Subject: How the Church lost it's Hebraic Roots
Date: Wed, 14 Jan 1998 00:21:42 +0000
From: heb_roots_chr@mail.geocities.com
Reply-To: heb_roots_chr@geocities.com
To: "Hebraic Heritage Newsgroup"<heb_roots_chr@geocities.com>
From: Margaret Lee
To: heb_roots_chr@geocities.com
Subject: How the Church lost it's Hebraic Roots
Eddie,
I've been curious about information on early church history.
I'm quite ignorant as to how the early church unfolded, the
different councils throughout the early centuries, the Vatican,
Protestant Reformation, Crusades, Inquisitions, etc.
Do you know of any easily digestible readings you can
recommend for me? I don't have the time in my schedule
to hang out at the library to research all this stuff. I thought you
or maybe any of the other "well read" members would have any
suggestions?...
Thanks
Shalom
Margaret
>From Eddie:
***************
As a starting point, you might want to read "Our Father
Abraham" by Marvin Wilson. There is even a WORKBOOK for each
chapter! Please contact Cheryle Holeman of HaY'Did ministries for
further information (shalom@haydid.org).
I am not aware of any SINGLE book that covers this entire
subject. Perhaps, I can give a FAST summary.
Yeshua./Jesus and His disciples were Jewish. The setting of
the Gospels are within the culture of Judaism in the land of Israel.
Religious events in the Gospels center around what was written in the
Torah and what was prophecied to happen by the prophets in the TeNaKh
(Old Testament). Yeshua/Jesus taught in the synogogues and the Temple.
He attended the Jewish Festivals. He was circumcized the 8th day. He
learned Torah at a young age. His ministry started at the age of 30,
the age when a Priest was qualified to perform His duties.
Yeshua/Jesus died on Passover, was in the ground on Unleavened Bread
and was resurrected on First Fruits. The Holy Spirit was outpoured on
the day of Shavuot (the Feast of Pentacost).
Get the picture? The Bible is a Jewish book and the Messiah is Jewish
in all that He does and His followers followed after the ways of BIBLICAL
Judaism. The first 3,000 believers on the day of Shavuot when the Ruach
HaKodesh/Holy Spirit was outpoured in Acts 2 were Jewish. In
(Acts 28:22), the believers in Yeshua as Messiah are called a sect of
Judaism. When there was a religious dispute, it was settled in
Acts 15 by the Jerusalem Council, a Jewish organization.
Since the early church was clearly a Jewish faith, the
early believers kept the sabbath and the Biblical Festivals and the
Torah. We even see the Apostle Paul in the books of Acts prove to His
critics that He was a Torah observant Jew in (Acts 21:17-26) when he
took a Nazarite vow (Numbers 6) to prove that he was a Torah
observant Jew and taught other Jewish believers in Yeshua/Jesus as
Messiah to be Torah observant.
When God poured out His Ruach HaKodesh/Holy Spirit, He did
so upon both Jew and Gentile. The BIG controversy was how to disciple
the Gentile into a Jewish faith. What was required of them? Did they
have to become Jews? Did they have to be circumcised? This issue was
so BIG that was the meeting of the Jerusalem Council to decide this
issue. What they decided was that that there were MINIMUM requirements
for the Gentile to come into the Jewish faith and practice but the
Gentile were not required to keep all the commandments or have
knowledge of all the commandments as did the Jews. However, since
they went to the Synogogue to learn and study Torah every week (Acts
15:21), it was decided that the Gentiles should STUDY and LEARN and
that the Holy Spirit would guide them in their walk in further Torah
observance.
BTW, this is what the people on this list is required by God
to do. We are on this list to STUDY and LEARN. We are all at different
leves in our walk with God and in our understanding of what God
requires. Some are more knowledgable of the Festivals than others.
