All posts by James Pyles

James Pyles is a published Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror author as well as the Technical Writer for a large, diversified business in the Northwest. He currently has over 30 short stories published in various anthologies and periodicals and has just sold his first novella. He won the 2021 Helicon Short Story Award for his science fiction tale "The Three Billion Year Love" which appears in the Tuscany Bay Press Planetary Anthology "Mars."
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The Challies Chronicles: Conrad Mbewe and the End of the First Day

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Conrad-MbeweConrab [sic] Mbewe is a man who wears many hats and who fulfills many different responsibilities, but above all else he is a preacher of God’s Word. MacArthur introduced him by explaining that he wished to have Mbewe at the event because the charismatic movement has done devastating damage in Africa and he wanted an insider’s perspective. Mbewe titled his message “The African Import of Charismatic Chaos.” Here are some brief notes.

Mbewe decided to provide a brief overview of the charismatic movement in Africa. It is a movement he has observed for over thirty years and one that is of great concern to him. This is not something he has learned about by reading books, but something he comes across literally every day. He warned that some of what he would say would be somewhat foreign to a Western mindset, but he felt it necessary to speak from his African background.

-Pastor Tim Challies
“Strange Fire Conference: Conrad Mbewe,” October 17, 2013
Challies.com

Note: This was written before my meeting with my Pastor last night. More on this as developments occur.

I’ve been trying to figure out the logic of why certain presenters were scheduled and why their presentations were ordered as they were. I’m sure it was purposeful, but I don’t know enough about MacArthur and how he conceives of things to understand what the first day of the three-day Strange Fire conference was supposed to communicate beyond the obvious message that the Charismatic movement is undesirable and even dangerous.

Conrad Mbewe was the last of the speakers for the first day of the conference and he illustrated something for me that I’ve heard before. I used to think that when missionaries were sent to “the foreign field,” they transmitted a more or less generic message about Christianity to the unsaved in the various places on our planet. Now I realize that there is a sort of struggle between denominations and movements in Christianity to possess the minds and hearts of the people in all these nations and regions of the Earth. According to Mbewe, the Pentecostals pretty much “own” most of Africa.

As an African, there is a whole world in his mind that this invariably floods into. The word “breakthrough” is really saying to the common African man that if you are struggling in your marriage or struggling to conceive or struggling to maintain a job (and so on), it is because between you and God there are other layers that need to be dealt with. One of those layers is that of angels and demons and the other is that of your ancestral spirits. Until those layers are broken through, you will not get what you want. This is what the charismatic movement has taken on when dressed in African attire. The language that has already been there for centuries in Africa is given a thin veneer of Bible verses. You can understand, then, that if men and women are running in throngs to the witch doctor, they will rush in throngs to these so-called churches because it boasts the same power they are looking for.

I suspect that throughout the history of the Church, missionaries have encountered circumstances where what they preached, rather than replacing local beliefs and customs, have been integrated into existing beliefs, so that a sort of fusion occurs, as described above. The Pentecostal presentation of the power of the Spirit has been fused with local beliefs of ancestral spirits and witch doctors (or witch doctor substitutes), at least as far as what I can tell from this summary.

He proposes, “What’s to stop someone like me from coming up with irrational ideas because I’ve been empowered to do so?” He has counseled many, many people who are caught in these scandals—sexual scandals about spiritual husbands and wives, where a messenger from God, a pastor, steps in to be sexual partner with someone because of the authority that they have from God. These people keep God’s Word closed.

charismatic-prayerIf these events are indeed taking place, then serious abuse is occurring. The question is, should all Charismatics everywhere carry the blame, or only the people in those specific locations who are authoring this confusion? We have Mbewe’s commentary on what he’s witnessed in his area of the world. This is MacArthur’s building a case against Pentecostalism one brick at a time.

In no way do I defend the heinous practices Mbewe describes, and I can certainly support returning to scripture as a guide for right living. It very much seems, based on Mbewe’s report, that what many African people believe is “Christianity,” is a highly skewed and twisted version that has been heavily abused, to the detriment of many people. Unfortunately, that’s also a description of most of the history of Christianity, pre and post-reformation.

Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth.

–John 17:17 (NASB)

He went to John 17:17 and said the charismatic chaos we see would never have been the case if this verse had been taken seriously.

As much as MacArthur and his peers, including Mbewe, tout the sufficiency and even primacy of scripture, I was a little surprised to see that Mbewe used only a single verse from John to support his presentation. It’s also true that all incarnations of Christianity (and most other religions) lay exclusive claim to “truth,” so isolating John 17:17 and serving it up can actually serve both sides of this debate.

His final remarks expresed [sic] his relief to see the Reformed movement growing on the African continent, though it is still in its infancy there. He exhorted us all: We have got to pray and get back to the Bible! Today we are not saying enough that this book is sufficient. It is sufficient!

This isn’t just a conference designed to expose the flaws and dangers MacArthur and others believe the Charismatic movement represents, but one that markets and promotes the Reformed movement as a replacement. The simple message I’m getting from the conference so far is that, “The Charismatic movement is wrong and I’m/We’re (MacArthur/Reformed movement) right.”

Challies wrote a separate summary of the first day of the conference which outlines the presenters and their messages, as well as the overarching message of that day. How Challies ended his summary told me how it was all impacting him, which showed he that he wasn’t entirely expecting to agree with everything being warmed up over this strange fire:

Until the day of the event, and really until the end of MacArthur’s opening address, I was unsure of whether or not I would give a lot of attention to the event. But I am glad I chose to blog about it as it really does seem to be making a big splash in the Evangelical world and especially among the Reformed crowd that tends to read this site. Like you, I am very interested to know what will come today and tomorrow.

What remains to be seen, and what may take quite a long time to see, is whether this event will call Christians to work to find greater agreement on the issue of the miraculous gifts, or whether it will polarize the camps even further. It is fast becoming my prayer that one way or another the Lord will see fit to use this event to bring greater maturity and greater unity to his church.

