The Judaism of Jesus: The Messiah's Redemption of the Jews

By J. Christopher Garrison

We had hoped it was he [the Messiah] who would redeem Israel (Luke 24:21)

In this book, you will learn

that the religion Jesus founded was not Gentile or called Christianity. The name Christianity is not found in the New Testamenta work authored by Jews who followed Jesus;

that the religion of Jesus was a form of Judaism that revolved around the Hebrew concept of Brit Hadashah, meaning New Covenant. This concept first appeared in the writings of Jeremiah, one of the great prophets of Judaism;

that to achieve the full task Jews have expected of their Messiahof redeeming Israel and completing Gentile world salvationthere have been three separate stages in the work of Jesus the Messiah: (1) the Atonement & Resurrection stage; (2) the Gentile stage (represented by two thousand years of Gentile Christianity); and (3) the Jewish (or Jewish redemption) stage;

that with regard to the Messiahs prophecy on Jerusalem and on the completion (or fulfillment) of his Gentile stagesee Luke 21:24: Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilledon June 7, 1967 (the day Jerusalem fell to Jews), the Messiahs prophecy was fulfilled. Hence, with June 7, 1967 formally marking the end of the Messiahs Gentile (or Christian) stage, the Messiahs final (or Jewish) stage has already begun;

that with the times of the Gentiles (or Christianity) over, why Christians must adjust and reorient themselves to the new Jewish era and reality that is rising;

many other topics of vital relevance to our present transitional erafrom Gentile-Christian to Jewish-centered timeswhere world history is quickly reaching a tumultuous climax...centered on the Jews, Jesus the Messiah and the Messiahs New Covenant Judaism as the winning side of end-time history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Apr 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9781490829746

J. Christopher Garrison

J. Christopher Garrison is a seminary-trained theological researcher and writer. In 1998, he completed a full curriculum of theological studies at Chicago’s North Park Theological Seminary (Evangelical Covenant Church). Since that time, the author has utilized his seminary training to pursue research and writing on various theological subjects.

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PROLOGUE ON THE MT. SINAI COVENANT

Is the Sinai Covenant immutable and eternal?

—A biblical examination

At the present time, the majority of religious Jews highly revere the covenant God made with the Jews at Mt. Sinai through Moses as mediator. As such, there remains today significant Jewish opposition to the New Covenant Judaism founded by Jesus the Messiah in his blood (see, Luke 22:20). As noted in the Preface to this work, the New Covenant Jesus referred to in Luke 22:20 was that which the great Jewish prophet Jeremiah proclaimed that God would establish with his Jewish people to replace the Mt. Sinai Covenant:

Jeremiah 31:31-32 KJ 2000 – ‘Behold, the days come,’ says the LORD, ‘that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; my covenant which they broke, although I was a husband unto them,’ says the LORD.

On its face, this Jewish Bible passage from Jeremiah clearly suggests that the Sinai Covenant was not intended to be an eternal covenant. Instead, it was eventually to be replaced by what Jeremiah calls a new covenant made between God and his Jewish people. However, not persuaded by this, Jewish religious leaders defending what they see as the eternal authority of the Sinai covenant usually claim that, in Jeremiah 31:35-36 and Jeremiah 33:25-26, Jeremiah clarifies what he said in 31:31-32.

According to Jewish leaders, in Jeremiah 31:35-36 and Jeremiah 33:25-26, the prophet clarifies and confirms that Judaism knows of no other than the old Sinaitic covenant. Eternal as the covenant with heaven and earth is God’s [Sinai] covenant with the seed of Jacob and that Jeremiah in the same place makes an emphatic declaration of the immutability of the [Sinai] covenant with Israel.

These assertions are found posted online in the Jewish Encyclopedia articles entitled, Covenant (The Old and New Covenant) and New Testament.

However, when one carefully examines the actual language of Jeremiah in 31:35-36 and 33:25-26, the explicit language used by Sinai Covenant Jews—as found expressed in the Jewish Encyclopedia—to support their belief that God intended for the Sinai covenant to be eternal and not to be replaced by a New Covenant is actually not found either in Jeremiah 31:35-36 or in Jeremiah 33:25-26. In fact, a careful scrutiny with the help of Bible concordance and computer search techniques fails to reveal that this precise encyclopedia language is found anywhere else in the entire Jewish Bible.

But just with respect to Jeremiah 31:35-36 and 33:25-26 alone, these two passages from Jeremiah cited by Sinai Covenant Jews in support of their counterclaim against the New Covenant read as follows:

Jeremiah 31:35-36 AKJ – Thus said the LORD, which gives the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which divides the sea when the waves thereof roar; The LORD of hosts is his name: ‘If those ordinances depart from before me, said the LORD, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me for ever.’

Jeremiah 33:25-26 AKJ – Thus said the LORD; ‘If my covenant be not with day and night, and if I have not appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth; Then will I cast away the seed of Jacob and David my servant, so that I will not take any of his seed to be rulers over the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: for I will cause their captivity to return, and have mercy on them.’

First of all, with respect to the assertion made in the Jewish Encyclopedia articles cited above, stating that the prophet’s words [in Jeremiah 31:31-32] do not imply an abrogation of the Law [given at Mt. Sinai] because of the prophet’s emphatic declaration [in Jeremiah 31:35-36 and Jeremiah 33:25-26] of the immutability of the covenant with Israel, we note that neither in Jeremiah 31:35-36 nor in Jeremiah 33:25-26 is the Sinai covenant or its Law explicitly mentioned at all. So how could these two Jeremiah passages be explicitly connected to the Sinai covenant at all? As carefully as one will search the language in these two Jeremiah passages of the Jewish Bible, no explicit mention is made of the Sinai covenant or anything even close to it.

Please note, that in these passages, the only explicit reference the prophet makes to a covenant is God’s covenant with day and night and the only law mentioned are the ordinances of the moon and stars and those of heaven and earth. Moreover, this finding has led us to discover that the explicit Jewish Encyclopedia phrase, Eternal as the covenant with heaven and earth is God’s [Sinai] covenant with the seed of Jacob, is obviously only a human sentiment added to Sacred Scripture since it is not found anywhere in the Jewish Bible.

