IS MODERN ISRAEL UNDER GOD'S BLESSING (OR, A CURSE)?

“Are the Jewish People under God's Blessing or God's Curse,” asked Boaz Michael, Founder and Director of Messiah Magazine. His premise is that “…the Jewish people are under an enormous blessing...for Judaism is not a religion of curses. Judaism is a religion of blessings. The Jewish people and the Jewish religion are a blessing to the whole world.” 

What? Jewish believer, Baruch Moaz has colossal disagreement with Michael’s view. Moaz ventures to totally deconstruct modern Judaism in his book “Judaism is not Jewish,” saying modern Judaism (actually, since AD 90) is reinvented Judaism and is not the Judaism of Yeshua! The Jewish rabbis and leaders met at Yavne about 60 years after Yeshua was crucified, in AD 90 (which was also the time Yochanan was incarcerated on Patmos and given the Apocalypse or Revelation). They met for several reasons. First, the Jewish leaders met in reaction to the Jewish revolution cause by Yeshua, Who claimed to be God’s Son, and Who was turning the Jewish world upside down and causing it to splinter. Second, the Jewish leaders met at Yavne in response to the myriad and myriad Jews coming to faith in Yeshua. Read the biblical New Testament book of Acts and record the number of Jews who came to faith in Yeshua; thousands! Third, the Jewish leaders met to rival the myriad messianic Jews called Nazarenes, Christians, Ibionites, the Way, and the Branch. These Jewish believers in Yeshua were considered to be apostate Jews by mainline Judaism at that time. Finally, the Jewish unbelievers in Yeshua met to restore and console misplaced Jews expelled from Israel under Roman General Titus and Roman Emperor Hadrian. 

The outcome was a [literal] reinvention of Judaism, to shape a ‘faith’ that could exist and would exist outside Israel, no longer needing to lodge within the holy city, Jerusalem, no longer needing the once sacred Temple, no longer needing sacrifices (at least not the bloody ones), remaining quite alright without all the biblical rituals, and yet remaining Jewish even though in the diaspora. This rabbinic Judaism IS NOT a blessing to world Jewry. It is a modern Baal, a Judaism of unbelief in Yeshua, and Jews who embrace this unregenerate disbelief in Yeshua will continue to be under the curse of the law, and therefore, the wrath of the Almighty (John 3:18, 36). Yeshua is the plumline regarding one's favor with God (Amos).

When God blesses some one or some thing, He declares His good will toward that man or thing. Outside Yeshua there is no good-news, there is no good will of God, there is no Gospel. Yeshua is the Gospel! He is the ONLY GOOD NEWS! There is no blessing to anyone who rejects God’s only begotten Son Who is His only sequestered way to blessing! This applies to the Jew, first, and also to the Gentile says Shaul (Paul), “there will be tribulation and distress upon every soul of man who does evil, of the Jew first and also of the Greek, but glory and honor and peace to every man who does good, to the Jews first, and also to the Greek” (Romans 2:9,10). God is moving in the Middle East, but His movement is in relationship to the only truth, way, and life for mankind, His son, Yeshua! Israel returning to the Holy Land from the ovens of Auschwitz is not the Gospel. Israel becoming the greatest airfare in the world is not the Gospel. The land of Israel becoming rich and growing to become the breadbasket of Europe is not the Gospel. These 'miracles' are true, but by the hand of God to turn the Jewish nation -one last time- to Yeshua.

Shaul does not mince words when he writes to the church at Thessalonica, “you also endured the same sufferings at the hands of our own countrymen, even as they did from the Jews, who both killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out. They are NOT PLEASING [my emphasis] to God, but hostile to all men, hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they might be saved; with the result that they always fill up the measure of their sins. But WRATH HAS COME UPON THEM to the utmost. (1 Thessalonians 2:15,16). What is Shaul  saying? Yeshua is the Epicenter! Not Israel, not Jerusalem, not the Temple, not being Jewish, not Judaism, not the Holy Land, not the Law!

Michael’s premise in his article is that the Jews are blessed because they continue to obey the Sabbath and obey God’s Laws, and because of that, they have a religion of blessings. That is not what the Holy Scriptures teach! The epicenter of the Law was Yeshua whom the Jewish people as a majority worldwide continue to reject? The Law was foremost a tutor to lead Israel to Yeshua. The epicenter of the Torah was Yeshua! The epicenter of the Prophets was, Yeshua? The epicenter of the Kevutiim was Yeshua! In fact, belief in Yeshua was the natural and expected  expectation of OT Judaism! 

NT faith in Yeshua [still] is the fulfillment of OT Judaism! OT Judaism led true believers to Yeshua and His new covenant. That is what Jeremiah says (Jeremiah 31:31), a covenant "not like that covenant YHWH made with you at Sinai!" Yeshua was a High Priest of another order, the Melchizedekian order and not the Aaronic order. Yeshua was the son of a Judahite mother. 

Lets be clear! Yeshua is the hallmark, the locus, the zenith, the bulls-eye, the epicenter of the Holy Scriptures. In fact Yeshua's hermeneutic or how He interpreted the Holy Scriptures was that all the scriptures were about Him (Luke 24:27, 44)! The same Holy Scriptures that the Jewish sages, rabbis, and teachers -then and today- say they believe and practice, are the exact same Holy Scriptures that Yeshua says are all about Him, although the Jewish leaders and rabbis discredit and discard Yeshua.

Yeshua is Himself, the ONLY way, the ONLY truth, and the ONLY life. He is therefore, the ONLY medium of blessing! He, Yeshua is our identity. If any one of us, the Jew first, and then the Gentile, does not die and become a "new man in Christ" (new birth is KEY!) that man or woman remains under the curse of sin and is destined to be eternally cursed! 

Jewish people, first, and also, the Greek, are already, now under the curse and the wrath of God; man is already separated from God, and without eternal life. Man must be "born again!" He must be birthed into a new kind of man.  Without that new beginning and being placed in the family of believers in Yeshua, they are then not known by Yeshua. He will therefore say one day, “I will say, I never knew you”). Such a condition is a curse. And, be forewarned believer, for you to declare any different is to preach heresy! To believe any different is nearing apostasy. 

For this reason, in 1944 a coterie of believers here in Chattanooga, TN came together in great sympathy for the Jews being exiled from Europe. With great empathy, they formed a mission board to take to the Jewish people Yeshua, the ONLY Good News, the ONLY Gospel! These founders may have been interested and even helpful to Jews of getting citizenship at Ellis Island into America, but the foremost interest was that the Jews worldwide become citizens of heaven. The founders of our ministry that was then called The Southern Hebrew Mission, did not think for one moment that Jews were ok in their Jewishness. Their focus was to their real need, not being rescued from the Holocaust. They needed Yeshua, the rescue from the eternal Holocaust! 

Remain a Jew and a Gentile without Yeshua? You are cursed and destined for ghenna[fire]! We MUST all be born again, not born over, for there is no good thing in you/us! We can't be fixed. We don't pray, God help me change! We pray Ohh God come into my life and let me have your life! 

Beloved, the blessed man and the blessed woman, is not one who is a Jew, or because he/she is an American, nor because one is an Asian, or a priest, pastor, bishop, Levite, Baptist, or good person. The blessed man and blessed woman is the ‘new man’ in Messiah Yeshua. We are His body, bride, book, and building! Remain outside of Yeshua and you are cursed and will remain cursed!