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Most
of us who, for any length of time, have been involved
in Messianic Judaism, know there are serious divisions
within the Messianic Jewish movement. A meeting
of Messianic Jewish leaders, convened by Chosen
People Ministries, which recently took place in
New York, exposed some of these divisions. I think
one of the purposes of the Borough Park Symposium
was to help unify the movement by the exchange
of ideas. Various people presented papers which
were followed by discussion. After starting to
read some of those papers, my conclusion is that
the symposium will not bring greater unity to
our fractured movement. But, it did help clarify
the reasons for some of our divisions, and it’s
a positive outcome when serious error is exposed
so that it can be corrected and those who are
teaching it can be removed from places of influence.
This
response is limited to Stuart Dauermann’s paper
because Stuart remains an influential leader in
our movement, and because his ideas represent
those of others. For this symposium Stuart was
asked to present a paper on the topic, “What is
the Gospel?” (This paper is available online at
www.boroughparksymposium.com.)
It is a simple, direct question that deserved
a simple, direct answer. Why? The Good News reveals
much about who God is. The Good News is central
to what God is doing and what we are to be about.
We must know what the Good News is.
What
is the Good News? It is the simple message that
the Seed of the Woman, the long-expected Redeemer,
the One who is truly called Immanuel, who is fully
God and fully man, came to save mankind which
is dead in trespasses and sins! By means of His
incarnation, sinless life, death, burial and resurrection,
He has made salvation possible for Jews and Gentiles
who hear this Good News and believe it. This is
the simple Gospel. Every one of our children should
know this before they become a Bar Mitzvah. When
a rabbi no longer is able to articulate this,
but instead minimizes it, confuses it, undermines
it, or adds to it, something is seriously wrong.
In answer
to this simple question Stuart presented a 48-page
paper which revealed some of the reasons for the
serious divisions within our movement. I would
like to comment on Stuart’s paper and then make
some recommendations.
Stuart
refuses to give a clear simple definition of the
Good News. In fact, he advises us against having
a simple definition of the Gospel. He claims that
most of us are confused about the Gospel, particularly
the Evangelical Church and Jewish Missions. “Conditioned
by evangelicalism and Post-Enlightenment conceits,
we may at first think that defining the gospel
is a straightforward matter, and simple, really
... I advise against this approach! The gospel
should not and cannot really be defined in the
same manner as other terms” (p. 22). In fact,
he claims that “it is and always will be more
than we can grasp and define” (p. 23). When describing
the Gospel, he says it is “fundamentally a report
we have received and which we pass on, an authoritative,
empowered, but always fragmentary report
concerning God’s saving intervention in Jesus
Christ” (pp. 22-23; emphasis mine).
Stuart
distorted the Gospel in other ways. He claims
that we can’t know who will be saved and who will
be lost (p. 38). Pleading humility and agnosticism
on the issue of the salvation status of Yeshua-rejecting
Jews, Stuart writes: “I must demur, especially
in the case of God’s chosen people, whom he hardened
for his purpose, but who remain beloved for the
sake of the fathers. The full outworking of the
drama of the Jews and the Holy One is obscured
from our view. A cloud of incense obscures our
view of the mercy seat - by divine design” (p.
37). Why does Stuart want this ambiguity where
none should be tolerated? Being able to determine
who is saved and who is lost is possible for us
to know and is not complicated. John gave
us some simple tests to determine if someone is
saved or lost, Heaven-bound or Hell-bound (see
1 John 2:22-23; 1 John 4:14-15; 1 John 5:9-12).
According to these clear and simple tests,
the various non-Messianic Judaisms and their adherents
fail.
He distorted
the Gospel by minimizing the need for “individual
soul salvation” (p. 10) and a “one-by-one gospel”
(p. 9). He minimizes the need for individuals
to hear and then accept the Good News for salvation
(see Romans 10:8-16). He claims that the Good
News must be good news for all Israel (the collective),
and if it isn’t, it somehow isn’t valid or worthy
or properly understood. He makes the absurd statement
that unless the Good News is good news for all
of Israel, it can’t be good news. This ignores
the truths that not all Israel is Israel, and
that God has always worked through the elect,
the chosen ones among the chosen people, the faithful
remnant (see Romans 9:6-7).