Hence, neither Jeremiah 31:35-36 nor Jeremiah 33:25-26 offer explicit support for the Jewish belief that the prophet’s words [in Jeremiah 31:31-32] do not imply an abrogation of the Law [given at Mt. Sinai]. Likewise, no explicit support is found in these Jeremiah passages for the Jewish belief concerning the the immutability of the [Sinai] Covenant with Israel since the Sinai covenant is never explicitly mentioned in these passages. Also, it is obvious that God’s covenant with day and night is not the same thing as God’s Sinai Covenant with Israel or its Law inherent therein. However, in these Jeremiah passages, the prophet does refer to the seed of Israel [or Jacob] never ceasing to be a nation before God forever; but this is something we are not disputing. Obviously, a nation is not precisely the same thing as a covenant with that nation.

Still another argument advanced by the Jewish Encyclopedia in its article entitled, New Testament, is one that concerns the words God spoke through Jeremiah, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts (Jeremiah 31:33). The Jewish Encyclopedia apparently does not accept the idea that, with these words, God is predicting a new order of Jewish religion to replace that of the old Sinai covenant order. Instead, this encyclopedia article interprets the words to be predicting merely a renewal of the Law [or Torah] through a regeneration of the hearts of the people. Hence, under this interpretation, it is not the Sinai covenant order that is to be renewed but only the hearts of the people.

OUR RESPONSE: We agree that the Messiah’s new covenant order brings about a renewal or regeneration of the core (or heart) of God’s people. This was the renewal of the human spirit predicted by the prophet Ezekiel (Ezekiel 36:26 NIV – I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh). This Ezekiel prophecy corresponds in its fulfillment with the new birth (or spirit regeneration) experience that the Messiah referred to (see, John 3:3, 6 NIV – Jesus [said], ‘Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again…Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit [of God] gives birth to [the new] spirit.’).

We agree also that this renewal of the heart does not involve a total discontinuity with Sinai covenant moral law, as found summarized in the Ten Commandments. For example, we do agree that God’s moral law that is to be written in the heart cannot be a totally different law from God’s moral law written in stone under the old Sinai covenant (For an expanded explanation of this topic, see Chapter 22 below on the Moral Law in the New Covenant order).

However, to say that the law to be written in the heart merely involves a renewal of the Law through a regeneration of the hearts of the people, thus leaving Sinai covenant law totally unchanged in all its aspects—that is, including not only the moral law but also the ceremonial and judicial laws exactly as they were given at Mt. Sinai—is not as obvious as this article assumes. This is true for the following three reasons:

(1) First of all, Jewish history makes evident that after the First (or Solomon’s) Temple was destroyed in 586 BC, God himself was bringing indirect but effective radical change and diminishment to the Sinai covenant and its law through the application of his power of divine providence. The major institutions that made Sinai covenant law functional were gradually disappearing—for example, (1) a free and sovereign Jewish nation that could ensure both a safe temple existence and security for the Jewish people from persecution that would prevent them from exercising freely their obligation to observe Torah law; (2) a priesthood and its system of animal sacrifices; and (3) a steady line of prophets who gave the word from God to the people.

As these institutions disappeared, the Sinai covenant, its law, and observance of the law were together becoming increasingly dysfunctional. Hence, long before the Messiah appeared, God was already in the process of providentially breaking down, diminishing, and bringing to a close the classic Sinai covenant order in preparation for the Messiah’s new covenant order that was approaching.

By the end of the fourth century BC, the classic Sinai covenant order was virtually over. The leftovers that remained and lingered finally went into full extinction in 70 AD with the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and its Second Temple (for more detail on this development, see Chapter 9 below). Of major significance is that by the time this destruction occurred under the Romans, about three decades earlier the Messiah had already successfully founded and established the New Covenant order with his own blood (35 AD approximately). Jews therefore were never without a live covenant with God being in force.

(2) Secondly, by the time of Jeremiah, God, through the words of the prophet, was already declaring the original Sinai covenant to be a broken covenant that was in need of a new covenant to repair (the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; my covenant which they broke). Since the words of the prophet in this passage explicitly refer to the old (or Sinai) covenant, and specifically not to the human heart, as being broken and in need of renewal through a new covenant, then it is plainly obvious that at least some changes in the Sinai covenant itself had to be anticipated.

Hence, if there was nothing wrong with the old covenant God made at Mt. Sinai, then why does God say through the words of the prophet that he has to make a new covenant to repair the old one and to take its place? Moreover if there was nothing wrong with the old covenant God made at Mt. Sinai and it was only the renewal of the human heart that God was concerned with, the negative language God explicitly directed against the Sinai covenant itself, which he specifically did not direct against the human heart, had no need to be said.

(3) Finally, even before the Messiah had arrived and the new covenant changes with him, the Jews, being forced by the increasing historic reality of a substantially diminished Sinai covenant order, had already become aware that the old (or classic) Sinai order was no longer functional. Hence, these Jews in the evolutionary transitional period between the old and the new covenants were forced to innovate to maintain Jewish identity. Therefore, driven by compulsion to maintain such Jewish identity by any means possible, the Jews themselves were led to create a new religious order (or religious dispensation), which they now call Rabbinic Judaism.

This clearly establishes that without waiting for the Messiah to arrive and, with him, the new covenant changes, it was the Jews themselves and not the Messiah who first changed the Sinai covenant order. To see how radically different from Sinai covenant Torah law the rabbinic changes were, see Chapter 8 below.

Obviously, the Jews of the transitional period between the old and the new who invented the rabbinic order would certainly not have gone through all the trouble of having to develop this new rabbinic system if the old covenant order of Sinai remained fully intact and fully functional with all the necessary institutions to make it so. Therefore, the Jews on their own changed the dysfunctional Sinai covenant order by replacing and superseding it with the new rabbinic system of Jewish religion.

For this reason, given all the evolutionary changes noted above, it can hardly be said that nothing in Jeremiah’s new covenant implied doing away with the old Sinai covenant law and that his words only referred to a renewal of the Law through a regeneration of the hearts of the people. If in actual fact this is all Jeremiah’s new covenant implied, then why did the Jews abandon the Sinai covenant order themselves and replace it with the rabbinic order? The answer to this question is now made simple—the Sinai order had broken down for lack of all the necessary institutions that made it fully functional under the strict and precise requirements of its Torah law.

