After having red the preceding teaching many people might think that Messianic Jews are a kind of proud, closed, destructive and antichristian sect which still profess in the name of Jesus.
Many can think that we are a kind of Zionist organization that wants to place itself above others and particularly above Christians.
This is really the characteristic of the movements of messianic Judaism. Although this is not true concerning Messianic Jews (from Christ) because in such case they would not be able to fulfill their calling that was given by God. In such case they would be just the same as those who are attacking, depriving and trying to assimilate them.
For better understanding of who we are, we have to go back to the history of the Assembly of Corinth.
Paul arrived in the city of Corinth in the year 48AD just after the council of the apostles and stayed there for about 18 month at the age of 51 or 52.
He arrived alone and anxious since the insecurity of the city was very bad. There was no moral nor ethics left in this big and evil city in spite of a very intense worldly life among the society.
Corinth was a real Hellenistic city where an incalculable number of cultures and religions were mixed.
We could find all kinds of temples dedicated to Greek and Roman gods. Statues were standing in every corner of the streets. Of course religions of the far-east were also present in those times.
There was also a big amount of different philosophies in practice. The statue of Diogenes testified the presence of scepticism and cynism, but the spirit of Pythagoras and the stoics were there too.
We can imagine what Paul had to bear there as a Jew at the sight of such a degree of idolatry.
Then he met a Jewish couple who were in exile. They were roman citizens fleeing from Rome. (Acts 18:2-3).
The local assembly that was made up of Jews living in the Diaspora began to grow and blossom.
Beyond Aquillas and Priscilla, there were surely other Jews (messianic and traditional) together with some people of pagan origin – delivered slaves – who all were in touch with one another.
This assembly consisting of about 100 people is a real model for us now. It illustrates the way a messianic community can and has to surpass itself by welcoming Gentile members. This is how Jews have to form an inseparable unity where Yeshua HaMashiach is in the center of everything.
We are here talking about an assembly whose calling and mission was given to Jews. The Gentiles who had been purified from their pagan origins came to join Jews to help them to fulfill this calling and to realize the Project of God as their brothers in Christ.
In other words, God still sends people in charge of an apostolic ministry just as He had sent Paul in the times of Corinth. This ministry has the aim of restoring and recovering Christian communities so that they also should fulfill apostolic ministries at their turn afterwards.
This is the reason why God maintains contacts between Jews so that this work should start under the rule of Yeshua HaMashiach and through Messianic Jews.
Then He gives ″free slaves″, it means Gentiles who were born from new and who were expelled for this reason from their own people. He offers them as brothers in the Messiah to help Jews.
These brothers are living together with us as a big family in one community. Their duty and calling is to pass on all they received from God through the Messianic Jews to the other people they are coming from.
In other words, when Gentiles are grafted in the roots of the good olive tree, they immediately become the tools and the actors of the grafting in of further pagans. The members of the other people accept and understand each other better the same way as a Jew gets on best with another Jew. This is how God can use the best his children among the people they belong to, among their own circles.
We can say that Messianic Jews are not a new sect, a new school or a new movement, but are rather a group of people which is subjugated to God and His original Project which consists of recovering the genuine order and message of the Lord.
We are just the simple tools of the great apostolic restoration of the final times.
The Grafting in and -back does not happen into a new root but rather into the original trunk, into the genuine root that is able to provide a new life.
The real apostolic or re-establishing work is at the same time the prophetical testimony of God.
Because God made the promise of the Grafting in and -back. He has never let the root of the cutout tree die according to the same promise.
Jews’ revival together with the Gentiles’ one in Christ can only happen in the following way:
Since we are again living in some ″Corinthian″ times, God sends Jews towards Jews once more so that the promise of the Grafting back may become fulfilled first.
Paul himself had always started all his ministries in the synagogues and among Jews.
- Then, God gives to his apostolic servants, some ″scattered Jews″ as companions who are rejected by all. These are the Jews who are far from Jerusalem but also rejected and hated by Rome.
The Jewish spiritual community together with the Jewish individuals who are assigned to this apostleship will soon be the witnesses and the actors of the realization of the prophecies. Indeed, when the unifying of these Jews with these ″franchised slaves″ will be done, the door will then open towards the apostolic work among pagan-Christianity or Christian-paganism. This work will extend then since another mission is linked to this one which is the evangelizing mission.
So that one could understand and accept the calling of Messianic Jews, it is necessary to realize that Paul has never been an evangelist either!
During his journey, he did no other than confronting the testimony of the Messiah with Hellenism and all other philosophical, mystical and pagan religious trends. He just repeated and defended the Will of the Lord and the continuity of the Law. His ministry consisted of showing and declaring again the Lord’s testimonies, prophecies and promises.
Paul was not a church-founder but rather the re-establisher and the purifier of the triple functioning and unity of the Torah (Laws), the Historical Books (Testimonies) and the Prophetical Books (Prophecies). He was also the confessor of the Messiah’s testimonies.
