father and the Holy Spirit as They really are – as the ONE and only true Living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Israel! And only when we know and embrace Him on His terms, can we know the Living God who speaks His Living Word and sends Him to us! God was suddenly so real, wonderful and liberating to me that everything old immediately evaporated, leaving only Him, in all of His Glory, to fill my mind and heart.

I wish I could say the first glow of that encounter that overtook me that day is perpetual and always remains with me, just as vibrantly and tangibly experiential as it was then. But it doesn’t work that way. If it did, we would not need to live by faith; we could know Almighty God by ‘sight.’ But as long as we are still abiding in our bodies of mortal flesh, we also remain trapped… in our original fallen, Sin-corrupted state. And so we’re not yet able to see and know God, ‘face to face’. Sin still abides within our flesh, and that makes us, in our mortal state, incompatible with God’s Perfect, Infinitely Righteous and Holy Nature. So, God’s total Transcendence requires us to know Him by faith and trust in His initiatives and in His Perfect Credibility. We must live by faith in His Living and written Word. And, if we finally become willing to do that, God’s Living Word is free to reveal Himself to you through the Power of God’s Holy Spirit. This is how God lets people know how real and true and substantial His written Word truly is. He does it by making His Living Word real and dynamically alive from within you, in a way that begins to fulfill all that was written about Him.

So, after giving me a taste of that glory… He brought me back down to Earth… and, like everyone else, I too am required to continue my Exodus journey… by faith in the glow and reality of the Living Reality and Credibility that He allowed me to taste. After that ‘taste’, you can know from that time forward, that the Lord is utterly real! So now, even at times when I experience horrid circumstances and setbacks and times in this world really get ‘bad’… and everything seems to be going dreadfully wrong and I can’t see or hear or ‘feel’ any vestige of the glory that enveloped me on that awesome day when He came after me… I still can know that nothing has changed… He is still here with me… and He always has me, and all of Creation, totally ‘covered’. And when all is said and done… in retrospect, I can see that He was always there, with me, even during my darkest moments… being and doing everything He had promised that He would do.

Hebrews 13:8-9a

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Do not be carried away by varied and strange teachings…”

Habakkuk 2:4

“Behold, as for the proud one, his soul is not right within him; but the righteous will live by his faith.”

Knowing this Lord’s Reality is all that matters once that living revelation is given to a person. That’s what happened to me. The realization that He loved me and came after me, and that He had never looked upon me as a Judas, was utterly overwhelming! I had nothing to do with what had just happened. I had been running in the opposite direction! It was His idea to come after me and stop my flight!

Imagine that! HE, THE LORD OF GLORY, despite all the things I had done and despite all I had said against Him… even after all that… He loved me and HE gave Himself up for me… and, by God’s Initiative, He came after me!

That’s why nothing else mattered to me after that. The Hell I had lived in disappeared, and all that remained was a sense of total Relief and Joy and Peace… in and from… HIM!  And now He’s trying to show me, and all of us, that He wants His Jewish brothers and everyone else, to become utterly one in the knowledge and experience of His cleansing, freeing, mind-blowing kind of Spirit-given Love. He wants all the ‘Levi’s’ in this world, to know Him, at a depth and intensity that are unprecedented in human history… because we’re approaching the final climax and conclusion of human history and it is time for Almighty God to reveal to all of Creation… the Ultimate Restoration that He has in store for it! Now, it is time for the Fullness of the Gentiles to emerge and for God’s Israel to come into the Fullness of her Inheritance. So I am convinced that in the days to come, we will see more and more… that the Almighty Living God of Heaven and Earth, will be speaking for Himself!

Levi knows nothing of such Glory yet. And I know my former religious superiors didn’t know Him in this way while they were dealing with me. And I know that the whole world doesn’t know Him in the way God wants for us all to know Him. The time for that to happen on such a global scale has not quite yet arrived! But it is coming soon! But until it does, many of us will remain hyper-religious and clueless. But if it’s true that we’re approaching the Last Days Era and its climactic events, then here is a truth we will all have to take into account:

LUKE 17:26-27

“And just as it happened in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: they were eating, they were drinking, they were marrying, they were being given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all.”

Noah and his family had no clue about what would happen, or how life would be, after the flood came. Nor could they even imagine what it would be like and where they would end up after it was over. Only God knew all that. He was the one who was going to see them through and guide their steps and make possible whatever it was He had in mind for His Plan of Salvation for the ages to come. But for them, it was ‘The Great Unknown’! That’s why they had to follow and rely completely upon God’s Living Word. He would let them know what was necessary, on a need to know basis. And that is how it will be for all of us in the Last Days Era.

We don’t know what lies ahead of us! All we know is that it will be much more cosmic and monumental than even the Flood was! The same pattern of shaking and destruction and death and resurrection awaits the whole fallen, temporary world as we know it today. But the specifics are something that only Almighty God, in His infinite Wisdom and Foreknowledge can know and anticipate. Only God’s omnipotent Power will be able to transform His Creation into the perfect fulfillment of the purpose and destiny He has imparted to it. God has to do everything. Only He can make it happen in a way that will align with what His Eternal Plan requires. We could never figure that out, much less make it happen. No, our part will be to surrender and entrust our current comfort zones and our ‘business as usual’ status quo realities… into His hands. And we must be ready to follow the leading of His Word and Spirit on our Exodus into the Great Unknown. This is true for Jews and non-Jews alike! So, as Levi said with such deep insight, it won’t be a Jewish thing… nor will it be a non-Jewish Christian thing… or any created, man-controlled thing… it will truly be A PURE, HEAVENLY, STUPENDOUSLY SUPERNATURAL GOD THING!

So now, it’s time to consider these things very seriously. The time for serious ‘House cleaning’ is at hand because the Full Revelation and Vindication and Coronation of God’s Living Word made flesh is fast approaching. And so, regardless of what we believe and stand for today, we must all finally realize that none of that, none of what we hold to and value today… is even close to enabling us to know the tremendous things concerning God and His Messiah, which He is about to reveal to us in the days to come. Levi knows a lot about Yeshua historically, thanks to his voluminous reading and study. He probably knows more than most priests and ministers do! But all of that ‘head knowledge’ can’t begin to convey the Electrifying Reality of God’s beloved Son to him. At present Levi studies to amass irrefutable ‘ammunition’ and firepower to repel organized Christendom’s claims and promises. But that’s all he knows about Yeshua… mental stuff, soulish stuff, created stuff. The Real Uncreated Glory and Spirit-imparted Splendor of the Living Lord has not yet personally exploded all over him and pierced, penetrated and impregnated his heart and blown him away!  So I truly delight in anticipating the look on Levi’s face, and the instantaneous, glorious transformation that will take place in him, and all of the others like him, the moment the Living Lord appears to them as He did to me. And soon, all of mankind will finally be overwhelmed… just like Abraham before us was overwhelmed. Like Abraham, regardless of our previous realities and personal backgrounds, we will be instantly compelled to fall on our faces, at our Lord’s feet, in absolute and totally silent worship!

Genesis 17:1-3

“Now when Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, ‘I am God Almighty; walk before Me, and be blameless. I will establish My Covenant between Me and you, and I will multiply you exceedingly.’

“Abram fell on his face, and God (through His Living Word) talked with him…” (Amplification and emphasis added.)

It will happen the moment God’s Living Word, the Lord Yeshua, by God’s Holy Spirit, is sent by His Father to reveal Himself to this dying world; the way He was sent to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and the prophets; the way He did to Nathaniel under the fig tree and to doubting Thomas, and to all the other Jewish apostles, including Saul of Tarsus. But at the end, the revelation will surpass anything that has come before. At that time, Almighty God will force the enemies of His beloved Living Word, His Son, to fall down before Him and serve as a willing Footstool for His feet! There can be no substitute for The Real Thing. The Living God must and will speak for Himself to each and every human being He has created, in His own good time! And once He speaks to people like Levi directly and personally, they too will never ever be the same!

Joel 2:27-29

“Thus you will know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I am the Lord your God, and there is no other; and My people will never be put to shame. It will come about after this that I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind; and your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on the male and female servants I will pour out My Spirit in those (last) days.” (Amplification added.)

I am still obtuse in many areas. The Lord keeps me in a perpetual ‘boot camp’ training mode because I really need it. But before He came for me on that awesome day, I was hopelessly, irretrievably obtuse. No flesh and blood could have reached me. My resentful fear and wounded condition and the toxic shame that kept regenerating and boiling within me wouldn’t have allowed it. I might have eventually matured to the urbane, sophisticated level at which Levi operates, but what would be the use of that? If the Lord was real, I had surely betrayed Him. Haven’t we all betrayed Him? Scripture says we have. And so, if Yeshua is as real as He showed Himself to be to the fathers of the Faith, then just as Moses and the prophets of Israel predicted… Levi and many other Jews have rejected, and continue to reject, their long-awaited Messiah! So how can anyone talk his way out of that? What will Levi be able to say on his own behalf when the Truth finally catches up with him… the way He caught up with me?

The snag that made me stumble for so long was this: to my way of thinking, God and the Church I was part of were one and the same thing! I couldn’t separate them because of the way I had been taught and trained to think. So when I saw holes in that created, human, organizational thing, I saw holes in my theology. And when I saw holes in my theology, I saw holes in my god! And once we become hyper-religious, most of us are not able to deal with that! When we begin to see ‘holes’ in what we were convinced was the truth… the Real Truth forces us to admit that there are glaring flaws in the man-made religious thing we’ve come to embrace and worship. Then we realize that we are also going to have to admit that the god to whom we’ve devoted our lives, is false! So, rather than allow that terrifying sense of loss and doom and shame to overwhelm us, we become paralyzed with fear and dread and shame, and we resist and do whatever we must to protect and maintain the quaking ground upon which we are trying to stand, regardless of the consequences.

