I confess that I do not know how to categorize or designate such a meeting as this one today. Perhaps we should label it "a spiritual smorgasbord." No program has been formulated, and no set address was prepared. Instead, you are free to ask whatever is in your heart, and you yourselves will determine the path we shall take and the direction that we travel in our mutual discussion. Do not feel reluctant to ask anything that may seem trivial or out of place. Whatever is important to you certainly will not be foolish to me.
Will you repeat what you said some time ago about your indifference to Jews becoming "Christians" and elaborate upon it for my benefit?
Yes, indeed. What I said then and what I maintain now is that I am not all "hung up" on what Jews call themselves when they reach the personal conclusion that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah of whom the prophets spoke. The earliest disciples of Jesus were all Jews or proselytes. They were not designated as Christians. They were called Nazarenes, believers, disciples, or brethren. None of these was a title. In the aggregate, they were known as people of "the Way." Perhaps all of us should abandon our sectarian labels and become once more followers of the Way. Hundreds of primitive disciples of Jesus actually died for their faith and never knew they were expected to be designated Christians. It is a fact that only after the message was taken beyond the borders of Palestine into a pagan environment that the term "Christians" was applied to the believers. Luke informs us that the disciples, or believers, were first called Christians at Antioch.
In spite of the ingenious rationalization of some of my friends who like to think the name was bestowed by the Lord, I doubt that it was predicted by the prophets or pronounced by divine revelation. I suspect it was contrived by the populace of Antioch. It may have been even given in jest, as a nickname. Certainly history bears out that the inhabitants of the area were addicted to such characterizations. The ending of the word with ianoi merely means "to be affiliated with," or "to be a member of the party of someone." The believers in the messiahship of Jesus were regarded as members of the party of the Messiah, to distinguish them from those who did not believe in Him.
The designations "Messianic Jews" or "Jews for Jesus" is sufficient for me. If there are connotations of the word "Christian" that violate your conscience, making it either abhorrent or inexpedient for you, do not become uptight about it. I want you simply to share in the reconciling power of God's grace that was made available to us through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus. What you call yourselves is a matter of indifference to me, as long as you truly glorify God. I do not want you to become non-Jews, nor to become like me, except in my trust in the Nazarene as the Messiah as foretold by the prophets. You are Jews, and while no human parentage or ancestry will justify us before God, you must be what you are and not something else!
You do contemplate that those Jews who accept Jesus as the Messiah should become members of some Christian church, do you not?
No Sir, I do not! The whole concept expressed by the term, "some Christian church," is contrary to my thinking. It runs counter to all I believe about the eternal purpose of God. In the first place, I doubt that the word "church" should be in our spiritual vocabulary. It is not at all a translation of the word it purports to represent. That word in the Greek is ekklesia, which comes from the term ek, meaning "out," and kaleo, "to call." So ekklesia simply refers to those who have been "called out" and called together by response to the good news of God's great move in history to form a people for himself. The word corresponds to the Hebrew kahal, an "assembly," or "assemblage."
I do not want to become technical or theological. God called Abraham out of the idolatrous world, of which he was a part, in order to create for himself a nation, a special people to keep alive on earth the belief in one God. Even so, "in the fulness of time" He called out a people composed of Jews and non-Jews to witness to mankind that the Messiah has come. It is enough that you hear the call and heed it as did Abraham, and thus become one of the "called out." If you have to be identified, why not be simply a synagogue of the Messianists? Above all else, do not feel that it is essential to identify with "some church," and thus unwittingly lend your influence to further the sectarian spirit which is so carnal and immature. God has only one called-out people. There is but one body, and never can be another. Just be content to remain where God receives you, and do not feel obligated to become something that men try to make you become.
Let me tell you sincerely that when you respond to the gospel by faith in the greatest fact ever proclaimed (that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God), and when you are baptized in validation of your faith in that fact, you are my brother, regardless of what you call yourself. I am concerned only that all of us be the people of God. It is this for which we are called. There is only one family because there is only one Father. Anyone who is born from above surely is in that family. Let us just be sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty. Let us be brothers and sisters in the majestic family of God. Let those of us who have become friends of Jesus be friends of one another, and not become enemies over what designations we paint in our humanly-erected signboards. I pray that all of us will become "people of the Way." It is on that basis I receive you, for it is thus that God received us all. The call of the ages is echoing through the corridors of time. Hear it, heed it, and let us walk together unto His marvelous glory.