Some are just beginning to learn things for the first time. While I
believe that it is the heart of God that we ALL return to the roots of
our faith and begin to examine the significance and importance of the
sabbath, the festivals and the ROLE of the Torah for GENTILES, we
will all begin to walk in this new light AS THE SPIRIT LEADS. Some will
begin to do the Festivals this year. Others need to study more and might
not do them for 3-5 years. But, if you have a PURE heart then God will
lead you each step of the way (Psalm 37:23).
In the first century, Jews and non-Jews fellowshipped in the
Synogogues and kept
the Sabbath and the Festivals with each other until an event happened
that begin to change the course of the worship of Jews and Gentiles
together. That event was the destruction of the Temple by the Romans
in 70 C.E. Some sects of Judaism who didn't believe that Yeshua/Jesus
was the Messiah sought to overthrow Rome. Those who did believe that
Yeshua/Jesus was the Messiah did not want to participate. This caused
friction among Jewish believer and the Jewish non-believer. When the
Romans won the war, it was not very "kosher" to be associated with
Judaism.
Also during this time, Jewish and Gentile believers in
Yeshua as Messiah became less and less welcome in the Synagogue.
Around 93 C.E., there was a prayer instituted into the Synogogue
prayers to condemn the "heritics". This referred to the those who
worshipped in the Synagogue who believed that Yeshua/Jesus was
Messiah. This created further tension and friction.
Everything came to a climax in 135 C.E. when there was a
final Jewish rebellion against Rome. A well respected Jewish Rabbi
(even among the Orthodox Jews today) Rabbi Akiva, proclaimed the
military leader of the Jewish rebellion against Rome (Bar Kochba) as
Messiah. Once again, the Jewish believers in Yeshua/Jesus as Messiah
could not participate in this war which created further tension and
friction. Rome won the war and crushed the last great Jewish
rebellion. The city of Jerusalem was renamed and the Jews were
sold by the Romans as slaves.
The first 15 bishops of the Jerusalem church were
Jewish. However, as more and more Gentile believers came into the faith and
as
Rome was victorious in the Jewish rebellions, Judaism and anything
Jewish was seen as bad. Therefore, because the Gentile believers came
out of paganism and didn't understand the Jewish practices and
culture of their Jewish Messiah and because Rome didn't tolerate the
Jews or their religion, the Gentile began to reinterpret and teach the
scripture in an anti-Jewish and anti-Torah perspective. Without having
an understanding of their roots and with many pagan religious ideas
during the time, the Gentile understanding of a Jewish book began
to get clouded.
Meanwhile, through the missionary activities of
people like the Apostle Paul, Gentile faith in Yeshua as Messiah began
to grow and spread into the Western culture. With this background
disputes among various doctrinal beliefs began to emerge and would
be great issues during the day.
The more the Romans persecuted the believers, the more
they grew. Finally, Rome decided that if you can't beat them you might
as well join them. In 321 C.E., the Roman Emporer Constantine
supposingly saw in a dream "the cross" which the instructions to go
and conquer. For many years, the Roman Empire was polytheistic and
their worship centured around the worship of the sun god in Mythraism.
When the Roman Empire adapted "Christianity" as their state religion,
they began to substitute their pagan customs and "Christianize" them.
In the Mythratic religion, the religious leaders were "priests" and
"bishops". From this religious system, Roman Catholicism was
developed. Catholic means "universal" and the Roman Empire sought
to have a Catholic (universal) religion in its Empire. Political Rome
chose Christianity to be their state religion.
As various disputes arose about religious doctrine,
Councils were called to decide the disputes. These are your Vatican
Councils. Their rulings became the official belief of the Roman
Empire. From a combination of drifting from their Jewish roots and
mixing Roman Mythraism with Christianity, their was a deep darkness
and lack of understanding within the Christian world. With no
knowledge of the scriptures, they followed the teachings of their
"church leaders" who were under political pressure to appease Rome.
Within this environment came DEEP anti-Semitism teaching and doctrines
by the church fathers which later came to be used in the following
centuries to justify killing Jews who "killed Christ".
