Identity Theft Page 10

  “If you were going to refer to a week from now, would you say, ‘in seven days’ or ‘in a week’?” asked Toma.

  “‘In a week,’ of course,” I answered.

  “Right, so if someone chooses to say ‘eight days,’ they probably don’t mean a week, because if they did, they would simply say ‘a week,’ not ‘eight days.’

  “But honestly, who cares?” Thomas shouted, throwing up his hands. “It doesn’t matter. Of course we were there! We were there on Sunday and Monday and even on Tuesday—we were living in the Upper Room. We were not Judeans, but Galileans. Our homes were several days away—and we didn’t have cars, trains, or buses back then. We were holed up in the Upper Room, wondering what in the world to do.

  “In both accounts, if you noticed, the doors are locked. That was pretty uncommon in those days, if you were at home—and we had eleven men there. Why would eleven men hide behind locked doors? I’ll tell you. We were scared! Even though the other brothers had had that one encounter with Yeshua a week, or ‘eight days’ earlier,” he winked, “we had not seen Him since. And remember—they did kill Him. So yeah, we were still scared, pretty nervous, and shaken up.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  SATURDAY NIGHT’S ALL RIGHT

  “Furthermore,” Toma continued, “the Kehilah had not yet come into being. The last thing on our minds was devising some new order or routine for meeting. We were so broken; we had no idea that we would even stay together as a group, much less meet every week. Kefa was still so ashamed that he had denied that he ever knew the Messiah. However, after Shavuot everything changed.

  “We did begin to meet. Would you like to know on what day? Read these two passages.”

  I read.

  Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved (Acts 2:46-47).

  “This next one is right after we were beaten because we refused to stop preaching in Yeshua’s name!”

  The apostles left the high council rejoicing that God had counted them worthy to suffer disgrace for the name of [Yeshua]. And every day, in the Temple and from house to house, they continued to teach and preach this message: “[Yeshua] is the Messiah” (Acts 5:41-42 NLT).

  “Every day, David, every day! In the Temple and from house to house. It was an amazing time, looking back. We had miracles and signs and wonders and best of all, the presence of God. Yeshua was so close to us. It was simply the best time…” As Toma was reminiscing, he faded from the screen.

  “David, remember the passage I shared with you in the beginning; it should be number three on your list.”

  “Yeah, I’ve got it here.” I read it aloud. “‘The days are coming’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah’” (Jer. 31:31).

  “With whom is He making the New Covenant?” asked the teacher.

  “With Israel and Judah.”

  “You understand that at that time, when Jeremiah gave the prophecy, the people of Israel were divided into two kingdoms, Israel in the north and Judah in the south. So in essence, He is making this New Covenant with all of Israel, right?”

  “Right,” I agreed.

  “Now tap twice on the passage,” Ariel requested. When I did, the entire thirty-first chapter of Jeremiah opened up. “Read verse thirty-three please.”

  “For this is the covenant I will make with the house of Isra’el after those days,” says Adonai: “I will put my Torah within them and write it on their hearts; I will be their God, and they will be my people” (Jeremiah 31:33 CJB).

  “Now, what is the difference between the two Covenants?”

  “He says that this time, He will write the Torah on our hearts; He will put it inside us.”

  “Exactly! So the Father promises a New Covenant with Israel, then just over five hundred years later He pours out the Holy Spirit on Jerusalem, after Yeshua’s death and resurrection, of course. He promises in this Covenant to write the Torah, His Law, on the hearts of His people.

  “Does it make any sense at all that one of the first things He commands His fiery new Jewish devotees to do is to delete the fourth commandment—one that has just been written on their hearts, ‘Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy’ (Exod. 20:8), and replace it with something that centuries later, Gentile believers would use in order to excommunicate not only Jews from their communities, but also Gentiles who sought to honor the Jewish Sabbath?”

  “It would be highly unlikely,” I agreed.

  “Another passage people use to say God has changed the Sabbath is Acts 20.” D’ling.