He had never built any assembly himself but did always receive help from brothers living in the same spirit as him. This help was given to him for the period of his different journeys through Europe and minor Asia. God provided him this helps since no ministry can be done without the aid of brothers and sisters living in the same spirit as a servant. A ministry with no brotherly community would never start or would just live for a little time.
When God led the steps of Paul to other regions, the community and the assembly that were born during his staying there as the fruit of his ministry, continued to work autonomously after his departure. They lived without Paul but they kept in touch with him. They continued to ask for his apostolic advices they accepted and put into practice. He was nor their teacher neither their pastor. He was one of their brothers and sometimes an adviser too.
Because, ever so powerful the apostleship can be compared to the other ministries, it can never be associated with them. Otherwise the apostolic ministry would just serve some human projects and church constructions.
The same applies to the prophetic ministry which can also easily be based on human desires, projects and interests for the sake of churches, pastors or assemblies.
Messianic Jews are the predestinated elements of God’s restoring work. It is then impossible for us to become some movement or church or to work together with any of them. We can just live and work independently and free from everything in spirit but still keeping a constant and superficial relation with the rest of the Jewish community. This spiritual independence is often misunderstood by many Christians.
The Alliance of Abraham together with the blood-relationship that connects us to the other Jews is getting their strength in the waiting of the Messiah and the fulfilling of the prophecies. This link is indestructible and is also an obligation for us.
We have the same kind of relationship with the Gentiles who are living and obeying the Messiah/Christ.
The ″franchised slaves″ coming from the other peoples, the born again Gentiles living in a brotherly spiritual community with the Messianic Jews and collaborating with them, are mainly those through whom the restoring apostleship is starting towards the religious pagan-Christian and the idolatrous charismatic crowds.
Indeed mainly through them since there are also some Messianic Jews who lived more or less long among such traditional religious, idolatrous charismatic and other pagan-Christian churches and assemblies before having lived this apostolic work in their own life. These Jews whose lives has been settled and restored have a quiet important knowledge about these Christian circles. They also often keep in touch with some members of them.
God is then able to use this knowledge and relations with the aim of carrying out his apostolic and prophetic work.
However, the main characteristic of these relations are that most of them end up wasting away after a certain period of time. A very little minority of them survives and gain even strength when new slaves start searching for their right place, community and way to liberty.
We just have been talking about the attacks coming from Christendom towards the Messianic Jews.
I think it could also be some confusion in this case if one mix up the word Christian (which means belonging to an earthly church or denomination) with the expression from Christ which is a stable spiritual state and identity.
The expressions of Messianic Jew and from Christ are synonyms.
We are here talking about the two parts of the Messiah’s Body. The Jewish and the Gentile part both having the same value but a different role and calling to fulfill.
These two parts will never fight each other since the Spirit of the Messiah is one and cannot be divided.
Although, churches, assemblies and Christian faithful are covered with the symptoms of the diseases that appeared in Corinth among the assembly that was born in the hands of Paul and his Jewish friends.
I don’t want to make once ore the list of all the symptoms of the Corinthian plague. But the list above is really the sad diagnosis of the actual assemblies and their leaders.
Today’s situation is more Corinthian than ever. The old spirits have revived or rather they have never disappeared since then.
Christianity is nourished by Hellenism – the Greco-Roman roots. This way Christianity is seriously idolatrous, filled with philosophies, theologies, dogmas and other falsehood. But mysticism coming from the far-east had also been mixed with charismatic, so creating many new mutants.
Among this ″modern″ Christianity which went so far from its original Jewish roots and who nourishes itself from alien roots, many are those who even don’t realize how much they look like the disciples of Apollos, Cephas and Paul who were not really the disciples of Christ!
In this mess, God sends again some people according to his Promise to put things in order and do the apostleship.
God has already separated a people long ago. This Chosen People can’t stand any form of idolatry.
This People preserved the Revealed Law of God in its hearth, many times despite itself. Moreover Jews reject absolutely all kind of alternative laws or at most they respect it under pressure!
Besides, there is a People among this People:
The Messianic Jews.
We are carrying the Law in ourselves. It is graved and preserved in our hearths while having already recognized Yeshua HaMashiach: God’s Love and Mercy Who is ruling as Lord.
Such as Paul, we also received the task of revealing all this again.
Our apostleship consists in unveiling and destroying all lies and falsehood in order to make the testimony of the original. Our due is to show the way towards the re-establishing of the genuine order. This is the only way to the real revival which is no other than the restoration of the most ancient.
The Messianic Jewish community is doing the apostolic mission it has been sent for.
It does not build a new empire and do not dig the basis for a new human construction either. All these false works would sooner or later end up fading away and remain empty, such as each time in history when human efforts always finished to be taken under the control of alien powers.
Just as Paul and his spiritual colleagues, neither do we chose fruitful fields to minister in. We are never searching for any glory, success or other rewards. We just obey God. In this restoring mission of the ancient, we could never be the tools or the assistants of any human constructions because we are not for sale.
