The New Testament, the will that was sealed in the blood of Messiah Yeshua (Jesus Christ), provided a profound legacy to all those who would be begotten again unto the hope of life through his resurrection (Hebrews 9:15-18; I Peter 1:2-5). This irrevocable testament guaranteed its provisions to all those who would come under the aegis of the kingdom of God through faith in the completed work of Calvary (Colossians 1:13). Unfortunately, however, the vast majority of those who have become heirs of God through Jesus Christ have been deprived of much of the inheritance that was provided for them in the last will and testament of our Lord. The legacy of Jesus has been lost to much of the church, covered over by centuries of human tradition.
The provision of the will was simple and clear. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the faith of father Abraham that had been reserved to his progeny alone was extended to all mankind. What had once been held exclusively by and for the Jews as the fleshly descendants of Abraham was then made available to Jew and Gentile alike as the spiritual children of Abraham. This is the truth set forth by the apostle Paul in Galatians 3:14, 29: "That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith . . . And if ye be Christ’s then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise." Simply stated, Abraham is "the father of all them that believe. . ." (Romans 4:11).
A Rich Legacy for the Gentiles
This is also the apostle’s thesis in Romans 11:7, 11, 12, 33: "Israel hath not obtained that which he seeketh for; but the election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded . . . I say then, Have they stumbled that they should fall? God forbid: but rather through their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them to jealousy. Now if the fall of them [the Jews] be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles, how much more their fulness? . . . O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!" The failure of the collective Jewish nation to recognize in Jesus of Nazareth the coming of their Messiah was a part of God’s plan to bring salvation and the wealth of his knowledge and wisdom to the Gentile peoples of the world. This is what Paul meant in Romans 3:1, 2 when he posed the questions, "What advantage then hath the Jew? Or what profit is there of circumcision?", and gave his own conclusion, "Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God [the Word of God]." The advantages of being Jewish or of practicing the Hebrew faith of the Bible are many, but the chief advantage is the wealth of knowledge about God and his Word that is gained by being and doing so.
With God there is no respect of persons; therefore, he gives "glory, honor, and peace, to every man that worketh good, to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile" (Romans 2:10). Fundamentally, then, everything that God had given to the Jews was to be extended through the New Covenant to the Gentiles. This was the wealth of God’s inheritance of good things that was enjoyed by the joint heirs with Jesus Christ through the New Will that Jesus sealed with his own blood. The Gentiles, "which in time past were not a people," came to be included in the people of God as a "chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people" (I Peter 2:9, 10). They did not replace the Jews as the people of God, but they did come alongside them as "fellowcitizens" of the "commonwealth" of Israel with all the rights and privileges extended therein (Ephesians 2:12, 19). Through the New Covenant, the Gentiles entered into the household of God, which Israel had been for centuries (Ephesians 2:19). They were cut out of their wild, unproductive olive tree and were grafted into the cultivated, productive olive tree of salvation where, along with Israel (Romans 11:17), they partook of the rich sap from the root of the olive tree and were subjected to the pruning hook of God’s Word that made them even more productive.
From the time of the resurrection and ascension of Jesus around 30 C.E. and of the inclusion of the converted Gentiles shortly thereafter, the church continued to function as a sect of Judaism which was struggling to make its understanding of the Messiahship of Jesus normative for all of their brethren according to the flesh. The church did not seek to break away from the rest of Judaism, despite the fact that its leaders were engaged in an ongoing dialogue with the leaders of Israel, a dialogue that was often vitriolic and occasionally violent. The apostles, however, maintained their loyalty to the faith of their fathers (Acts 24:14) and continued to worship in both the temple, in the synagogues of their ancestors, and finally in their own synagogues (cf. James 2:2 where the word translated assembly in the Authorized Version is literally sunagwghv [synagogue] ).
Losing the Legacy
By the end of the first century C.E., however, as the church became increasingly Gentile in demographics and leadership, the fierce loyalty to the Holy Scriptures and to the Judaic faith which Jesus and the apostles taught and practiced was replaced by an inclination toward traditions of the Gentile cultures and religions of the Greco-Roman world. As the church spread rapidly in obedience to the Great Commission to "go into all the world," it was increasingly influenced by the cultures to which it expanded. Gradually, various parts of the first century Christian Judaism that the New Testament church practiced were supplanted by Gentile customs and traditions. The faith of Jesus was very rapidly Hellenized, influenced through and through with neo-Platonism and other Gentile philosophies.