  On the first day of the week we came together to break bread. Paul spoke to the people and, because he intended to leave the next day, kept on talking until midnight (Acts 20:7).

  “First of all, it does not say that it was their custom to meet on the first day of the week, just that they were meeting. Toma already told us that in Jerusalem they were meeting every day. And it is quite possible they had gathered in order to hear Paul, who was their honored guest, speak.

  “But even if this were their normal time to meet, let’s think it through. They came together on the first day of the week to break bread. The idea is that believers chose Sunday because of the resurrection. So, assuming that they had their worship service in the morning as He rose ‘early on the first day,’ that would mean Paul spoke from breakfast until midnight! It is highly unlikely that Paul either spoke that long or that they listened that long!”

  “Why don’t you let me tell you how it was?” another personality emerged from the larger tablet. “My name is Eutychus and I was there. If you keep reading the passage you’ll find out that I died—yeah, I really did. I fell right out of a window. Fortunately, Paul was there with the faith to raise me from the dead. The meeting had gone on for hours and I found myself nodding off a few times and then I must have fallen backward, out the window to the ground. Probably wasn’t the wisest place to sit. The next thing I know, I am waking up on the ground and Rabbi Saul has his arms around me, praying for me and telling me, ‘Don’t be alarmed.’ Try not to be alarmed when you have just fallen three floors to the ground with enough force to kill you.”

  “Eutychus, I think you were going to share something with us about the Sabbath,” Ariel reminded him.

  “I was and I will. David, when does the Jewish Sabbath start?”

  “Friday evening.”

  “So when does it end?”

  “Saturday at sunset.”

  “So when does a new week start?”

  I was about to say Sunday, when I realized his point. “Ah, Saturday night.”

  “You’re catching on. So doesn’t it make sense that when Luke wrote in Greek, the ‘first day,’ he really meant, the end of the Sabbath? Jewish believers still went to synagogue on Saturday morning to hear the Scriptures read. Remember, people didn’t have Bibles back then, and a good number of us didn’t read. The New Testament had not been written! So we were dependent on the Jewish believers to tell us what was written in the Hebrew Scriptures. Then in the evening, as the new week began, we would all break bread together, worship and hear the Word taught.”

  “That makes much more sense,” I agreed. “In Judaism, the day always begins at sunset. We always celebrate the beginning of Jewish holidays in the evening.

  “I remember back to the month I spent in Israel during college and how weird it was for me that the week began on Saturday night. When you would see people on Saturday morning, you would greet them with the words Shabbat Shalom. However, if you did that on Saturday night, people would think you were strange. The Sabbath is over—the day is over. On Saturday night when you saw people, you would greet them with the words, Shavuah Tov, ‘Have a good week.’ On Saturday evening in Israel, there was a sense that you had left one season and entered into
another. Stores that closed for the Sabbath reopened in the evening. Kids got ready for school, which started on Sunday. A new week was beginning.”

  “Well, I guess I’m no longer needed. Adios, fellows!” And Eutychus was gone.

  “And David,” added Ariel, “all the Jewish believers living in Israel in the first century, before the destruction of the Temple, would’ve been going to work on Sunday morning because, just like in Israel today, the Jewish professional work week began Sunday morning. That would have been a difficult time to meet for a worship service.1

  “Dr. David Stern—one of the foremost Messianic Jewish scholars and an authority on the Jewish roots of the faith—in his Jewish New Testament, translates Acts 20:7 like this: ‘On Motza’ei-Shabbat, when we were gathered to break bread, Sha’ul addressed them. Since he was going to leave the next day, he kept talking until midnight’ (Acts 20:7 CJB).

  “Motza’ei shabbat refers to Saturday night. Motza’ei is the Hebrew verb ‘to take out,’ meaning that we are ‘coming out’ of Shabbat.

  “You would do well to buy a copy of his translation,”2 Ariel suggested.

  “Why don’t you just download it to my tablet and save me some money?” I joked.