Being aware of these realities, the Jewish New Testament, just a few years prior to 70 AD, says of the new covenant, By calling [in Jeremiah 31:31] this covenant ‘new,’ [God] has made the first one [or Sinai] obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear [this happened in 70 AD] (Hebrews 8:13 NIV); also, If that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second [or new covenant] (Hebrews 8:13 NIV).

PART I

THE NEW COVENANT IN THE EVOLUTION OF JUDAISM

INTRODUCTION: NEW COVENANT JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

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New Covenant Judaism and Christianity

For the purpose of this Introduction and this work, the following definitions and references are provided to assist any reader who may find this useful in attaining clarity of understanding:

Important definitions and references

NEW COVENANT JUDAISM—For convenience in the remainder of this work, the name, New Covenant Judaism, will be abbreviated to N.C. Judaism.

ABOUT JESUS—Jesus, which is the Greek version of his name, was a Jew of the tribe of Judah who was considered by his Jewish followers to be the Messiah of Israel. The Messiah of Israel was to be the Ultimate Leader and King whom the Jews had long expected God would send them to fulfill important promises he made to them. As a special King sent by God, and apparently to emphasize salvation as the most important aspect of his mission, Jesus’ given Hebrew name was Yeshua. This original name given to Jesus as a newborn Jewish child was appropriate; for, in Hebrew, the name essentially means, God saves. Hence, it is written in the Bible’s New Testament, You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins (Matthew 1:21 AKJV).

Jesus has also been referred to as Christ Jesus, Jesus the Christ, or just simply as Jesus Christ. The word Christ comes from the Greek word Christos, meaning, the Anointed.

However, as it turns out, the word Christ is also the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word Mashiach, also meaning, the Anointed. From this Hebrew word Mashiach, the English word Messiah is derived. Thus, if one refers to Christ Jesus or Jesus the Christ or to Jesus Christ one is actually saying in the Hebrew meaning, Messiah Jesus, Jesus the Messiah or Jesus Messiah.

ABOUT PAUL— Because of his immense importance to New Covenant teaching, the name Paul is very familiar to most followers of Jesus. Excerpts from Paul’s New Covenant/New Testament writings are cited frequently throughout this work. While Jesus became the chief Jewish founder of N. C. Judaism, Paul, also a Jew, became Jesus’ main apostle for the propagation of N.C. Judaism and its teachings until his Roman martyrdom—understood to have taken place in the year 66 AD.

Known by his Greek name Paul, Paul had previously been known by his Jewish name, Saul of Tarsus. In his earlier years, Saul had been a top Jewish student of the renowned first century AD Torah scholar and sage, the Pharisee Rabban Gamaliel I. As a leading member of the Jewish governing council, the Sanhedrin, and grandson of the great Jewish teacher Hillel the Elder, so great is the reputation of Gamaliel in the history of Judaism, it is said of him in the Talmud, Since Rabban Gamaliel the Elder died, there has been no more reverence for the law, and purity and piety died out at the same time. Such was the prominence of the Jew who became Paul’s major tutor.

Chapter 26 has been dedicated to an account of how Paul, while already a strong Jewish orthodox leader and Pharisee, became a follower of Jesus through an astounding miraculous encounter he had with this Messiah after the Messiah’s resurrection from the dead.

THE TANAKH—The Jews refer to their Bible as the Tanakh. For Christians, the Tanakh is what is known as the biblical Old Testament. The Tanakh had reached completion by the time the Persian rule over the Jews came to an end in 332 BC. The completed Tanakh is divided into three sections: (1) the Torah or first five books of the Bible; (2) the Prophets (nevi’im in Hebrew); and (3) the Writings (ketuvim in Hebrew).

THE JEWISH NEW TESTAMENT—The Bible’s New Testament is referred to in this work as Jewish in the sense that the New Testament authors were all Jews who came out of historic Jewish religion recorded in the Tanakh. Where there has been doubt in the case of Luke, we at least know that whatever Luke’s ethnicity was, the writings of Luke are so steeped in Jewish sacred Scripture, and the sources he relies on are so thoroughly Jewish, his two New Testament contributions emerge totally from a Jewish biblical worldview.

Hence, in the sense of predominant Jewish authorship and worldview, we can say without any meaningful hesitation or qualification that the New Testament is thoroughly Jewish from beginning to end.

THE GOSPEL—The gospel is a New Testament phrase referring to the message that is proclaimed concerning the spiritual salvation Jesus the Messiah achieved for all who trust and believe in him. By itself, the word gospel comes from the Greek words eu and aggelos, which together mean, good news. Hence, the preaching of the gospel actually means, the proclamation of the good news of the Messiah’s salvation.

GENTILES—Although the biblical name for non-Jews may be something universally known, nevertheless, at least for the record here, we must say explicitly that, in this work, all non-Jews are referred to as Gentiles.

HISTORIC PRE-MILLENNIALISM—With respect to our understanding of the flow of biblical history, this is viewed from the perspective of what in New Testament teaching is known as Historic Pre-millennialism. This is not to be confused with what is known as Dispensational (or Pre-tribulational) Pre-millennialism. There are very significant differences between these two views. For one thing, Historic Pre-millennialism is not pre-tribulational. More detail on Historic Pre-millennialism is found in Chapter 13. Dispensational Pre-millennialism is discussed in Chapter 10.

N.C. Judaism and the Gentiles

The origins of N.C. Judaism can be traced to the core of historic Judaism. It begins with a prophecy from Moses. It involves as well a prophecy made by Jeremiah, who was a major prophet of Judaism. Moses predicted that God would raise a prophet from among the Jewish people. He was to be just as authoritative before God as Moses was to his people. Moses warned his Jewish listeners that anyone who did not heed the words of this prophet would be held accountable and receive the due consequence of their deed:

Deuteronomy 18:15, 17-19 NASB – The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen, you shall listen to him…The Lord said to me…‘I will raise up a prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. It shall come about that whoever will not listen to my words which he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him [or, I myself will hold accountable (NRSV)].’