If you entertain such feelings as you say you do, how do you account for the terrible persecutions to which Jews have been subjected by Christians?
I do not want to be evasive, nor do I want to condone actions that are cruel, regardless of who perpetrates them. But I think you labor under a misapprehension. It occurs to me that many Jews in the western world assume that everyone who is not a Jew is a Christian. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Perhaps you think of the occidental world as a Christian realm. It is not. America is not a Christian nation. It is pagan in its culture and, regardless of its claim to be Christian, it has false gods and false "isms" to which it defers and pays homage. You are not a separate people living in a Christian world. Both of us are living in a pagan world.
Spain, under Ferdinand and Isabella, was not a Christian nation. Thomas of Torquemada was not a Christian, although he was the prior of a Dominican monastery. The pope who inaugurated the Inquisition at his behest, and made him grand inquisitor for Castile and Aragon, was not a Christian. It was not a Christian people who tortured the Jews and finally banished them in 1492, so that a modern historian wrote the sad words, "The galleons of Columbus setting out for the New World passed the ships taking the Jews into a new dispersion."
Germany, under the one-time paperhanger who took the name of Hitler, was not Christian. The frightful holocaust was not the work of Christians, but of sin-blighted pagans. You may believe me or not, but no true follower of Jesus ever persecuted Jews or anyone else. Indeed, Jesus taught His disciples to love their enemies, to do good to those who would despitefully use them and persecute them. Regardless of one's profession, if he engages in persecution, he is not a follower of Jesus. It is shameful that men have cloaked themselves under the garb inscribed with the name Christian to cover up their dastardly crimes. You cannot identify the criminal by the disguise he has stolen from the innocent.
The follower of Jesus suffers himself to be defrauded, rather than to defraud. He endures illegal confiscation of his goods, rather than to confiscate the possessions of another. The disciple of the Nazarene would rather meet death than to take life. In Christ, racial and ethnic differences lose their significance. To the extent that racial prejudice exists in a man's heart, he is not truly a follower of Him who died for us all. The purpose of the Spirit of God is to pour out in our hearts the love of God, until we see all men as our Creator sees them.
Is not the main difference between Christianity and modern Judaism the fact that Christianity is a "pie in the sky" religion? Modern Judaism encourages one to do all the good he can on earth because death brings only the peace of non-being. I am talking about the philosophic distinction, not about the theological spread between them.
That is a big question. I have no doubt it is an important one. My answer will probably not satisfy you, but surely you can be cheered in knowing that a few years ago it would not have satisfied me either. I must confess that I am not too interested in any philosophic clash between Christianity and Judaism of the modern stripe. I regard both of them as corruptions of God's revelation. Christianity is a term coined to designate a complex system. It is composed of accretions of human explanations, traditions, interpretations, and socially acceptable ethics and has snowballed through the ages. Just as barnacles are not a part of a vessel, so these are not a part of what God intended. Modern Christianity is no more the simple faith proclaimed by the envoys of Jesus than the socialistic state of modern England is the monarchy of the past. I confess I am not too "high" on the conglomerate mess lumped off under the general label of Christianity.
By the same token, I am equally turned off by what is dubbed "modern Judaism." Maybe it is because I flinch when I see the suffix ism attached to any term of religious significance. It is the tail that wags religious dogs, and who wants to go to the dogs? Judaism, whether it be the brand in vogue yesterday or the current article, is not the system revealed to your fathers at Sinai and delivered to Moses by the hand of angels. It is a synthetic distillate composed of one part revelation and nine parts rationalization, there being nine times more human than divine in it. Its empty rituals can no more satisfy the longings of the human soul than can the hollow liturgies of organized Christianity. It is time to ask both sects in the words of Isaiah, "Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labor for that which satisfieth not?" (55:2).
