Deconstructing the Lies: a Look at the "Beliefs" Section of Derek Leman's Blog

You can find Derek's "Belief's" section HERE.

I'd like to take a brief moment to deconstruct his artfully constructed lies regarding Gentiles:

LIE #1:  "Acts 15 indicates that the sign commandments of Torah do not obligate non-Jews."

RESPONSE:  Acts 15 does not introduce the artificial dichotomy "sign commandments vs. universal commandments."  And the issue before the council was not whether Gentiles should observe Mosaic Torah but rather whether circumcision was required for salvation (i.e. does salvation come through works or by grace?).  Peter's argument before the council was that the Gentiles were saved through grace and joined to the covenantal People of Israel (i.e. the phrase "a people for His name" refers in Torah to the exclusive national covenant made with Israel).  Furthermore, the Gentiles were commanded to abstain from "pollutions" of idolatry, especially cultic prostitution and the drinking of blood from an animal that had been strangled for cultic sacrifice.  Why?  Because Gentiles needed to attend synagogue from week to week to learn the Torah of Moses (v. 21).  In short, Acts 15 explains that the Gentiles are joined covenantally to the people of Israel and must immediately stop practicing paganism and start practicing the Torah of Moses.

LIE #2:  "Yet Paul’s letters evidence the formation of congregations outside the synagogue which were for the Gentiles and which were Law-free (by Law-free I mean not bound to the sign commandments of Torah–I don’t mean they were libertines)."

RESPONSE:  Notice that Derek doesn't cite to evidence for his assertion that the Gentile congregations were "Law-free [of sign commandments]".  The observance of Shabbat was one of the most visible sign commandments and the Gentile congregations observed it (see Galatians 2:16).  Derek would argue that this was not the case.  But observe:  how could the Gentiles have even learned from Jews if they were not, like Cornelius the prototypical New Covenant proselyte, attending synagogue on Shabbat?  There was no such thing as Christianity back then even though Derek would have you think that to deny Christianity is to deny G-d's work:  "A Messianic Judaism that is anti-Christianity is equally false and in danger of denying God’s work amongst the nations."  In fact, Christianity is anti-Judaic and leads inevitably to political and social anti-Semitism as history has proven countless times.  Thus, in promoting Christianity Derek is unwittingly (1) promoting a system of anti-Semitism and (2) distorting the picture of first-century Gentile practice from the actual Judaic picture to a Hellenistic, Christian picture.  Derek would have all Gentiles suppress their G-d-given desire to reject the anti-Judaism that pervades Christianity.  

LIE #3:  "Another kind of supersessionism has risen in the recent Torah movements loosely associated with Messianic Judaism (Hebrew Roots, One Law, Two House) and involve non-Jews assuming Israel’s place as the Torah-keeping people and equating themselves with Israel on the basis of phrases in the New Testament such as “grafted in” and “commonwealth of Israel.”

RESPONSE:  Derek has redefined "supersede" here.  Supersede means to take someone's seat, to push them out of the way.  But Derek wants to attack One Law Theology and so he redefines supersede to mean "join."  The One Law Believers say that Gentiles join Israel.  For this, Derek calls them supersessionists.  But if this were true then Paul would be a supersessionist for asserting in Ephesians 2 that Gentiles are citizens in Israel.  Notice that Derek translates "citizens" as "commonwealth."  But he already admitted previously on his blog that he was in error to translate the Greek term as "commonwealth."  So now he is unashamedly basing his theology on known exegetical errors.  

DEREK'S CATCH-ALL LIE:  

"Responding to a comment, I came up with a list of points that is a good corrective to some ideas about Gentile relationships to Torah and Israel that arise in Hebraic Roots groups:

1) Non-Jewish followers of Messiah are not Israel, but are now in the commonwealth of Israel.

(2) Full Torah observance is neither an obligation nor a higher way for Christians.

(3) Jews and Gentiles remain distinct in roles and equivalent in blessing.

(4) The distinction will not disappear in the world to come.

(5) Israel is the Chosen People through descendancy from Jacob and Israel’s election is free and irrevocable.

(6) Christianity is not any more or less guilty before God than Judaism."

RESPONSE TO THE CATCH-ALL LIE:  All of these assertions on based on a single premise:  that Gentiles are excluded from the covenants.  However, Paul says that Gentiles are included in the covenants (Eph 2).  He says that the New Covenant inaugurated by Yeshua applies to the Gentiles (1 Corinthians).  The New Covenant, as Jeremiah 31 explains, is the national covenant of Israel.  Ezekiel 36 explains that this New Covenant contains the same categories of Torah as the Mosaic Torah (e.g. chukim and mishpatim, the supra-rational, ceremonial decrees as well as the rational, moral and civil decrees).  