I’m reminded of the political polarization that has taken place in our nation, especially during the current Presidential administration. I’m also reminded of a prize-fight. I remember being very young and visiting my grandfather at his house in Omaha. I remember him watching professional boxing matches on a small, black and white television while smoking his pipe. I was more focused on visiting grandpa and my aunts and uncle than really watching the boxing, but it still left an impression.

boxing-matchYou have two sides battling it out, although the battle is actually happening in the blogosphere (it’s not happening in the conference because only one “boxer” is doing the swinging).

But is seeking truth and the Word and Will of God supposed to be combat? I suppose “spiritual warfare” sounds pretty dramatic and even heroic, but I don’t think MacArthur has that terminology in mind. If this were a legal case in court, then both parties would have a chance to present their evidence before a judge. There’s no way to truly burn away the dross and produce a pure product without all of the elements being present. A legal court has been called a crucible of fact. MacArthur is attempting to construct a crucible of truth.

But all of his critics, the “defendants,” are stuck outside the courthouse, looking in through the windows, with the Internet as their only means of response. Do the Charismatics ever get their “day in court?”

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Where Romans and Galatians Meet: Analysis by Mark Nanos

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Mark NanosBut when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. For prior to the coming of certain men from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles; but when they came, he began to withdraw and hold himself aloof, fearing the party of the circumcision. The rest of the Jews joined him in hypocrisy, with the result that even Barnabas was carried away by their hypocrisy. But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in the presence of all, “If you, being a Jew, live like the Gentiles and not like the Jews, how is it that you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?”

–Galatians 2:11-14 (NASB)

Table-fellowship, particularly in the context of gentile participation, was a significant concern among Diaspora Jews. The many laws and customs that made it necessary generally to separate from association in gentile meals, or from the eating of many gentile foods whether in the company of gentiles or not, made table-fellowship a notable issue. Jews often avoided meat and wine, for it was necessarily tainted by idolatry in Diaspora cities, unless special provisions had been made. However, Jews did eat with gentiles, given proper circumstances. And in the context of “righteous gentiles” attending synagogue this matter became a regular necessity.

Gentiles attending synagogue and participating in the lifestyle of the Jewish community, or visiting Jewish homes, were expected to adopt minimal Jewish practices. This behavior demonstrated respect not only for Jewish sensitivities, but in the mind of the Jews at least, it represented respect for the righteousness of God that would be expected to accompany the faith of the “righteous gentile” — for God is holy.

-Mark D. Nanos
“Chapter 2: The Historical Backdrop and Implied Audience,” pg 56
The Mystery of Romans: The Jewish Context of Paul’s Letters

No, I haven’t stopped reading this book, but the demands on my discretionary time plus the dense commentary in the Nanos book have slowed me down considerably. I just finished Chapter 2 (as I write this) but decided to take a detour into “Summary and Appendix 1: Peter’s Hypocrisy (Gal. 2:11-21) in light of Paul’s Anxiety (Rom. 7).” Given my lengthy and sometimes frustrating review of the Book of Galatians with my Pastor, I felt it necessary to get in some additional reading beyond Lancaster’s The Holy Epistle to the Galatians: Sermons on a Messianic Jewish Approach (although it seems my conversations on Galatians have reached a premature end).

I must admit, I too have had a difficult time fitting “Peter’s hypocrisy” and Paul’s criticism into my overall understanding of Paul’s relationship with the Torah as a Jew and an Apostle of Messiah. In a little over thirty pages though, Nanos managed to clear things up for me. It never occurred to me to look at that passage from the point of view Nanos presents.

In the first part of Appendix 1, Nanos reviews the traditional interpretation of Galatians 2:11-21, that Peter had been living like a Gentile, that is, not observing a Torah or Jewish lifestyle and eating all manner of non-kosher food at the same table as the Gentile disciples in Antioch. Then Torah observant Jews from James came to visit, and as a result of peer pressure, Peter separated himself from the Gentiles and resumed a Torah lifestyle, inducing others including Barnabas to do likewise. Paul calls Peter out for his hypocrisy, that he could live a Torah-free life with the Gentiles one minute, and then, weakening to pressure applied by more traditional Jews, back off from his “freedom” from Torah and rejoin the “circumcision party.”

But Paul says something else in verse 14:

…how is it that you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?

The Mystery of RomansWe tend to miss that part of the verse but it may hold the key to understanding everything Paul is saying about Peter.

But first, lets take a look at how Nanos describes a mixed Jewish/Gentile synagogue in the city of Rome:

That is, the early Roman Christian communities were functioning as subgroups within the larger synagogue communities at the time of Paul’s letter, and Paul hoped that they would hear (shema) his epideictic message in a manner that would enhance their adherence to righteousness and the worship of the One God of Israel as the One God of the world even before his arrival. They would then be found fulfilling the eschatological expectation of Israel: gentiles declaring the Shema in the midst of the congregation of Israel to the glory of God, the One God of all.

-Nanos, “Summary and Appendix 1: Peter’s Hypocrisy (Gal. 2:11-21) in light of Paul’s Anxiety (Rom. 7),” pg 338

Nanos paints a portrait of Jews and Gentiles worshiping within a subset of larger Judaism and the larger Jewish synagogue community in Rome, with Jewish believers continuing to live Jewish lifestyles, including Torah observance, and Gentile believers living in respect of the Torah lifestyle of their Jewish mentors, and living within the behavioral constructs of the Noahide laws (Genesis 9) and the Apostolic Decrees (Acts 15). They enjoyed table fellowship with the Gentiles either consuming food totally acceptable to the Jewish believers or with the Jews restricting their diet to vegetables and water while sharing a table with gentiles.

So what’s Peter’s problem or for that matter, Paul’s? In the context of Galatians 2 not only does Paul say that Peter is living like a Gentile, but it is implied that Paul is too. Did both of these Jewish men apostate from Judaism and convert to Gentile Christianity? Like much of Christian doctrine teaches, did Christ turn Jewish believers into Gentiles?

