Making room in the Bible for the Jewish people

The Bible is chock full of prophecies specifically given to the Jewish people. What happens when Gentile believers re-interpret those Jewish promises away from the Jewish people? Most Christian use of Scripture ignores its Jewish context and simply replaces it with a Gentile Christian context. This is Replacement theology, practically speaking. Even my best friends do this on a daily basis.

Let’s look at this problem, and then try to bring some biblical balance.  The Bible says that cursing, making light of or ignoring the Jewish people is a biblical no-no (see Genesis 12:3; Jeremiah 30:17). Is there a more excellent way of using the Jewish Scriptures – one that will not separate the Jewish people from their promises, while at the same time allowing Gentile believers to apply the relevant spiritual principles to their own lives?

A diamond is forever

The Apostle Paul gives us a solid foundation for understanding and using the Jewish Scriptures: “From the standpoint of God’s choice they (the Jewish people) are beloved for the sake of the Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) – because the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (Romans 11:28).

Simply put, all of the promises originally spoken over the Jewish people still apply to the Jewish people. They are all valid prophecies and they will certainly come to pass for the sons and daughters of Jacob. These promises, like diamonds, are forever. They are the family jewels of Jacob’s children.

Staying honest

How are we to honor the original and lasting intent of the Bible (2 Timothy 2:15) in our teaching, preaching and calls to intercession? Whenever we use a Scripture passage which talks about Israel, let’s ask ourselves some basic questions:

Discovering that the Bible really is a Jewish book

If nearly all of the Bible’s prophecies are about the Jewish people, God must have a reason for that.

God is calling for a radical reformation in the Body of Messiah. His challenge to us all – can we let the Bible mean what it says? Will we allow those prophecies to breathe, giving honor to God’s word by honoring His original intent?

“Does that prophecy actually refer to the Jews and their destiny?” (first illustration)

A movement of worship and intercession is spreading across the planet. Christian believers are glorifying the God of Israel and calling on Him to bring repentance, renewal and revival to their own nations. Scripture passages are often drafted and pressed into the service of these movements. A closer look at these passages almost always reveals that the verses used are actually prophesying specific destiny over the Jewish people.

One example is Isaiah 60:1-3, 12, 14:

“Arise, shine; for your light has come and the glory of YHVH has risen upon you. For behold, darkness will cover the earth and deep darkness the peoples. But YHVH will rise upon you and His glory will appear upon you. Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising … For the nation and the kingdom which will not serve you will perish, and the nations will be utterly ruined … The sons of those who afflicted you will come bowing to you, and all those who despised you will bow themselves at the soles of your feet. And they will call you the City of YHVH, Zion of the Holy One of Israel” (Isaiah 60:1-3, 12, 14)

This passage is not a declaration that the church will bring revival to other Gentiles. It is definitely a declaration that Israel will bring revival to all the nations (which is part of her prophesied destiny; see Romans 11:12, 15).

How to use this passage honestly? It’s a two-step process:

  1. One, proclaim that YHVH will shine His light on Israel and through them He will bring light to the Gentiles. This is a high strategy for God and we all need to make it part of our strategy as well
  2. Two, encourage people to appeal to the God of Jacob to shine His light upon their own nations as well

This two-step process keeps us honest:

  1. Point one above declares that Isaiah 60 is a prophecy over the Jewish people. It is our privilege to proclaim this prophetic promise over Israel
  2. Point two above is our own prayer response, though it’s not what the prophecy is stressing. We ask God to shine His light on our nations – but without weakening the biblical promise for Israel, and without turning our prayers over our own nations into false prophecies

“Does that prophecy actually refer to the Jews and their destiny?” (second illustration)

Here’s another example of how to use scripture honestly:

“So now, our God, listen to the prayer of Your servant and to his supplications, and for Your sake, O YHVH, let Your face shine on Your desolate sanctuary. O my God, incline Your ear and hear! Open Your eyes and see our desolations and the city which is called by Your name. For we are not presenting our supplications before You on account of any merits of our own, but on account of Your great compassion. O YHVH, hear! O YHVH, forgive! O YHVH, listen and take action! For Your own sake, O my God, do not delay, because Your city and Your people are called by Your name.” Now while I was speaking and praying, and confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my supplication before YHVH my God in behalf of the holy mountain of my God… (Daniel 9:17-20)