Finally, even Palestinian Christianity became Gentilized when Hadrian’s armies crushed the Bar Kochba rebellion, expelled all Jews from Jerusalem, and built the Roman city Aelia Capitolina upon its ruins in 135 C.E. Since the Roman Empire then persecuted the Jews and proscribed things Jewish, the church in Israel rapidly distanced itself from both Jewish believers and Jewish practices. Tragedy was occurring, for the church’s beautiful, rich legacy from Judaism was being eroded by the winds of false doctrine and the sands of human tradition.
Since the law and its symbolic ritual were no longer necessary as means of establishing righteousness before God, the value for the principles of Old Testament worship was gradually diminished until it reached the point of insignificance. Other concepts of worship were considered of equal value at first and, then, of superior value to those of Judaism. The Gentiles were simply more comfortable with forms of worship employed in the temples of the Hellenistic world’s pantheon of gods. They felt more at home with the reason and logic of neo-Platonic philosophy than they did with the faith and trust of the nascent church’s Judaism. They functioned better with their own calendars than they did with Judaism’s biblical liturgical calendar.
When the New Testament order of Judaism became detestable in the eyes of the ecclesiastical and political authorities, it was finally proscribed upon penalty of death. The transition was completed in 321 C.E. when Constantine the Great issued the imperial edict which prescribed Sunday as the day of rest for the Roman empire and when in 325 C.E. he effectively proscribed the Christian observance of communion on the day of Passover.
Deprived
Since the time when these tragic events occurred, millions of believers in the Jewish Messiah have been deprived of their rightful heritage in biblical Judaism as a part of the faith race of Abraham. A vast legacy of knowledge of the eternal God and the opportunity to worship and praise him in the manner which best pleases him have been lost to them, buried in nearly two millennia of Gentile tradition. Countless ones of them have not even understood that their Lord Jesus, himself, was Jewish, much less that the reformed faith which he commissioned his apostles to teach among all nations was itself inherently Jewish. The church has been cut off from its roots, toppled from its founda tions, torn from its moorings, and set adrift in the maelstrom of human tradition and doctrines of demons. Its history bears witness to its lost identity; for, instead of being the body of the suffering Jewish Messiah, it became little more than a tool of political imperialism, enslaving the souls of millions of people in superstition and darkness and wreaking havoc in the lives of millions of Jewish people.
Lately, however, scriptural archaeologists have been digging in the Word of God and have begun to uncover bits and pieces of this lost legacy. Scholars of various denominations have awakened to the realization that our over-Hellenized, over-Latinized Christian faith needs to be restored to its original context. Since Christianity is inherently Jewish, many theologians are calling for a reevaluation of traditional Christian attitudes toward Judaism. Some are calling for a full restoration of the Hebrew foundations of Christian faith, the performing of reattachment surgery to reconnect the church with its Jewish roots. Due to the extensive Gentilization of the church, this call to reclaim Christianity’s Judaic heritage seems radical and even revolutionary to some; however, it is both scriptural and prophetic, for everything biblical is to be restored at the time of the Messianic age (Acts 3:20, 21).
Many Christian believers today are daring to demand that the rights and privileges provided for them under the will of the New Testament of Jesus be restored in full. They are claiming their Christian heritage in biblical Judaism, the faith of Jesus and the apostles. They are finding in the legacy of the children of Abraham a manner of praise, worship, and service that more scripturally honors the Heavenly Father. Entitlements of which the church had no knowledge until recently are being claimed and enjoyed by believers from all backgrounds, denominations, nationalities, and ethnic groups. In what can only be described as a work of the Holy Spirit (since no single earthly source can be identified), God is leading Christians into ancient truths long obscured by human tradition.
We invite you to join the growing numbers of those who are rediscovering and claiming their long-lost spiritual legacy, Christianity’s heritage in biblical Judaism.