A key misunderstanding of Derek's is that membership in Israel in determined by descendancy alone.  If Derek's assertion were true then he could never belong to Israel since he was born a Gentile.  So his arguments LIES are self-defeating.  

Lloyd Gaston on the Subtleties of Christian Anti-Judaism

"Possibly anti-Judaism is too deeply embedded in the foundations of Christianity to be rooted out entirely without destroying the whole structure," --Rosemary Ruether

"Perhaps I should make clear what I mean when I speak of antisemitism or anti-Judaism...Just as individuals can be relatively free of personal prejudice and still participate actively in a system of racism, so anti-Judaism has to do with the objective effect of the words used, whether or not the people who speak them subjectively hate Jews.  This underlines the seriousness of Ruether's point that theological anti-Judaism is the fundamental root of later cultural and political antisemtism.  (Philosemitism, in other words, is no excuse.)  If the three pillars on which Judaism stands are God, Torah, and Israel, then a fundamental attack on any of the three would be anti-Judaism..."
pg. 17 Paul and the Torah by Lloyd Gaston

I thought these quotes were interesting and I had two points I wanted to share:

(1) if hatred of Mosaic Torah leads to socio-political anti-Semitism, then shouldn't Gentiles love the Mosaic Torah?  And if they love the Mosaic Torah and it is something intended for the nations (Isaiah 2, etc), shouldn't all Gentiles embrace a Torah lifestyle (i.e. Judaism)?

(2) if one is culpable for racism by participating in a racist system, then could one be culpable for anti-Judaism by participating in an anti-Judaic system?  I think it's possible.  But I also think any culpability can be nullified by being open about your beliefs.  For example, if you start wearing a kippah to church then they'll probably get the message that you are pro-Judaic.  

If Gentiles are "Without the Law" (Rom. 2) Then Why Are They Subject to "The Curse of the Law"?

I read something interesting today.  Check it out:


"If nomos denotes the Mosaic law of Sinai, it by definition concerns the Jews, but not the Gentiles.  No wonder, then, that Paul often makes a clear distinction between the Jews 'under the law' and the Gentiles who are without the law [Rom 2:12; 1 Cor. 9:20; 1 Cor. 7:17]....Bearing this in mind, some statements of Paul in Gal 3 come as a surprise.  He says in 3.13-14:  Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, in order that Abraham's blessing might in Christ come upon the Gentiles, in order that we would receive the promised Spirit.  At the first glance it seems natural to think that 'we' in v. 13 refers to Paul and other Jewish Christians--it is only they that had been under the Torah before becoming Christians.  Several reasons, however, speak against this explanation.  In v. 14b the 'we' must in any case refer also to the Galatian Gentile Christians; the mention of the Spirit ties with v. 2-5.  Now it would be strange, if the pronoun tacitly changed its reference in v. 14  There is no indication of any contrast between the 'us' of v. 13 and the 'Gentiles' of v. 14; unlike 2.14ff.  Paul does not deal with the difference between Jews and Gentiles at all in this passage.  And how could the redemption of the Jews from the curse of the law bring the blessing to the Gentiles?  The context does not speak of the removal of the wall between the two races;  Paul is explicating the liberty of the Galatians, which is connected with the crucifixion.  V. 13 ties with the opening verse (v. 1) of the passage.
Strange as it may appear, the conclusion is hard to avoid that even the Gentiles were, in Paul's mind when dictating this passage, under the curse of the law.  This is in tension with Paul's assumption in 1 Cor 9:21 or Rom 2.12, or even Gal 2.14.  Still, our conclusion is reinforced by the next passages in Gal.
The alteration of the pronouns in 3.23 ff. shows that in that passage, too, the first person plural includes the Galatians.  In v. 23-25 Paul speaks of 'us' being under the law, which is pictured as prison guard and tutor.  From the point of view of the subject-matter one would again think that he has the Jewish Christians in mind...Having said, 'We are no longer under the tutor', he goes on:  'For you are all children of God.'  This time, too, the tacit assumption is that even Gentiles had been tutored by the law....
Apparently without noticing it, Paul is thus operating with a double concept of 'law'.  The context suggests that he is talking about the Sinaitic Torah, four hundred years later than Abraham, all the time.  And yet the 'curse of the law' must, in view of the verses adduced, have a wider reference.  One cannot avoid noticing 'a strange oscillation of the concept of law in Paul'--an oscillation between the notion of a historical and particularist Torah and that of a general universal force." pg. 18 of Paul and the Law by Heikki Raisanen

"Fulfilling" the Law: How Yeshua Equates the Perpetuity of the Jewish People with the Perpetuity of the Mosaic Torah

It occurred to me today that Yeshua might've equated the Jewish People with Mosaic Torah.  Observe the following passages and see if you come to the same conclusion:

Matthew 5:17-18

"17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.