The argument of the Church is that the disagreement is about food, that is, Peter was eating “trief” like a Gentile, having abandoned a kosher diet and presumably everything else about the Law. How like the misunderstandings most Christians have about Acts 10 and Peter’s vision. Was that about food, too?

I most certainly understand now that God is not one to show partiality, but in every nation the man who fears Him and does what is right is welcome to Him.

–Acts 10:34 (NASB)

peters-vision-doug-jaquesPeter’s vision is recorded by Luke in verses 9-16 and verse 17 testifies that Peter did not know what the vision meant. We see that Peter finally figured it out by verse 34. The vision wasn’t about food, it was about equality. God was telling Peter that the Gentiles had equal access to justification before God through faith, just as the Jews have. He even testifies of that equality in a legal hearing in Jerusalem some time later (See Paul on Trial by John W. Mauck for more detailed information about the nature of the legal hearing in Acts 15):

And God, who knows the heart, testified to them giving them the Holy Spirit, just as He also did to us; and He made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith.

–Acts 15:8-9 (NASB)

On pages 342-3 of his appendix, Nanos says this about the Church and Galatians 2:

The traditional assumption is of course that Paul opposed Peter in Antioch because of Peter’s change of behavior with respect to food.

But just as food wasn’t the issue in Acts 10, neither is it the issue in Galatians 2 according to Nanos.

Nanos goes on to say that if the traditional Christian interpretation of these verses is correct, then Paul had to have been saying there are no Jews in Christ, because to set aside the Law and live like Gentiles would make the Jewish believers no longer Jews. There would be only Gentiles (born Gentiles and formerly Jewish Gentiles) in Christ.

This contradicts the Bible on so many different levels it makes my head spin (although even an apostate Jew is still Jewish…you can’t become “unJewish”). You’d have to completely ignore all of the Messianic prophesies in the Tanakh (Old Testament) to make that interpretation work.

As already mentioned, the traditional interpretation of Paul’s rebuke of Peter turns on the issue of food. Although the balance of the letter is read with respect to the issue of justification by faith in Christ, and the explicit use of justification language in Galatians is concentrated around this incident, yet the traditional interpretation obscures the focus on justification in verse 14. I suggest that the language of Paul’s rebuke centers on the same justification language as the surrounding context, namely the position of one justified, that is, living “in Christ” by faith, whether “Jews by nature” (“even we” of 2:16) or “gentile sinners,” as equals. It is thus Peter’s withdrawal, not food, that is at issue in Antioch; what was eaten or how it was eaten was not the reason for Peter’s withdrawal. The issue entirely concerned those with whom he had been eating and then withdrawn; his exclusion of gentiles was because they were gentiles, not because they ate offensive food or in offensive ways.

-Nanos, pp 347-8

Apostle-Paul-PreachesGalatians 3:28 famously declares that there are no Greeks or Jews, no men or women, no slaves or freemen, but all of them are one in Christ. But just as women don’t have to turn into men to become saved in Messiah, neither do Gentiles have to turn into Jews or Jews turn into Gentiles to become disciples of Messiah. The “oneness” is as equal co-participants in the community with equal access to justification and the blessings of God.

What Peter was doing was indeed responding to peer pressure and as a result withdrawing from close association from the Gentile disciples, but it had nothing to do with Peter’s eating habits or Jewish vs. Gentile lifestyle. His hypocrisy had to do with accepting Gentiles as co-participants previously, and then treating them like second-class citizens by withdrawing from them when Jews from James showed up.

The issue of Galatians 2:11-21 was the same issue as the rest of the book of Galatians: Gentiles do not have to become circumcised and convert to Judaism, taking on board the full yoke of Torah in order to be justified before God and equal co-participants in the community of faith. Look at verse 14 again:

…how is it that you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?

Peter was putting up the dividing wall that Paul was trying so hard to break down by saying Jews had a superior position in Christ and in justification and that only by compelling the Gentile disciples to live like Jews (convert to Judaism) would they be saved, undoing all of the blessings of Christ upon the world.

No wonder Paul was furious. Peter just slapped him and all of the Gentile disciples in the face by his withdrawal and worse, he compelled other faithful Jewish disciples, including Barnabas, to do the same.

Nanos wrote this appendix because of the apparent conflict, especially in light of his interpretation of Romans, between Romans 7 and Galatians 2. I’m only summarizing what he has to say. To get all of the details, you’ll need to read the Nanos book.

In Romans, Paul is encouraging Torah observance for the Jewish believers and respectfulness for the Torah and for Jewish observance from the Gentiles. However, much of Galatians, including Galatians 2, seems to contradict this. Nanos wrote this summary and appendix to set the record straight, or at least to give his readers something to think about.

Hopefully, this has given some of my readers something to think about as well.

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God’s Shadow

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love-in-lightsGod is your shadow at your right hand.

–Psalms 121:5

The Baal Shem Tov taught that God acts toward individuals accordingly as they act toward other people. Thus, if people are willing to forgive those who have offended them, God will similarly overlook their misdeeds. If a person is very judgmental and reacts with anger to any offense, God will be equally strict. The meaning of, God is your shadow, is that a person’s shadow mimics his or her every action.

At a therapy session for family members of recovering alcoholics, one woman told the group that she had experienced frustration from many years of infertility and tremendous joy when she finally conceived. Her many expectations were shattered, however, when the child was born with Down’s syndrome.

“I came to love that child dearly,” she said, “but the greatest thing that child has done for me is to make me realize that if I can love him so in spite of his imperfections, then God can love me in spite of my many imperfections.”

If we wish to know how God will relate to us, the answer is simple: exactly in the same way we relate to others. If we demand perfection from others, He will demand it of us. If we can love others even though they do not measure up to our standards and expectations, then He will love us in spite of our shortcomings.

Today I shall…

…try to relate to people in the same manner I would wish God to relate to me.

-Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski
“Growing Each Day, Kislev 3”
Aish.com

I just reviewed the First Fruits of Zion television program episode The Golden Rule, which illustrates that principle of “do unto others” from a first century Jewish perspective.

I’ve also been reviewing a series of blog posts written by Pastor Tim Challies recording his impressions of John MacArthur’s Strange Fire conference, which is MacArthur’s commentary and warning about Pentecostalism and the Charismatic movement.

In reading the concluding summary (yes, I read ahead), it wasn’t the information or the scriptures presented by MacArthur and company that bothered me. I didn’t feel the real argument was about whether Pentecostalism was better or Reformed theology was better. For me, the issue was whether or not God would have handled the situation the same way MacArthur did.

Who knows, maybe He would have (and you may also believe that MacArthur is God’s tool to do just that).

Then I read messages like the one I quoted from Rabbi Twerski. I guess I’m just a soft and “mushy” inspirational Christian as opposed to one who sees God as perpetually wielding a club and who is ready to bludgeon us the minute we get out of line.

God knows we’re imperfect. God knows we’re messed up. God knows that, all things being equal, we’d mess up a free lunch…which is what most of us have done with the blessings and gifts He’s provided us.

“I came to love that child dearly,” she said, “but the greatest thing that child has done for me is to make me realize that if I can love him so in spite of his imperfections, then God can love me in spite of my many imperfections.”

I know the hardcore “justice” fans on the blogosphere will say that’s no excuse for not standing up to error and proceeding forward with the sword of truth to smite everyone who has drifted from the “true” path…uh, but doing it in “love,” of course.

If all you are as a person of faith is someone who has to fix the mistakes or others, the errors in theology and doctrine (or at least those things you perceive as errors), then you’re basically a mechanic who is always using a wrench and a hammer to hunt down that funny noise the car’s engine makes periodically.

Or, like the woman Rabbi Twerski talks about, we can be like a mother of a child who will always be imperfect, but not beyond improving. We don’t beat such a child, we shouldn’t beat any child, just because they’re imperfect. We influence and promote change by loving, not condemning.

Before we relate to any other human being regardless of the experience, if we could imagine how we would want God to relate to us under similar circumstances, maybe we’d be better people of faith. If we want God’s love and forgiveness, we have to be loving and forgiving. If we are harsh and judgmental, even if we’re being technically and scripturally correct, how will God judge us? How will God treat us?

Forgive us as we forgive others.

–Matthew 6:12 (God’s Word Translation)

By the standard we use to treat others…that is the standard God will use on us.

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FFOZ TV Review: The Golden Rule

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ffoz_tv19_mainEpisode 19: Jesus instructs us “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” This is the Golden Rule. But why does he add at the end “For this is the law and prophets”? Episode nineteen will explore the words of other rabbis who also distilled down the commandments in a similar way to Jesus. The Golden Rule is the practical application of the Leviticus commandment “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” and thus is the baseline of kingdom ethics and a prophetic picture of the peace of the Messianic Era.

-from the Introduction to FFOZ TV: The Promise of What is to Come
Episode 19: The Golden Rule (click this link to watch video, not the image above)

The Lesson: The Mystery of the Golden Rule

I didn’t think I’d get much out of this episode, so I was surprised when the material covered by First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ) teachers Toby Janicki and Aaron Eby folded into several blog posts I’ve written recently, all touching on how we treat our fellow human beings.

The “Golden Rule” is often rendered as “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Here’s the Biblical source:

So then, whatever you want sons of men to do to you, do the same to them, for this is the Torah and the Prophets.

–Matthew 7:12 (DHE Gospels)

Here’s a more familiar version of the same text:

In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.

–Matthew 7:12 (NASB)

I guess I’m always a little surprised when I hear how some Christians understand certain parts of the Bible. It would never occur to me to think that Jesus was supposed to be replacing the Torah and the Prophets, that is, the Old Testament, with a new, “one size fits all” law that is simple, easy to understand, and (in theory) easy to accomplish. But apparently, that’s what a lot of Christians have been taught.

They’ve also been taught that Jesus invented “The Golden Rule” and that it is a wholly New Testament concept.

Except, that’s not true.

Toby pulls a story from Talmud commonly referred to as Hillel, Shammai, and the Three Converts. I won’t render the entire tale here, but the core statement, when the Rabbinic Sage Hillel is confronted with a demand by a would-be convert to teach him the Torah while the man stood on one foot (and no one can keep their balance on one foot for very long), is the response, “What you dislike, do not do to your friend. That is the basis of the Torah. The rest is commentary; go and learn!”

ffoz_tv19_tobyThis statement is a variation of what Jesus said to his listeners in Matthew 7:12 and communicates the same thought. But the Rabbinic sages Hillel and Shammai lived and taught a full generation before Jesus began his ministry, so Jesus couldn’t have invented this teaching. Further, both Jesus and Hillel say that “the Golden Rule” is the basis of the Torah and the Prophets, which is often misinterpreted by Christians to mean that this rule replaces the Torah.

We’ll get to that in a minute, but Toby also tells his audience that Hillel didn’t invent the Golden Rule either:

…you shall love your fellow as yourself — I am Hashem.

–Leviticus 19:18 (Stone Edition Chumash)

Both Hillel and Jesus are drawing directly from a commandment in the Torah, and this is the first clue in solving our mystery:

Clue 1: The Golden Rule is a paraphrase of Leviticus 19:18.

At this point, the scene shifts to Aaron in Israel and he reads a related passage from scripture to us:

A certain sage among them asked him a question to test him, saying “Rabbi, which is the greatest mitzvah in the Torah?” Yeshua replied to him, “Love Hashem your God with all your heart, with all of your soul, and with all of your knowledge.” This is the greatest and first mitzvah. But the second is similar to it: “Love your fellow as yourself.” The entire Torah and the Prophets hang on these two mitzvot.

