Israel and Messianic Judaism

In 1998 I completed my music studies in Austria and moved to Israel to begin theological studies at a Bible college in Jerusalem.  Studying in Israel and discovering Judaism opened to me an entirely new world.  Until now, my faith had been mostly based on the gospels and the New Testament.  Although I had read the Old Testament extensively, I perceived it as a thing of the past that had now been abolished and replaced by the superior New Covenant.  Living in Jerusalem among the Jewish people made me see and experience that the Torah and the Tanakh (Old Testament) are alive and well still today.

I saw how God's Word was being fulfilled before my very eyes with the return of the Jewish people to the land of Israel after 2,000 years of exile.  Better yet, I could also experience the spiritual restoration of Israel: the growth of the modern Messianic Body, Jews who had recognized their Messiah Yeshua, yet who wished to retain, affirm and live out their Jewishness.  I began to understand the continuity of Judaism and Christianity and how Jewish Christianity really is.  I realized how gentile Christians such as myself should not adopt an attitude of spiritual arrogance towards the Jewish People, but rather be conscious of how much we can, and should, learn from them.  As I saw that the most Jewish thing one can do is to believe in Yeshua, I also realized how much a true Christian should study Judaism and learn to love the Jewish People. 

This first contact with Judaism and Messianic Judaism, however, did not win points for the Catholic Church in my eyes.  On the contrary, I was confronted with its dark past towards the Jewish People.  I was shocked to discover that the crusades, the inquisition, the pogroms and the Holocaust were still haunting nightmares in the memory of the Jewish Nation.  Worse, these horrific acts were all associated in some way with Christianity and Jesus Christ Himself. 

I soon understood that anti-Semitism had often found its roots in the error of "replacement theology", the idea that the Church has now replaced Israel as God's chosen people.  Consequently, I became an ardent Christian Zionist, convinced that God's covenant and promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were still valid.  It seemed obvious to me - and still is - that the Jews are still God's chosen people, and that His promise of the land of Israel to their descendants as an everlasting possession still stands as a testimony of His great faithfulness to them. 

After my year of studies and having arrived at a new understanding of Israel, I was fortunate enough to join a Christian Zionist organization in Jerusalem committed to supporting Israel and educating Christians about it.  This lasted until March 2001, when I decided to leave Jerusalem and move to Tel Aviv to work with a Messianic congregation and outreach center. 

Why Search Further?

By this time, it would seem that my theological position would have been well established and reached a point of relative stability.  I had found a living relationship with the Messiah, had come to love His People as my own, and had the immense privilege to live among them and share with them about Yeshua.  My position towards Catholicism had also appeared to reach an irreversible low point.  Not only was it unbiblical and had completely severed its connection with the roots of Judaism, I thought, it had seemingly become more pagan than Christian, culminating in the persecution of God's own people in the name of their Messiah!

Having found such riches in Evangelicalism and Messianic Judaism and such evil in the Catholic Church, what then caused such a dramatic change of heart and mind in a matter of months?  I have described at length the evolution of my opinions to show that nothing short of a miracle has brought me back to Catholicism.  In addition, the environment I was living in could not have been less conducive to my return to the Church.  Ironically, it was while living and working in a very anti-Catholic environment in Tel Aviv that I was to return to the Catholic Church!  God is not without a sense of humor.  At any rate, I hoped at this point to finally and permanently close the door on Catholicism, but my integrity demanded that I settle every point before I drove the last nail into the coffin.  Yet there were a few nagging issues that remained unresolved.

First, I had met some true Catholic believers.  I had encountered some Catholic charismatics who had shown that they had a genuine relationship with the Lord.  I remember giving them a hard time about the Mass and Mary, and though their explanations were not the clearest, they showed through their lives humility, love and true faith in Christ.  I had also met true Catholic believers in Israel.  Of course, there was also the sincere faith of my parents.  This was annoying, because the very fact that the Catholic Church could produce such good fruit robbed me of my right to declare it outright a demonic system!

Second, I was impressed by the sound orthodoxy of the fundamentals of the Christian Faith (best expressed in the Nicene Creed) taught by the Catholic Church.  There was no denying that the Church had guarded and defended for 2,000 years the key doctrines of the Christian faith, such as belief in the triune God, the Virgin Birth, Christ's atoning death, his resurrection, and his expected return in glory.  It seemed odd that a Church in error could also firmly and consistently teach so much truth.  Parallel to this, the Church's moral teachings were unequalled.   No other church had ever upheld such high standards of morality and human dignity.  Only the Catholic Church had always persistently refused to waver on controversial issues such as homosexuality, abortion, extra-marital sex, euthanasia, divorce and contraception.  Accordingly, no other church has ever produced such a hall of fame of remarkable saints, holy men and women who gave their lives to love Christ and their neighbor.

Third, the sort of anti-Catholicism that I encountered baffled me.  It was often expressed in an emotional and judgmental way.  Although I could understand this hostility, stemming from a painful history, I found it to be seldom based on a solid, rational knowledge of Catholic theology.  I certainly cannot judge such an attitude since I had been a victim of it myself in my zeal for the Gospel and misunderstanding of the Church's teachings.  Still, it sometimes seemed that to attack the Catholic Church was more important than to live out the love of Yeshua.  This certainly could not be the Holy Spirit at work.  Furthermore, it bothered me that on one hand there were Catholic believers who lived an exemplary life and sincerely believed that the Catholic Church was the true church founded by Christ - but on the other hand, equally sincere Evangelicals or Messianic Jews claimed with similar vehemence that surely the Catholic Church was the work of the devil and that the Pope was no other than the antichrist.  How could sincere believers come to such contradictory conclusions?  Who was right?  Could there be a middle ground?

Fourth, I began to feel uncomfortable with many Scriptures that were difficult to explain from a "Protestant" perspective.  Why did Jesus emphasize so strongly in John 6 that one must "eat his flesh and drink His blood to have eternal life"?  Where was Jesus when He went to preach to the spirits in prison? (1 Pet. 3:19)  Why did He seemingly give His disciples the authority to forgive sins: "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained" (John 20:23)? 

This uneasiness only increased when I took a course on early church history.  To my surprise, I discovered that the earliest Christian writings indicated that the first believers held beliefs and practices strangely similar to Catholic beliefs and practices today.  In fact, our professor, although not trying in any way to defend or support the Catholic Church, openly admitted this similarity between early Christianity and modern day Catholicism.  I wrote a paper on the development of the doctrine of the Eucharist and apprehensively discovered that the first Christians unanimously held the bread and wine to be truly the body and blood of the Lord, offered as a sacrifice to God, just as taught in the Catholic Church today.

In addition to this theological questioning, I began to wonder if something was not missing from the Evangelical and Messianic services I went to.  Although carried out by dedicated and sincere ministers, the "success" of a meeting seemed dependent on so much human effort: whether the worship was "powerful" enough, or whether the preacher was sufficiently "anointed".  It sometimes felt as if the congregation was responsible to go up to heaven and pull God down into the room.  Everything seemed so dependent on our emotions and efforts that sometimes the services were more exhausting than fulfilling.  I also began to seriously ask myself why there was so much theological disagreement and division in the Body of Messiah.  Everyone took the Bible as the Word of God and claimed to have the Holy Spirit to guide him, yet there was perpetual and substantial disagreement about countless doctrinal issues among Protestants, and even more so among the Messianic Congregations. 

Such were the thoughts that were hindering me from declaring all-out war on Catholicism at the beginning of 2001, and that were beginning to erode my confidence in Evangelicalism and Messianic Judaism.