And what a horrible trap that is! But trap or not, it is that level of total delusion from which God has sent His Word to deliver us all! This is exactly what happened to the pharaoh of Egypt and his fellow idolaters in the book of Exodus! That is what happened to the prophets of Baal and to every other proponent of false gods and false religions. And, by the time we’re in the days described by the book of Revelation, this is exactly what will have to happen to us all! And these are matters that I believe the Church, and anyone who has a tender heart for our awesome Creator must begin to ponder and pray over in these Last Days.

Now I can see that my faith and hope had actually been placed upon a created thing that I was idolizing and to which I had submitted myself! So, without realizing or intending to do it, I had become an idolater! According to that kind of ‘faith,’ based simply on the say-so of some esteemed religious and ecclesiastical ‘authorities,’ what I was perceived to be doing by my religious superior was – walking out on my God and Redeemer, even though I wasn’t intending to do that at all! How can you, or I, or anyone else, walk out on Someone when we do not even know Him yet? And how can we know Him, until He actually reveals Himself to us as He really is?

Luke 23:33-34

“When they came to the place called The Skull, there they crucified Him and the criminals, one on the right and the other on the left. But Jesus was saying, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing!” And they cast lots, dividing up His garments among themselves.”

So as long as that Judas curse remained embedded in me, a soul-murdering guilt and sense of hopeless condemnation kept eating at my innards. And so, I saw three alternatives: either I could submit to the curse that had been placed upon me and look forward to an eternity in Hell someday, or I could commit suicide and get it over with and go to Hell immediately, or I could hope that none of it was true and start trying to prove that I had rejected a false god. I chose the latter.

And I believe Levi is doing something similar. The way he sees Judaism, at this time, is the way my superior saw his organization – the organization I was leaving. Levi also sees his version of Judaism, as he understands it, as being identical to Almighty God Himself! And so, for any like-minded people to choose to accept Yeshua and His claims… would be to reject and turn their back on the god of their preference! This is because the ‘Christ’ Levi thinks he knows, as the Christians he encounters have presented Him, falls far short of the Reality! He sees a Hellenistic, Gentile concoction being presented to him that, according to Deuteronomy 13, couldn’t possibly be the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob! If Levi were to try to agree with the apostle Paul, in his current state of mind, he would literally tear his soul in two! He’d betray God (as he knows Him). He would forsake everything he believes and hopes in and holds most dear! And he would be left with nothing but Darkness, Death and Eternal Desolation, just like I was!

That’s what all people who inherit the fallen flesh of Adam are forced to think and assume. So people like Levi… Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus and all the others build walls against anyone who dares to disagree with them. Only the Real Messiah, the risen Lord Himself, can blast men out of such profoundly delusive bondage – by personally revealing Himself to them, as He REALLY IS, and embracing and pressing them to His heart. Mere ideas and concepts about the Jewish or Gentile versions of God and Jesus, or any other man-made god, will never pierce our hearts and enlighten our darkened minds! The eternal, Divine Love of God’s Living Word Himself, the Uncreated Light of the World, has to literally cascade all over them as if they were standing directly beneath Victoria Falls!

Matthew 11:27

“All things have been handed over to Me by My Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him!” (Emphasis added.)

It will take something that electrifyingly Infinite and overwhelmingly Real to burst into their awareness, and break their chains and gain their confidence and trust. Only God Almighty Himself can break through the hard granite of our mental and emotional imperatives and resisting religious fallen, mortally wounded, severely maimed Sin-corrupted hearts! And that is what His Living Word was sent to do. Only He is powerful and real and authoritative enough to demolish the tremendous, smothering, suffocating serpentine coils that the religious bondage, springing from our grossly twisted and limited human perceptions, invariably wraps around the hearts and souls of well-meaning soulish people of all the different ‘persuasions.’

Because of what the Lord has shown me in recent days regarding the Jews, the Church, Israel, and the whole world, I can see myself as I used to be – in people like Levi. I think I understand where he’s coming from and why he does what he does. And my heart bleeds and aches for him and for all the others, Jews and Gentiles alike, for we are all in the same boat! People who do not realize these limitations become so deeply devoted to their ‘religions’ that they literally worship them as if they are God Himself! But no man-made religion or program or set of traditions and arguments will ever truly equal or be able to embody and convey the Reality of the Living God to anyone! Whenever we try to do that, all kinds of walls suddenly appear, and bloodshed follows! Only the Spirit-generated power, grace and timing of God’s own Self-Revelation can destroy those walls and make an eternal difference in the human hearts that feel driven to create them.

 

So What Do You Do While You Wait for Truth Himself to Appear?

Arthur Katz, a Messianic Jew, once had an opportunity to speak with an internationally known Jewish lecturer and Nobel Prize winning author who had survived the Holocaust. Despite the horrors he had seen and experienced, that man had grown to be the epitome of worldly grace, charm, erudition and noble dignity. And as they were chatting, Katz asked this unbelieving, secularized, world-famous Jewish man, this gut-piercing question:

“How far are you willing to consider the possibility… that all the horrors that we Jews as a people have suffered… including the Holocaust… are the result of incurring the curses for violating our Covenant with God, as stated in Leviticus and Deuteronomy?”

The moment that man heard this, he turned abruptly and walked away, saying over his shoulder, “I refuse to consider that!”

Of course he refused! When that man was a child, he experienced painful, frightening abuse at the hands of other children who were ‘Christians.’ So he grew up fearing and mistrusting Gentiles and Christians. And, after the Holocaust that Christian Germany had imposed on him and his people, he even began to favor his own humanistic understanding, valuing it over the written Word of the God of Israel! He was so devastated that he began to build a wall and hide within the bubble of his own homemade Jewish comfort zone. He learned to trust his own wits, instead of allowing the written and Living Word of God to pierce and penetrate his own hardened, stony Adamic heart. And of course his mistrust, resentment and antagonism would push away any Jew, like Katz, who would be benighted enough to betray his identity and his people and their heritage and familial roots in order to become a Christian!

What do you think his early impression of the testimony of Christendom did to the ‘hard drive’ of his Jewish ‘onboard computer?’ And what kind of ‘virus’ did the shame and horrors of the Crusades, the Inquisition and that Holocaust—which were unleashed against all Jewry by civilized, ‘Christian’ countries such as Britain, France, Belgium, Spain, Germany and many others – embed into his ‘hard drive?’ And what does it do to his thought processes when he hears many people, including some Christians, stoutly denying that there even was a Holocaust and that Jews are making it up for their own self-serving purposes?

Beloved, I believe the only way a man like that could deal with someone like Arthur Katz and his heart piercing questions would either be to shut down immediately and walk away, or else begin screaming to the heavens at the top of his lungs out of overwhelming rage, bewilderment and sheer hopeless exasperation! How could he stand to converse with a man he perceives to be a renegade Jew that is betraying his own people? No, nothing can get through that kind of mental and spiritual granite… nothing will be able to get close enough to touch such a wounded and petrified heart… except for the sudden Spirit-imparted Invasion of His resurrected Messiah… Yeshua Himself! What happened to Saul of Tarsus is what must happen to each and every Sin-corrupted child of Adam, including Levi and the man that walked away from Arthur Katz, and every other human enemy of God’s Living Word made flesh.

So, I ask you to ponder the huge transformation that took place in Saul of Tarsus… the tremendous changes that led to him becoming, Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles! Before Yeshua revealed Himself to him, He was ‘Saul of Tarsus’ the Jewish Pharisee of Pharisees. And in that state, he was a ‘religious thug,’ a ‘hit man’ for the religious establishment of first century Judaism! He was just like today’s modern day ‘jihadist terrorists’! He was convinced that he knew and worshipped the true God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. No one who disagreed with him could have convinced him otherwise! To him, those that disagreed and refused to believe as he believed had to be evil and demonic!

Nevertheless, later on, he had to admit that he had been dead wrong. And he also had to admit that what he once clung to so ferociously before Yeshua invaded his space, had no more value than ‘dung’ or, more accurately, ‘crap’! So that was the significance of his personal ‘turnaround’… it was a totally supernatural transformation! Saul became a Messianic Jew, who thereafter, was willing to pour out his entire life on behalf of clueless, unclean, Jew-ignoring, Jew-persecuting Gentiles! His resurrected Lord commissioned Him to take the Gospel that truly had been entrusted to Israel, and make it known to the rest of the non-Jewish first century world, just as it was, without any exception or discrimination!

Genesis 12:2-3

“… And I will bless you, and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing; and I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed!” (Emphasis added.)

So try to ponder the level of repentance Saul of Tarsus had to undergo… the depths of the Exodus journey God required him to make from what he had been, to what God intended to make of him. Try to grasp what it cost him, during the fourteen years he was forced to spend back home in Tarsus after the Lord confronted him outside of Damascus. It took that much ‘boot camp training and brain rewiring before the Holy Spirit deemed him to be fit for New Covenant ‘combat-readiness’!

God transformed Saul, who from birth had been trained and raised to be what our Messiah called, ‘an old wineskin’… into a new, New Covenant wineskin. And so was it for Peter, James, John, and newcomers like Stephen and Phillip and all the other first century religious Jews who dared to believe and follow Messiah Yeshua… into the Great Unknown! So as you try to get your mind around what God required Paul and his fellow New Covenant disciples to do, you will begin to grasp and absorb the meaning of these Spirit-inspired words that he was called upon to share with some of his fellow first century Jews that were so angry at him, that they were intent on killing him:

Acts 22:1-21

“Brethren and fathers, hear my defense which I now offer to you.” And when they heard that he was addressing them in the Hebrew dialect, they became even more quiet; and he said, ‘I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city, educated under Gamaliel, strictly according to the Law of our fathers, being zealous for God just as you all are today. I persecuted this Way to the death, binding and putting both men and women into prisons, as also the high priest and all the Council of the elders can testify. From them I also received letters to the brethren, and started off for Damascus in order to bring even those who were there to Jerusalem as prisoners to be punished.