–Matthew 22:35-40 (DHE Gospels)

The first commandment, Aaron tells the audience, is taken from Deuteronomy 6:5 and is part of the Shema, the most holy prayer in Judaism, which observant Jews recite twice daily. The second, as noted before, is from Leviticus 19:18

Aaron introduces a concept called “equal decrees,” which is a Jewish interpretative method used in Jesus’s day and one that Jesus was using in the above-quoted scripture. This method says that if two sections of scripture use the same and unusual words, which in this case are “And you shall love” or “ve’ahavta” in Hebrew, then they are considered related and equal to each other. Jesus is saying that there’s a relationship between Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18, that they are linked and that they are equal in some manner.

Aaron also drew out that all of the Torah commandments and teachings of the Prophets hang on these two verses. In other words, all of the Torah commandments are dependent upon loving God with all of your resources and loving your fellow as yourself. Instead of replacing the Torah and the Prophets with the Golden Rule, Jesus was upholding and affirming the Torah and the Prophets, just as Hillel was (and who would ever accuse the great sage Hillel of trying to replace the Torah with a simple rule commanding kindness to others?).

ffoz_tv19_aaronIt occurred to me as I listened to Aaron, that anyone who claimed to be “Torah observant” but who didn’t treat others the same way as they would want to be treated, could not actually say to be obeying the Torah of Moses, since all of the commands in Torah are utterly dependent upon loving God and loving others.

Of course, we have to consider the question, “who is my neighbor?”

But we’ll get to that in a minute.

Returning to Toby in the studio, we receive the next clue:

Clue 2: The Golden Rule summarizes the commandments of the Torah.

Now we’ll begin to address who is our neighbor or our fellow.

Then a certain sage arose to test him and said, “Teacher, what should I do to take possession of eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the Torah? How do you read it?” He answered and said, “Love Hashem your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, and with all of your strength, and with all of your knowledge — and your fellow as yourself.” He said to him, “You have answered well. Do this and live.”

He desired to justify himself so he said to Yeshua, “Who is my fellow?”

–Luke 10:25-29 (DHE Gospels)

Here, Luke reverses who speaks the two greatest commandments, having the sage who is testing Jesus state them. Jesus says something interesting and something I think should make Christians a little nervous. He says to the sage that if he loves God with all of his resources and his fellow as himself, if he observes these Torah mitzvot, he will live, that is, he will gain eternal life. In “Christianese,” Jesus is telling him that he will be saved if he observes the two greatest mitzvot.

This is very revealing because Jesus didn’t say “believe in me, in Jesus” or even “believe in God” but rather, you will gain salvation if you love God with everything you’ve got and if you love your fellow as yourself.

But what about this neighbor/fellow stuff?

In Luke 10:30-37, Jesus responds to the sage’s query by relating what we know as “the Parable of the Good Samaritan.” In other words, Jesus defines a neighbor not just as one’s fellow Jew, but even as someone who you don’t like very well, someone who isn’t even Jewish.

Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers’ hands?” And he said, “The one who showed mercy toward him.” Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do the same.”

–Luke 10:36-37 (NASB)

Ah, mercy. I’ve had a lot to say on mercy lately. Mainly because of a few people in the blogosphere who lead with their sense of “justice” while dumping mercy into the gutter.

sad-childJesus is saying that the second of the two greatest commandments, a mitzvah upon which all of the other Torah mitzvot depend, is loving any other human being, showing that person the exact same compassion that we ourselves would want to be shown. Since the second commandment is considered equal to the first, one cannot love God if that person does not show mercy to his fellow human being, any fellow human being. It doesn’t matter if that’s a fellow Jew or not (assuming you’re Jewish) or a fellow believer or not (assuming that you’re a believer). The Golden Rule, the second of the two greatest commandments, must apply to everyone you encounter, regardless of who they are. Otherwise, your love of and faith in God, as well as your much vaunted observance of Torah, means absolutely nothing.

This is also the third and final clue:

Clue 3: The Golden Rule applies universally.

Toby says that the Golden Rule is also a foretaste of the Messianic Era, an age of universal love and peace, when everyone will treat each other with compassion, kindness, and mercy. These are the ethical principles of the Messianic Age, and we can apprehend some of that age now if we just embrace the Golden Rule and live it out.

What Did I Learn?

I surprised myself in that I have been urging my own small audience on my blog to observe the Golden Rule without even realizing it. In spite of how I’m sometimes criticized for leaning a bit more toward mercy than justice in my messages, according to this FFOZ TV teaching, I seem to be on the right track. But what does that say for those out there in the Church and the Hebrew Roots movements, and all their variations, who lean more toward justice, a lot more, and barely give mercy a passing nod?

According to Jesus, both love of God and mercy toward your neighbor, who can be and in fact is everybody, is required in order to acquire eternal life, a place in the world to come, otherwise known as salvation. This is the viewpoint of the Bible that conflicts with the standard Christian version, which says all you have to do is believe in order to be saved. No behavior is required.

According to Ismar Schorsch in his book Canon Without Closure: Torah Commentaries, in one commentary on Torah Portion Vayeitze (“No Aversion to Wealth,” pg 108):

The Torah is indifferent to the nature of the afterlife, offering but slight comfort to the individual victim of oppression. What it does unflinchingly is to rail against those who pervert the principles and practices that enhance human life.

I get a very “Old Testament” feel from the teachings of Messiah as presented in this episode of FFOZ TV, The Golden Rule. Jesus is saying that our relationship with God, the true meaning of our faith and trust, isn’t what we think, and it’s not a warm and fuzzy feeling. Rather, it’s what we do. The nature and character of our love of God is directly reflected in how we treat other human beings, not just people who are like us, but also those who are unlike us, even those who are opposed to us.

For instance, how a believer, whether he thinks of himself as “Christian,” “Hebrew Roots follower,” or “Messianic,” speaks of and treats someone he considers an apostate, tells us more about that believer than it ever will tell us about the apostate.

No matter how much you tell yourself that you are “right” because you are quoting scripture, stating facts, stating truth, and upholding justice, if you also do not have the same mercy that the Samaritan had for the man who had been victimized by robbers, you have nothing at all from God.