As for the prophecy of Jeremiah, he predicted that a time was coming when God would make a new covenant with his Jewish people to replace the old covenant made at Mt. Sinai after Moses had led the Jews out of Egypt. Essentially, the reason given for this major change in covenants was that the old (or Sinai Covenant) had become broken and dysfunctional.

As implied in Jeremiah’s prophecy, apart from an issue of supporting institutions or the lack thereof, the brokenness of the old covenant is apparently connected to the inability of the Jewish people to abide by the terms of the covenant in the perfect level of observance that the terms required (see Chapters 18 and 19 for extended detail on reasons for this failure):

Jeremiah 31:31-32 KJ 2000 – ‘Behold, the days come,’ said the LORD, ‘that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; my covenant which they broke, although I was an husband to them,’ says the LORD.

When Jesus appeared within Judaism and Jewish history, he claimed he was the prophet Moses predicted and the one whom God ordained to be the founder of the New Covenant and the new era this would usher in Judaism. According to Jesus, the New Covenant and its era was to be founded and inaugurated in his blood (see, Luke 22:20 NIV – After the supper [Jesus] took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you’).

Only a minority of Jews believed Jesus and sided with his New Covenant version of Judaism and its teachings. Hence, to the four notable sectarian versions of Judaism at the time—Pharisaic, Sadducidic, Essene, and Zealot—the Judaism taught by Jesus quickly became the new addition.

Based on their teachings recorded in the New Covenant/New Testament, the original Jewish followers of Jesus understood that the Judaism of Jesus was founded on his fulfillment of Moses’ and Jeremiah’s prophecies. This is made clear in the following passages:

John 1:45 NASB – Philip found Nathanael and said to him, ‘We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the Prophets wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.’

Acts 3:22-23 NIV – Moses said, ‘The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you must listen to everything he tells you. Anyone who does not listen to him will be completely cut off from among his people.’

Acts 7:37 ISV: – It was this Moses who told the Israelites, ‘God will raise up a prophet for you from among your own brothers, just as he did me.’

1 Corinthians 11:25 NIV – In the same way, after supper [Jesus] took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.’

2 Corinthians 3:6 NIV – He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

Hebrews 7:21-22 NIV – [Jesus] became a priest with an oath when God said to him: ‘The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind: ‘You are a priest forever.’ Because of this oath, Jesus has become the guarantee of a better covenant.

Hebrews 8:6-13 NIV – "The ministry Jesus has received is as superior to theirs [that is, the high priests of the Sinai Covenant] as the covenant of which he is mediator is superior to the old one [that is, the Sinai Covenant], and it is founded on better promises. For if there had been nothing wrong with that first [or Sinai] covenant, no place would have been sought for another [as confirmed in Jeremiah 31:31-32].

"But God found fault with the people and said, [NOTE – At this point, the New Covenant author of the Book of Hebrews goes on to cite from Jeremiah’s ‘New Covenant’ prophecy cited above to confirm that this was the central (or primary) Jewish Bible legal authority on which Jesus and his Jewish followers based their New Covenant teaching] ‘The time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they did not remain faithful to my covenant, and I turned away from them, declares the Lord.

"This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.

By calling this covenant ‘new,’ he has made the first one [or Sinai Covenant] obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear.

After the Messiah commissioned them to do so, the small band of Jews who, after Jesus, became the leaders of N.C. Judaism as a movement and the first to believe that Jesus was also the Messiah of Israel, began openly to proclaim the good news (or gospel) of their Messiah’s salvation (Matthew 28:19-20; Acts 1:8). This proclamation was made to their own Jewish kinsmen first.

While some progress was made in this direction among a minority of Jews who were accepting, it quickly became apparent to the Jews who followed the Messiah that, as one body, the Jewish majority had become stiffly resistant, rejecting both the Messiah and his gospel.

At this point, the minority Jews who followed the Messiah came to a final conclusion: It now seemed to them a waste of precious time and effort to continue trying to convince a Jewish majority that had already hardened itself in unrepentant unbelief against the Messiah.

However, the Jews who followed the Messiah believed that at least in having done the best they could to convince the Jewish majority of what Jesus taught, they had fulfilled their responsibility as Jews to bring the Messiah’s gospel to their own people first. This feeling of having a moral obligation to their own people first was undoubtedly driven by their awareness of the warning Moses had given to the Jews when he spoke of the coming prophet, whose words from God Jews were instructed to heed (Deuteronomy 18:15, 17-19 NASB – It shall come about that whoever will not listen to [God’s] words which he shall speak in [God’s] name, I myself [that is, God] will require it of him).

Accordingly, the Jewish minority who obeyed the words of Jesus did so because they believed he was Moses’ predicted Prophet and Messiah (See New Testament passages cited above).

Consequently, these few Jews came to believe that, by hardening themselves in unbelief and rejection against Jesus, the Jewish majority had now, according to the words of Moses, freely taken on themselves the responsibility of having treated the Messiah with contempt by refusing to obey his words and follow his lead.

However, the Jewish majority’s utter refusal to listen to the words of the Messiah became the Gentiles’ salvation. This was true because it freed the Messiah’s Jewish followers to turn to the Gentiles as the second target audience to whom these Jews felt obligated to proclaim the Messiah’s gospel. See the following:

Acts 13:46 NIV—Then Paul and Barnabas answered boldly [in opposition to the rejecting Jews of the majority]: ‘We had to speak the word of God to you first. Since you reject it and do not consider yourselves worthy of eternal life, we now turn to the Gentiles.’

Acts 18:6 NIV—When the Jews [of the majority] opposed Paul and became abusive, he shook out his clothes in protest and said to them, ‘Your blood be on your own heads! I am clear of my responsibility. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.’

In addition, by turning away from the rejecting Jewish majority to spread the Messiah’s gospel to the Gentile world, the Jewish minority who obeyed the Messiah believed they were fulfilling the moral obligation God placed on the Jews when he said to Abraham, the first Jewish patriarch, In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice (Genesis 22:18 AKJV). Thus, through the instrumentality of Jews, though only a scant minority of them, Judaism—that is, in the form of Jesus’ New Covenant Judaism—and the light and salvation of Judaism found in Jesus the Messiah of Israel, was first brought to the Gentile nations of the world.