I represent no sect, party, splinter, or philosophic clique in modern "Christianity." I am not interested in having you embrace it. My only creed is Jesus the Nazarene. I accept His life and seek to reproduce it in my own feeble and imperfect existence. The life of Jesus has promise, in this world and in the world to come. I do not wait for "pie in the sky," although the "pie" I share now is big enough that I cannot exhaust it in these few years of mundane existence. I receive a hundredfold more in this life for what I sacrifice for His sake, but in the world to come I shall have life eternal in its fullness. It is a travesty on justice to make it appear that the faith in the Messiah causes one to stumble blindly along through life, with no reward here and only a nebulous hope of blessing beyond the grave.
You were very perceptive in your use of the term "modern Judaism," for what you have is not what your fathers trusted in at all. You have heard the song of the same sirens that echoed in the ears of the proponents of institutionalized Christianity. You have been lured to shipwreck on the same rocks.
In the eleventh century, Moses Maimonides drew up a summary of the Jewish creed in thirteen articles, and these were accepted as a universal confession of faith among Jews.
Article Twelve states, "I believe, with a perfect faith, in the advent of the Messiah, and though he should tarry, yet I will patiently await every day till he come." Article Thirteen states, "I believe, with a perfect faith, that there will be a revivification of the dead, at the period when it shall please the Creator, blessed be his name, and let his remembrance be exalted forever and ever!"
What has happened to modern Jews to make them disregard, and even deny, these statements from the celebrated rabbi who was hailed as "the eagle of the doctors" and "the lamp of Israel"? Certainly there are many in this generation who do not patiently wait for the Messiah every day. They have rejected the idea of a personal Messiah, and have substituted as an expedient a system they hope will somehow leaven the social structure of which they are a part.
What has happened to the "perfect faith" that the sleeping dead will arise? Many modern Jews, betrayed by the "evolutionary process" into believing that man is merely a superior animal, reject the idea of a life beyond the tomb. To them man dies like a beast, and his end is extinction.
Modern Judaism, like modern Christianity, so-called, is the result of men coming under the influence of clever sophists, whose skeptical writings cut the heart out of faith in a divine being and in the supernatural. David Levi was a learned Jew who published a memorable work called Dissertations on the Prophecies of the Old Testament, twenty years after the American Revolution broke out. In his book he declares that Deism and infidelity had made such great strides in the world that they reached even to the Jewish nation. The result was that many became so infected with skepticism by reading Bolingbroke, Hume, Voltaire, and others that they "scarcely believe in a revelation, much less have they any hope in their future restoration."
We must face the fact that the Jewish and Christian faiths have come under attack from infidelity for the same reason. They have a common origin. Both were revealed to men by divine power. I would like to make it clear that I accept the veracity of the message given at Sinai with the same degree of fervor that I believe in the message of the chosen envoys of Jesus. Both conveyed hope. The first held forth the hope of a Messiah who would put all things together, the second conveyed hope of man's eternal sharing with the divine when death was conquered and destroyed.
Is it not true that Jesus borrowed from philosophers and priests before His day, and there was nothing really distinctive or new in the system He devised and which you defend?
You remind me of the old anecdote of the man who imbibed a little too much liquor, and in his semidrunken state began to brag and bluster about his physical prowess. He announced that he could whip anyone in town. There was no response, so he broadened the scope of his challenge to include anyone in the county. Again there were no takers. "I can whip anyone in this whole state," he said. Upon hearing this, a little man stepped out of the crowd and knocked him down. The inebriated individual clambered slowly to his feet and said, "You will have to excuse me, please. I took in too much territory that last time."
That is what you have done in your question. The implication is that everything Jesus taught was appropriated from prior human sources, and there was nothing distinctive about the system He inaugurated. That takes in too much territory upon both counts. It would make of Jesus a peddler of secondhand precepts and used concepts. It would have been ridiculous for one who was the animate embodiment of all truth to deny any truth man had discovered. Truth is truth, regardless of who asserts it, and all truth is consistent with itself. Jesus was concerned about truth for its own sake, and not as a means for personal renown. Man had lived for thousands of years and had received revelations from God through the prophets. Philosophers and wise men had discovered principles of moral and ethical conduct that were becoming to mankind.