“But it happened that as I was on my way, approaching Damascus about noontime, a very bright light suddenly flashed from heaven all around me, and I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?’ And I answered, ‘Who are You, Lord?’ And He said to me, ‘I am Jesus the Nazarene, whom you are persecuting.’ And those who were with me saw the light, to be sure, but did not understand the voice of the One who was speaking to me. And I said, ‘What shall I do, Lord?’ And the Lord said to me, ‘Get up and go on into Damascus, and there you will be told of all that has been appointed for you to do.’ But since I could not see because of the brightness of that light; I was led by the hand, by those who were with me and came into Damascus.

“A certain Ananias, a man who was devout by the standard of the Law, and well spoken of by all the Jews who lived there, came to me, and standing near said to me, ‘Brother Saul, receive your sight!’ And at that very time I looked up at him. And he said, ‘The God of our fathers has appointed you to know His will and to see the Righteous One and to hear an utterance from His mouth. For you will be a witness for Him to all men of what you have seen and heard. Now why do you delay? Get up and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on His name.’

“It happened when I returned to Jerusalem and was praying in the temple, that I fell into a trance, and I saw Him saying to me, ‘Make haste, and get out of Jerusalem quickly, because they will not accept your testimony about Me.’ And I said, ‘Lord, they themselves understand that in one synagogue after another I used to imprison and beat those who believed in You. And when the blood of Your witness Stephen was being shed, I also was standing by approving, and watching out for the coats of those who were slaying him.’ And He said to me, ‘Go! For I will send you far away to the Gentiles.’” (Emphasis added.)

 

The Path of Least Resistance

So what do you do while you’re unwittingly waiting around for Truth Personified to come after you and deliver you of your self-righteous pretensions? Well, thanks to God’s laws of Creation, your energy takes the path of least resistance! In other words, you keep making up your own reality, as you think best, based on what you feel is the most reliable, self-serving information available at the time. Is it not a law of physics, established by God, that energy always seeks to travel by the easiest path that is available to it? In such a case, the path of least resistance would be… to do what makes the most sense and causes the least damage and pain to you and your loved ones and serves to protect and maintain your normal, familiar comfort zones and ‘sacred cows.’

That’s all Saul of Tarsus was able to do… until after that day on the road to Damascus, and the time he spent in Tarsus. And, that’s all I was able to do too… until the Lord Himself came after me. And, that’s also all Levi is able to do when he regards Yeshua, as he currently understands Him. The energy within him follows the path of least resistance. And before he can come to know Yeshua as He really is, that path will naturally be – the path of most resistance!

I see myself in that Jewish man who walked away from Arthur Katz too. That was me, walking away from such a question, refusing to even consider the possibility that I had betrayed God, simply because I had rejected the ‘Christ’ that some people had tried to ram down my throat. For a long time, I had been doing exactly as many religious people do – even though at the time, I would have denied it. What was I doing?

I was instinctively assuming that what I knew about Christ and the Church and all the rest of Reality, was all that there was to know!

I too assumed that ‘I had ‘arrived,’ and ‘had all the answers’ and ‘had nothing more to learn.’ I too thought I knew all there was to know about Jesus. Isn’t that what that religious thug Saul of Tarsus believed all the while he was trashing his fellow Jews who believed and worshipped Yeshua? Isn’t that what he assumed as he cheered on the murder of Stephen… in the name of his god? I have no doubt that men like dear Levi also assume that what they know of Jesus Christ and the rest of Reality, is all there is to know. So they’re stuck, just as I was stuck, and just as most of this fallen world is stuck!

But now, by God’s Mercy, I know better. I know that the Christ that most men THINK they know and accept, or reject, falls far short of His actual Reality. It is not THE REAL LIVING CHRIST! And we will all be stuck, until God actually sends His Resurrected Living Word, through the Holy Spirit, to pierce, penetrate, and impregnate our hearts with the seed of Eternal Life, and demolish our idols! Until then, we will have no clue about our true spiritual state! So now, I also know this:

If people still reject Messiah Yeshua… they cannot possibly know Him authentically, AS HE REALLY IS! To know the Living Word of the true, Living God, as he REALLY IS, is to automatically fall at His feet in total submission and loving, wholehearted worship! This follows, as night follows day.

People who do not yet love, trust and embrace Him, have not yet been directly touched by Him! They have not yet felt and been penetrated by His overwhelming Presence and the heart-transforming force of His Divine transforming ‘Love Electricity’ – the Absolute Authoritative Acceptance and Redemption of the Living Word of Almighty God! Our intellectual, imagination-originated ideas about God are not God Himself! They are mere human products – the paradigm creations, the intellectual products of our own incredibly limited and fallen human souls that fall far short of the actual Uncreated, Infinite and Living Reality of the Living, Almighty God!

So, sooner or later, no matter what you think you are, or what you think you know, your theology is going to betray you too! It will always fall far short of the Living Reality. You cannot stuff the living God in any pathetic man-made ‘mental strong box’ for too long, even if you call it ‘The Ark of the Covenant’ or ‘The Church’ or ‘The Cabalah’ or ‘The Dharma’ or whatever else men may choose to put in their places!  Sooner or later, your man-made box will explode too! It will not be able to contain the pressure buildup that is created by the Infinite Reality of Yeshua’s Real Eternal Truth! He is the Eternal Uncreated, Living Truth of the Infinite, Incomprehensible and Eternal Almighty God Himself that no created mind or thing is able to contain or define or capture!

I can see why there is no way some Holocaust survivors can admit that what happened to them and their families in their interactions with so-called ‘Christianity’ could actually be a punishment from the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Does He, Who claims to be Perfect Love, Mercy and Justice, actually endorse the demonic, abusive, conflicting and confusing array of religions and ‘gospels’ that have sprung up in our midst and all around us? Does He really cause and condone all the human cruelty and murderous destruction that is done in His Name while all of the conflicting, confusing messages about Him keep muddying up the picture? Is it a shell game that God is running? Is it 20 Questions? Is it up to us to us grossly limited people to guess what is right? And if you are Jewish, must blame always be one-sided—always in favor of non-Jews? How many Christs are there? Is it the Catholic Christ, or Pentecostal Christ, or Methodist Christ, the German Christ or the Spanish or Mexican or North American Christ, the ‘Country Western’ Christ, or the Korean or Indonesian or the Greek Orthodox one? Is it the Sunni version of Allah, or the Shiite version? Are they all one and the same God? How can that be, since all these ‘believers’ and ‘unbelievers’ are so divided and at odds with each other? Is the real God, and His Living Word divided? Arthur Katz rightly says that Jews cringe every time someone calls them God’s Chosen People. I can see why. As he said, that always brings up this ominous question: ‘Chosen for what?’

Even now, my own mind balks at Christendom’s raucous midway of thousands of ridiculous, repulsively competitive ‘Gentilized’ representations of Christ. That’s not His Body! It’s a ‘free-for-all!’ I balk at all the other man-made versions and opinions about Him too, no matter what men choose to name them or what theologies and religions or atheistic empires they build around themselves! Is it any wonder then that God sent His Living Word to do the following:

He sent His Word to reveal the Truth that comes from the Living God. The Word reveals the nature, the ways and the will and commandments of His Eternal Father. He also reveals the promises of God. But that’s not all the Word has to do. The Word also creates the reality that underlies our perceptions and understanding of the revelation and our ability to enter into the reality of all that God has said to us. He also fulfills all of the commandments and all of the promises God has put before us. He produces everything needed to back up whatever He reveals, commands and promises to and for His Creation! So all of the Fullness of God is contained in His Living Word. The Word does all the work… from start to finish… in our name!

How truly wonderful it is then, when the Word reveals Himself to you! God’s Living Word is the Blood Covenant Representative, Champion and High Priest of the entire human race! We can’t grasp or define or convey all of this! Nor can any of us fulfill the commandments or meet God’s Perfect Standards to His Infinite Satisfaction. Everything is contained in God’s Living Word! And He does everything necessary… in our name! So He is our Perfect Wisdom, and Redemption and Righteousness and Salvation!

Matthew 11:25-30

“At that time Jesus said, “I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for this way was well pleasing in Your sight. All things have been handed over to Me by My Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him. Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

After I left the priesthood, I could not accept the proposition that God would consider me a Judas, simply because a couple of panicky religious superiors from one of many denominational persuasions decided to pull ecclesiastical rank, and work their own system against me, to make sure they could fulfill their personal administrative responsibilities and anxiety-driven purposes. Were they not fashioning a god in their own image and likeness? Is that not what the fallen flesh of all men keeps doing? My heart’s intent was never to defy or betray Almighty God. But my religious superiors dogmatically insisted that’s what I was doing. And that’s what many of the others also do – priests, ministers, rabbis, imams, gurus, and worldly leaders of all kinds. So then, is it all about man-made externals? Is God not able to speak and act for Himself in each individual’s heart? Must He always have religious intermediaries and go-betweens that can’t even change themselves, to speak for Him? The Living God of Israel has promised that the time for that is about to come to an end!

Jeremiah 31:34

“They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,’ declares the Lord, ‘for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.’”

The truth was that inside, in my heart, I could not breathe! My recent initial exposure to the Bible had begun to corrode and destroy the footings of my religious world as I had come to understand it! So I became like a suffocating man, crashing through a picture window, in hopes of getting a gasp of air! I was trying to retain my sanity, not concoct a cold-blooded scheme to betray my Creator! I could no longer believe that those men, and all the others like them, represented and spoke for God, even though it was true that many centuries worth of man-made traditions, religions and philosophical opinions of many people around me stoutly continued to back them up! Frankly, if the ‘God’ they were embodying to me was true, I had no choice but to walk away.

Scripture told me He is Love, that He is a faithful loving, compassionate just and merciful Father. But men like these keep making Him out to be a monstrous, malevolent, murderous, destructive control freak, so weak and unsure of Himself, that He is forced to do the pompous bidding of dogmatic controlling men that make Him up in their own image and likeness! Such people claim to be able to send people like me to hell, in order to endorse and protect and fulfill their own theologies and bureaucratic claims and administrative imperatives! So, is that all there is to it? No, there’s more! Much more!