18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled."

Jeremiah 31:35-36

"35 Thus saith the Lord, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; The Lord of hosts is his name:  36 If those ordinances depart from before me, saith the Lord, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me for ever."

Christians like to say that the Mosaic Law has been abrogated.  But if the Mosaic Law defines the Jewish People then it cannot be abrogated--or else the Jewish People would be abrogated along with it. Yeshua seems here to illustrate the Judaic belief that Torah, Covenant, and People are correlative.  Thus, He not only defends the perpetuity of Mosaic Law but He defends the perpetuity of the Jewish People.

And if these concepts are correlative, then He also came to "fulfill" the Jewish People.  What does that mean?  Well, to make something full is to add something to it.  One wouldn't say that a glass of water that was full had been terminated or reduced in any way.  One would say that filling a glass added something to it, helped it to serve its purpose.  A glass is meant to hold liquid.  So when you fill it up you are helping it achieve the purpose for which it was designed.  In the same way, Yeshua came to help Israel achieve the purpose for which it was designed.  

Hannukah Handbook (Courtesy of Cajun)

CLICK HERE FOR LINK

Popularity of This Blog is Increasing!

I just wanted to thank you, dear readers for visiting this blog.  I just noticed that when you type in "Messianic Judaism blog" in google that my blog is top of page number 2.  So we almost made page 1! I'm guessing we'll have page 1 ranking within a month or so.

-Peter

The Greatest Threat to One Law (Hint: It's Not the UMJC or FFOZ)

This past Friday I went to Grove Ave Baptist Church's Hannukah party.  It was great.  The teaching was excellent.  One of the pastors explained why Christians should celebrate Hannukah.  Oh, and he was wearing a kippah!  

There was a small delegation there from a local UMJC synagogue.  And, yeah, they gave me the cold shoulder.  I even said "hi" to one fellow in the hall and he just glanced at me warily and kept walking.  Perhaps he didn't hear me?  

But I was thinking about something.  Where will all of this go?  I overheard the pastor tell someone that they wouldn't have been allowed to do this five years ago.  

These wonderful Christians have apparently been encountering a tough adversary:  their own denomination!  

It's funny:  the UMJC people there absolutely hate me (we have a history).  But the reality is that we're on the same team:  team Judaism.  We both only wish to show the beauty and goodness of G-d's Torah.  

The UMJC and others like them are their own worst enemy.  They make the gentiles feel excluded and so most of the gentiles (notice i said most) end up leaving dissatisfied after a while.  But the Christians are inclusionists with regard to their religion.  The Christian says triumphantly that all men should follow Christianity (even Jews).  So the Christian includes everyone and makes everyone feel welcome.

This is problematic.  Messianics shouldn't get too cozy at church---even the ones who are awakening to Jewish Roots.  Why?  Because that old threat is still there:  anti-Judaism.  

I don't even know if Grove Ave. will continue doing what it is doing.  I pray that they will continue on this trajectory!  But will they?  We don't have a lot of historical data here.  This pro-Judaism thing (e.g. pastors wearing kippot, teaching Christians to follow Hannukah because Christ followed it)...this is a new trend.  

Well, here's hoping that these Christians at Grove Ave. will continue on their journey and will not suffer reprisals from within their movement.

Be Sure to Check Out Judah Himango's Post About Jews for Jesus

CLICK HERE FOR LINK.

Coincidence? Or a Confirmation from G-d?

I was able to go to the Wednesday night small group session at Grove Ave. Baptist Church yesterday.  I'm glad I went!

When I arrived, I suddenly wanted to skip the first part of the men's group.  I suddenly dreaded the video part of the class in which I inevitably become impatient.  "I think I'll skip the first part of the class" I said to my wife in the lobby.  "I like the discussion part but I just can't stand sitting through the videos..."

I think my wife just nodded, knowing that I'd end up going.  And then she went to her class.  And I was left with the decision to hang out in the lobby or proceed to class.  So I reluctantly chose to go to class.

I got there and started talking with the leader.  He asked about my week.  I told him about how I was looking for a professional mentor, hopefully a G-dly lawyer who has had a practice for a while.