A review and a cautionary tale from today’s “morning meditation.”

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Being Jewish is a Gift

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jewish-t-shirtMy great grandparents were born in New York. At the end of a high school Holocaust memorial assembly, students were asked to file out quietly in the following order: those who had parents who were Holocaust survivors, those who had grandparents who were survivors, and finally those who had great grandparents who were survivors. I remained sitting with three other students in the empty auditorium. We looked at each other across rows of empty seats, and I felt shock ripple through me. I didn’t know that most of my classmates’ grandparents were survivors.

On the stage the American flag rippled in the dim spotlights alongside the Israeli flag, and I thought about the refuge that this country has been for so many Jews. My grandmother used to tell the Santa Claus who offered us candy canes at the mall: “No thank you. We’re Jewish so we celebrate Hanukkah. But happy holidays!” I’ll never forget the way her green eyes lit up with her fiery pride for Judaism. As her granddaughter, I grew up believing that being Jewish was a gift…

-Sara Debbie Gutfreund
“Swastikas in New York”
Aish.com

“…being Jewish was a gift.”

I never really thought of it that way before. Being Jewish is precious. There aren’t that many Jewish people relative to the world-wide population, and usually when something is rare, it’s valuable.

Jewish people are survivors, not just of the Holocaust, but of the world. Look at Jewish history going back thousands of years and you’ll almost always find that someone is trying to kill them. Look at ancient, Biblical history. Israelites co-existed in a world with Canaanites, Hittites, Moabites, and a lot of other “ties.” Are any of those other nations or people groups still around?

No. Only the descendants of the Israelites, the Jewish people.

They even continued to exist when they were evicted from their national homeland nearly two-thousand years ago. Who’d have thought that when the Roman empire crushed ancient Israel under its boot, that homeland would be resurrected again in 1948? Who knew that after over six decades, this tiny nation in the middle east would not only continue, but thrive and be an innovator in technology and other industries? Who knew?

Being Jewish is a gift.

Which brings me to Christianity, Hebrew Roots, and Messianic Judaism, all movements that are loosely connected by a mutual worship of the God of Israel and discipleship under the King of Israel and Messiah.

The vast majority of Jews would disagree with the last part of my statement. I understand that. But there are a very tiny minority of halachically Jewish people who have recognized that the man called “Jesus Christ” in the Church is also Yeshua HaMoshiach, Son of David, Anointed One of Hashem.

Of those Jewish people, probably most of them are assimilated into the traditional Christian church and live mostly or completely like their Gentile counterparts, foregoing most or all of the mitzvot that would otherwise identify them as observant Jews.

The “gift” of Judaism is recognized by some Gentile Christians in the Church, prompting them to leave their usual world of pulpits and pews and to join some variation on a Hebrew Roots or Jewish Roots congregation. These groups typically attempt to incorporate some form of modern, Jewish synagogue worship into their Sabbath meetings, spend more time in the Tanakh (Old Testament) than the Apostolic Scriptures, and some even tend to elevate the Torah or the Five Books of Moses, above their former devotion to Christ. They see Judaism as a gift too, tempting some of them to convert.

It’s a confusing world.

churchesAlmost all the Jewish people I know in Messianic Judaism have a previous experience in a traditional Church. Almost all of them are intermarried to a non-Jew. Many of these families live observant Jewish lives, but a few are split, with the Jewish spouse (and perhaps kids) attending a Shabbat service at a Messianic or traditional synagogue and the Christian spouse going to church.

It’s a confusing world.

Does attraction to or involvement in Jewish/Hebrew Roots and/or Messianic Judaism lead to apostasy? Or, for that matter, does such involvement increase the risk of apostasy?

I have no data to draw from. I don’t know if as many, more, or fewer people in the Church (big “C”) leave the faith altogether than people in Jewish/Hebrew Roots and Messianic Judaism. I only have anecdotal information only. Whispers in the dark. Rumors of this family and that who left the worship of Yeshua and converted to Judaism or, if halachically Jewish, returned to an observant Jewish life.

I can say that the temptation is there. I remember my own involvement in Hebrew Roots back in the day. It’s easy to be persuaded that the ritual, the prayer service, the Torah service, donning a tallit, laying tefillin, relating to the Judaism of our ancient faith leads to a closer walk with God. It can generate an enormous pull. Of course, with my wife being Jewish, the thought of conversion was additionally fueled, but that was many years ago. I even toyed with the idea of suggesting to my wife that we make aliyah.

But that seems like another life.

Don’t seek Christianity and don’t seek Judaism. Seek an authentic encounter with God.

That’s one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever received and it cuts to the heart of the problem. Who the heck are we anyway, Jew and Gentile, in the body of Messiah?

There are a lot of writers in the Messianic Jewish space who write about distinctiveness between Jews and Gentiles in the faith, about the obligations to the Torah and how they are applied differently, radically differently to Jewish members and Gentile members. Men like Mark Kinzer, Stuart Dauermann, and David Rudolph write periodically or even regularly about the drive, the need, the absolute requirement for Jews in Messianic Judaism to see all other Jewish people and national Israel as not them, but us.

In other words, Messianic Jews are Jews first and Messianics second. I think that’s what Dr. Dauermann’s statement means. But that statement, while it repairs many an old wound, creates other problems.

How do you balance Jewishness and Judaism against a faith that in any real sense, hasn’t been Jewish (for the most part) in nearly twenty centuries? The very word “Christian” immediately screams “GOY!” in the ears of any Jewish person.

jewish-repentanceBeing Jewish is a gift.

Yeah, I get it. And if a Jewish person comes to faith in Jesus…excuse me, Yeshua, then do they throw away that gift?

I know a few Jewish people in my church. At least one of them has a passing relationship with the larger Jewish community in my little corner of Southwest Idaho, but she’s actually Christian through and through. Did these Jewish Christians throw away that gift?