He claims
that Gospel-rejecting Judaism is in a different
category from other non-Christian religions -
implying that it is significantly different regarding
salvation than those religions (p. 11).
He minimizes/ignores
that the Good News is predicated on bad news.
He says that the news that Jews who reject Yeshua
are lost is “unwelcome” and “oppressive” (p. 42).
But the Good News is based on the truth that the
whole world, including the Jewish people, is perishing.
Those who refuse to acknowledge the bad news
of our lostness, can no longer clearly declare
the good news of the salvation provided by Yeshua
(see below, 1 in the Notes - “The Bad News
and the Good News”).
He minimizes
the reality that people are going to Hell. He
claims that the proclamation about Hell was not
part of the apostolic message. But that is a word-game
and false. The Messiah’s emissaries may not have
always used the word “Hell”, but they always operated
with the knowledge that the world was estranged,
alienated from God and eternal life. If they didn’t
specifically use the word “Hell”, they used other
synonymous concepts for the same reality - being
lost, being in need of salvation, being in need
of a Savior, being dead in trespasses and sins,
the Second Death, the Lake of Fire, etc.
He maximizes
the benefits of the good things that God put within
Judaism, minimizing the rejection/disobedience/punishment
aspects for failure/rejection/unbelief. He states
that “along with Mark Kinzer, I believe Judaism
to be (sic) a house still inhabited by Yeshua
even though he is yet to be recognized and explicitly
honored by the majority of those living there”
(p. 12, footnote). Stuart is guilty of trying
to justify a Gospel-rejecting Judaism, a Yeshua-rejecting
righteousness that does not submit to the righteousness
of God (Romans 10:3). This deadly theological
mixture of truth and error will not save our people.
It will only falsely assure our people that they
are OK, and keep them away from faith in the Messiah
who alone can save them.
He challenges
those who declare the emptiness and inadequacy
of Jewish religious practice and faith (p. 28),
who proclaim the “futility, vacuity and impotence
of the Jewish way of life” (p. 29). He challenges
those who believe that those Jewish people who
reject the Messiah, who refuse to love Him and
follow Him, are not fundamentally spiritually
lost (p. 8). He accuses those of us who are trying
to declare the truths about the inadequacies of
non-Messianic Judaism of being hostile to our
people. “Most of us are well practiced in bashing
Jews and Judaism”. But, those of us who tell our
people that non-Messianic faith is inadequate
to attain that which is most important - salvation
- should not be criticized any more than the prophets
and Messiah and apostles who loved our people
enough to tell us the truth. It is the false
prophets who didn’t tell us the truth about our
sinful condition, but told us pleasant lies -
that all was well with us when things were not
well.
He maximizes
his desire to be accepted by the non-believing
majority and minimizes the inherent offense of
the Gospel. He doesn’t want to offend the majority
of our people with the message that the One who
is despised and rejected must be loved and accepted
in order for us to be saved. There is no encouragement
for us to pick up our cross and boldly proclaim
the truth, shouting from the housetops to our
people the truths that Messiah has whispered to
us. He does not encourage us to have the willingness
to go outside the camp bearing Messiah’s reproach.
He calls
us back to covenant faithfulness to the Sinai
Covenant, not acknowledging that it is a broken
covenant. He considers the Sinai covenant as being
fully in force (p. 41). He calls us to covenant-faithfulness
based on Torah-observance (“Torah obedience of
all Israel”, p. 45) while ignoring the reality
that the Sinai Covenant is a broken covenant.
This is legalism.
What
is Stuart trying to accomplish?
What is his agenda?
Stuart
is minimizing the Gospel and maximizing the good
that can come from Yeshua-forsaking Judaism to
open the theological door to the “Wider Hope”
- the teaching that people are saved apart from
personal acceptance of the Gospel. He is trying
to create another Gospel by which the religious
Yeshua-rejecting majority of our people are partakers
of the benefits of salvation.