This is how God’s promise to Abraham (Genesis 22:18) was fully and effectively fulfilled. This—as noted earlier in the Preface to this work—is also what fulfilled as well the following Jewish Bible prophecies regarding the Gentiles:

Deuteronomy 32:21 NIV - [God said] I will make them [i.e., the disobedient Jewish majority] envious by those who are not a people; I will make them angry by a nation [i.e., the Gentiles] that has no understanding.

Malachi 1:11-12 NIV - ‘From the rising of the sun even to the going down of the same my name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense shall be offered to my name, and a pure offering: for my name shall be great among the heathen,’ said the Lord of hosts.

Zechariah 2:11 NIV - Many [Gentile] nations will join themselves to the Lord in that [future] day and will become my people;

Hosea 1:10 NIV - In the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ they will be called ‘sons of the living God’

Hosea 2:23 NIV - I will show my love to the one I called ‘not my loved one.’ I will say to those called ‘Not my people,’ ‘You are my people’; and they will say, ‘You are my God.’

As for the Jewish majority left behind in hardened unbelief against Jesus, we will see below how Paul warned Gentiles not to count this majority as lost forever. He predicted that, eventually, God would reconcile and restore at least a huge number of this alienated majority—if not the whole of it—to the Messiah.

In Chapter 3, we learn in detail concerning the three stages in the full work of the Messiah: (1) the Atonement and Resurrection stage, (2) the Gentile stage, and (3) the Jewish stage. The alienated Jewish majority left behind in unbelief is to be restored and reconciled to the Messiah once the Gentile stage (i.e., the Gentile-centered Christian era) has reached a fullness of completion. This restoration and reconciliation of the Jewish majority, Paul refers to as its fullness, and the completion of the Gentile or Gentile-Christian stage (or era), Paul refers to as the fullness of the Gentiles. See the following:

Romans 11:11-13, 15 NKJV—Through [the Jewish majority’s] fall [into hardened unbelief], to provoke them to jealousy, salvation has come to the Gentiles [this happened in accord with Moses’ prophecy in Deuteronomy 32:21 NIV—I will make them envious by those who are not a people; I will make them angry by a nation that has no understanding]. Now if [the majority’s] fall is riches for the [Gentile] world, and their failure riches for the Gentiles, how much more their fullness! For I speak to you Gentiles…. For if [the Jewish majority] being cast away is [or means] the reconciling of the world, what will their acceptance [or restoration] be but life from the dead?

Romans 11:25-26 NASB—"I do not want you, [Gentile] brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery—so that you may not be wise in your own thinking [or be conceited]—that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in; and so all Israel will be saved."

The word fullness in Romans 11:25, cited above, comes from the original Greek word pleroma. The NIV bible translation translates pleroma as full number. However, the NASB has a more precise or accurate translation; for pleroma simply means fullness, a filling up, or completion.

Thus, in Romans 11:25-26, Paul is effectively saying that once the fullness of the Gentiles is reached (which would officially mark the end of the Messiah’s second or Gentile-centered stage), God will intensely turn his attention to the Messiah’s Jewish stage. It is in this Jewish stage that God will reconcile the estranged Jewish majority to Jesus the Messiah.

The fullness of the Gentiles referred in Romans 11:25 is believed to have officially occurred already—in the decade of the 1960s. As such, we are now already in the Messiah’s Jewish (or Jewish-centered) stage. The reason for this belief is discussed below in this Introduction.

The rise of Gentile Christianity and the corrupting of N.C. Judaism

Beginning in the middle part of the first century AD, while N.C. Judaism was still under exclusive Jewish control, N.C. Judaism began to spread out from Judea to the Gentile world in three directions. In one direction, N.C. Judaism spread to Egypt. In another, it spread to the Greek world in Asia Minor and what is now Greece. Last of all, it reached the center of the Latin world in Rome. The Jewish Apostle Mark is reputedly the one who founded N.C. Judaism in Egypt. The Apostle Paul and his companion Barnabas were the main Jewish missionaries who led expeditions to the Greeks and the Romans and established N.C. Judaism among these two groups.

After the complete loss of its Jewish leadership in Jerusalem—believed to have occurred after 135 AD—N.C. Judaism among the Gentiles quickly lost much of its Jewish purity. As the transition from Jewish leadership to complete Gentile control was taking place, N.C. Judaism under the Gentiles became exposed to many toxic movements in the principal Gentile cities of Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople, and Rome. Among these movements were Gnosticism, Manichaeism, Neo-Platonist Hellenism, and other cults of Greco-Roman and Persian paganism.

The poisonous ideas of these movements, foreign as they were to Jewish thinking, began infiltrating what was originally strictly a Jewish religious movement with live Jewish supervision. Now under full Gentile control with no live Jewish oversight, these foreign ideologies exerted their harmful influence on N.C. Judaism as it evolved under the Gentiles. One of several tragic outcomes of this, which is of special relevance to the theme of this work, was an increasing anti-Jewish sentiment among Gentile followers of Jesus (see Chapter 2 for a more detailed discussion of this history).

All this was emerging as Gentile followers of Jesus began to put their stamp of corruption on the N.C. Judaism they received from the Jews. In its evolutionary process, N.C. Judaism under Gentile control became very much of a proud, arrogant, and corrupted religion filled with abhorrence for unbelieving Jews. This state of mind led early Gentile theologians professing to be followers of Jesus to assume colossal misunderstandings with respect to the nature of New Testament religion.

Specifically, it seems that they failed extensively to respect or appreciate that, because of Jesus, the Jewish Messiah they claimed to follow, and the Jewish New Testament on which their faith was professedly based, New Testament religion necessarily remained at all times unchangeably, foundationally, and thoroughly Jewish at the core.

Such blind shortcomings in Christianity persist even to this day. So much is this the case that even today, after two thousand years of Christian history, it is not unusual to get puzzled looks from Christians when one refers to the New Testament as Jewish. A central purpose of this work is to expose the nature of this repugnant Gentile state of mind and to promote the concept of New Testament religion understood as its Jewish founders actually knew it.