  “Funny, David,” Ariel continued. “Now there is something I want you to be very clear about. The Father has no objection whatsoever to people gathering to worship on Sunday. They can worship on any day they want. No one is saying everyone must assemble for worship on the Jewish Sabbath—that’s legalism and will produce death. No, the point I am making is that God has never changed the Jewish Sabbath.”

  “Why didn’t God just say, ‘Hey, I want everyone to meet on this day?’” I asked.

  “Because there is no set day for worship!” Ariel half shouted. “The New Covenant is purposely silent on this issue because the Gospel would be proclaimed in many nations and received by many different cultures. Believe it or not, many cultures don’t use a seven-day week. Much of the Roman world lived by an eight-day week. However, in 321 CE, Emperor Constantine abolished the eight-day week in favor of the seven-day week. And in some areas of Africa, they still use a six-day calendar. So while the message of the Gospel—that Yeshua, the sacrificial Lamb, died and rose again so the world through Him can receive forgiveness of sins and eternal life—is unchangeable, the day and manner of worship of believers is not written in stone…no pun intended. Besides, the Sabbath was not given to the Church, but to Israel.

  “The problem is not ‘Sunday worship’ per se,” Ariel continued. “A concerted demonic effort to detach the Church from her Jewish roots has played a significant role in all this confusion. The Council’s edict to change the day of worship from the Jewish Sabbath to what some refer to as the Lord’s Day, exposed the deep anti-Jewish feelings in the Church which could be seen as early as the second century. This carried the unavoidable consequence of alienating Jewish adherents from joining the Church. It has bred a deep distrust of the Church in the hearts and minds of the Jewish people ever since, covering the truth that the New Testament is as much a part of Judaism as the Torah. Sunday worship and the outright rejection of the Jewish Sabbath confirmed, in the Jewish mind, Christianity’s status as another religion altogether.”

  “Where does the phrase ‘the Lord’s Day’ come from anyway, if it isn’t in the New Testament?”

  “Oh but it is, my friend. And I should know; I am the one who wrote it!” The face of an elderly gentleman with a long gray beard took center stage on the screen of the large tablet.

  Notes

  * * *

  1. Many scholars do believe that the first followers of Yeshua actually met on Sunday night after work. This is a valid view, and even if it is accurate, it in no way invalidates the Sabbath—in fact, it strengthens it. Why didn’t they meet on Saturday morning when they were already enjoying a day off from work? Because they were committed to being in the synagogue or Temple courts worshiping and listening to the public reading of the Word alongside observant Jews. Nevertheless, Saturday night still seems more plausible than Sunday night, as it was already a day off—synagogue in the morning, rest in the afternoon, and then the coming together for worship as believers in the evening.

  2. Dr. Stern’s translation of the Bible can be read free at: http://www.biblestudytools.com/cjb/.

  Chapter Sixteen

  MESSIANIC JEWISH

  ATHEISTS?

  “Hello David, my name is John—not the John you met earlier. I wrote of that John and his revelation that Yeshua was the Lamb of God in my account of the life of the Messiah. I am John, the disciple whom Jesus loved. We were very close, actually best friends. Even before I understood who He was, I looked to Him as an older brother—a mentor. After a long night in prayer, He chose me and eleven others to be His closest associates and then He spent the next three and half years training us.

  “The amazing thing about the Master is that even though thousands followed Him, He always found the time to be alone with us and focus on our training. Most people, who have even a fraction of the charisma and wisdom of Yeshua, seek to use it to take advantage of people. Yeshua did just the opposite. He shunned popularity and focused on leadership training. We didn’t understand it at the time, but He was raising us up to lead the Jerusalem revival once He left. And it could not have been easy for Him.

  “We were a quarrelsome bunch. My mother once asked Him if my brother, Jacob, could sit on His right hand and I on his left in the Messianic Kingdom. This led to all kinds of backbiting, gossip, and jealousy among the disciples.

  “Meanwhile, He always spoke of being a servant. Yet it wasn’t until He washed our feet, just as a servant would, that we finally began to understand. And not a moment too soon, as just a few hours later He was nailed to an execution stake showing us the full extent of His servant’s heart.