This spiritual darkness ushered in the dark ages. It
was the deepest and darkest time in the history of the church. Things
began to change with the Protestant Reformation. Beginning with the
Protestant Reformation, God through His Ruach HaKodesh/Holy Spirit
began to restore spiritual truth back to the truth.
The truth that God began to restore followed the path of
worship in the tabernacle. The first truth to be restored through
Martin Luther was that we are saved by faith in God and not by works.
This was so radical and was so opposed by the Catholic church who
insisted that you went to heaven by works and paying money to the
church and "being a good Catholic" and paying indulgences to the
church that Protestants were burned at the stake by the Catholic
church for believing that you are saved by faith alone and not by
works.
In the succeeding 500 years since the beginning of the
Protestant Reformation, God had been restoring truth back to the body
of believers in Yeshua/Jesus as Messiah. For each new truth that is
restored comes SEVERE criticism from the church world.
The present GREAT movement of God's Spirit is a restoration
of our Hebraic/Jewish Roots. Because of the church's "we are not under
the law" doctrine, many Christians cannot identify with "Hebraic
Roots" and think that those who are "into that" are strange and wierd.
Christians and so tightly connected with Christmas and Easter through
church tradition that they find it diffucult to accept that God gave the
festivals to be celebrated by ALL believers rather than the pagan
substitutes. Great disputes among Christians are beginning to arise
over this issue of embracing our Hebraic Roots and the role of the
Jewish and non-Jewish believer toward the Torah just like has arisen
in the past 500 years when God began to restore other various truths that
have been lost for hundreds of years.
Praise God you are a part of the chosen remnant who have a heart to
hear, know and obey what the Spirit of God is doing in these days.
We are living in the final days. All things are coming
to a climax. God is pouring out His truth like never before while at
the same time we are SATURATED with a Greek/Roman culture and
religious based system. The culture and religious based system will be
used by Satan through its acceptance for so many years to cause a
GREAT end time deception. A deception politically, economically,
financially and religiously. Only those who KNOW their God and His
ways will be able to understand and discern the times. Very shortly,
God will divide the wheat from the chaff. They have been aloud to grow
until the end of the age but the end of the age has arrived and God is about
to divide the wheat from the chaff because Yeshua/Jesus is coming back
again to rule and reign on the earth for 1,000 years --- the Messianic
Age.
Isreal will be at the center of the end-times
controversy of the nations. Jerusalem will be at the center of that
controversy. God is trying to get the attention of His church through
the outpouring of His Ruach HaKodesh / Holy Spirit all over the world
to embrace their Hebraic roots, stand with the Jewish people and love
the land of Israel and understand how the Biblical Festivals and the
Sabbath were given by God to explain His redemptive plan. Meanwhile,
the majority of the church is rejecting the Sabbath and the
Festivals as being "under the law" and will therefore lack the
discernment of how God wants to bring together Jewish and non-Jewish
believer and bring traditional Judaism and Christianity to understand
that the God of Israel has one family, one Torah and one Messiah.
Meanwhile, God is calling out His people within the
church to come out of Babylon and be separate from the world and the
ways of the world. He is calling His people to discover their
Hebraic/Jewish roots, to love and stand with the Jewish people, to
fight Anti-Semitism, to pray for the peace of Jerusalem and have a
heart for the land of Israel. I pray that YOU will receive the heart
and vision of God for His people in these last days prior to the
return of Yeshua/Jesus the Messiah to the earth at His second coming
to rule and reign with His Bride for 1,000 years during the Messianic
Age.
I pray that you will proclaim the richness of Hebraic Roots to your
friends. Knowing our history and receiving what the Ruach HaKodesh /
Holy Spirit of God is doing in the hearts of His people all over the
world by drawing them an understanding of their Hebraic roots and
Jewish heritage will help us to understand and discern the
last days and times before the soon return of Yeshua/Jesus the
Messiah. Will you be a wise virgin or a foolish virigin?
Margaret, I hope that this has given you an overview of
these things Thanks for your question. It was a good one. I hope that
I was able to shed some light on this subject for you!
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