Essentially, the early Gentile Fathers who set the starting precedents for Gentile Christianity were Greek and Roman intellectuals. Among the Greeks, there was for example, Irenaeus of Lyons, Clement, Origen and Cyril of Alexandria, and the Cappadocian Fathers. Among the Romans, there was Cyprian, Jerome, Ambrose, and Tertullian. These early Gentile Christian leaders and others like them took over the philosophic and theological leadership of Jesus’ religion once its original Jewish leaders had passed away. With Gentile leaders now in full control of what was formerly a Jewish-founded and Jewish-led form of Judaism, this is where the corruption of Jesus’ N.C. Judaism began.

Hence, because of their departure from the pure form of Judaism they received from the Jewish apostles of Jesus, instead of adhering faithfully to N.C. Judaism’s founding Jewish-centered outlook and worldview, Gentile followers of Jesus began to innovate and syncretize, bringing into N.C Judaism non-Jewish—even pagan—religious notions, ideas, practices, and philosophic worldviews. This had the effect of transforming the pure Judaism of Jesus and his Jewish apostles into a movement not at all compatible with Judaism of any kind.

Once the Gentile-inspired name that we now know as Christianity was adopted, the transformation from Jesus’ Judaism to a movement totally Gentile in identity was complete. From this point on to our present times, the religion of Jesus would no longer be Jewish-centered in practice or thinking, though remaining Jewish in its New Covenant/New Testament foundation and in who Jesus was as a Jew.

Exceptions to the rule of corruption

All the negative things that have been said above about Gentile Christianity and its beginning is not to say that Gentile Christianity involved a total corruption of N.C. Judaism. Such a view would be a horrendous misrepresentation not supported by the facts of history. In fact, we have no misgivings at all in saying and believing that in spite of its many errors and corrupt times in history, there was enough Judaism in Gentile-centered Christianity—more or less in various times and related movements—for the biblical God to have used Christianity to bring enormous blessings to the world.

As already noted in the Preface to this work, because of Christianity, an utterly hopeless pagan and barbarian world in Europe was transformed into a glorious and refined Western civilization where people found hope, safety, enlightenment, and a stable way of life.

Of course there was a lot of awful history as well—full of violence and mayhem. But these things did not last. Time and time again, nations always found a way to make peace between themselves and ratify treaties designed to allow a relatively peaceful coexistence with ideological adversaries who could not be destroyed.

Another aspect in the history of Gentile Christianity that makes evident the work of God in preventing the total corruption of N.C. Judaism is what happened in the development of Christian theology. Thanks to the overruling power of God’s providence, there was some positive good that the early Christian Church Fathers managed to accomplish in spite of all the corruptions they also introduced. In fact, the good these Fathers introduced might have served to give them an aura of authority that served to make the bad they introduced seem credible and acceptable.

As for the good which the Greek and Roman Church Fathers introduced, it can be said first of all that their work in determining the acceptable canon of the Bible’s New Testament was a feat that has found virtual total agreement among all major Christian groups. Secondly, these Gentile Church Fathers did marvelous work in keeping away serious heresies that would have completely wiped out whatever vestiges of Jewish purity they managed to retain from original N.C. Judaism.

Third, in the process of fighting off heresies, these early Gentile Christians were able to develop and formulate sound theology that could be supported, certified, and confirmed as such by the authoritative Jewish Bible and Jewish apostolic text of the New Testament. Two notable examples of this are the doctrines of who Jesus the Messiah is as to his person and nature, and the complex singularity (or triune nature) of God (see Chapter 4 for an extended exposition of the Trinity from the Jewish Bible and Jewish New Testament).

Hence, in our estimation, the Jewish Bible and Jewish New Testament alone—with nothing else added—represent the supreme authority that must determine the correctness of any doctrine or development of theology that claims to be authoritative. Moreover, we view this sole combined authority as that which prevents the original Jewish purity of N.C. Judaism from being totally obliterated. The New Testament is therefore in our eyes the highly treasured legacy that was left to the Church before N.C. Judaism’s founding Jewish leadership passed away.

This Jewish New Testament eventually proved vital in reform movements, such as the Protestant Reformation, which sought to bring back the lost Jewish purity of Jesus’ religion. As to whether the Reformers were aware of this Jewish aspect in their movement, history does not seem to confirm this. Yet, whatever the case may be, the New Covenant/New Testament of N.C. Judaism’s Jewish founders has been the steady rock on which all faithful Gentile followers of Jesus have relied on to know the truth about the nature and worldview of New Testament religion, which we now understand has always been Jewish.

It was a great blessing for Gentiles that Jewish missionaries brought them N.C. Judaism and the salvation of Jesus the Messiah it proclaimed. Sadly, however, the enormous human influx that this event generated drew in a diverse crowd of Gentiles with all sorts of perverted ideas and sentiments that were completely alien to the mind and spirit of the Jews who founded N.C. Judaism and authored the New Testament.

So it comes as no surprise that, once Gentiles were in full control of the Judaism of Jesus, N.C. Judaism/now Christianity became Gentile-oriented and corrupted with anti-Semitism. This state of affairs proved lethal to hapless Jews who were driven out of their lands after their Roman defeats in the first and second centuries AD.

Compelled to leave their own lands, these Jews had the profound misfortune of being forced to settle in lands that quickly came under the prevailing influence of an already corrupted and vindictive, anti-Semitic Gentile Christianity.

The Jewish Awakening in Christianity

Prior to 1948, when the modern State of Israel was established, Sinai covenant Jews were largely ignored except for persecution. However, since the founding of the State of Israel, the Gentile world has fixed its attention on all major events the Jews in Israel have been experiencing in their relationship with their Middle East neighbors and the world. Hence, Jews have become aware that, in our time, anything Jews is news.

It is significant that, at the same time the State of Israel was nearing establishment in mid twentieth century, the cultural and social influence of Gentile Christianity in the West was already in steep decline. In a widely presumed Christian America, the courts had begun to rule in favor of atheism, putting this belief on an equal footing with Christianity. This followed with Gentile Christianity being driven out of the public arena on the basis of a newly established legal doctrine called the separation of Church and State. Along with this came the banning of public school prayer.

In an increasingly hostile environment, Gentile Christianity was being forced to retreat to the isolated cloister of its churches, as its public voice was being stifled, made irrelevant, and vastly non-existent. Actually, both in Europe and America, people were bluntly being informed they were now living in a post-Christian world. Based on mounting evidence, it became increasingly evident that this was an accurate assessment; religious authority in the public sphere was quickly on its way to total collapse.