Now I am convinced that men like these do not speak for God. Nobody speaks for God; no fallen flesh can take His place! God speaks for Himself – ALWAYS – because only He knows Himself as He really is, and only He knows how His Creation was designed to be! So we must have Yeshua, God’s Living Word Himself. Only He is the true Word of His Father. And nothing short of Him will do! The superiors I was dealing with were speaking for a man-made system that was, obviously, not doing very well. But at that time, I wasn’t sure of anything. That’s why I felt compelled to grind an axe of my own. People obsessively grind axes, as a substitute for being sure. When we’re not sure about something with such high stakes, we become anxious, self-serving and frightfully, demonically, controlling.

That insecurity is what drove Israel’s religious establishment and the cronies of the emperor of Rome to crucify Yeshua… and so many, many other Jews and non-Jews all across the world! And, if you could look ‘under the hood’ of any medieval inquisitor or power-grabbing army or modern day ‘religion’ and gang of terrorists, you too would agree that fear and insecurity are what was, and is, and always will be, what really drives people to continue to berate, exclude, torture, burn and kill each other! Their chilling sense of dread, fear and emptiness drives them to try to stamp out their opposition. The impressions of Jesus that cause people to be hostile when they’re exposed to ‘Christendom’ are false impressions, inspired by false teaching! When you receive a testimony of Christ that forces you to reject Him, you are in a very dicey position. It forces you to argue with it, or attack it, or at least walk away from it, just to keep the damage that is taking place in your heart to a minimum. But I also know that that has nothing to do with whether Almighty God, and His Living Word and Holy Spirit… is real or not!

And, if you’re having doubts, or are still a blatant unbeliever, the burden of believing is not on you. How could it be? No… the burden of proof is on those who say they believe… the ones that claim to be so sure of their ground, that they feel justified in trying to ram their beliefs down someone else’s throat. They’re the ones obligated to back up with demonstrated proof… what they say they believe. You don’t do that by arguing about it or forcing people to submit to you! You do it when your god, and your faith in your god, are put to the test in The Arena of Testimony, while the unbelievers look on! Your deity must speak for Himself and prove that what his believers claim is the Truth! He must prove that what He has to offer to this world transcends the destruction, mayhem and murder that is so common to us all. The Real God has to be able to do better than that, or else he will be proven to be as limited, powerless, inept and insecure as we humans are!

 

The Arena of Testimony Reveals Reality and Truth

In the case of those of us who claim to be New Covenant believers in Israel’s God, Yeshua, His resurrected Messiah, has to really be living and operating in us and through us in supernatural ways! He had better be able to back up His claims and promises amid our personal circumstances and situations! In other words, the disciples of Yeshua who say they believe in Him… they are the ones who must enter the Arena of Testimony, to PROVE that their faith is well founded, no matter what it costs or requires of them! It’s their job to live out their faith amid life’s lions, tigers and bears before the critical, jaundiced-eyed unbelievers sitting in the stands. If our gods are false, our claims and prophecies will be exposed, stripped and proven to be vain and empty, just like all the others. And our religious empires will thus cave in and be devastated, because we’re relying on something that is totally unreal and therefore, powerless. But if we worship the One True Living God… and if His Living Word is really and truly in us, leading us into that Arena, like He was doing with Stephen, and the Apostles of Yeshua… then our opposition is going to be utterly amazed and overwhelmed!

Matthew 12:15-21

“But Jesus, aware of this, withdrew from there. Many followed Him, and He healed them all, and warned them not to tell who He was. This was to fulfill what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet:

“Behold, My Servant whom I have chosen; My Beloved in whom My soul is well-pleased; I will put My Spirit upon Him, and He shall proclaim justice to the Gentiles. He will not quarrel, nor cry out; nor will anyone hear His voice in the streets. A battered reed He will not break off, and a smoldering wick He will not put out, until He leads Justice to Victory. And in His Name the Gentiles will hope!”

So beloved, if we serve the true, Living GOD, then… those who sit in the bleachers, Jews and non-Jews alike, will have to see us, His believers, covered, protected and confirmed by His awesome endorsing Testimony! Supernatural changes that come from the Heavenly, Supernatural Glory of God (and not from anything that He has created) will have to accompany us and appear in our wake! And then the minds of the onlookers will be blown away and their hearts will be pierced! The Living God will reveal Himself through the faith-filled flesh of His people. He will speak through them, for Himself, and He will draw the onlookers to envy, admiration, respect, hope, gratitude, affection and devoted love. And He Himself will be their Salvation!

Acts 9:3-5

“As he was traveling, it happened that he was approaching Damascus, and suddenly a light from Heaven flashed around him; and he fell to the ground and heard a Voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?’

“And he said, ‘Who are You, Lord?’

“And He said, ‘I AM JESUS (YESHUA) whom you are persecuting!’” (Amplification and emphasis added.)

Matthew 7:13-16

“Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to Life, and there are few who find it. Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor figs from thistles, are they?”

What sort of ‘fruits’ did the Holocaust victims receive from most of the ‘Christians’ they encountered? What could that prominent Jewish author do but walk away from the question Arthur Katz asked him? Based on what he knew about Christ through the disgraceful testimony of His so-called followers throughout history, he had no choice but to turn away. We non-Jewish believers cannot begin to fathom the hell that corporate Jacob has had to endure, as he has tried to reconcile what Christians have done to him for centuries, coupled with the terrible words Jesus Himself once directed at the religious Jewish establishment of His day:

Matthew 23:37-39

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. LOOK, YOUR HOUSE IS LEFT TO YOU DESOLATE! For I tell you, you will not see Me again until you say, `BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD!’”

Before Jewish people know Christ personally and become aware of the depths of their own sin, like Arthur Katz and others who have been similarly blessed, what can Jews, who do not yet know Him, do? How can they handle Yeshua’s prophetic indictment? How can they explain the fact that Moses and Isaiah and others like Hosea, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, forewarned that they would reject Him and that they are great examples of the fulfillment of the prophecies of Israel’s own seers? They can’t face Truth at such a soul-shredding level. But neither can they deal with the treatment they’ve received from countless so-called ‘Christians?’ How can they deal with the fact that Judaism was mutilated, devastated and scattered so quickly after Yeshua prophesied that Jerusalem would be leveled? In order to survive all that they’ve been through, the Jewish leaders have had to resort to extra-Biblical Talmudic ways to explain and justify their corporate and individual agonies. They’ve been hounded and persecuted over the centuries, often by Christians. But they’ve managed to cling to shreds of meaningful ‘noble,’ self-serving victimhood, using it to explain away and cover up the habitual sins of Israel as well as the loss of their land and temple worship with its priestly ministry and blood-offering Feast of Atonement.

Unbelieving peoples have to deal with a bazaar-like ‘midway’ of conflicting, contradictory, mutually exclusive crazy-making, diverse denominational and sectarian testimonies of ‘Jesus.’ Throughout all of Christendom, they see a vast buffet of pick and choose ‘Jesus as you like Him’ entrees. Jesus is morphed into an endless variety of ethnic and cultural Gentilized versions. And very little of that truly comes from the Scriptures that God entrusted to Israel, as written in the Bible! All of those mutually conflicting ‘presentations’ set before them do not come anywhere near to matching the glorious Renewed Covenant words or the Heavenly Reality they have a God-given right to expect! That glitzy, religious ‘bazaar’ called ‘Christendom’ – and the Islamic version of that religious ‘bazaar’ that is filled with murderous, mutually destructive sects and jihadist groups that continually murder, maim, abuse, rape and whip people into submission constitutes much of what Jews see. So how can all of that Gentile Jumble even come close to resembling a true testimony and representation of the True Living God, who created the heavens as well as this tiny little planet we call, ‘Earth’? And how can Israel’s Messiah, as God has revealed Him in Israel’s Scriptures, be identified and reconciled with the Jew-spurning ‘Jesus’ that the Christian Crusaders and Inquisitors presented to them? And how does the ‘Jesus’ of those modern Christian denominations that continually ignore and boycott and refuse to include Jews, come across?

When Jews do reject the Jesus presented by those groups, are they actually rejecting the Living Person of the Messiah that was sent to them by the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? To me, as I’m seeing it now, that is very doubtful. In keeping with Yeshua’s ‘hen’ analogy, I submit that, to many Jewish people, many of the ‘representations’ of God and His Son make Him seem more like a ravenous Gentile Vulture… an alien hostile Substitute that rejects and discriminates against Jewish ‘chicks’ and refuses to accept them as its own! Coupled with the neglect and persecution done in His name over the centuries, there’s no way they could see such a ‘Christ’ as being the human incarnation of their solicitous Abrahamic, Torah-revealed Blood Covenant God, the ‘Mother Hen.’ That Hen would not devour her own! She would be passionately eager to cover them with Covenant Wings, and settle over them to protect and save them from the oncoming flames – even if it meant Her own incineration!

Even after regaining possession of a portion of their Land, Israelis still cannot rest in it or enjoy it in peace. So how can many of them not be reminded of Christ’s prophetic words? They may be haunted by them! But they won’t accept them—UNTIL—Christ has one whole, healthy integrated, synchronized Body that reveals Him to them AS HE REALLY IS and proves with authenticity, that He really is the ever-faithful GOD and COVENANT FRIEND of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Yeshua needs a world wide Human Body. But it must be really and truly His, and not that of someone else! When He finally appears to His Jewish brothers in a way that enables them to experience how He actually, personally, tenderly, applies HIS infinite, everlasting, airtight BLOOD COVENANT LOVE to them through His ONE True Body, THEN He’ll convince them as only He can do, that God Almighty sent Him to them, and that He’ll never leave nor forsake them. THEN they’ll fall at His feet, just the way I was forced to do when He came after me.