Daniel’s intercessory prayer is highly specific. It focuses on the Jewish people, their sins and their prophetic destiny. If we want to use this scripture passage to encourage other nations and peoples to intercede for their own countries, the same two-step process applies: One, recognize and proclaim that Daniel is interceding for Israel’s repentance, restoration and salvation. This is a high priority for God. It should be our high priority as well. Two, encourage people to appeal to the God of Jacob to bring repentance, restoration and salvation to your own nations. If we follow this two-step process, we walk in God’s ways, honoring His prophetic intentions and His heart for Israel. We enter into God’s burdens without weakening the biblical promise for Israel, and without turning our prayers over our own nations into false prophecies.

“Does that prophecy actually refer to the Jews and their destiny?” (third illustration)

Here’s a third example of how to use scripture honestly:

“In that day I will raise up the fallen booth of David and wall up its breaches. I will also raise up its ruins and rebuild it as in the days of old, that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations who are called by My name, declares YHVH who does this. Behold, days are coming, declares YHVH, when the plowman will overtake the reaper and the treader of grapes him who sows seed – when the mountains will drip sweet wine and all the hills will be dissolved. Also I will restore the captivity of My people Israel, and they will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them. They will also plant vineyards and drink their wine, and make gardens and eat their fruit. I will also plant them on their land, and they will not again be rooted out from their land which I have given them, says YHVH your God” (Amos 9:11-15)

Amos’ prophecy is very specific. It talks about:

If someone would want to use this scripture passage to encourage nations and peoples to press in to God through worship, the same two-step process still offers help here, though it should be stressed that worship is not the subject of Amos 9:11: One, proclaim that Amos is prophesying the Jewish people's physical and spiritual restoration and salvation. This is a high priority for God. It should be our high priority as well. Two, encourage people to worship the God of Jacob. If we follow the first step of this two-step process, we will be walking in God’s ways, honoring His prophetic intentions and His heart for Israel – without weakening the biblical promise for Israel, and without altering the meaning of Amos’ prophecy.

A little less boasting, a lot more equipping

Two thousand years ago the Apostle Paul called out a warning to Rome’s Gentile believers: “Do not boast against the (original Jewish) branches” (Romans 11:18). To teach that YHVH’s gifts to the Jewish people are revocable and have now morphed into Gentile and not Jewish gifts – this is precisely the boasting against the Jewish people that Paul condemns in Romans 11:18, 20.

Leaders and teachers in the Body of Messiah need to get out of our easy chairs and start teaching what the Bible actually says about these issues. A daily dose of Vitamin J (kosher teaching about the Jewish calling) is long overdue. Paul calls us upward: “And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Messiah – until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Messiah. As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming” (Ephesians 4:11-14)

Mañana (tomorrow) is good enough for me

One of our ministry emphases focuses on the urgent need to equip believers – so that we will all be pro-actively ready for the restoration of Israel. Occasionally some believers respond to the challenges with these words:

Brothers and sisters, the time for hesitation’s through. Let’s stop the delaying tactics. Let’s own up to our lack of prophetic courage.

Let the Jewish people back into their own tent

In your devotions, in your Bible reading, in your preaching and teaching, allow the Jewish people into your tent. According to Romans 11:24 it is actually their own tent –“their own olive tree”. But do make room for the Jewish people, and allow them back into their own Bible, their gifts and their calling.

How should we then pray?

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal or credit card) through: www.davidstent.org

By the rivers of Woodstock

It’s fifty years on since a half a million young Americans flowed down the Interstates to converge at Bethel in western New York State.  Smack dab in the middle of Max Yasgur’s cow pasture, the Woodstock Aquarian Festival of Music and Art morphed into a muddy stage which would showcase the counterculture generation.  Hundreds of thousands got up and danced to the music, swaying to the songs and promised dreams.

