We are Messianic Jews, Jewish individuals, who believe in the God of Israel and rely on the Word of God, and not tradition or religion as a basis of our faith. Many Jewish people are unaware that God promised the New Testament in the Tenach.
The Prophet Jeremiah 31:31-32: “Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant (ברית חדשה) with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake…”
God described the relationship each of us can have with Him through this New Covenant. "…For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more." (Jeremiah 31:34)
We are called Messianic Jews or Christians. A Messianic Jew is Christian by faith and Jewish by blood, as were the disciples of Jesus in Israel two thousand years ago. A Messianic Jew or a Gentile Christian believer is an individual who believes in Jesus, has personally called on the Lord for salvation, trusting solely in Jesus’ blood sacrifice for the forgiveness of their personal sins and iniquities.
This is different from Catholics, Maronites, Muslims, Druze, and other religions, such as Judaism, whose followers are predominately born into their religion, or choose to become observant. These religions follow men's precepts and traditions over God's Word alone.
Christianity originated with the disciples of Jesus, all of whom were Jewish. The community grew rapidly until in Jerusalem alone there were thousands of Jewish believers. In fact, until the siege in A.D. 132, all of the leaders of the church in Jerusalem were Jewish according to the historian, Eusebius, who wrote the chronology of the bishops in Jerusalem.
Jesus said to His disciples "…And ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth." (Acts 1:8) The Jewish disciples were the first missionaries to the Gentiles and took the news of forgiveness of sin and salvation through Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, to the world.
It was a difficult mission for the Jewish disciples to proselytize pagans and polytheist Gentiles to believe in the Jewish Messiah as prophesied in the Hebrew Scriptures. However, many Gentiles turned from their idolatry, believed the message, and communities and small churches were started throughout the world and spread. The Jewish and Gentile believing community prospered and multiplied in spite of persecution from unbelieving Jews in Israel and Roman Emperors.
The confusion between New Testament Christianity and Pagan Roman Catholicism began when Roman Emperor Constantine came into power. To unite his kingdom, Constantine converted to "Christianity" as a political move, and changed the Biblical faith into a religion, which later developed into Roman Catholicism. Constantine’s legalized form of Christianity was directly opposed to the New Testament and what true believers practiced and believed. True Christianity originated in Israel while pagan Catholicism originated in Rome.
Those who held to Christianity as written in the New Testament were called dissenters and were persecuted by the Catholic church and other ruling powers. Jews, Protestants, and true Jewish and Gentile Christians were seen as a threat to the Catholic church's rule and were forced to convert to the idolatrous religion or be killed. "In his History of the Inquisition, Canon Llorente, who was the Secretary to the Inquisition in Madrid from 1790-92 and had access to the archives of all the tribunals, estimated that in Spain alone the number of condemned exceeded 3 million, with about 300,000 burned at the stake." (Dave Hunt, A Woman Rides the Beast, page 79, also 242). In Lima, Peru, and various places in South America and Europe, one may visit Inquisition Museums and view the instruments and torture chambers of the Catholic Inquisition.
There has always been a line of believers throughout history who have held to the true doctrine of the New Testament. We identify with the historic Baptist beliefs, as they are based solely on the Word of God. Independent Baptists (not affiliated with a union or convention) believe and teach the Word of God, not religion or tradition. Our faith is in God's Word alone, which is the Bible.
We believe both the Tenach and the New Testament, and that each one is not complete without the other. The Tenach speaks of the New Testament as it says in Jeremiah 31:31-32, The Prophet Jeremiah 31:31-32: “Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant (ברית חדשה) with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake…" This new covenant was not like the covenant God made with Moses and the Jewish people in Sinai which required continual blood sacrifices and strict observance of the commandments. The New Testament is based on the foundation of the Tenach.
Many Jewish people, when reading the New Testament for the first time are surprised that it is a Jewish Book. Jesus and His disciples kept the feasts and worshipped in the Jerusalem Temple. Writers of the New Testament were disciples of Jesus, eye-witnesses of His life, crucifixion, and resurrection. The Books of the New Testament were written during the disciples' lifetime.
The Roman persecution against the Jewish church in Israel became more intense, which caused many Jewish believers to flee to other countries. Jewish eye-witnesses of Jesus' resurrection were absolutely convinced that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah. Each of the 12 Apostles of Jesus were eventually killed for their faith and testimony, and in fact, millions of true Christians throughout history have been killed for their faith.
We hope the articles on our website will help you to understand more. If you really want to know the truth, sincerely ask the God of Israel to show you the true path and start reading the Prophets and the New Testament.