Zechariah 4:6-7

“Then he said to me, ‘This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel saying, “Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,” says the Lord of hosts. “What are you, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel you will become a plain; and he will bring forth the top stone with shouts of “Grace, grace to it!’”

 

The Kettle is Black, What Color is the Pot?

Don’t we Christians do the same thing many Jews do? They create Talmudic substitutes and we create our pet sectarian theological, ecclesiastical substitutes. Don’t we also create and maintain huge ‘un-Biblical’ denial systems so that we won’t have to face and own up to our various excruciatingly difficult criminal issues and repent of our sins? Our denial and trance-like disassociation from the Jewish people blinds us to the pain, fear and anxiety they feel when we act as if they do not exist and go about our self-absorbed pre-occupations on our side of The Wall that we habitually maintain! We can’t imagine what reaction and survival patterns they’ve had to develop after being abused, or ignored, or suspected, derided and dispossessed for so long. They’ve been blamed for everything that’s wrong with everyone else, for centuries. Haven’t Gentile ‘believers in God’ been behind a lot of that?  But we don’t become aware of what we’ve done, or fathom how much damage we’ve created and how that makes Jewish people feel, until the same thing is done to us! I merely received a tiny taste of it, during my trip to Israel, and even that little taste was enough to knock me for a loop!

Of course they’ve been taught by their sages to idolize the traditions of their traditional Jewishness. That and their faith in God are all they’ve had with which to survive! They have to believe, that if they do their best to cling to what little remains of their God-given past, are they not righteous? It has to be true, or they have no hope! How can they bring themselves to ponder the horrid alternative – that God’s true and only way to Salvation requires that they die to all they are by nature, to their Jewishness… and exchange what they’ve held most dear, for that monstrous ‘Christian Thing’ that has been persecuting and tearing into them for generations? How can they acknowledge a Messiah that has been so grossly misrepresented by Gentiles who have abused, betrayed and dispossessed them for centuries? No, as things stand today, they can’t do that. But I feel forced to ask, “Is it really their Messiah that they’re rejecting, or are they turning away from a gross man-made caricature they cannot recognize, much less, believe?”

 

Why Do You Messianic Jews do it? What’s In It For You?

Look at it from another angle. Suppose that someone like Levi were to consider opening his tightly clenched eyes just enough to let in a sliver of Yeshua’s blinding Light and Truth. What would he see as he considers joining the Messianic Brotherhood of Jewish believers? What would he see in the way ‘Christendom’ regards and treats them, that could possibly draw him to envy as he ponders the present lot of those Christ-following Jews that are sprinkled amid the various and sundry ‘churches’ of their Gentile Christian brothers?

Would Levi not check to see how the believing Jews habitually fare among their fellow Gentile believers? Would he not closely observe how Gentile Christians treat and react to Jews who are actually willing to endure the hell of forsaking their Christ-less Judaism and suffering terminal rejection and severance from their own parents, siblings, relatives and friends?

So what would Levi see? How are the Messianic Jews acknowledged, received and treated in Christendom? Where are they? What place do those terribly outnumbered Jews occupy in the Gentile Church? Do Gentile believers ‘move over’ to make positions of authority and honor available to them within their midst? Or do they keep even those fellow believing brothers of theirs stuck in their ghettos, on the other side of that wall?

In the modern day Church… do Jews serve as ‘natural branch’ elder brothers and guides for the droves of ‘wild branch’ Gentile newcomers who are attracted to Yeshua? Are these descendants of the first Jewish believers in Messiah Yeshua revered and given their proper place in the midst of their Gentile brethren? Would Levi see the Gentile believers honoring, revering, loving and enjoying them and learning from them, about their true Israelite New Covenant roots? Would he see those Jewish successors to the apostles occupying positions of apostolic authority and prominence in the one worldwide Church, as is their due? No, of course he wouldn’t see that… because it does not exist! At least not yet!

So, if Levi would consider joining us, what future could he anticipate for himself and the loved ones he holds most dear? Just exactly what is it that would make Levi’s walk with God so much better if he joined us? How would it fulfill His Jewish heart and his Biblically-based Israelite identity and his heart’s aspirations? If he assumed there was no wall and he dared to bring his little ones into our midst, would he then see that damnable Wall suddenly rise up out of the ground? Would he and his wife and children not be treated as if they do not exist by Gentile believers in Christ, just the way my tour group was treated in that hotel in Jerusalem?

Who, among the diverse kinds of Christians, should Levi approach? Which of them would be seriously willing to try to fill the vacuum created by the loss of his Jewish rabbinic brotherhood, and the deep family roots he would be forced to sever and leave behind? Now who should he believe and follow? What denominational slant should he trust and embrace? Does it really matter? Is one as true as the other? Even if they disdain, ignore and even reject the Scriptures God gave to His chosen people, and even if they ignore and reject the other denominations and sects of Christendom, should he entrust his family to them? Do all roads really lead to God, as the New Agers and promoters of universal tolerance claim? Is the True Gospel just a big ‘serve yourself,’ man-made non-kosher Gentile Buffet?

 

One New Man

Isn’t Levi supposed to find a Jewish/Gentile Church that is united and one, on a supernatural, worldwide scale? Yes, he is. But isn’t it true that instead of that, he would encounter a Torah-phobic pile of bloody sectarian ‘hamburger’ comprised of over 38,000 different groups, denominations and segregated religious gangs that have pitifully little to do with each other?  In that case, on what basis would he decide, from among such a huge variety of vying contestants? Which of them should he and his family trust and believe and respect over all the others? How much of the real Living Biblically-revealed Messiah would He see in what is currently before him in that vast Christian Buffet? It’s no longer just one wall against the Jews that we maintain. We’ve created a mad maze of thousands of walls… against each other! Could razor sharp minds like Levi’s possibly accept what they see, and because of it, fall at Christ’s feet in awe, joy, relief, gratitude and adoration?

No. It could never happen, unless the Lord Himself personally intervenes and reveals Himself to them, and to all the rest of us, just as He revealed Himself to Saul of Tarsus. Saul was so overwhelmed by the risen Lord’s Reality, that he was immediately willing to forsake everything he once held dear… and follow His Messiah into the Great Unknown… even to death! Imagine a Pharisee of Pharisees being willing to do that! What happened to that man? What was so overwhelmingly irresistible to him about Yeshua that could prompt him to transform the way he did? Well, whatever it was, I submit to you that that is the same level of devotion and love that it will take for anyone else… whether they be Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian or Muslim, before they’ll be able to believe what we say and dare to come into our midst! Almighty God Himself will have to reveal Himself to them in a wonderful and living way. Only He has the Authority, Power and Credibility to speak His Word… the Living Word that can truly set the human race free from what the Serpent has done to it and from what it keeps doing to itself! Nothing short of Him will do! No man or group of men was able to persuade me. It took the risen Lord Himself to do it. That’s why I am convinced that He will have to do the same for everyone else.

The true answers to the questions I’m asking myself are embarrassingly negative. Unbelieving Jews can see and feel that the same wall of division that has always existed between them and Gentiles in their midst. The wall remains alive and well, throughout all of Christendom. They still see little pockets of ghetto-like Messianic fellowships, sprinkled in, but ignored and lost amidst a sea of uncaring ‘Gentiles Only’ denominational country clubs. They see Gentile Christians today as Gentiles have always been toward Jews… arrogant and callous. They see Gentiles operate and talk as if they were now God’s know-it-all replacements for ‘those stubborn stiff-necked Jews’ in His Eternal Plan. They hear Gentiles discounting Jews and claiming and living as if they, and not the Jews, are the real Olive Tree of God… and His ‘true’ Israel. We act as if the Covenants God made with Israel and the Scriptures He entrusted to their care are now specifically ours alone. We interpret God’s written Word as if it had been addressed and written to us and not at all to earlier generations of Jews. We’ve made the Church into a purely Gentile thing.  So how’s that for treating Jews as if they don’t exist and are not ‘here?’  Who can blame them for not trusting anybody or for cringing and freezing up when we approach? How could they not act like abused children or try to beat us at our own game by creating exclusive ‘country clubs’ of their own?

Why would any God-fearing Orthodox Jew in his right mind want to be assimilated into such a mess? How can we expect them to see what not even Saul of Tarsus was able to see… until he was ‘blindsided’ and totally overwhelmed by His risen Messiah? What will it take to convince them that what Saul the apostle began to say, after he knew Yeshua for himself, is the absolute Truth?

Galatians 3:25-29

“But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. For you are ALL sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to promise!” (Emphasis added.)

Can any of us fathom the depths of what Paul was saying in the above text, under the inspiration and influence of the Holy Spirit? No beloved, as long as the current status quo is allowed to stand… Levi won’t entrust himself to a relationship with me, or anyone like me. He knows me without even having to bother to get to know me. No matter how piously we claim to ‘pray for the peace of Jerusalem’ and say we ‘love Israel’ and decry blatant anti-Semitism, our habitual passive disassociation and shallow lip service and benign neglect of our Messianic brothers – and of our fellow Christians – proves to non-believing Jews that most of us are lying through our teeth! We profess to ‘love sinners’ and pursue them actively, but only up to a point. We still actually struggle to know how to open our hearts to our own families, and to our Jewish co-believers! So, since they see us continually ignore and bypass so many other fellow human beings, how could the Jewish people ever assume that we won’t continue to do the same to them?

Our overtures to them fall flat, because they see that we can’t even love each other! Levi would have to assume that if he joined us, he and his family would have to keep suitcases packed and ready at all times, in anticipation of the next pogrom, crusade, or wave of persecution that is no doubt going to arise once again. So, from that perspective, it’s psychologically impossible for him to stick his neck out and risk close, intimate personal interactions with a Gentile he’s only just laid eyes on. That’s why Levi follows the path of least resistance, least disappointment and the least pain… and so… he ignores my Emails.

 

Will ‘Do As I Say and Not As I Do’ Actually Work?