The Christian influence that in the past had been so strong in support of high moral values in Western society was fast disappearing. The rationalist and scientific movements that began with the Renaissance and Enlightenment in Europe (the Age of Reason) were finally rising victoriously in the form of mounting secularism and technocracy. Without any meaningful concern for religious values, the European and American worlds were quickly descending to extremely low levels of Christian religious faith and spiritual-mindedness.

Emerging seemingly as a triumphant climax in this movement, the culture wars of the 1960s erupted in the formerly Christianized West, breaking down to their foundations those Christian traditional values that were formerly upheld by society and its institutions. Thus, the Gentile West, the cultural center the entire world looks to and tries to imitate, was well underway to substantial freedom from religious restraints. Increasingly, people would now do what was right in their own eyes. This was secular humanism replacing the rule of God. Moral anarchy and a worldwide narcissism had arrived with a vengeance, as the world was witnessing the fulfillment of New Testament biblical prophecy:

2 Timothy 3:1-4 NKJV—Know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.

In this new and vastly degraded Western environment, it is understandable that a widespread weariness with and indifference to the gospel of Gentile Christianity was emerging. In the mid 1900s, Gentile Christian mass evangelism reached a peak with Billy Graham. From there on, such evangelism began to decline. Added to a rising moral dissipation worldwide, the growth of apostasy, atheism, and agnosticism increased considerably. This is what the former Gentile Christian world was coming to at its demise.

All of Gentile Europe and the Americas, where once the Christian view of reality pervasively determined spiritual and moral life, is now in comparison only a desolate, empty shell of what it used to be. It is like a once elegant edifice having suffered a termite invasion that has eaten all its substance. Such a world has now moved on to an apprehensive existence where the old Christian-influenced traditions, which in the best of times gave human meaning and social cohesion to the Western world, now appear to have irrevocably disintegrated and vanished.

Yet, in the face of this, we are not pessimists; for we believe that while a former good order of things was in the process of dying and passing away, another good order was and is in the process of being born. What we are saying here is that, in God’s program for biblical history, all these events in the Gentile world had to come to pass in order for God to bring the Messiah’s Gentile-centered stage to an end so that the Jewish-centered stage could then begin.

In accord with this view—that God’s direction of biblical history is now toward a Jewish era—it is our strong belief that, as world humanity finds itself seeking for a stable level in the midst of profound volatility and insecurity, the time has arrived when God, for his own climactic purpose that is ahead, is taking whatever is left of God-fearing Christianity back to its original source; to the steady and secure Jewish roots from which it originally arose.

In an online Associated Press article dated April 9, 2006, entitled Rabbi wants Jews to learn about New Testament, Rachel Zoll, AP Religion Writer, wrote on the awareness within Judaism that many Christians are embracing the Jewish origins of their faith. In addition, we have become personally aware of Gentile Christian groups that are forming in America and abroad seeking to relate to and connect with what the Jewishness of original Christianity is about.

What appears remarkable about this Jewish Awakening among Christians, which we also refer to as the Jewish consciousness movement—or just simply the Jewish movement—is the seemingly spontaneous manner in which this is unfolding and in such a worldwide scope. This is but one of several indications to us that God is behind this movement and that it will eventually culminate in the rebirth of N.C. Judaism—an egalitarian union of Jew and Gentile followers of Jesus (see Chapter 23 on Jewish identity for more details on what the Jew-Gentile union is about).

Of course, only time will verify the reality of this; nevertheless, this is how the vision is now foreseen and anticipated here. Having this vision, along with the confidence that the ongoing Jewish movement is from God and that we are in the last (or Jewish stage) of the full work of the Messiah, our path is no longer uncertain; we now have a stable sense of direction around which we can plan and prepare.

The individual local groups engaged in the Jewish movement generally meet together for fellowship and Bible study. Bible study will include, for example, studying and discussing the various ways Jesus and his Jewish followers related, compared, and distinguished themselves and their movement with respect to the Sinai covenant regime established by God through Moses. These meetings also include studying issues relevant to the New Covenant prophesied by Jeremiah (see, Jeremiah 31:31-33) and established by the Messiah through his blood sacrifice (see, Luke 22:20).

In their meetings, one particular Gentile group of this type that was recently visited took very seriously and applied to themselves the following teachings from Paul:

1.   Gentiles who have believed in the Messiah have been grafted into Israel (Romans 11:17-19).

2.   They have been united as one with Jews who follow the Messiah (Ephesians 2:14).

3.   They have been made fellow citizens in the commonwealth of Israel with Jews who have obeyed God and his Messiah (Ephesians 2:11-12, 19-20).

Unfortunately, in many cases, these Jewish consciousness meetings have involved Gentiles in various degrees of syncretistic blending of Sinai Covenant and New Covenant practices and beliefs. Hence, it is evident that this ongoing Jewish awakening among Gentile followers of Jesus is in urgent need of sound biblical teaching.

Jewish history and the Jewish Awakening

As we see it, the modern Jewish awakening in Christianity can be traced to events in Jewish history in mid-twentieth century. As already indicated, for almost two thousand years up to 1948, Christians had been accustomed to knowing the Jews only as a persecuted race, without a country of their own and scattered throughout the world. No one could then have imagined what happened with the Jews in 1948 when the State of Israel was founded. At that point, a new dynamic began to emerge in Christian thinking. This involved a growing and steadfast interest among Christians in the biblical significance of the Jews in the Holy Land and their rise to worldwide prominence.

This historic shift in Jewish status, happening at the same time that, in fulfillment of Jesus’ prophecy on the times of the Gentiles (Luke 21:24), the social standing of Gentile Christianity was reaching the depths of its decline, all these things became major clues that led to our understanding that there has been a total of three stages in the full work of Jesus the Messiah—the Atonement and Resurrection, the Gentile, and the Jewish stage.

Now that we are in the Messiah’s Jewish stage, biblical history is increasingly revolving around the rising of the Jews. This is part of the new dynamic that in time emerged in Christian thinking. In this Jewish Messianic Era, New Testament religion has been witnessing a remarkable and unprecedented number of Jews reconciling themselves to their estranged Messiah. We can expect God will reconcile an even greater number of Jews as the Messiah’s Jewish stage progresses.

