A Series on Acts - #153
Speaker Notes
The Collect
O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: Increase and multiply upon us your mercy; that, with you as our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we lose not the things eternal; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Acts 26:19
19 “So then, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven.
Romans 9:1-5
Paul’s Anguish Over Israel
1 I speak the truth in Christ—I am not lying, my conscience confirms it through the Holy Spirit— 2 I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. 3 For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, 4 the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption to sonship; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. 5 Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen.
Salvation Is From The Jews by Roy H. Schoeman pages 350-351
As mentioned, St. Paul in his Letter to the Romans that the last days will see the widespread conversion of the Jews. This has led many to consider the current wave of Jewish conversion and ask whether it might be the beginning of the fulfillment of that prophecy.
It is probably impossible to determine whether the current wave of Jewish conversion is numerically greater than any previous one. For one thing, good statistics are lacking for both present and the past conversions. Further complicating matters is the fact that past conversions were often induced by external persecution, while the current ones are almost all genuine. But whether or not the largest in history, the current wave of conversions does have some distinctive characteristics that are suggestive.
One of these is the emergence of Jewish Christian communities in which Jews accept the principles of Christianity while still maintaining their identity as Jews. The aforementioned associations, Remenant of Israel and the Association of Hebrew Catholics, are examples of this in the Catholic Church. Within Protestant Christianity, such communities are represented by what is known as “Messianic Judaism”.
Salvation Is From The Jews by Roy H. Schoeman pages 352-353
… We have seen how, at the very outset of Christianity, many held the mistaken belief that one must be a member of the Old Covenant (i.e., be a Jew) to be eligible for participation in the New. This error was quickly corrected, but was soon followed by another known as “supersessionism” – that the Old Covenant had been entirely replaced (or superseded, hence “supersession”), made null and void, by the New. This view dominated Christian theology for much of the past two thousand years. It has only recently been definitively rejected by the Church. With its rejection, however, a new and perhaps even more pernicious error has emerged – that the Old and New Covenants are two “separate but equal” parallel paths to salvation, the one intended for Jews, the other for Gentiles. This has been presented as though it were the only logical alternative to supersessionism, despite the fact that it is utterly irreconcilable with both the core beliefs of Christianity and with the words of Jesus Himself in the New Testament.
This book proposes a third alternative – that as the Old Covenant was brought to fruition by the New at the first coming, so will the New Covenant be brought to fruition by the Old, by the return of the Jews at the Second Coming. Thus, the current wave of Jewish entry into the Church may be among the most important things going on today, or indeed, in the history of the world.
Jürgen’s Blog