Carlos Santana explains:

Michael Lang, the event’s main organizer, similarly opines:

Rolling Stone magazine stated that Woodstock was:

Now that 50 years have come and gone – the same amount of time as a biblical jubilee (see Leviticus 25:8-13) – what perspectives can we take away from the rock festival that was in Bethel – musically, socially and spiritually?

The saffron-robed swami and I

Woodstock began with Sri Swami Satchidananda leading at least 400,000 American youth in invoking the spirit of the Hindu deity Ram.

In 1991 it was revealed that over the years at least 11 women, including two of Satchidananda’s former secretaries, had been coerced into having sexual relations with him.

The saffron-robed swami had just shrink-wrapped ancient polytheism and given it a new Aquarian rock 'n' roll packaging – his present to the youth of the Western world. To paraphrase Bob Dylan, the times of Judeo-Christian spiritual consensus were rapidly changing.

A text with a context

Woodstock flowered at the end of the American Sixties. A lot had gone down in the previous twenty years:

President Eisenhower had challenged America to give a wide berth to a carnal materialism which spurned biblical and spiritual realities. His 1954 State of the Union address declared:

The spiritual thirst of America’s youth had found little that was appetizing in increasingly liberal and anti-supernatural traditional forms of Christianity and Judaism. This irresistible spiritual hunger was about to crash into an immovable American religiosity.

Francis Schaeffer remarked that “the hippies of the 1960s did understand something. They were right in fighting the plastic culture, and the church should have been fighting it too ... More than this, they were right in the fact that the plastic culture – modern man, the mechanistic worldview in university textbooks and in practice, the total threat of the machine, the establishment technology, the bourgeois upper middle class – is poor in its sensitivity to nature ... As a utopian group, the counterculture understands something very real, both as to the culture as a culture, but also as to the poverty of modern man’s concept of nature and the way the machine is eating up nature on every side” (Francis A. Schaeffer, Pollution & the Death of Man).

A hard rain’s gonna fall

An entire generation of baby boomers grew up with a nuclear Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads. The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 seeded existential fear across the continent. Why plan for a distant retirement when faced with the clear and present danger of total human destruction? The ‘American Dream’ was beginning to look like an illusion. The assassinations of John F. and Robert Kennedy as well as of Martin Luther King shook the stability of a nation.

These and other pressures colored developing social dynamics:

Disintegrating values were leading to disintegrating boundaries.

This was the matrix from which Jefferson Airplane sang out at Woodstock:

Look what's happening out in the streets!

Got a revolution, got to revolution

One generation got old, one generation got soul! 

This generation got no dissertation to hold

Pick up the cry! Hey now it’s time for you and me - Got a revolution, Got to revolution”

(“Volunteers,” Marty Balin & Paul Kantner, © BMG Music)

The Who’s stunning performance at Woodstock threw the spotlight on a similar message:

Things they do look awful c-c-c-cold. I hope I die before I get old…

Why don’t you all fade away and don’t try to dig what we all s-s-say

I’m not trying to cause a big s-sensation. I’m just talkin’ ‘bout my g-g-g-generation

(“My Generation”, Peter Townshend,© Brunswick/Polydor)

The disillusionment with Western materialism in general and with America in particular bubbled up into what many see as the anthem of Woodstock – Canned Heat’s ‘Going up the country’ –

I’m gonna leave this city, got to get away.

All this fussin’ and fightin’ man, you know I sure can’t stay

So baby pack your leavin’ trunk, you know we’ve got to leave today

Just exactly where we’re goin’ I cannot say but we might even leave the U.S.A.

(Alan Wilson, © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC)

Outwards appearance and secret societies

Mark Twain once declared, “Clothes make a man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.” Woodstock was famous for tie-dye t-shirts, fringed jeans and skinny dipping. Those outward manifestations nevertheless had a significant influence on Western society.