He wants
the Messianic Jewish community, and Jewish Believers,
and the Jewish Missions community to be committed
to Messianic congregations and a Torah-centric
life. This is a goal that I am sympathetic to.
I want to see Messianic Jews relate to the Torah
and the Sinai Covenant - broken though it is (see
below, 2 in the Notes - “Being Pro-Torah”)
- but Stuart is going about it by embracing the
false teaching of legalism.
Stuart
wants the non-Messianic Jewish community to perceive
us as being supportive of our people. This is
a goal I agree with. There are many areas of cooperation
and commonality and there are many ways we can
affirm and support our people - but without compromising
the integrity of the Gospel. We should commend
our people when we can and for what we can, and
we should stand by our people - but not at the
expense of minimizing/toning down/compromising
the Gospel and giving a message of false hope
that non-Messianic Judaism will save, or atone
from sin, or bring justification, righteousness,
etc.
So
What Do We Do About Those Who Are Teaching Serious
Error?
I
hope that all who love the Word of God and sound
doctrine will recognize that these are very serious
errors. There are important theological boundaries
we must stay within. Stuart has transgressed some
of those boundaries .
It
is essential to our movement’s well-being that
we not tolerate error or those who teach serious
error. Sound teaching is one of the most
valuable things in the world because it brings
good. One of the most dangerous things is false
teaching, because it is so terribly destructive
to human life. Those who minimize the Gospel,
make it complicated or unclear, water it down,
substitute another gospel, or add other things
to the Good News do a disservice to God, distort
the truth, dishonor God and His Word, confuse
the lost, and harm Messiah’s community. Those
who do these things are seriously confused and
may even be lost. They are certainly not fit to
be teachers who are in the position to influence
others.
Rabbi
Paul tells us to judge ourselves - to discern
if we are staying within theological and moral
bounds and if not, take the appropriate action.
We must not be like the rest of our society -
overly permissive, with low standards, afraid
to confront, willing to tolerate that which should
not be tolerated, slowly decaying, slowly being
cooked like the frog in the increasingly hot water
that never jumps out of the pot. We must embrace
sound doctrine and reject false teaching and teachers!
No more tolerance for that which must not be tolerated!
The conveners
of the Borough Park Symposium should not have
remained silent when Stuart taught his errors.
Something should have been said at the Symposium
to correct those errors; otherwise, by their silence,
they will be perceived as supporting his errors.
But better late than never. I ask the conveners
of the Borough Park Symposium, because they gave
Stuart a public platform which he abused, to publicly
disavow Stuart’s errors.
I
ask other leaders to no longer give Stuart and
those who share his errors a platform to influence
others and spread further confusion within our
movement .
If our
movement is to be restored to health, so that
we can be all that the Lord wants our precious
movement to be, and enjoy the blessing of God,
we need to cling to sound doctrine - good, wholesome,
solid, reliable, faithful teaching - and reject
that which is bad.
Notes
1. The Bad News and
the Good News
We need
to realize that apart from the redemption and
salvation provided by God - by having faith in
God, and offering the appropriate sacrifice, first
a temporary atonement provided by the sacrifices
at the Temple in Jerusalem, and then the ultimate
atonement provided through Messiah Yeshua - the
whole world is going to Hell. And here’s why:
at the very beginning of human history, our first
parents rebelled against God. After being warned
not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good
and Evil, our first parents rebelled against God.
They sinned and ate from the Forbidden Tree.
They
believed the Father of Lies more than they trusted
the word of the Heavenly Father. They sided with
the god of this world rather than the God of Heaven.
By doing so, they joined forces with Satan in
his rebellion. This one sinful rebellious act
enabled Satan, sin, and death to take control
of humanity. The whole world came under the Devil’s
authority. John tells us that the whole world
lies in the power of the wicked one (1 John 5:19).
Human beings in their natural condition are under
the authority of the domain of darkness, that
powerful, evil, demonic kingdom that is in rebellion
against God, and filled with lies, deception,
deceit, chaos, rebellion, and death. They share
Satan’s doom in the Lake of Fire that was prepared
for him and the fallen angels that rebelled with
him.