Prior to the rise of the Jews to the center stage of history, there seemed to be a widespread lack of interest among Christians with respect to Jews in relation to New Testament religion. But given that biblical history is now in the Messiah’s Jewish era, it should not be surprising that God is at this time increasingly stirring his people to turn their attention to this issue whose time has come.

The fullness of the Gentiles and the end of Gentile-centered Christianity

We will now proceed to discover how it is that, based on the prophecies from Jesus and Paul mentioned above, Gentile-centered Christianity has officially already ended.

As we interpreted Paul earlier (see above in this Introduction), we said he predicted that Jewish hardening against Jesus the Messiah would prevail. But this would end once the Messiah’s Gentile stage, or that which we also call the era of Gentile-centered Christianity, would be officially over. Paul refers to this ending as the fullness of the Gentiles having come in.

Following again is Paul’s statement: Romans 11:25-26 NASB—I do not want you, [Gentile] brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery—so that you may not be wise in your own thinking [i.e., conceited]—that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in; and so all Israel will be saved.

Notice how Paul’s prophecy indicates that after the era of the Gentiles reaches its fullness of completion, all Israel will be saved. The meaning we gather in this sequence is that, according to Paul, after the Messiah’s Gentile stage (or Gentile-centered Christianity) is officially over, the final or Jewish stage in the work of the Messiah will begin.

But this, we believe, is the same thing as saying that, after Gentile-centered Christianity has officially ended in the flow of biblical history, we will see a reverse transition from that which took place when early Gentile Christianity replaced the Judaism of Jesus. In other words, we will again see the rise of original Jewish-centered N.C. Judaism to take the lead in New Covenant/New Testament religion. This restored Jewish-centered movement will replace the passing away of Gentile-centered Christianity. How extensive this replacement will be remains to be seen.

In any case, as we understand Paul’s prophecy on the Jews, at some point in this process of Jewish reorientation, God will reconcile a Jewish majority, if not the whole majority, to Jesus as the Messiah of Israel (and so all Israel will be saved - Romans 11:26). In Chapter 6, we discuss what might be the exact meaning of Paul’s words, all Israel will be saved.

In addition to what Paul said on the topic concerning the fullness of the Gentiles and all Israel will be saved, it is finally made clear from the prophecy of Jesus over Jerusalem that the Messiah’s Gentile stage has officially already come to an end and the Jewish Stage has begun. In Jesus’ prophecy, what Paul calls the fullness of the Gentiles, Jesus calls the times of the Gentiles (see, Luke 21:24 NASB—Jerusalem will be trampled under foot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled).

While the phrases the fullness of the Gentiles and the times of the Gentiles refer to the same event, Jesus’ prophetic statement has an advantage over that of Paul in the following sense: Unlike the prophecy made by Paul, the prophecy of Jesus mentions a specific historical event that is to serve as a marker we can look for to know exactly when the Messiah’s Gentile stage is officially over and the Jewish stage has begun.

Jesus says that the Gentile stage (or times of the Gentiles) will officially end when the Gentiles lose control over Jerusalem (Jerusalem will be trampled under foot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled). We have already noted that this historical event took place on June 7, 1967 when Jerusalem fell to Jewish control after non-Jews had ruled in Jerusalem for over two thousand years.

Hence, we can now finally conclude that, according to Jesus’ prophecy, June 7, 1967 is in effect the day when the Messiah’s Gentile stage officially ended and the Jewish stage officially began. Clearly then, the Jewish-centered or final stage of the Messiah’s work is where we are now in biblical history.

In this Jewish-centered stage we are in, we expect God’s restoration of Jewish-centered N.C. Judaism to become increasingly evident—how quickly, God only knows; but time seems to be running out as human existence gets more and more desperate. Thus, it is anticipated that, at the longest, it is probably a matter of decades. But again, only God can know for certain.

Being taught and instructed directly by the Messiah, Paul was able to predict the eventual ending of God’s Gentile-centered work without meaningful live Jewish oversight. Hence, this Gentile-centered work without meaningful live Jewish involvement had to end once the fullness of the Gentiles had emerged. Now that this has arrived and is behind us, and with the Messiah’s Jewish era currently ongoing, it’s a brand new biblical world unfolding; everything in biblical history from now until the Messiah returns, will be Jewish-centered.

It stands to reason that toward the end of human history, everything in New Testament religion should return to the Jewish-centered movement it originally was. It should be so, since we are now beginning to learn here that the New Testament, no less than the Jewish Bible, are both Jewish-centered. Both the Jewish Tanakh and the Jewish New Testament point to a future age, before eternity begins, where the Jewish Messiah of Israel will reign on earth (Revelation 5:10) for a thousand years (Revelations 20:4) as King of a united world, as Jewish prophecy has predicted.

The world at this present time is drawing ever-near to this historic climax. All of it will be in fulfillment of the following Jewish Messianic prophecy:

Psalm 2:7-9 AKJV—‘I will declare the decree’: the Lord has said to me, ‘You are my Son, today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will give the nations for your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron; you shall dash them to pieces like a potter’s vessel.’

Given the above, Gentile Christians need to start getting used to the idea and fact of the biblical world being Jewish-centered. Since the worlds of the Jewish Bible and the Jewish New Testament do not revolve around Gentiles but around Jews and their destiny—a destiny into which believing Gentiles have been graciously brought in—Gentile Christians should heed Paul’s words and not be conceited (Romans 11:17-21). The central theme in Romans 11 on the restoration of Israel to the Messiah addresses this issue.

Gentiles have been given the opportunity to join in and participate in a Jewish experience under Jesus the Messiah. Accordingly, the time under this Jewish Messiah is now quickly approaching when the following prophecies given by Zechariah and Isaiah will be fulfilled for the Jews:

Zechariah 8:23 NIV—In those days ten men from all languages and nations will take firm hold of one Jew by the hem of his robe and say, ‘Let us go with you, because we have heard that God is with you.’

Isaiah 60:14 NASB—"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 the LORD, The Zion of the Holy