Ron: The root is the patriarchs. The root is Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It’s the Jewish people. To me, is important — for me anyway — to understand it correctly, because that’s what I’m doing right now: trying to unravel a lot of this wrong thinking that Christians have developed. And there are lots of reasons for it.
But when you start really studying all this stuff, it’s just — we’ve had 2,000 years of perversion in Christianity - 2,000 years. Think about that — 2,000 years of perversion because the Christian church left the roots of Judaism. It got so bad that— there are lots of reasons for it — but it got so bad that’s when they began to really persecute the Jews.
Course, actually — they persecuted them in the first century, and by the third century there was no semblance — actually, I think second century — there was no semblance of the root that it came from. In my mind, I thought, “Okay, this is really great. It’s great information. It’s good to understand this stuff, but I don’t have any antisemitism.”
Now that I’ve started studying it, I realize the stuff that I’ve been taught ever since I was a kid going to church — there’s just so much that you accept because everybody teaches it. That’s the way churches have been brought up. Even if they say they’re not antisemitic, if you start digging into their doctrines and theologies and the way they think, they’ve got antisemitism in them.
A lot of it’s ignorance. It’s total ignorance. It’s just because people don’t dive into it — they don’t think it’s important.
Mike: See, that’s where you make the mistake. The Old Testament word is not old — forget that — but it *is* the root, it’s the foundation. If you don’t have that, you cannot understand the New Testament, because the New Testament is revelation of the Old Testament and how you apply it in the day they were walking.
Ron: But Mike, the Old Testament is the law, and I’m free from the law.
Mike: No, no, no, no, no. Jesus said He came to fulfill the law. He didn’t say we were free from the law.
Debbie: I think that things are being revealed. I think the Holy Spirit’s revealing these things now because we are coming into a time of the end, and we have to know these things. We have to get the truth.
Ron: As I’m studying this stuff about the Jews, I’m realizing that a lot of the way they approach life and the way they approach God — I’m beginning to approach Him that way, even before I start studying it.
I wonder how much they’re starting to approach things the way we approach things, because I feel like Sherry is right, it's coming together.
Debbie: The blending of the two to become one. That’s what’s happening right now. He is opening up a new thing. He wants His bride to be made ready.
Ken: You’re talking about the culmination of the ages, and I believe all of these ingredients we’re talking about right now are a part of that. Like you’re saying, there’s emerging more than ever before of the original Jewish people and how God said, “These are My sons, these are My people,” and out of them is going to come the One — the branch — that’s going to be the one that leads us into this place of a connection with God.
Mike: If you don’t have the restoration, go all the way back to the first-century church and realize what took place. Once they received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, they didn’t drop Passover, they didn’t drop Pentecost, they didn’t drop Tabernacles. They blended right in, and they were talking with their brothers in the temple — midrashing over the new revelations that had come, trying to help them understand what just took place in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.
They were able to relate and communicate with one another, and they weren’t beating each other over the head with Scripture — “this Scripture” or “that Scripture.” It created a flow, and it created an openness that brought them together in oneness. I really believe that was the case.
And the ones that were positional thinkers fought it tooth and nail because it exposed who they were. Exactly — that wasn’t a walk with God, it was a religion. And the ones that had the walk with God — that’s where it was alive, and the Spirit was moving, and there was freedom, there was liberty — all of that. And that’s where we’re trying to get back to.
Ken: I think we’re there. I think we’re there. And I think that’s why all these issues are coming up. (That’s right!)
Debbie: That’s why He wants to make everything perfect. He wants to make everything perfect. He wants us to understand — the Holy Spirit’s trying to show us —understand that they are the root. The root came from them. It came from Abraham. It came from the fathers.
Now you have to open up to a whole new way of relating to the Word, relating to everything, because the old is passing away. Behold, the new day has come — and this is not a new thing. It’s just being revealed the way God wanted it to be.