From
the moment that Adam and Eve rebelled against
our wonderful Creator, everything changed. Their
sin and rebellion affected every aspect of their
nature. Their body, their soul, their will, their
mind, and their spirit, had become corrupted.
Their orientation toward God, who is HaMakor
- the Source of Life - changed for the worse.
Instead of drawing nearer to God, Adam and Eve
ran away from Him. They were alienated from Him.
Adam and Eve were exiled from the Garden of Eden,
and forbidden to eat from the Tree of Life. They
were headed toward death - the First Death and
the Second Death - Hell.
The results
of what our first parents did were passed on to
all of their descendants like a deadly virus.
That corruption of body, soul, and spirit was
passed on like a horrible degenerative disease
to all of their billions of sons and daughters.
Here is the human condition according to King
David: The Lord has looked down from Heaven (thoroughly
searching with His all-seeing eyes) upon the sons
of men, to see if there are any who understand
(they don’t), and who seek after God (they don’t
seek Him sufficiently). They have all turned aside
(and missed God and salvation). Together they
have become corrupt. There is no one who does
good, not even one.
Human
beings are “sons of disobedience” - disobedient
children. By our very nature, by inherent predisposition,
we are disobedient to God. We live according to
this sinful world’s corrupt values, satanically
empowered, indulging the lusts of the flesh and
the lusts of the mind - physical sins and mental
sins - and are by nature children of wrath, deserving
of the righteous wrath and punishment of an infinitely
holy God. Humans beings who are only born once
in this world are mere human beings - flesh -
not spirit. They are of this world, not of the
next. They are perishable - not imperishable.
The entire world of human beings (Jews and Gentiles)
is perishing, decaying, and headed for destruction
like a rotten piece of fruit (John 3:16).
These Truths Apply
to the Whole World - Jews and Gentiles
In Adam,
all die. In Messiah, all are made alive. Just
as the Fall affected all men and all men died,
all human beings - Jews and Gentiles - need the
God-sent Savior. All are saved the same way -
through the proclamation of the Good News, the
Gospel. The apostle to the Gentiles affirmed that
the Gentiles are completely lost. They are excluded
from the commonwealth of Israel. They are strangers
to the covenants that contain the promises of
salvation and reconciliation. They have no hope
and they are without God.
The
Jewish people are not exempt from the need to
embrace these realities . In fact, the
opposite is true. We are more responsible to believe
these Torah-truths - not less responsible.
To whom much is given, much is required. The more
one knows, the more is expected of him, and the
greater the punishment for failure. We are entrusted
with the Oracles of God, which contain the Messianic
prophecies and all the symbols and signs and principles
that point us to King Messiah. In our Torah, we
were specifically warned not to reject the great
Prophet who would come, who would be like Moses
(Deuteronomy 18:15-19); if we did, God would hold
us responsible and would severely punish us. When
Messiah came, He came to us. He was one of us.
He did His great miracles and gave His exalted
teachings to us!
The Son
of God, who is always right and can’t be wrong,
said to Jewish people who were immersed in Judaism
that, now that He had come into the world, He
was the Way - which means that there is no other
way. Non-Messianic Judaism is not the way. Can
Islam provide the Way? Buddhism? Being a good
person? The answer is, categorically, no! Yeshua,
who cannot lie, said that He is the Truth - which
means that there is not enough truth to save you
anywhere else. Having a zeal for God, but not
having the knowledge of the truth about Yeshua,
and the righteousness that believing in Him provides,
is not enough. It leads to Hell. Israel has pursued
righteousness the wrong way, and stumbled over
the Stumbling Stone, by not placing their faith
in Messiah (Romans 9:31-33). Yeshua, who is never
wrong, said that He is the Life, which means that
apart from Him you will not live forever with
God. Yeshua, who is infallible, said that apart
from placing faith in Him, no man could get to
the Father (John 14:6).
Yeshua
said to a group of Jewish leaders (men who believed
in God, who knew the Torah, who went to the Temple
in Jerusalem and offered sacrifices), “Unless
you believe that I am He, you shall die in your
sins” (John 8:24). And if the Chosen People who
reject Yeshua are lost, where does that leave
followers of the non-Bible-based religions like
the Buddhists, Muslims, or Hindus; those who have
embraced erroneous ideologies like secular humanism?