  “I was able, Baruch HaShem, to outlive all the other apostles. It wasn’t easy, mind you. Emperor Domitian, who hated believers in the Messiah, commanded that I be boiled alive in oil! Roman guards seized me in Ephesus and extradited me to Rome. I was nearly ninety years old, in an age when most men barely made it past fifty. And what was my crime? Atheism, of all nonsense!

  “I stood before a man who claimed to be God, as they accused me of being a heretic.”

  “How could you be an atheist? You were a believer,” I asked, puzzled. “Goodness, you wrote the book of John!”

  “And Revelation and the Epistles, uniquely titled First, Second, and Third John,” he added with a smile. “The one religion that covered the entire Roman Empire during those years was Caesar worship. Every emperor after Caesar was thought to be divine. So those who wouldn’t worship Caesar were considered atheists or heretics. The punishment for this depended on the ruling emperor of the time. When I was on trial, Domitian was Emperor of Rome. He was referred to in his public documents as Our Lord and God and he took his divinity quite seriously. He was one of the most vicious men in history. In 96 CE, he put to death his own cousin for being an atheist. Of course he was actually a believer in Yeshua, but any refusal to worship the emperor as God earned you the title of atheist. And you are going to be amazed at how he came to faith! Just wait.”

  A quote, though not from the Bible, appeared on my tablet. I was reminded that Ariel had forewarned me that he would be downloading information from a variety of sources.

  He informed all governors that government announcements and proclamations must begin, “Our Lord and God, Domitian, commands”…They must call Domitian God—or die. Thus the issue was clear. It was a matter of gods. Either the Lord Jesus Christ or the Emperor of Rome was Lord-God. It was Jesus or Caesar.1

  “I was brought before the Emperor to be judged. We were in a full coliseum-turned-courtroom, and he asked me, ‘Is it true you are an atheist, and refuse to declare that Caesar is God?’

  “I serve Yeshua, the Messiah, the King of Israel, Savior of the world.”

  “Whoa! Dude, that is impressive! What did he do?” I asked.

>   “He got a little upset.” John smiled, clearly understating the event.

  “The great Domitian responded,” John now assumed a grand imperial tone, “‘You understand that the penalty for atheism is death?’

  “I was in my eighties, David. What was he going to threaten me with, Heaven? I was more than ready to join all my friends who had gone on before me, each one of them dying for the cause. Now it would be my turn, or so I thought. Domitian was, in essence, doing me a favor. I can’t tell you that I was too excited about being boiled in oil. But David, God will always give us grace for anything He permits. In that moment I thought of Stephen.”

  “Who is Stephen?” I asked.

  “Stephen is one of my heroes. He was one of our disciples in Jerusalem and a true servant. When the first apostles were feeling overwhelmed by all the administrative duties involved in serving such a large and growing body of believers, we appointed a group of godly men as servant leaders who were suitable for the task.”

  “Like Yeshua, when He washed the feet of the disciples?” I turned to Ariel who smiled and nodded assent.

  “Stephen not only served the people with compassion and humility,” John continued, “he was also a mighty and effective communicator of the good news. People would listen to him mesmerized at his ability to explain their need for salvation. Through him, God did many mighty miracles. Blind eyes were opened and the lame walked. At the time, the Kehilah was growing rapidly. Even many Jewish leaders had come to faith. Something the Jewish ruling council was none too happy about.

  “God was using Stephen powerfully to bring many Jewish souls into the Kingdom. At that time we were only reaching out to Jews—mostly from Jerusalem, but the message of salvation and forgiveness was also touching many Jewish visitors to the Holy City. Stephen had a supernatural power of persuasion that I have not seen since, and being backed up by signs and wonders, opponents found it difficult to argue with him. He was so full of the love of God that many who sought to hate him ended up following Yeshua. He would lead them to Yeshua and then they would return to their hometowns or homelands as believers in their Messiah, taking the good news back with them.