A music/social philosopher Bill Mankin offers some insight on this point:                                                         

The circle of life

The promise of a new generation that Woodstock hoped for – that utopian dream of a turned-on world, a transformed humanity and a new spiritual age – rapidly fell by the wayside. The nightmare of the Altamont Speedway Free Festival (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altamont_Free_Concert) barely four months later saw an African-American stabbed to death by Hell’s Angels bodyguards while a white British rock-blues band (the Rolling Stones) played Sympathy for the Devil and Under my thumb. “Altamont became, whether fairly or not, a symbol for the death of the Woodstock Nation” (Mark Hamilton Lytle, America’s Uncivil Wars: The Sixties Era from Elvis to the Fall of Richard Nixon, p. 336).

The Rolling Stones were not the cause of Woodstock Nation’s collapse. The spiritual pillars of the Aquarian Age had been tottering from the outset. And the moral compass of the movement was giving a false reading of the true North from the get-go. It is said that the apple does not fall far from the tree. In the end the hippies of Woodstock did not walk that differently from their fathers.

Joni Mitchell, famed Canadian singer-songwriter, has a verse which might sum up this aspect of the Woodstock journey: “And the seasons they go round and round. Painted ponies go up and down. We’re captive on the carousel of time. We can’t return we can only look behind from where we came and go round and round and round in the circle game” (Joni Mitchell, © Siquomb Publishing Company).

Searching for Paradise Lost

The spiritual yearnings which were part of the warp and woof of the rock festival crystallized in another Joni Mitchell song ‘Woodstock.’ According to David Crosby, Mitchell captured the feeling and importance of the Woodstock festival better than anyone who had actually been there. Her anthem describes a spiritual journey to Max Yasgur's farm, making conspicuous use of sacred imagery and comparing the festival site with the Garden of Eden.

Well, I came upon a child of God. He was walking along the road

And I asked him, “Tell me, where are you going?”

This he told me. Said, “I’m going down to Yasgur’s Farm

Gonna join in a rock and roll band.

Got to get back to the land and set my soul free”

Well, then can I roam beside you? I have come to lose the smog

And I feel myself a cog in something turning

And maybe it’s the time of year, yes and maybe it’s the time of man

And I don’t know who I am but life is for learning

We are stardust, we are golden. We are caught in the devils bargain

And we got to get ourselves back to the garden

(Joni Mitchell, ‘Woodstock’ © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC)

The Woodstock Generation was suddenly cut adrift. Within a year the three ‘J’s (Jimi, Janis and Jim Morrison) were dead of drug overdoses. But many of hippies soon came into a deep spiritual encounter with the Messiah of Israel, Yeshua, during the Jesus Revolution of the late Sixties and early Seventies. A significant number of these were Jewish people, and some of them became the leaders of the Messianic Jewish movement around the world and in Israel.

Who remembers the Babylonian Hit Parade?

Over 2,600 years ago Judah was crushingly exiled to Babylon. The Jewish people may have lost their homeland, but they didn’t lose their common sense. They realized that God had exiled them to a foreign land (Psalm 137:4). The prophetic restoration and future of their people lay in remembering the national connection between the scattered Jewish people and their Promised Land (verse 5). Indeed, every Jewish wedding shouts out these words: May even the high joy of my wedding day pale in comparison to YHVH’s promises to doubly restore the Jewish people – spiritually through the Messiah, and physically to the Land of Israel!

In the same way that no one today remembers the ancient Babylonian Top Forty, the Jewish people also no longer remember the Hebrew melodies we were forced to sing beside the Euphrates River 2,600 years ago.  But do the Jewish people still remember the fact that most of Jacob’s sons and daughters are not in Israel, but still reside in the lands of our Exile (2 Kings 17:23; 25:21; Ezra 5:12; 9:4; 10:16; Isaiah 5:13a; Jeremiah 16:13-15; 29:13-14; 30:10-11; 16-18)?

