A good number of years ago, a person who had become well known in American Christian circles for teaching on Jewish Roots abandoned faith in Yeshua and became an Orthodox Jew. This was a person who apparently had experienced deep and wonderful things in the Holy Spirit. Many who knew this person or were supporters of the ministry were shocked at the public announcement of conversion to Rabbinic Judaism. How is this even possible? It is not the first time that a Christian or Messianic Jew has abandoned Yeshua for Orthodox Judaism. However, this is one of the rare occasions in which someone well known in a national ministry has done so. The reasons that were given were mostly of a theological and historical nature. It was asserted that there were contradictions in the New Testament that prove it is not the Word of God and that the worship of Yeshua is idolatry. I will address the theological issues. But in my experience, even though the person believes that such matters are primary, I place them only in fourth place as reasons for abandoning Yeshua. As I have watched those who have abandoned Yeshua for Rabbinic Judaism, I have noted that a clear pattern is usually discernible. I express this in terms of four categories.
Failure to Maintain Fellowship with Yeshua
The first is failure to maintain a vivid and lively fellowship with Yeshua Himself and with New Covenant realities. When one’s experience begins to fade and one’s heart grows cold, one is subject to error and a legalistic approach to religion. Most Jewish believers in Yeshua come to Him in very dramatic experience. Visions, miracles and overwhelming in-breakings of the Spirit are very common. If we recall out early days of passionate love, we can often see that a drift has slowly taken place. However, if we maintain this passion by pursuit of the Lord, the realities of the New Covenant remain so vivid that we cannot accept their replacement. Paul calls any false religious prioritizing “Losing connection with the Head, from whom the whole body (is) supported and held together.” When one is rightly connected to the Head, Yeshua, one realises that pre-New Covenant ministry is like a candle light in comparison to the light of the Sun, so great is the superceding glory of the New Covenant. “For what was glorious has no glory in comparison with the surpassing glory.” The loss of the right orientation here is the key to all else and the most important reason why it is possible or people to abandon Yeshua. Other reasons only reinforce this one.
In addition, one’s sense of primary identity as a new creation in the Messiah is crucial to not having an identity crisis which seeks to find greater importance to ethnicity that is biblically warranted. Jewish calling is important, but not superior to other callings in the Body of Messiah.
Rabbinic Idolatry
The second reason is what I call rabbinic idolatry. Rabbinic idolatry gives unbalanced adulation to rabbinic sages and their teachings. We must bear in mind that Rabbinic Judaism inherited the stance of first and second century rabbis who rejected Yeshua and the apostolic witness. This should lead us to suspect that Rabbinic Judaism is skewed. In its dimensions of legalism, the weightier matters of the Law are not practiced and the heart intent of the Law is often obscured. Failure to embrace Yeshua has produced a religious stance that is at best inadequate and at worst in terrible error. Yet when one immerses oneself in rabbinic literature and legal reasoning, one can lose perspective. For many who were not raised in it, the novelty of rabbinic culture fascinates. One can slowly drift from Yeshua and become more focused on rabbinic thought than on Yeshua. Lest I be misunderstood, I want to make it clear that the answer to rabbinic idolatry is not the wholesale rejection of rabbinic ideas and culture. There is much that is good and beautiful. The test is through a renewed mind that is full of “Yeshua fascination,” which weighs all by the Word of God in a New Covenant fulfillment emphasis (Romans 12:2). When this is solidly in place, one can appropriate good and beautiful traditions as led by the Spirit. However, the intensive pursuit of rabbinic study is only for the few and the very spiritually strong who have a call to do so.
Failure to Maintain Accountable Fellowship
The third reason for the loss of faith in Yeshua is the failure to maintain accountable fellowship. The person is not submitted to wise elders and strikes out in an independent way that is often fairly unfairly critical of the Church or the Messianic Jewish congregations. When I came back to solid commitment to Yeshua in my early 20s I had some knowledge of sociology and anthropology. These studies show that people conform to their primary social fellowship. A century ago, anthropologists went to primitive tribes and lived among them with no outside communication. Some became bushmen! Without outside communication and fellowship, they became like the very people they studied. Outside communication became normative for such researchers after this! When I came back to the Lord, I knew that I would not grow in my faith without deep and lasting fellowship among those who shared like faith. In addition, I knew I would need accountability to elders for my spiritual development. This is God’s order. People leave accountable fellowship long before they finally abandon Yeshua. They make their primary community of identification one that does not share in the fellowship of the Spirit in the New Covenant. Our primary fellowship must be with fellow believers. Only then are we insufficient right order to develop significant relationships with those of different persuasions. For Jewish disciples, sometimes the feeling of alienation from the Jewish community and family are very painful. They need to be prepared for this. This preparation includes developing strong and deep fellowship with on-fire believers in Yeshua.
Being Led Astray by Foolish Arguments
The fourth reason is being led astray by foolish arguments. There is now an anti-missionary and anti-Messianic Jewish literature. Their arguments are superficial and stereotypical. First they point out contradictions in the New Testament, which are not really contradictions, and have various explanations. Then they point out that New Testament quotes are not consistent with the Hebrew Bible. They fail to point out that the New Testament usually quotes what was considered the authoritative Jewish translation into Greek in the first century, the Septuagint. Because of its popularity in the Christian community, centuries later the Jewish community abandoned this translation. However, the text tradition of the Septuagint is valid. The differences for most quotes are minor and none change doctrinal conclusions in a significant way. Then some anti-Messianic Jews make a big deal of radical liberal “Christian” scholarship admitting to the contradictions and mythical quality of the New Testament. It is then said that Christian leaders suppress this information.
These arguments are an example of unjust weights and measures. Why? First of all with regard to quotes, one needs only to pursue rabbinic interpretation to gain a sense of the level of fanciful interpretation that is beyond anything that followers of Yeshua even imagine. Does Rabbinic Judaism often veer from the text in context? Wow! Does it ever!
In addition, if we are going to examine radical liberal scholarship, let’s do it even-handedly. Such scholarship rejects the divine origin of the Torah and presents us with a Torah that is merely the product of primitive story-telling and transmission around tribal campfire gatherings and then compiled centuries after the purported time of Moses. They point out many apparent contradictions in the Torah and the other Hebrew biblical books. Every Christian and Messianic Jewish seminarian has studied the radical liberal theories; they are not suppressed. However, we find these theories of unbelief to be of no use for edifying our people and spend little time teaching them. We are convinced that they are not based upon good evidence.
Far Stronger Evidence
We have far stronger evidence for the authenticity of the New Testament than we do for the Torah. I fully believe in both. However, one of the great reasons to believe in the Torah is that Yeshua taught its authority and divine origin, and He rose from the dead. However, without the teaching of Yeshua, we must depend on Torah manuscript testimony from copies that are at the earliest 1,200 years after the time of Moses, I think that there is adequate evidence from archeology for the integrity of the Torah. However, it is much weaker than the evidence for the New Testament. For the New Testament, we have thousands of manuscripts that are based on first century originals, Almost all scholarship agrees that the disciples died for their testimony of the resurrection of Yeshua. We could hardly have better evidence for any historical figure that we have for Yeshua. Lastly, that God would reveal Himself in human form is foreshadowed in many Torah passages and contradicts nothing in the Hebrew Bible but only rabbinic presuppositions.
My heart grieves for those who abandon Yeshua. They have drifted from the truth and have sold their birth right for a pot of stew. May they find their way back, and may we keep Israel’s Messiah pre-eminent as the original Messianic Jews did.