 

In the light of two millennia worth of such ‘testimony,’ how could unbelieving Jews be expected to trust that the Christ we present to them is really one of their own brothers, and is actually their long-awaited Messiah, and that He is the Living Word of the Living God of Israel? How could we expect this level of testimony to prove to them that our God knows what He’s doing or even cares about restoring anything to Israel? How could we realistically expect them to desire to integrate with us and share fellowship with us, when most of us have turned our backs on their Scriptures, and on each other? Why should they dare to risk it? We don’t just have one wall against them—we have THOUSANDS OF WALLS AGAINST ONE ANOTHER! How then have we PROVEN that we’re really capable of serving God, loving other people – including Jews – and that we are ready to be one with them in Christ, when Christ can’t even get us to trust, or live as one with each other?

John 17:21-23

“…Father, just as You are in Me and I AM in You, May they also be in Us so that the world may believe that You have sent Me. I have given them the Glory that You gave Me, THAT THEY MAY BE ONE AS WE ARE ONE: I in them and You in Me. MAY THEY BE BROUGHT TO COMPLETE UNITY TO LET THE WORLD KNOW THAT YOU SENT ME AND HAVE LOVED THEM EVEN AS YOU HAVE LOVED ME!”

Just before His crucifixion, Christ said that our unity, or the lack of it, is testimony to the legitimacy or illegitimacy of His claims! In that case, the Gentile Church of the status quo has an enormous amount of repenting and straightening out to do, doesn’t it? To expect unbelieving Jews to forsake their Mosaic heritage in favor of what we currently have to offer to them would be to ask them to descend into utter madness and self-annihilation. If they forsake what they have, for what they can expect to receive from us as things currently stand, they know they would disappear from the face of the earth! How dare we expect them to betray their forefathers, and die to everything connected with their natural human identity and heritage, WHEN WE AREN’T WILLING TO DO THE SAME THING OURSELVES?

Genesis 12:1

“Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go forth from your country, and from your relatives and from your father’s house, to the land which I will show you…” (Emphasis added.)

What evidence does our smug, cultural, nationalistic Gentile sectarianism give that would make the rest of the world believe that we are the ‘Crucified Church’ we claim to be? Have we been grafted into God’s True Israel? Have we been transformed into one new Heavenly Man by God’s grace and supernatural Power? Or are we actually still embodying and perpetuating the ancient confusion and dispersion of Babel? No, beloved. Because of the dismal testimony given to them by the Gentile Church, for Jews to accept Christ as we currently present Him, would require them to repudiate everything that ever made sense or meant anything to them and their loved ones. They may be in error. They may not yet know the risen Lord personally. But they are most certainly not naive and stupid! They know who’s serious about making a true Exodus from this world’s system… and who isn’t. So, this is why I couldn’t come up with a good answer for the Jewish man who sent us that terse angry email!

But after the Power of Almighty God hits the world in the Last Days, then… just like Saul of Tarsus, we will all have to die to our radically independent selves. We will die to every worldly, temporary thing we’ve ever loved and believed and invested in up to the present moment. What happened to Egypt in the days of Moses, is what will happen to our modern world system. It had to happen to Saul of Tarsus before he was ready and willing to count all former things as dung, in exchange for knowing Christ! And it will be necessary for all other human beings to experience a similar miraculous ‘Road to Damascus’ kind of encounter with the risen Lord! At this time, to Levi, the idea of dying to being a Christ-less Jew is as unthinkable as it was to Saul of Tarsus… BEFORE God Almighty Himself stepped in to personally intervene and reveal His beloved Son to him. But like Saul, after Yeshua reveals Himself to him, Levi will have no trouble following Him into The Great Unknown!

And the same thing will have to happen to all of us Catholics, Baptists, Episcopalians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Greek Orthodox and Pentecostals… we’ll have to die to all of that. And we will, when God sends His Holy Spirit to reveal the risen Christ, and His Divinity and overwhelming Love to us. Then He’ll reveal His Living Word as He lives – in us – and reveal Him to others – through us! And no longer will that Wall be allowed to exist and to cut the Body of our Messiah in pieces!

Romans 11:17-21

“If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not boast over those branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the Root, but the Root supports you. You will say then, ‘Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in.’ Granted. But they were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but be afraid. For if God did not spare the natural branches, He will not spare you either.”

It is true that the very death of our carnality and religiosity that we all fear and avoid so religiously is precisely what God requires of every human being! He requires all the spawn of Adam to repent of their self-deception. We must all finally admit that when our Father Adam died, so did we all die. And when we’re willing to do that, we’ll be willing to embrace Messiah Yeshua, the Last Adam, and allow Him, in His Resurrection Glory, to live in everyone who formerly identified himself as a Jew or Christian or Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or atheist! Regardless of what we started out to be by birth, nature and earthly religious tradition, we must all be truly, experientially and effectively crucified with Christ and buried with Him into His death. Then we’ll share in the Glory of His Resurrection… as one.

The resurrected Lord Himself is the only Authority and Power that can penetrate deep enough to set us all free from our innate original self-life. And only personal knowledge of the resurrected Messiah can overpower our inborn human selfishness, arrogance, cowardice and laziness. Only He is authoritative, desirable and fulfilling enough to get us all to die to identifying ourselves as black or white or red or brown or yellow. Only His Love can melt our soulish lust to crow and glory in being Jewish or Arab or Irish or Indian or British or Asian or Muslim, Catholic, Hindu, Lutheran, Baptist, Pentecostal, male, female, gay or straight, etc., etc. and forsake all of that so that we can truly become one with Him and one in Him, on an eternal basis, instead. If that was true for Abraham, Moses and Saul of Tarsus, it has to be true for all the rest of us, wouldn’t you agree?

Yeshua: the Same Yesterday and Today and Forever. (Hebrews 13:8)

When we truly know God’s Living Word in all of His Heavenly Splendor, the earthly residue that is in us will quickly evaporate. Then there will be nothing to stop our coming together… no conflicting earthly agendas, and no walls. Then we will be as one – for our Heavenly Father’s sake. All of Creation is waiting to see that day. And when it comes, there will be no walls remaining among us for God’s chosen people to bump into or stumble over. And I believe the Lord is, even now in this generation, setting things up all across the world in order to make this happen. He is about to create the dawning of that awesome day. And so, the cry of my heart is:

“Come Lord Jesus! Have mercy on us! Come and reveal Yourself to this generation, as only You can do! Bring us all into the Glory of Your Resurrection… in Spirit and in Truth!”

 

Formerly, Blood was required for Atonement; but what about now?

On the conscious intellectual earthly level, Jews are eminently capable. They are often brilliant, sharp, witty, cagey, innovative and so competent, that they usually end up running the local world system wherever they land. They set the norms in vast arrays of venues for their respective societies. Entire societies have been influenced and blessed and changed by the Spinoza’s Mendelsohn’s, Gershwin’s, Goodman’s, Marx’s, Freud’s, Einstein’s, Adler’s Rothschild’s, Salk’s, Spielberg’s, and all the other gifted prominent Jewish people like them. But they can also influence them negatively, and do a lot of damage, in a myriad of worldly, soulish and Godless ways.

Others, like Levi and his fellow rabbis, studiously maintain the standards of their Judaic religious heritage and identity. They defend and justify their positions cogently and brilliantly. But, thanks often to Gentile persecution and the paranoia it causes, the great majority of them have drifted away from their God-given, world-blessing commission given in Genesis 12:1-3. It’s hard to focus on blessing the very world that is always intent on pulling you down, or even annihilating you in one way or another. And when you’re busy looking over your shoulder, and keeping your back to the wall, it’s easy to forget about what the temple worship before 70 AD used to really be about. God gave that former glory to the Jews for a time. Then He took it away to make room in their hearts for His risen, All-Sufficient Lamb who fulfilled all of what had come before… so that He could transform their very flesh into His New or Restored Covenant Body, and so they could be covered and fully cleansed once and for all by the Blood of their Messiah who was raised from the dead!

But because of that wall of partition that is always present, they’ve been taught instead – thanks in part to how they’ve been mistreated by us Gentiles, to focus and rely on the bloodless ethnic, performance-based synagogue system their leaders created to replace the original temple worship and its sacrificial system. Thus they manage to find some semblance of solace and safety in their ghettos, from the false, abusive, multi-faced ‘Christ’ caricature that we have communicated to them over the centuries.

Yet God hasn’t changed. Atoning Blood must be shed! For whatever reason, Jews have forgotten about the rivers of blood that had to flow continually from their two man-made temples, in atonement to God. They’ve gotten away from the Bible’s blood consciousness, and the Sin of all sons of Adam that requires innocent substitute blood. They forgot that’s what it takes to satisfy God’s Perfect Standards of Righteousness and Justice and the awesome Infinite Authority of a Blood Atonement that would release God to cancel and pass over their Adamic sin-generated guilt and condemnation.

Leviticus 16:29-34

“This shall be a permanent statute for you: in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall humble your souls and not do any work, whether the native, or the alien who sojourns among you; for it is on this day that atonement shall be made for you to cleanse you; you will be clean from all your sins before the Lord. It is to be a Sabbath of solemn rest for you, that you may humble your souls; it is a permanent statute.

“So the (Eternal, Ultimate High) Priest who is anointed and ordained to serve as Priest in His Father’s Place, shall make atonement: He shall thus put on the linen garments, the holy garments, and make Atonement for the holy sanctuary, and He shall make Atonement for the tent of meeting and for the altar. He (the Living Word of God made flesh) shall also make Atonement for the priests and for all the people of the assembly. Now you shall have this as a permanent statute, to make atonement for the sons of Israel for all their sins once every year (in faith-filled anticipation for your Messiah’s Ultimate Atonement).” And just as the Lord had commanded Moses, so he did.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)

Jews of a liberal and secular bent see all of this Scriptural heritage as ‘mythological’ stuff and they dismiss Talmudic traditions as folkloric, dated, and not at all in keeping with the relevance and requirements of worldly ‘modernity.’ So they remain blind to any need for their Messiah and His Eternal Blood Atonement and its Eternal Fulfillment of the Law. So, at best, indulgence in Judaica and Post Modern thought is all they think they need in order to be ‘okay’ as human beings, and as God’s chosen people. And so in place of the Freedom that the Blood of Israel’s Messiah has provided for us and offers to all Sin-corrupted children of Adam… Jews and Gentiles alike settle instead for ‘normal religious business as usual’ behind their respective side of that wall of partition.

