Full Inclusion Now Underway?

May the God of Israel and His Messiah Bless You

Joel C. Rosenberg has published an interesting post at his blog.  Given what appears to be a significant upsurge of interest amongst Jews in Jesus Christ as the Jewish Messiah, one wonders how long it will be before Israel will become recategorised as a Christian country.

As you read this, do so with the spectacles of Romans 11 firmly in place:  "So I ask, did they [the Jews] stumble in order that they might fall?  By no means!  Rather through their trespass, salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous.  Now if their trespass means riches for the world, and if their  failure means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean!"  [Romans 11: 11-12]

A big, untold story: Since last Yom Kippur, millions of Jews have begun searching for the Messiah, and for atonement for their sins. The media isn’t reporting this. But it’s worth examining.

 

Over the past year since the last Day of Atonement, millions of Jews around the world have begun a quest to find the Messiah.

At sundown, we begin Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. This is the highest holy day on the Jewish calendar, and one of great Biblical and historic and cultural importance to my people.  I so wish I was home with Lynn and our sons in Israel tonight. Instead, I am in the U.S. speaking at a number of events, from Dallas to San Luis Obispo to Washington, D.C. to Toronto. I am speaking about the darkness that is falling in our world. But I am also explaining to people about a fascinating phenomenon that I’m observing.

Since last Yom Kippur, millions of Jews have begun a quest to find the Messiah. For reasons I cannot fully explain, Jews are suddenly searching for answers to the deepest and most important questions concerning life and death and God and atonement and eternity, in numbers unprecedented in history. Some are searching through the Hebrew Scriptures for answers. A stunning number are actually reading the New Testament, most for the first time. They are searching on Google for information about the Messiah. They are even watching a new series of videos by Jews who claim to have found the answers. The videos — some of which have gone viral — were produced and posted on a new website called www.imetmessiah.com.
To me, these are fascinating developments. They certainly aren’t being reported by the media. But they are worth examining. That said, more on all that in a moment.

First, a few thoughts about Yom Kippur itself. 

Continuing to Pray for Israel's Salvation

Darkness At Noon

The Scriptures speak of a judicial darkness lying over the hearts and minds of Jewish people.  This hardening of heart, and blindness of eye is for the sake of us Gentiles, who have been called.  (Romans 11)

Early Church Father, Athanasius confronts that blindness when he writes a "Refutation of the Jews".

(39) But surely they cannot fight against plain facts. So it may be that, without denying what is written [in the Old Testament], they will maintain that they are still waiting for these things to happen, and that the Word of God is yet to come, for that is a theme on which they are always harping most brazenly, in spite of all the evidence against them.

But they shall be refuted on this supreme point more clearly than on any, and that not by ourselves but by the most wise Daniel, for he signifies the actual date of the Savior's coming as well as His Divine sojourn in our midst. "Seventy weeks," he says, "are cut short upon thy people and upon the holy city, to make a complete end of sin and for sins to be sealed up and iniquities blotted out, and to make reconciliation for iniquity and to seal vision and prophet, and to anoint a Holy One of holies. And thou shalt know and understand from the going forth of the Word to answer,[17] and to build Jerusalem, until Christ the Prince."[18]

The Promised Land, Part IV

Israel Must Return to the God of Its Ancient Fathers

Christians get confused over Israel.  We are commanded to have a longing for God's ancient people that they might come to Christ (Messiah), believe upon Him, and be saved.  Sadly this often "translates" into support the state of Israel at all costs.  We believe that this is a grave mistake. 

If God does not wink at the sins of nations, why should we wink at the sins of Israel?

Chrestomathy

The Hope of All the Earth . . . Or Nothing

"Christianity in its origin appealed to a great Messianic expectancy, the source and spring of which . . . is found in the Old Testament itself. The whole Old Testament is prophetic. Its special predictions form only a part, although an organic part, of the prophetic Scriptures; and all prophecy points to the Kingdom of God and to the Messiah as its King.

"The narrow boundaries of Judah and Israel were to be enlarged so as to embrace all men, and one King would reign in righteousness over a ransomed world that would offer to Him its homage of praise and service. All that had marred the moral harmony of earth would be removed; the universal Fatherhood of God would become the birthright of redeemed, pardoned, regenerated humanity; and all this blessing would centre in, and flow from, the Person of the Messiah.

Such at least is the promise of the Old Testament which the New Testament declares to have been fulfilled in Christ Jesus. And if it were not so, then surely can it never more be fulfilled. For not even the most fanatic Jew would venture to assert, that out of the Synagogue would now come to our world a King reigning in righteousness, a Son of David, a Branch of Jesse; and that the present Synagogue would so enlarge itself as to embrace in its bosom all the nations of the earth. And thus, unless the old hope of the kingdom has been realised in Christianity, it can never be realised at all. Then also is the Old Testament itself false in its inmost principle, and false the hope of humanity which it bears. . . .

"And so it still is, that the New Testament without the Old, and the Old Testament without the New, is not possible. . . . And so we all feel it, when in our Christian services we not only sing the Psalter and read the Old Testament, as of present application, but speak of Abraham as "our forefather". "

Alfred Edersheim, Prophecy and History in Relation to the Messiah (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, [1901] 1980), pp.24--26. (Alfred Edersheim (1825--1889) was born and educated in a Jewish home but later converted to Christianity. His perspective therefore is unusually keen and comprehensive on the subject of Jewish history and Old Testament prophecy and its fulfillment.)

Distortions

Why the Jews Rejected The Messiah

Chrestomathy

The difference between the Messianic hope of the Old Testament and of the later (intertestamental) time was that between the utterances of inspired men who spoke the message of God, and uninspired men who spoke of it with the feelings of personal injury burning in their hearts . . . . It was still "the kingdom"--but Judaic, not universalistic

Alfred Edersheim, Prophecy and History in Relation to the Messiah (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, [1901] 1980), p318. (Alfred Edersheim (1825--1889) was born and educated in a Jewish home but later converted to Christianity. His perspective therefore is unusually keen and comprehensive on the subject of Jewish history and Old Testament prophecy and its fulfilment.)