Why i left messianic judaism

Three weeks after my first visit to the Messianic congregation, Pastor Dave not his real name informed me of my divinely ordained role in " the body ": evangelistic outreach. For the next several months I learned the techniques that leaders of the Messianic movement had developed to win Jewish souls. Words that elicit strong negative reactions among Jews were avoided at all costs - at least in initial stages of contact. Jesus was " Yeshua ," Christ was " Messiah " or, better yet, the Hebrew " Mashiach ," a Hebrew-Christian was a " Messianic Jew ," and baptism was " immersion in the mikveh.

Perhaps most crucial was the out-of-context memorization of purported Messianic prophecies from the Hebrew Bible Old Testament Prophecies Fulfilled in Yeshua is the title of one piece of literature. These were the means to demonstrate an unbroken continuum leading from Abraham to Jesus to modern-day Christianity in its purist form - Messianic Judaism. With the mastery of a revisionist, Christ-centered view of the Jewish holidays for example, Jesus as the real Passover lamb, his broken body symbolizing the Afikomen I had completed my preparation.

My task was to coordinate evangelism directed at Jews at major Washington-area college campuses. The success of our campaign to promote Yeshua exceeded my initial expectations. With the assistance of sympathetic Christian fundamentalist student groups, we reserved tables each week in a number of campus student centers. Our brightly colored signs - " Choose Life! The Messianic Jewish Alternative " - found a ready audience in the confusing supermarket of religions that vie for the lost, naive and lonely.

Woefully ignorant of things Jewish, our dozens of daily inquirers most of them Jews, a few curious Christians were no match for our well-prepared and attractively packaged conversion campaigns.

The product we loudly proclaimed - a " personal relationship with G-D " - enticed many students to return frequently to our tables or to visit our congregation. We also furnished Jewish targeted evangelistic literature including a " Kosher New Testament " referring to " Miriam " and " Yeshua " instead of "Mary" and "Jesus" to Christians anxious to share the Good News with Jewish friends. Everything seemed to move in accordance with some eternal plan.

The periodic displays of opposition - hostile campus chaplains who, in their ecumenical role, did everything they could to remove us from their campuses; Orthodox Jewish passers-by who spit on our signs - fortified us. Would that we were all spit upon for Yeshua ," intoned our congregational elder. The troubled, the unstable, the malcontent: We received them all with a ready welcome, a warm embrace and an offer to help from the congregation's counseling center.

In a congregation where marginal individuals had become the norm, my professional status, relative stability and oratorical abilities were assets. I continued working as a lawyer.

I was repeatedly invited to consider a leadership position, perhaps as an elder-in-training or a leader of one of the weekly home prayer and study groups to which all members belonged. The opportunity for leadership is an exalted prize in the Messianic Jewish community. The leaders were the elect of G-D, their opinions and decisions were deferentially received. Despite the considerable temptation, I politely declined each invitation because of doubts that I was loathe to acknowledge but that refused to recede from the far recesses of my consciousness.

In our tightly controlled world, every expression of uncertainty or longing would hamper the ability to " witness. For example, why did we have no answers when confronted with questions about the eternal fate of the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust?

Was not the Christian bible clear that, without a belief in Jesus, these martyrs were suffering eternal torment? Despite my doubts, I stayed in the congregation. I believed much of the Hebrew- Christian theology, I found the intense spirituality exciting, and, perhaps, most important, I was part of a community.

But as the months went by, memories of the past assumed a wistful quality. No other people had this. Is He not the same yesterday, today and forever? So how can one possibly think that Sabbath has given way to Sunday? Where is any Scripture in the New Testament to declare such a major change? There is not one Scripture in the New Testament that decrees it as such. Yahveh has revealed Himself to His people and in this, He has revealed what is pleasing to Him and what is sin in His eyes.

Yeshua, far from negating the Torah Mt. Every one of them. With the coming of Messiah would that change? The only thing that changed was us. We died to self Rom.

Now, with His Spirit residing within, we can follow Him. We can be like Him. Was it sin for Him to eat pig? How could it not be sin for us then? Would it matter if one was born a Gentile? Since when does race determine what is sin or not? God determines what is sin for Jew and Gentile. How Gentile Christianity, early on about A. A Jew, called by God at Mt. Sinai to walk in His Torah forever Jer.

If anything, He says the exact opposite Mt. What would change is that we would die to self so that we could be filled with His Spirit to walk as He walked. And when one truly understands the New Covenant, they can see that Torah is still very much alive and well, deep within its inspired pages See Law Messianic Judaism could have been a voice crying in the wilderness of pagan Christianity, proclaiming His Righteous Truths, in a fuller, clearer and Hebraic way.

But Messianic Judaism failed to do this, and will continue to fail. No, this thing called Messianic Judaism will continue to grow the way we see it, till Messiah comes back because the Messianic leadership is very cozy with the Church and with their misunderstanding of Torah. The mainline Messianic Jewish movement is nothing more than the Church in Jewish clothes. What a pity and what gross sin.

Why has Messianic Judaism failed to walk in Torah? As the founding fathers and the current leadership tell us, it was never intended to raise the banner of Torah, for Jew or Gentile. Another reason it was doomed to fail is because Messianic Judaism embraces a rattlesnake called Judaism.