 

What Are YOU Afraid Of Losing?

But on the subconscious level, I’m pretty sure that something vastly different is going on in the hearts of many Orthodox, Conservative, Liberal and Secular Jews, and many other people in the world who are becoming less and less sure of the ground on which they have decided to stand. At that level, the same haunting terror that prevented Saul of Tarsus from embracing His Messiah, prevents many Jewish people who do not yet know Yeshua personally, from moving even an inch, in His direction. What would it do to their souls if, without personally knowing Christ, they had to admit they’ve been Scripturally derailed for centuries? To what monstrous levels of infidelity and betrayal of God’s Covenant would they have to confess? And what would that force them to do with their venerable identity patterns, Talmudic traditions and traditional Jewish lifestyles and comfort zones which many of them have substituted for their Messiah for so long? What shame-filled statement would they have to make to the rest of the world? What would it mean to their carefully crafted image and spirituality system and the Jewish mystique of being unique and special simply by dint of genes, family, acquired erudition and centuries of man-made Tradition?

What would happen if (without first knowing Yeshua as deeply as Paul and the other Jewish New Covenant apostles finally came to know Him) they suddenly realized that their Scriptures reveal Him to be their Messiah? What Josiah-level horror would grip them as soon as they saw that the dire promises concerning those that break covenant with God have been rolling in their direction all this time?

What if they really have rejected their Messiah and His Renewed Covenant? What if He really is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob made flesh? How will they stand it unless they also know His overwhelming Personal Reality and passionate Love for them has always been covering and protecting them from the full brunt of the Deuteronomy 28 & 29 curses to which their unbelief, disobedience and Sin have made them liable? Have we no wisdom or compassion?

In the Last Days when ‘Jacob’s Trouble’ reaches its zenith, what will they be forced to admit when their children say to their elders: “In the past, we were always right. How is it that now we know nothing?” And how much ‘crow’ would they have to eat before the entire Gentile world – especially before those gloating Arabs and Muslims and Christians all across the globe? How will they be able to face the fact that their venerable teachers and scholars have been so wrong about their Messiah? And here’s the real corker! Consider how galling it will be to accept the proposition:

That those millions of despised, unclean, arrogant Christian Gentiles who have abused and excluded them so cruelly for centuries have been—at least objectively speaking… correct!

Wouldn’t your brain shut down too, at such an overwhelming prospect? During my ‘Judas Period,’ my brain shut down at the thought of turning back to the ‘Jesus’ I had left behind. And nothing short of encountering the risen Christ Himself and His indescribable Love for me, was able to snap me out of the stupor of demonic Judas-level terror, despair and hopelessness that had engulfed me. Only He will be able to deliver Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Christians, atheists and everyone else out of our common Adamic trance, as well. God desires to love each of us in this way! So, once people know Him in the living way I’ve been trying to describe, they are able to respond to Him, and He is able to fill their chronic emptiness and deliver them from relying upon created things. To know Him at this level changes everything! The cost of following Him no longer matters! So… at long last, when they know Him like that, then God’s chosen people will be free to become completely fulfilled Jews in the Biblical, Heavenly sense of the term.

But first, the Lord must deliver us Christian Gentiles and bring us out of our trance! We will have to admit that we too have been grieving the Holy Spirit by turning our backs on what we arrogantly call ‘The Old Covenant’ and flagrantly violating the very heart and soul of God’s New Covenant Israel! What are the penalties for our violations of the Covenant into which God included us – His New Covenant with Israel? Wasn’t the Holy Spirit given to us to move us also to follow God’s commandments and take His decrees seriously? Isn’t His Torah also supposed to be written on our hearts if we are going to claim to be part of that New Covenant? Are we not supposed to allow ourselves to be grafted into Israel’s Salvation Root – Biblical Israel? (See Jeremiah 31:31-34 and Ezekiel 36:22-28 and Romans 11)

How will we feel when we have to confess before the Jews and the rest of the world that we have been disobeying God and rendering empty lip service to Him for centuries and have taught and done things in His Name that are not at all based upon His revealed Word – and are actually false? What will it cost us to admit that we have served our own ethnic biases and cultural imperatives and fleshly selfish interests and idolized our earthly desires, instead of serving our Lord and giving accurate, ‘image and likeness’ testimony to His risen, indwelling Presence within us? What will it cost us to offset, correct and stop the damage we have done by confusing the world with all our conflicting, Hellenized sectarian representations of our ‘Anti-Jewish Jesus’ that have confused and exasperated billions of people for centuries? What will it cost us to fall on our faces before the risen Lord and finally obey His requirements—ON HIS RESURRECTION TERMS?

The price that unbelieving Jews will have to pay is profound and incomprehensible to us Gentiles. Why is it incomprehensible? Well, we can’t fathom the depths of it because we have been unwilling to take the lead and pay the price the risen Lord requires US to face and pay! As soon as we understand by personal experience what it will cost us, we’ll understand and be compassionate over what it will cost Jews, Muslims and every other kind of fallen human that walks the earth! The Cross is not only for some of us; it is for all of us! And so, as soon as we can honestly say that we have paid that price, then… we’ll be able to lead others to where they must go. We’ll be qualified to guide others, because we will have ‘been there’ ourselves! Then, we’ll drop our double standards and demolish our walls and render the proper Christ-embodying testimony that will give unbelieving Israel, and the rest of the world, a great example to follow. That Christ-embodying level of testimony will be so powerful and appealing, that it will make the cost God requires seem like nothing to those whom God calls to it.

 

But Fear not, God Has It covered. It’s going to be alright!

And the Lord will do it—for Jews and Gentiles alike. His Power-imparting Last Days Presence will prepare and equip His unified, healthy, Messianic Jew and Gentile Body of believers through which He will show Himself to the world. I see the beginning signs of it appearing. He’s already begun to stir the hearts of Levi and others like him, moving them ever so gently, despite their fears, in the direction of those who are temples of His dear Presence. The Lord truly is in the process of ‘connecting all the dots,’ despite all of our innate handicaps, foibles, flaws, misunderstandings, and protective walls. And when He reveals Himself to us, as He really is, we will immediately realize that when we have Him, we will have EVERYTHING! And it will mean nothing to us when God asks us to forsake everything else, in order to have Him.

And just as I sense that God is stirring unbelieving Jewish people, it is equally wonderful to know that God is beginning to stir the dense, clueless hearts of Gentiles like me, in a corresponding way. We will soon be called to into a level of repentance that we’ve never seen before in world history! The days are now here, when all of a sudden, that profound, unprecedented End Times level of repentant brokenness will become a reality in our midst.

Hebrews 12:25-29

“See to it that you do not refuse Him who is speaking. For if those did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape who turn away from Him who warns from Heaven. And His voice shook the earth then, but now He has promised, saying, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heaven.” This expression, “Yet once more,” denotes the removing of those things which can be shaken, as of created things, so that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we receive a Kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe; for our God is a Consuming Fire!”

I truly believe that what God did to Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus and thereafter, will somehow have to happen to worldwide Jewry. But the Church has to go first and set the example for the rest of the world! Just as the Lord plowed Saul up by first confronting him with Stephen and revealing Himself initially through the testimony and joy-filled, peaceful, Spirit-led death of that awesome Messiah-loving disciple, so too will all of Jewry need to encounter a totally repentant ‘Stephen Generation’ that will emerge out of the Messianic Jewish AND Gentile Church. They will have to be so crucified to self-life, that they too will be willing to selflessly pour their lives out on behalf of their Jewish hard-hearted, stiff-necked future brothers, just as Stephen did for Saul. And this is the new direction in which I believe the Lord is drawing me.

So I can only assume that in the Last Days, God is going to do for His Jewish people something equivalent to what He did for the brothers of Joseph toward the end of the Book of Genesis. When it was time for God to reveal their long-lost brother, Joseph, to them, they were thunderstruck! They found him, and the salvation he represented to them, in the midst of Gentiles! When that utterly alien, imposing and scary Gentile ‘vizier’ of the pharaoh of Egypt, named ‘Zaphenath-panea,’ actually turned out to be their own brother Joseph… a lightning bolt of revelation hit them that shook them to their very core! And something similar to that also happened to Saul of Tarsus on the Damascus road when he finally realized who Yeshua of Nazareth really IS! And I believe something even more stupendous will happen to all of Israel when He gives them His awesome, unprecedented, Last Days revelation of His beloved risen Son. It will truly be like ‘Life from the Dead.’

 

So, Who Must Go First?

God has promised to do it by His Spirit. And He will. He has a timetable. If He can break people like Saul of Tarsus, and Arthur Katz, and other stiff-necked Jews, and hard-hearted Gentiles like me, He can break anyone! But before He breaks the corporate heart of Jewry, He must first break the corporate heart of the stiff-necked Messianic and Gentile Church and prepare them to become the actual, unified Body of His Son, in spirit and in truth, in all of His glorious Fullness. When we’ve been broken in total repentance… God will be able to bring totally broken repentant Jews and many of the other children of Adam – Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and all others… into our midst – for Last Days breaking, transforming, training and Holy Spirit equipping.

That’s why our flesh must first be crucified and raised with Christ. We are commissioned to become God’s ‘Path of Most Acceptance’ – His ‘Point of Entry’ into this demon-possessed world. No longer will He allow us to be the disgrace and embarrassment to His Name that we’ve been in the past. Jews will have to recognize Yeshua as the Living, creative Word of YHWH as He really is, when He is seen truly living in us, and reaching out to them, through us. When the Jews see God’s awesome Covenant blessings and fulfilled promises to their forefathers manifestly appearing amid GENTILES AND MESSIANIC JEWS, living, loving and working as ONE – they will finally receive the right Power-filled, Spirit-given, Christ-revealing Testimony. And then they will be able to believe and accept and embrace their Messiah!

