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A Letter about Messianic Christians

A Letter about Messianic Christians

Last updated on: February 19, 2009 at 3:05 pm by Scot McKnight

A Letter about Messianic Christians 2009-02-19T15:05:36-06:00 Scot McKnight

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Before we answer this, I’m wondering if you are hearing things like this. Any response?

Scot,

This is unbelievably forward of me. I am a reader of your blog. I

have a question about New Testament history, perhaps you can point me to

a resource or might want to write about it on your blog sometime.

I belong to a message board for evangelical Christian mothers. An

increasing number of the members are intrigued by “Messianic worship”

and quite a few have found congregations in which they can worship in a

more Jewish fashion while upholding their Christian beliefs. They begin

to refer to Jesus as Yeshua, replace Christmas with Hanakkah, replace

Easter with Passover, start keeping Sabbath starting at sundown on

Fridays, and dream of becoming fully Torah observant.

Some believe Christians are /commanded/ to do this. Convincingly one

woman explained that Acts 15:19-21 points to the idea that Gentile

believers were being directed to abstain from a few key things in the

short term and for long term teaching (v. 21) they would naturally hear

Moses (the Law) expounded upon in the synagogue…and therefore learn to

keep the rest of the Law.

Others believe that when we are saved, Torah is written on our hearts,

and we will be “prompted by the Spirit to live Torah.”

They believe that the reason this is news to most Christians is that

anti-semitic pressure arising from events between AD 70-300 caused an

intentional stripping of Jewishness from the beliefs of the church.

Here is how one woman (who is a rabbi in a messianic congregation) put it:

With the destruction of the Temple in 70AD there was a revolt that

the Messianic believers missed because they had heeded Jesus’ words

and fled to the mountains. They were accused of being traitors to

the Jews. So they stayed and participated in the next revolt until

the rabbis named a general messiah and then they had to leave. This

caused a strong split between the messianic church and traditional

Judaism. Combine that with it being dangerous to be Jewish and the

teachings of the Church became radically anti-semitic. The

*intentional goal* was to strip everything Jewish looking, sounding

or rooted from the Gospel and the NT writings. This is the first

time you hear teachings that Jesus came to start a *new* religion

instead of radically reform the Jewish understanding of Torah

(interpret it correctly); or that Sabbath was *changed* to Sunday;

that Torah didn’t apply to believers. Through 70AD and until this

shift began there was an understanding of everything being rooted in

Torah. If you study church history you can see the transition.

This really has my head spinning because as a Protestant (and generally

leaning to New Covenant theology, to boot) I’ve believed that a blessing

of the New Covenant is to not have to follow the Law of Moses, but the

law of love.

I’m suspicious when people find a new way of looking at things after

2000 years of viewing the situation differently. But the explanation is

plausible. On the other hand it also sounds a little

conspiracy-theory-ish. It’s always tempting to believe that the truth

has been suppressed and subverted until MY group rediscovered it.

I just don’t have the background to know. Does any of this ring a bell

for you? Can you point me to a resource?

Thanks very much. Please excuse me if I’ve been terribly presumptuous

in writing to you!

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