Simon
Peter stood before the Sanhedrin and declared
to the leading priests, scholars, and rabbis of
Israel that there is salvation nowhere and in
no one other than Yeshua of Nazareth (Acts 4:12).
It doesn’t get much clearer than that! Judaism
apart from Yeshua can’t save anyone.
Paul,
perhaps the greatest theologian of all time (apart
from Messiah Yeshua), made it crystal clear that
if during our earthly life we personally confess
with our mouth that Yeshua is Lord, and believe
in our heart that God raised Him from the dead,
we will be saved. But, the inverse truth is equally
clear: if during the earthly phase of our life
we don’t confess with our mouth and believe in
our heart, we will be lost. The rabbi from Tarsus
had great sorrow and unceasing grief in his heart,
because he knew the lost state of his beloved
Jewish people who didn’t believe in the Messiah
that God sent and commands us to believe in.
Non-Messianic
Jewish people are lost. The Jewish people are
without Temple, without sacrifice, basing their
religion on a broken covenant that cannot save.
Non-Messianic Jews have been broken off from the
Olive Tree of Salvation and Blessing.
We Can’t Save Ourselves
from Hell
Not only
is the whole world alienated from God, utterly
lost, unsaved, unrighteous, under the authority
of Satan, without hope, and headed to Hell, but
we are completely incapable of changing this situation
on our own. Just as we are incapable of saving
ourselves from the First Death, we are totally
incapable of saving ourselves from the Second
Death. Sin has so alienated us from God, and so
corrupted our nature, that we are in a state of
spiritual death. We are dead in our trespasses
and sins. Dead people are incapable of giving
themselves life!
Salvation
cannot come from anything having to do with human
effort or how good a person one is. We can never
be good enough, or righteous enough, or religious
enough. There are not enough good things that
we can do, not enough money we can give, not enough
mitzahs we can fulfill, nor merit that we can
earn that will enable us to avoid the Lake of
Fire. Salvation from sin, death, Satan, and Hell,
and restoration to God and life cannot be accomplished
by man. All human efforts will prove inadequate.
We can’t redeem ourselves. We can’t restore ourselves
to God, no matter how hard we try.
Only God Can Save
Us
But what
we are utterly incapable of doing, God is completely
capable of accomplishing! God had a plan to make
salvation from Hell possible. As soon as Adam
and Eve sinned, the Lord provided a substitute,
an innocent animal whose life was sacrificed and
whose blood was shed. Those who had faith in the
one true God, and offered a sacrifice, could be
forgiven. Centuries later, the Lord made covenants
with Israel. If we placed our faith in God and
obeyed His Word, and offered the korbanot - the
sacrifices that enabled us draw close to God -
we could be forgiven. But those sacrifices were
temporary, and were effective only when accompanied
by faith, and only until the Final and Perfect
Sacrifice came - the Lamb of God, the sacrificed
Messiah, who is able to fully take away the sins
of Israel and the entire world.
God the
Father sent the eternal, self-existing Son of
God, who was with the Father, from Heaven to Earth,
and He became a man. He allowed Himself to be
whipped, beaten, spit on, humiliated, stripped
naked and crucified! By dying in our place, by
bearing our sins on the cross, by satisfying all
the claims which a holy God had against us, by
taking on Himself the curse for breaking God’s
laws, by becoming the ultimate sin-offering, He
has dealt with the problem of sin fully and eternally.
Because
of the Son of God’s ultimate sacrifice and the
perfect atonement He accomplished on the cross,
God’s ability to forgive all of our sins is infinite
and perfectly complete. Because of His one, perfect,
final, and complete sacrifice, whoever believes
in Yeshua has forgiveness for all his sins. Not
one of our rebellious acts is left that will be
held against us, that will drag us down to Hell!
When
we draw near to God by drawing near to Yeshua,
we are delivered from the domain of darkness,
and transferred to the Kingdom of His beloved
Son. We are delivered from these dark, demonic,
deceiving powers. We are removed from under the
authority of the god of this world, and given
a new citizenship, in a new kingdom, under a new
authority. We no longer share the Devil’s final
destination.