I know that Kinzer, Dauermann, Rudolph, and other Jewish scholars and writers are choosing to see being Jewish as a gift that being Messianic does not require to be returned to sender. The apostle Paul was Jewish, proud of his heritage as a Pharisee, circumcised on the eighth day, zealous for the Torah. He worked closely with many Gentile disciples, established Gentile congregations among Romans and Greeks in the Diaspora, was aided, shielded, and supported by the Goyishe believers for decades.

If any man had the opportunity to leave Judaism, assimilate into Gentile “Christianity,” and “go native” among the Greeks, it’s Paul.

And he didn’t (I’ll get a lot of pushback from both Christians and Jews on that one).

I’ve gotten just tons and tons of advice since the most recent apostasy scandal hit the Hebrew Roots and Messianic section of the blogosphere. Most of it basically says, “Keep your eyes on Jesus.”

I sometimes wonder where God went, that is, God the Father, the one Jesus could do nothing without, the one who Jesus watched and imitated perfectly, the one Jesus told his disciples to pray to. Jesus said “no one comes to the Father except through me,” but he didn’t say the Father was replaced by the Son. Shouldn’t I be looking at the Son because opening his door, reveals the Father?

Being Jewish is a gift.

jewish-christianAnd there’s a terrible crisis in the Jewish world today. Jews are turning their back on being Jewish and practicing any form of Judaism in droves. Jews in this country are assimilating into Christianity, other religions, or secular atheism at a tremendous rate.

Jewish children are no longer receiving even the most basic Jewish education. They grow up in communities that do not have children knowing that their parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents are Holocaust survivors.

I’m not Jewish so I can only imagine this. If you are passionately, religiously, ethically Jewish and also passionately and religiously a devoted disciple of the Messiah who the Church calls “Christ,” then you must feel powerfully torn in two directions.

Except…

…except if devotion to Moshiach was originally Jewish and considered a valid Jewish religious stream in the days right before and then after the destruction of the Second Temple, why can’t it be just as Jewish today? Why do there have to be two opposing directions for a Messianic Jew? Why isn’t it the same direction, another stream of Judaism among many streams of Judaism?

I know…two thousand years of anti-Semitic Christian church history has severely tainted those waters.

For a Messianic Jew, faith is an unavoidable tightrope walk. For non-Jews associated with Messianic Judaism or Hebrew Roots, the draw is there, but it’s different. We weren’t born into the covenant that every Jew who ever existed was born into. We don’t have the same spiritual connection that is infused into our blood, our flesh, our bones, our very DNA. For Jews who turn their back on the covenant of Sinai, I believe there will be an accounting one day.

We from among the nations are not called to that covenant, but we are called to God through the Messiah, through a faith that righteous Abraham demonstrated. Yeshua is the doorway but we must remember that Messiah, not Judaism, not Jewish practice, not Jewish identity, is the key to being reconciled to God. That was Paul’s entire point when he wrote his famous letter to the Galatians.

Being Jewish or not being Jewish doesn’t justify one before God. Faith justifies. However faith and justification doesn’t erase who we are. Men are still men, women are still women, Jews are still Jews, Gentiles are still Gentiles.

Being Jewish is a gift and most of us don’t receive that gift. A few Gentiles become Jewish by choice under the authority of the proper Rabbinic court, but born-Jewish, conversion to Jewish, or born something else, if we turn away from our sins and turn toward God, we must do so as who we are, knowing that our identity doesn’t justify, only faith in God through Messiah does.

prophetic_return1Being Jewish is a gift and I defend those Jews who believe their gift and their identity is being threatened by Christianity, by Gentiles who suffer from identity confusion, or by anything else linked to our religious streams and even how we search for God. I’m not Jewish but I understand that God chose the Jewish people from all of humanity for a special purpose, and as a Christian, I have a unique responsibility to cherish and uphold their purpose and their role, because only through the blessings of the covenants God made with the Jewish people do I have access to God at all.

But…

…but, that purpose and that role isn’t the end of all things. Being Jewish does not grant exclusive rights to enter the presence of God or a place in the world to come. God will do what God will do, but it is only the faith of Abraham that grants anyone righteousness before a righteous God. In that, Messiah is the gift, and he is a gift everyone may receive, to the Jew first and even to the Gentile.

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The Challies Chronicles: Steve Lawson and the Charismatic Calvinists

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steve_lawsonJohn MacArthur opened the conference with broad statements about the purpose of the conference and what he perceives as the main challenges of the charismatic movement. Joni Eareckson Tada offered her unique testimony and this was followed by R.C. Sproul’s theological perspective. And now added to the mix is Steve Lawson and his perspective from church history.

With the recent resurgence of Calvinism there has been a strange merging of historic, biblical Calvinism with charismatic experiences and worship styles. It has pulled in an entire generation of young, restless, reformed people who believe in miracles, healings, words of knowledge, prophecies, tongues, and so on. They see no reason in the New Testament for why these gifts of the Spirit have ended since the first century.

-Pastor Tim Challies
“Strange Fire Conference: Steve Lawson,” October 16, 2013
Challies.com

This is a continuation of my Challies Chronicles series, an analysis of Pastor John MacArthur’s Strange Fire conference as “live blogged” by Pastor Challies. I guess I should just resign myself to the fact that I’m not going to know anything about the presenters at this conference, including Steve Lawson. I guess I’m just out of the loop as far as who is a popular Fundamentalist Pastor in modern Christianity.

Anyway, church history is a weak area of mine, so I can’t say this presentation was a complete waste. I learned a few things and even agreed with some of what Lawson said.

With the recent resurgence of Calvinism there has been a strange merging of historic, biblical Calvinism with charismatic experiences and worship styles. It has pulled in an entire generation of young, restless, reformed people who believe in miracles, healings, words of knowledge, prophecies, tongues, and so on. They see no reason in the New Testament for why these gifts of the Spirit have ended since the first century.

This merging has gone virtually unaddressed within the reformed community. I believe there is no one better to address these charismatic Calvinists than Calvin himself.