In the endorsement and restatement of such principles, Jesus did not endorse either the philosophers or their systems. If He had refused to state a truth because of its prior discovery, He would have come under censure as being either ignorant or inconsistent. Jesus did not profess there were no truths before He came. To the contrary, He frequently said, "It has been written." He asked the question, "Have you not read?" Certainly He brought to light truths never before ascertained, but He did not thereby renounce any truth previously asserted.
At the risk of seeming simplistic, let me say that I believe Jesus revealed for us the truth of the real nature of God. He also helped us to understand the gravity of sin as God regards it, and the alienation that results from it. Best of all, He made clear to us the means of reconciliation with God, giving us a new kind of hope never before experienced. So, while it is a fact that Jesus acknowledged all truth previously known as valid, it is just as certain He brought truths to light never before understood.
Why are you so interested in converting the Jews? Is there a peculiar kind of satisfaction in seeing a Jew give up his Jewishness?
Perhaps I do not understand the import of your question, but I shall answer what I think you meant. If I miss the point you can bring me into line on it. I suspect there are people who think there is an "open season" on Jews, stalking them in the hope of capturing them and bringing them into some "Christian" camp, and making statistics out of them. I have no inclination to go "scalp-hunting" for any specific group on earth. I love Jews and non-Jews alike. Because I believe that true joy is found in the Messiah, I want all whom I love to share in that joy. But I am like the Lord, in that I make no difference between Jew or Greek.
I have a deep conviction, based upon what I regard as the revelation of God, that life is to be found in God's Son. "He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life" (I John 5:12). If a researchist in a laboratory discovered the secret of longevity, or the fountain of youth, and guarded the secret, he would be considered a selfish criminal. I have found the secret of the new creation, of life in the fourth dimension. I want you to participate in it, to know the grace and peace that come through the Messiah, but I also want everyone else to know the new life in God's Messiah as well.
I must protest your misconception that I want Jews to dispense with their Jewish identity. That is the last thing I want. I maintain that God raised up the nation of Israel as a special vessel so that the Messiah could be brought to the world. No other nation could have done so. Salvation is of the Jews. The oracles given through Moses, the writings of the prophets, the songs of your eminent poets, all of these were bestowed as gifts of God to prepare mankind for the crowning act of blessing humanity through the Jews--the advent of the Messiah. Israel was the cradle of God in which the Messianic dream was rocked. As long as I regard Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah foretold by your ancient seers, I want you to remain Jews. Your very Jewishness is a testimony to the world of the marvelous program and providence of God.
Not for anything the world has to offer would I deliberately arouse antipathy in your hearts. I will do all that is right to allay the improper attitudes of all of us toward each other. I eagerly hope that you will not become incensed when I tell you that, as I view it, you can actually be better Jews in Jesus than you can be out of Him. This is true, regardless of how you may be looked upon by the modern Jewish community. It is no adverse reflection upon you to take the step of faith in the messiahship of Jesus. Thousands of Jews did this very thing immediately after His ascension to the Father. They did not feel that in so doing they were surrendering their standing as Jews, for they recognized Jesus as a Jew, as far as His earthly relationships were concerned.
Many decades ago the learned Jew, Alfred Edersheim, in his book The Temple wrote, "At the close of these studies, I would say, with humble and heartfelt thankfulness, that step by step my Christian faith has only been strengthened by them; that, as I proceeded, the conviction has always been deepened that Christ is indeed the end of the Law for righteousness, to whom all the ordinances of the Old Testament had pointed, and in whom alone, alike the people and the history of Israel find their meaning."
How I wish that I might persuade all of you of the truth of this profound discovery. You do not maintain your real Jewishness by rejecting the Messiah, but by accepting Him. All of the illustrious history that your fathers lived converges upon Him. It is a tragedy to search all of your generations for the pearl of greatest price, and then die in reach of it without ever touching it.
But this must suffice for this meeting. A week from now, if God wills, we shall draw our dialogue to a close.