When
we draw near to God by drawing near to Yeshua,
our old sinful, willful, God-independent nature,
predisposed to rebel, starts losing its power.
We are no longer dominated by the old human nature
that was hostile to God, but we are in the Spirit
- led to do the will and the deeds of God’s Holy
Spirit.
When
we are born again, we are given new life, a new
heart, and a new mind that are compatible with
a holy God, and a new nature that wants to serve
Him, and not rebel against Him. Instead of being
children of wrath, children of disobedience, we
become the children of God - the Almighty’s very
own beloved sons and daughters! Without being
born again, we can’t enter the Kingdom of God;
we will wind up in Hell. But with Messiah’s spiritual
rebirth, we will experience eternal life in God’s
Kingdom.
We draw
near to God by coming to know that Yeshua is the
Son of God, the Savior, who came into this world,
and died, and rose again. When we consciously
place our faith in Him, and believe in Him, and
trust in Him, we identify with Him. We are immersed
into Him. We become bone of Messiah’s bone, flesh
of Messiah’s flesh. We are in Messiah, and Messiah
is in us, and God the Father is in Messiah Yeshua.
We are in the heart of Yeshua, who is in the heart
of the Father. We have the incredible privilege
of being joined to Him in whom dwells all the
fullness of God! The Father sees us joined to
Messiah and sees His dearly beloved Son! The Father
sees us joined to Messiah, and behold, we are
whiter than snow! The Father sees us joined to
Messiah and He sees all the beauty and grace and
righteousness of the Lord Yeshua. The Father sees
us joined to Messiah and declares that we are
righteous.
The
various Non-Messianic Judaisms cannot accomplish
these good things connected to salvation; only
a Judaism that embraces personal faith in the
Messiah can .
2. Being Pro-Torah
While
it is clear that nobody (Jewish or otherwise)
can be saved by the works of the Law, and that
the Covenant upon which much of the Torah is based
is a broken covenant (there is no Temple and therefore
no sacrifices by which we may draw near to God
and obtain eternal life), nevertheless the Older
Covenant mediated by Moses and its laws are extremely
valuable. The Torah guides the life of the Jewish
people. It teaches us the right things to do and
gives us a good way to live. It helps us live
an authentic Jewish lifestyle. It keeps us from
assimilation and helps us remain part of the Holy
People. In fact, Paul commands Messianic Jews
to not become uncircumcised (1 Corinthians 7:18),
which means not to seek assimilation into the
prevailing Gentile culture, but to continue their
Jewish way of life. The early Messianic Jews
had a favorable view of the Law, and many were
zealous to live in accordance with it (see Acts
21:20-26). We know from history that Messianic
Jews continued to live a distinctly Jewish, Torah-based
lifestyle for centuries after the time of Yeshua.
Assimilation is a major problem for Messianic
Jews, and history reveals that Messianic Jewish
families who don’t live a Jewish lifestyle will
almost always assimilate and lose their Jewish
identity within a few generations.
There
is no incompatibility between being “zealous for
the Torah” and being a Messianic Jew . I
am pro-Torah, while recognizing that the Covenant
made at Sinai is a broken covenant. I am pro-Torah,
since all Scripture is “Torah” (literally, “teaching”
or “instruction”). I am pro-Torah, recognizing
that all Believers are in some sense to fulfill
the Law (Romans 8:4), but not all of us are obligated
to fulfill the same requirements of the Law (for
example, Gentiles need not be circumcised). I
am pro-Torah, recognizing that Messiah returned
us to the Torah’s original intent regarding issues
such as a man being married to only one woman.
I am pro-Torah, accepting the fact that Messianic
Jews who choose not to keep every aspect of the
Law, particularly the ceremonial laws, will not
lose their salvation. My personal experience is
that I have become more observant over time, but
it was a process for me that took years. Therefore
I encourage Messianic Jews to identify with and
embrace their Jewish heritage, which in large
part is based on the Torah; and I encourage Messianic
Jews to be gracious to each other regarding others’
level of Torah observance.
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