Many Jews in the Exile have lost their memory. We have forgotten Zion and are desperately trying to fit in to the lands of our enemies (see Ezekiel 39:25-29; 20:38). And all the while we are afraid that if the Gentiles remember our connection with the Land of Israel and realize that we are only ‘strangers in a strange land,’ they will turn on us and do us evil (Ezekiel 34:5-6. 11-16; 20:32). France once threatened their Jewish community with something similar (https://archive.jewishagency.org/jewish-community/content/24142).

Most English-speaking Jews in the Exile have forgotten these truths, just as they have forgotten the language of Zion and the layout of Jerusalem’s hills. When world leaders remind our people of our need to remember Jerusalem and to be loyal to our people or homeland, this is a divine call for the Jewish people to wake up and press in to know our God!

How should we then pray?

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal or credit card) through: www.davidstent.org

Double trouble and double blessing

One day in the Hebrew calendar is connected to devastation. The fifth month (known as Av or Ab) witnessed the destruction of two Jewish Temples – Solomon’s and Herod’s. That catastrophe (ḥurban in Hebrew) and its spiritual significance are unpacked in the prophetic Scriptures. These tragic lessons still resonate for us today.

Building the Temple was a good thing

Distancing our hearts from YHVH leads to severe shaking

On the day of Solomon’s dedication of the Temple, YHVH prophesied that Solomon’s dynasty would eventually undermine the spiritual foundations of the House. This would lead to the destruction of the Temple and the Exile of the Jewish people:

The ecumenical encounter between Babylon and Zion

The iron fist of Babylon broke into Jerusalem on the 7th of Av, 587 B.C. and completed the full destruction of the Temple by the 10th of Av.

Jewish tradition blended those two dates together, synthesizing the Ninth of Av as the memorial day. Since that time Tisha B’Av has become a day of mourning and fasting.

Throughout Jewish history, many tragedies fell upon the Jewish people on or about the 9th of Av, including:

The Ninth of Av is a day when many Jews remember these tragedies, humble their souls and hope for better.

How does God view Tisha B’Av?

Zechariah was a prophet who ministered at the same time as Haggai, during the era of Nehemiah.

The God of Israel notes that He had not established the Fast of Tisha B’Av. That decision had been taken independently by the spiritual leaders of Israel. Mourning and fasting have an important place, but they are no substitute for a repentant heart. Lack of repentance had led to the destruction of the Temple and to the Exile. God was looking for a change of heart in Judah – repentance, confession and return to the prophetic words of the Scriptures. And that repentance was still largely lacking in Zechariah’s day:

God was speaking clearly: it’s not another fast day which is needed. Real turning back to YHVH is what’s on the agenda.

Consider also the prophecy of Ezekiel 20, given on the 10th of Av, hammering home the same message.

What God called for among the Jewish people in Zechariah’s day – He is still calling for today.

My Jewish people need to turn back to our God, repent of our rejection of David and His dynasty (1 Kings 12:16-19) – our rejection of David’s Greater Son Yeshua the Messiah (Isaiah 53) – and our rejection of His gracious New Covenant (Jeremiah 31:31-34). We need to learn the biblical lessons of Tisha B’Av. National mourning without national repentance will not tip the balances.

Double prophetic blessing

A day is coming when Israel will repent with a whole heart (see Zechariah 12-14). In that day Tisha B’Av will not be memorialized with mourning and fasting, but with joy, gladness and cheerful feasting: “Then the word of YHVH of armies came to me, saying, ‘Thus says YHVH of armies, The fast of the fourth, the fast of the fifth, the fast of the seventh and the fast of the tenth months will become joy, gladness, and cheerful feasts for the house of Judah; so love truth and peace’” (Zechariah 8:18-19).

Isaiah proclaims that a future Temple will be established on the Temple Mount, known as YHVH’s House of Prayer: “Even those I will bring to My holy mountain And make them joyful in My House of Prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be acceptable on My altar. For My House will be called a House of Prayer for all the peoples” (Isaiah 56:7).

God will heal the Jewish people’s wounds. He will rebuild our land and our promises. Messiah will rule and reign in our midst.

How should we then pray?

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal or credit card) through: www.davidstent.org

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