Then, within a few moments, it was time to start the video.  For someone like me who loves conversation, this is the difficult part!  I dislike sitting passively.  I want to engage!

But then the video started...

"Guys, it's so important to have a mentor in your life" the lecturer began, "someone who will be committed to your development.  And you can even have different mentors for different areas in your life:  mentors for your profession, mentors for your marriage relationship...."

Yes, dear reader, I'm always resisting the flow.  And G-d has to do things like this--all the time--to get my attention.  He will literally shut me up sometimes.  Sometimes he makes me cry in the spirit and I literally can't talk.  This has happened in meetings with certain high-ranking Christians before.  G-d just lets me know when the time is not right and He lets me feel a small amount of His own grief.

Anyway, I think G-d is happy with this particular Christian community.  Check this out:

My wife gets out of her class and tells me about the Hannukah Party that Grove is hosting this Friday.

"Oh?" I say.  "So it's probably the guy from Tikvat running it, right?"

"No, it's one of the pastors."

And she mentioned his name.

Earlier that day, Zion had urged me to work from within the church and so I sent this guy an email.  Got a reply from him just now.  He told me a little about the pro-Judaic journey that this church is on and invited me to come meet him.  He also said something that gives me a clue where he believes all of this is headed.

Dear readers, this particular church isn't just some small, country church with a few hundred congregants.  This church was the largest contributor to the Southern Baptist Convention in the state of Virginia.  They have their own television program.  This is one of the oldest Baptist churches in town!  And they are doing something that has never been done in the history of Christianity until now.

So is it just a coincidence that we happened to start visiting THIS CHURCH out of all the churches in our town?

Yes, it will be very interesting to see where this goes.  I'm very much looking forward to my meeting with the pastors and discussing the formation of a Jewish Roots fellowship group.  I'll keep you posted, dear reader!

Dr. Peters Offers the Christian Argument for the Abrogation of Mosaic Law

CLICK HERE FOR LINK TO ARTICLE

Excellent Article on Acquinas' Threefold Division of the Law

CLICK HERE FOR LINK

If You're Looking for a Kippah That Will Stay on Your Head Without Clip...

Check out this style:  CLICK HERE.

Does Anyone Have Advice for How to Start a Fellowship Group?

Perhaps someone has experience in starting fellowship groups which they could share with me.  I have no experience...but I was brainstorming about it earlier today.  I was thinking that since everyone has to eat, that one could put flyers up at Grocery stores.  And then there's the usual places like libraries, religious book stores, secular book stores...what else?  I'm not really sure.

I suppose I can check to see if there are books about "church planting" that offer suggestions which would work equally well for starting a fellowship group...

Derek Leman Refutes Tim Hegg's Assertion That the "Yoke" in Acts 15 is the Oral Tradition

You can check out Derek's post HERE.  Here's the summary:  Tim Hegg says that the unbearable "yoke" in Acts 15 is Oral Tradition.  Derek says that the unbearable "yoke" is covenantal nomism (i.e. the Torah of the Covenant).

I happen to vehemently disagree with both Hegg and Leman.  Here's the comment I posted on the discussion (which I fully expect will be deleted later this evening when Leman gets back from Shul):

The unbearable yoke in Acts 15 is not the Oral Tradition. It’s not Torah either: 

“Rabbinic literature uses the word yoke…but not as it is used here. See e.g. Aboth 3.5, ‘He that takes upon himself the yoke of the Law…, from him shall be taken away the yoke of the kingdom…(that is, oppression by worldly authority). Thus the yoke of the Law, the obligation to obey it, is a blessing and a privilege…Peter claims that to require circumcision and legal observance from Gentile converts would be to lay upon their necks a yoke…to demand of them something that Jews themselves could neither endure nor achieve. …This does not agree with the attitude to the yoke of Torah quoted above [from Rabbinic literature]–it was a privilege and joy…If Peter really felt like this about the Law–that it was an intolerable burden–why did not he and his fellow Jewish Christians themselves give it up? …Peter claimed that he had never touched unclean food (with the probability that one who was scrupulous in this respect would not be negligent in others).” pg. 718 A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles by C.K. Barrett 

So what is the yoke? Paul explains this in Galatians 5:1,4. He defines “yoke” as trying to justify oneself by works of the law. 

Commencing countdown to comment deletion…5….4….3…..

Check Out This Michael Brown Debate (Audio Link)

Click here.  It's about Israel and election and how to interpret current events in light of prophecy.  Are there two Israels?  An Israel of the flesh and the Israel of G-d?