If we do, this would mean the end of our ministry. Our calling would immediately be withdrawn and we would be judged for fornication.
We can just give the basis on which assemblies and individuals together with the whole Body of the Messiah can (re-)construct themselves.
This way, all we can give has got to be in perfect accordance with the Word, the testimonies, the Revealed Law and the whole promises and the prophecies of God and Christ.
We also have the same reward as Paul and the other apostles.
Paul was attacked by the Jewish Pharisees as much as by the assemblies infected by Hellenism and other insane spirits.
Indeed since when an apostolic work starts, the enemy appears immediately such as it appeared each time Jerusalem was restored.
When the ″messianic bridge″ is under construction, it is natural that the attacks are increasing as in the case of all wars described in the Bible.
Our calling is not simply very important and one of the most decisive stages in the realization of prophecies, but it is also very dangerous.
Paul did neither go to Corinth or anywhere else in the hope of being victorious and having big success.
He left in a perfect obedience to God and with such a big faith that he was able to foresee the realization of the promises.
We are able to see the prophecies not just because we know them but also because we are living them since thousands of years. This is how our faith and the testimonies of God are getting stronger.
The members of the assembly of Corinth which does not exist anymore had never enjoyed the fruits of their own ministry.
All the events we can read about them are warnings for us coming from God:
God draws up the process of the assembly’s edification. He also tells us what kind of destructive spirits were raging there and he finally talked about the mission of the faithful and the apostles. The very particular Love of God although shows itself when some of us are occasionally allowed to perceive some fruit of the apostolic calling of Messianic Jews.
This fruit is no other than the vision of Christ’s Body which is re-established and strengthened on the new basis of the ancient where it revives in order to be prepared for the coming back of the Bridegroom.
Two more things before finishing:
When the Magyar tribes (the ancestors of Hungarian people besides the Huns) came into the Carpathian valley more than a thousand year ago, a very special troop was passing before them to reconnoiter.
This group was not from Hungarian origin but passed before the Magyar people to open the way to their troops that were walking a bit backward.
Actually it was a militia composed of Jews.
They helped the Hungarian conquest in many other ways too.
These Jews were also very actives in the settlement of the Magyars in the Carpathian valley and they were helped by other Jews who already were living here in the European Diaspora as roman citizens. These two Jewish groups were in touch. The collaboration of these two Jewish communities played a predominant role in the settlement of Hungarians in the hearth of Europe.
Today, at the door of a new departure, the situation is exactly the same. We have to conquer the Kingdom of the Messiah again.
We – Messianic Jews – have to be the scouts passing before others.
Our ″old relatives″ are waiting in front of us. Those who never became nor Romans nor Slaves nor Huns neither the assimilated members of any other Christian spiritual power of any kind.
In this role of ″bridge″, we cannot see any fruit, benefit or remuneration.
In the past, I could see the Danube and the Elizabeth Bridge from the window of my flat in Budapest.
It was almost impossible to evaluate how important service it was doing for the city.
The constant flow of cars passing from one side to the other did really symbolized the unity between the two cities (Buda and Pest). But it was also joining both parts of the country, the oriental and occidental halves. Moreover this bridge was perhaps joining much more than that: it is connecting West-Europe to East-Europe and perhaps also the whole western and eastern parts of the world.
This bridge does still stand, implacable, fulfilling its role without a break in spite of being a little rusty.
This bridge is sometimes repaired by those it is serving. The people living around take care of it because they want to keep in touch with the people of the other side.
We – Messianic Jews are being built.
We are waiting for the comers at the place God defined for us always faithful to His Project.
Because the flow of traffic is not the interest of the bridge itself but rather of those towards whom it is serving and offering its back in humility so that they could move freely on it.
We just bow in obedience before God and before the power of Yeshua HaMashiach.
No conqueror will ever be allowed to pass through us!
They can try to take us by force, they sometimes even undermine us to eliminate the bridge, and they will never overcome us. We remain stables on our positions until both banks get definitely united.
We are doing all this since we have been given the vision of it through our faith. Our submission to God is no other than the clear fulfilling of the prophecies.
So we are an invisible bridge that can never be the final destination in itself, or the property of anyone. We have to be a bridge through which the invisible Body of Christ can be weld by the unification of Gentiles and Jews who have already accepted Yeshua HaMashiach.
The Invisible Bridge is spiritual and works through the spiritual gifts of the ministry.
This work can also reach people’s soul. This way our ministry can easily change mentalities, feelings and thoughts.
This bridge is dangerous for Satan. That’s why he is always attacking it in spirit in order to prevent Christianity from changing in mind.
It is possible that some elements of the bridge relapse to the level of mind and soul instead of being built up in spirit. Because today’s assailants as those in the Corinthian times always try to tear links out the bridge in order to weaken the whole building.
However, God Himself is building Messianic Jews. Thus only the alien links and the ones that have not their place among us are likely to be torn out of it…
Budapest, 5 november 2008