Calvin faced a charismatic crisis of his own in his own day. I want to look at how he addressed them. As the leading reformer in that day, whatever faced the church faced John Calvin. He had the dominant voice and people looked to him to address issues.

john-calvinI have real issues with Calvin (Calvinism is resurging? Oy!) and suspect there is a significant “dark side” to the Reformation, even though there were also obvious benefits (something I’ll have to explore in more detail at a later time). I didn’t even know you could be a “charismatic Calvinist” (or that you’d want to be), but as I said, church history isn’t something I know much (or anything) about.

Then there were the Libertines who were one of the subgroups under the Anabaptists. They were antinomians. They abused Christian liberty and proved themselves to be, most likely, unconverted. Calvin called them a sect one hundred times more dangerous than the Roman Catholic church itself. They were lead by fleshly impulses and believed the Holy Spirit was adding new revelation to the Bible. They set aside the Scripture and wanted to follow the inner impulses that they thought were the Spirit. They lived in open licentiousness. They wanted an easy moral path without having to fight sin or temptation.

These were the things Calvin faced in his day. So the charismatic chaos we see now, in our day, is nothing new. It was prevalent in Calvin’s day, as it has been in other eras as well. So Calvin was not silent about it.

Here’s the part I agree with (odd, that I should agree with Calvin on anything). I don’t think you can choose to set aside the Bible and pretend that all your emotional experiences are the Holy Spirit. I certainly don’t think your emotions should tell you how to live and what is Holy, especially in contradiction to what we read in scripture. I don’t think it’s just the Libertines of Calvin’s day who live like this, and I don’t think it has to involve “dramatic” behaviors we see in Charismatic churches today. Plenty of liberal denominations are following the emotional leading of what we call “progressive” or “politically correct” in telling themselves what is right and wrong. If your church looks, acts, and believes exactly the way we’re being told to look, act, and believe by CNN, MSNBC, and the New York Times, then you have no doubt set the Bible aside and are listening to another “spirit,” the “spirit” of the popular, mainstream news media.

But I digress.

In Calvin’s commentary on Matthew 10:1, he states that the office of apostleship was a temporary office. The apostles were the foundation of the church, and you only lay a foundation only once. They were given miracles to authenticate their authority as messengers of the revelation of God in Christ.

I’ll agree that, as far as I know, miracles from God are pretty rare in our day and age relative to what we see in the New Testament, but I’m not willing to draw a hard and fast line and say they’re impossible, either. Nor do miracles only have to exist to validate the original apostles. After all, there are miracles all through the Tanakh (Old Testament) and ultimately, when you take their “purpose” down to its core, all manifestations of the power of God in our world are for the glory of God. You don’t have to write a bunch of rules around them and try to put God in a box. In this case, Calvin (and probably Lawson) is drawing a conclusion he can’t possibly prove.

Institutes 1.9.3 – Word and Spirit belong inseparably together. If you take anything away from Calvin, take this. “For by a kind of mutual bond the Lord has joined together the certainty of his Word and of his Spirit so that the perfect religion of the Word may abide in our minds when the Spirit, who causes us to contemplate God’s face, shines; and that we may in turn embrace the Spirit with no fear of being deceived when we recognize him in his own image, namely, in the Word.”

Institutes 2.15.2 – “This, however, remains certain: the perfect doctrine he has brought has made an end to all prophecies. All those, then, who, not content with the gospel, patch it with something extraneous to it, detract from Christ’s authority.”

nadab-abihu-fireI don’t think we should fall into the trap of believing the Calvin was always right just because he was Calvin or because we (or some people) hold the Reformation in such high esteem. I think Calvin, at least from what I’m reading here, didn’t have a particularly “Judaic” view of the Bible and thus probably missed a lot of meaning and depth in the Gospel message because he didn’t try to tune in to the intent of the original writers of the New Testament or their first century Jewish and Greek audiences. I can agree that Word and Spirit must be in agreement, but I believe that the Tanakh and Apostolic Scriptures must also be in agreement without a lot of theological gymnastics being necessary. I’m not sure Calvin would agree with me on that.

A charismatic Calvinist is, to Calvin, an oxymoron. It can’t exist.

I almost don’t care about this statement (almost, but not quite), because I think that all manifestations of the church in our era or any other (apart from the first century Jewish stream of “the Way”) have “missed the mark” in some manner or fashion. We have the Bible, the record of God’s interaction with human beings, primarily Jewish human beings. Then we have all of the systems we’ve built around that document, and we use those systems to tell us what the Bible means. Those systems aren’t perfect and objective because people aren’t perfect and objective. The numerous variations of Christianity aren’t perfect. Only God is perfect. I don’t think we always understand God.

We are all aiming at achieving high fidelity to the original and probably aren’t doing a very good job at it. I agree with some of the things Lawson had to say, mirroring some of the things Calvin had to say. You can’t pretend your emotions are really the Holy Spirit and then do anything you want, especially in contradiction to the Bible. But let’s be clear, no one of us and no one religious group has the inside track on exactly what the Bible is saying all of the time.

So far, I get the feeling that “Strange Fire” is trying to say that Pentecostalism is wrong and Fundamentalism is right. However, even if MacArthur and Company can reasonably convince me that Pentecostalism is essentially flawed and non-Biblical, that does not automatically grant Fundamentalism a rating of being perfect and always correct. On a math test, two students can get two different answers for the same problem but just because one student is wrong, doesn’t mean the other student is right. They could both be wrong, but in different ways.

Glasses on Open BibleThat’s why we always study. That’s why we’re still trying to learn. That’s why we struggle. That’s why we try to understand but in the end, we keep “understanding” differently from one another.

One question remains from Lawson’s presentation. Is he making a direct comparison between the Libertines of Calvin’s day and the modern Pentecostal/Charismatic movement? If he is, then he’s saying Pentecostals are letting their emotions not only re-write the Bible, but that they’re disregarding the Bible in favor of their emotive states.

Is that a fair comparison?