Something like that must happen… as the ‘days of Noah and Lot’ tribulation and agony of this world continue to increase in intensity and horror. The signs are everywhere that anti-Jewish sentiment is heating up again on a global scale. Can we discern the times? Where will the Church be when Jews are being hunted down and terrorized all over the world as the ‘trouble of Jacob’ (see Jeremiah 30) reaches its zenith? What possibilities could emerge if we Gentile believers were to cease construction and maintenance of our side of the wall? Would not Jacob’s side of the wall begin to fall down too? What if suddenly, Jacob’s only haven will prove to be found among the very Messianic and Gentile Christians from whom, at present, he cannot stand to learn or receive anything? Christ’s authoritative, redemptive Love must soon melt away all their fear and prejudice. But if that does not happen, which of us will be able to survive – which half of Christ’s severed potential Body – the redeemed Christians and the redeemed Jews in our present state… unless we first come back together to bond with our other half… as One?

 

Why Are We Christians Still Here?

I do not believe that the rapture of the Gentile Church will take place in the form of ‘divine helicopters’ coming to physically yank us away from the jaws of all of the tribulation troubles to come. We are not called to be terrified refugees, streaming out of the battle zone. We are called to be fully prepared and equipped combat troops, moving past the fleeing refugees, hurrying to engage the demonic enemies full force, in the Last Days Arena of Testimony. Our rapture will take place when the Cross of our Messiah actually yanks us out from our slavery to our own self-life and radical independence from the Holy Spirit. We must be raptured from this world system SPIRITUALLY, in spirit and in truth! Then, we’ll be supernaturally equipped and prepared, not to physically run away from what is going to happen, but to stand our Covenant Ground, and resist the powers of darkness until we overcome and confound them, and strip them naked!

Matthew 10:21-22

“Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; and children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death. You will be hated by all because of My Name, but it is the one who has endured to the end who will be saved.”

When we are completely dead to self-life and cut off from all former attachments to, and investments in, this world, Satan will find no legal hold or opening in us. There will be nothing left in us over which he can claim any authority. All he’ll see is Christ in us, the Hope of Glory. That’s when we will be truly raptured… when we’re finally, abiding with Him in our Colossians 3:1-4 birthright, in heavenly places with God, even as we stand and hold our God-given Ground, as our Messiah’s Heavenly warriors, here on earth. Then, we will overcome, alongside of our Messianic brothers, in a supernatural, Psalm 91 Covenant ‘force field’ of spiritual invulnerability. Through our mutually crucified flesh, the Lord who lives in us will reveal Himself to the rest of our future Jewish and Gentile brothers, amid a Tribulation that will leave us miraculously unscathed, even as it drives billions of terrified former unbelievers under the shadow of His ‘wings!’

 

God’s Last Days ‘Salvation Bomb’

Messianic Jews and Gentile Christians are two major elements of God’s ‘End Times Salvation Bomb!’ So far, on a macro scale, the virtual wall we maintain in our disobedience, keeps these essential components separate. But God does not plan to fulfill His Plan with Messianic Jews alone, nor will He do it with Gentiles alone. Another way of saying this is that God’s Word will have to be free to work through His earthly Body. The wall of partition that divides the two severed portions of that Body must come down, so that the two can reunite and be fused together. Only then can The Bomb of the Lord be assembled with all of its parts. Then, Christ will have a Body that is wholly integrated and healthy and truly, fully His, and not another’s. Then, He will explode all over the earth from within that totally supernatural, Spirit-empowered Body – in all of His Powerful Fullness! God’s Spirit will equip Messianic Jews and Christian Gentiles to risk their own necks and pour out their lives to save the other Jews, just like Stephen did. They will do it no matter what it costs, for Yeshua’s sake, even putting up with the paranoia, defensive arrogance, ingratitude and hardened attitudes that will remain in many of those Jewish hearts.

And through the faithful, TOTALLY SUPERNATURAL SPIRIT-IMPARTED obedience of these saints, like Saul of Tarsus, the Jews of the Last Days will finally be predisposed to usher in the Lord of Glory, the true Israel in the flesh… their Gentile AND Jewish flesh. They will embody their Messiah… to His chosen people! And then the Lord will say to that faithful Stephen Generation:

Matthew 25:35-36, 40

“…I was hungry and you gave Me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave Me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited Me in, I needed clothes and you clothed Me, I was sick and you looked after Me, I was in prison and you came to visit Me…Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of Mine, you did FOR ME!’ 

 

So, Therefore – What?

What is God telling us Gentiles by the order in which He started His Renewed Covenant Church? Who was joined with Christ first, to serve as the Church’s nucleus and foundational base? To whom did He first entrust its care? Were not every one of the original apostles and disciples a Messianic Jew? Of what was the original core nucleus of the Baby New Covenant Congregation composed? Were they not, every one, Messianic Jews? Didn’t the Lord’s ‘Marching Orders’ to His apostles imply, ‘Take the Gospel to the Jews first?’ Notice the order of priority and chronology: Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria… and then the ends of the earth. It was so predominantly entrusted by God to Messianic Jews, that in Acts 15, the First Council of Jerusalem had to wrestle with the question of whether or not they should allow the Gentiles into the Church, as Gentiles! And God made sure that they got the right message. Gentiles were accepted without first having to become Jews… so that by the end of this long story… they could bring the Gospel from the farthest reaches of the globe, from the westernmost reaches, back East… back to the place from where it was first launched… back to Jerusalem!

So, after two millennia, the situation is exactly reversed. Gentiles came into the Church in droves, and their superior numbers eventually pushed the Messianic Jews out of the picture. And now most non-Jewish believers think, talk, teach, act and live as if they are the entire show! And they smugly ask, ‘can we allow Jews into the Church and allow them to remain Jews? Must they not forsake what they are and become Gentiles first?’ And because of that mentality and attitude, Jews are nowhere to be seen in official positions of apostolic authority and leadership. Is it not time for God to correct this non-Scriptural aberration? Must not both groups repent, for the Lord Jesus’ sake and allow the Holy Spirit to lead them all to their proper, God-assigned roles and positions, as one New Man in Messiah? Is that not God’s Proper Order, as revealed in the book of Acts?

Does God condone the ‘For Jews Only’ or ‘For Gentiles Only’ country club approach? Will He condone what we latter generations of Gentiles have been doing? Did He really tell Gentiles to grab power, take over and bypass and replace the Jews? Did He tell us to forget and leave our brothers, the Messianic Jews, out in the cold? Will we continue to insist that they become Gentiles first, before they can leave their ghettoes and finally be admitted into the Body of Christ? If we keep doing that, by whose authority will we be acting? Is that what God said He wanted?

If we are true Children of God and disciples and lovers of Christ – we must all repent! Remember that what we inherited from the original New Covenant apostles of Israel is a Ministry of Reconciliation! How can we reconcile the world to God, as long as we refuse to allow God to reconcile us to each other? How can God reconcile a sinful world to Himself, through such a scattered, severed, non-reconciled religious rabble? For our Heavenly Father’s sake, let us honor His beloved Son and allow each other to assume our God-assigned places as members of His Body, and let us allow the Holy Spirit to do what He must, to us, in us and through us, in order to form us into one healthy integrated and coordinated Body that will truly be Yeshua’s and embody His Life faithfully, in everything we think, say and do!

Romans 12:1-3

“Therefore, (in the light of what I just finished saying in chapters 9, 10 and 11) I urge you brothers, in view of God’s Mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

“Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – His good, pleasing and perfect will. For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you!” 

Beloved, if we repent of our cold-hearted attitudes and selfishness, and seek God’s Revelation of His Living Word with all of our heart, soul, might and strength… The Wall(s) between us and our brothers in the Faith will quickly crumble and topple! So let us open ourselves to the work of the Holy Spirit so that He can equip and prepare us to repent before God. And let us allow the Holy Spirit total freedom to be for us, in us, and through us, what we could never be for and in ourselves:

Romans 5:3-5

“… we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”

When the walls we’ve maintained against each other crumble, the Holy Spirit will finally be able to assemble Father’s End Times Salvation Bomb. And after it detonates, the Living Word of God will speak out to His chosen people, just as He spoke to the dead Lazarus as he lay in his tomb in John 11. And the dead bones of the Last Days Jewish generation will come to Life as they bond with their Messiah and with their Gentile brothers. Then, through that one New Man that will appear under the Headship of the risen Messiah, God will bless all the families of the Earth… including numberless Muslim sons of Ishmael, and Hindus and Buddhists, and Communists and Shintoists and atheists, and all the others who will finally begin to heed His Voice.

Many Muslims will see what they never dreamed they would ever see. They will see their once-hated Jewish neighbors who they once perceived as enemies…  transform before their eyes… into the living Body of the risen Son of Man. And then they too will see be able to recognize Yeshua, as He really is in the flesh, and recognize Him as the Image of the Father, revealed by the Holy Spirit – the one true God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And all of these new members of Christ’s Body will actually be empowered by the Covenant Love of our Creator, to love and care for and cherish, and be willing to even die… for one another!

Ishmael will finally reconcile with and embrace his brother Isaac, according to the New Covenant that fulfills the Abrahamic Covenant into which the Living God of Abraham first brought each one of them (Genesis 17:23-27; 21:3-5). He brought them together then, through His Living Word! And the same Living Word will soon come after them both, to honor and restore their Covenant union (Ephesians 2). In the Last Days, the two brothers will reunite… with tears of sorrow, repentance and inexpressible joy, as true sons of Abraham – and as true, regenerated sons of the Living God of Abraham! And they will become one Seed, in the risen Lord Yeshua, Who is and always will be… everyone’s ALL in all.