In this, Messianic Judaism is true to its title as having incorporated the perversion of Rabbinic Judaism into itself. It seems to have doomed the movement to failure from its inception. In Hebraic thinking, one grows into the meaning of their name. Yeshua said in Matt. In the days of Moses and King David, there was no religion called Judaism as we know it today. The Hebrews were known as the people of Yahveh 2nd Chron.

The way of life Torah , that Yahveh gave to Israel from Mt. Sinai is vastly different from Judaism. Yahveh gave Israel the Tabernacle, Priesthood and sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins, etc.

Judaism is a pale and perverse reflection of what God gave to Moses. Israel worshiped Yahveh with sacrifice which was the core of the Mosaic Covenant and shows us how Yahveh could dwell among sinful Israel. Sacrifice, priesthood and the Temple were put on hold in 70 A. In the days of Yeshua there was no religion called Judaism, for even the Pharisees and Rabbis went to the Temple and sacrificed.

The High Priest was the leader of the people, not the Rabbis. In the days of the Book of Acts the believers were called and called themselves a number of different things. The believers were seen as one sect among the other sects of the Jewish people Pharisees, Acts ; ; Sadducees, Acts ; Essenes, etc. Does someone think that those Gentile Christians there met on Sunday and kept Easter when a delegation is sent to Jerusalem to find out what the Gentiles among them had to do in order to be saved Acts 15?

Were the Gentiles meeting on Sunday and the Jews on Sabbath? It would have been impossible for a movement called Messianic Judaism to have arisen in the days of Peter and Paul.

There was no religion called Judaism except in a general sense to speak of the religion of the Judeans. Why should we belong to an organization that is known as a Judaism that is anti-Messiah? If Judaism were only devoid of Temple, Priesthood, sacrifice, prophet and king, it would be a pale reflection of what God gave to Israel at Mt.

Sinai, and that might not be too bad of a thing. The Rabbis have given the Jewish people Talmud, Kabbalah and a fierce anti-Yeshua spirit, along with perverse interpretations of Torah. Then there is Kabbalah. For many centuries the Rabbis themselves, warned against this Babylonian mysticism or witchcraft.

But in the last two centuries it has wrapped its tentacles around the hearts of many a Jewish man and woman. Today, most Rabbis endorse and walk in Kabbalah, Babylonian mysticism in Jewish clothes. The Jewish man, in his attempt to walk with God and understand His Torah, has been shackled by Satan through the Rabbis. Their stranglehold over the Jewish people is as real as any Latin American Catholic priest over his superstitious and ignorant parishioners.

For the Catholics say to their people in South America and Asia, that they must not read the Bible in their own language. A satanic stranglehold on the neck of the people. And the Rabbis are identical. Ask Yeshua to reveal the Hebraic perspective of it to you. He is calling us out of both perverted Camps: Christianity and Judaism, that we might learn to walk with Him, His Way.

But perversion is not His Name. His Wisdom, Knowledge and Understanding will be beacons of Light to us and others in this world of darkness. Because you have rejected knowledge, I will also reject you, that you shall be no priest to me.

In 70 A. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were slaughtered and tens of thousands of Jews were sold into slavery. Thus, the religion of Moses gave way to what would become Judaism. With no Temple in Jerusalem, there was no place for sacrifice and priest. This observance enables Messianic Jewish people to maintain their God-given identities as Jews.

While there are many similarities between Messianic Judaism, Christianity, and Judaism, Messianic Jewish people embrace their Jewish heritage, while believing that Yeshua is the Messiah, the promised Redeemer of Israel and all of mankind. Sign Up Log in Search. Blog Magazine Newsletter Messianic Literature. Who Is Yeshua? Difference Between Messianic Judaism and Christianity. Published on March 22, I continued my Christian education at the Christian school where my mom taught. We continued to go to church and I wanted to learn more about Christianity and more about the Bible.

When I was about 10 years old, I voiced my desire to be a pastor. The Jews are the chosen people of G-d; G-d send them prophets and promised them a messiah — and Jesus fulfilled over messianic prophesies — Jesus must be the Messiah! After doing a lot of research, I learned about Messianic Judaism. They had a vast library on information about Judaism and that is where I got most of my introduction to Judaism. Then, I began to discover things on the internet that disturbed me.

I had a problem with the fact that they targeted Jews for conversion to Christianity. A lot of what they were doing was very deceptive to me — they threw kippot on their head, called their leaders a Rabbi, held services on Saturday, and calling themselves a synagogue or congregation — even though most had no Jewish genealogy and admitted they were not Jewish.

Even more disturbing, they claimed to be Jewish and thus different from traditional Christianity, yet their theology was exactly the same as the Southern Baptist church I grew up in. One of their most common tactics was to suggest to born Jews, many of whom were severely lacking in their own religious education, that the most natural and most Jewish thing in the world would be to recognize that Jesus was the Messiah.

I found it interesting that they would target Jews with little knowledge of Judaism — not big named Rabbis and Yeshiva students. My questions of Christian theology grew bigger.