Why is This Teaching Different? (And a brief summary of my personal spiritual quest)

In the Passover Seder, the youngest child always asks the “Four Questions” which prompt the leader of the Seder to explain the significance of Passover to G-d’s people. One of those Four Questions is, “Why is this night different from all other nights?” In a similar manner one might properly be led to ask of this teacher, “Why is this teaching different from all other teaching?”^[1]

And that is indeed a fair question. Every "Christian" has a divinely-appointed obligation to ask that question of every teacher, especially one who claims to be teaching the Word of G-d, when his teaching is in any way different from that which is considered the “standard” teaching of “orthodox Christianity.”

That questioning is not being at all unfair to the teacher; it is simply being true to the Great Teacher who through Rabbi Sha’ul (the Apostle Paul) commands us to, “Test all things, and hold firmly that which is good” (1 Thess. 5:21 HNV) ^[2]

In order to adequately answer that question, I must first provide some brief information about my own spiritual quest, and how it was that I have come to this point in my walk with G-d that leads me to teach what may sound, at best, “unusual” to many Christians and Jews alike.

I was born in 1946 and received Adonai Yeshua HaMashiach [He was then known to me as “the LORD Jesus Christ”] as my personal Lord and Savior in 1952. My father was an Elder in our church, First Christian Church of Parkersburg, West Virginia, which had been planted by a great-grand-uncle who was one of the earliest Restoration Movement missionaries to what was then the western part of Virginia. By the time I was about 10 years old, I was active in my Sunday school, helping to teach the “little kids.” It was about that time that my father began his many years of service as Pastor to a number of different Brotherhood churches in the Mid-Ohio Valley, the Carolinas, and Pennsylvania. As “the preacher’s kid” it fell to me to teach children’s Sunday school classes in every church where Dad served. When I was 16 I was selected by the elders of our home church to serve in the office of Junior Deacon. The responsibilities of the Junior Deacons included assisting the Deacons and Elders in all of their responsibilities, and to attend church Board meetings as representatives of the Youth Department. I also held a number of leadership positions in our Youth Department until the time I left home to join the Navy.

The Navy sent me to serve as a Hospital Corpsman at the U.S. Naval Hospital on Guam during the Viet Nam war. I immediately became active in the base chapel, and when I expressed concern to our agnostic Lutheran Chaplain that I didn’t feel the young people were being adequately ministered to, he appointed me as Youth Pastor, in which office I enthusiastically served for the remainder of my two-year tour of duty.

While in the Navy I began to feel a general dissatisfaction with what I was finding in established “Christianity.” I became increasingly aware that what was being taught “in church” was decidedly different from what I was reading in the Bible, and so to obtain more information on the subject I enrolled in some correspondence work at Johnson Bible College in Knoxville, Tennessee, where my father was enrolled at the time for his formal training to enter full-time pastoral ministry.

After being discharged from the Navy, I stayed in the San Francisco Bay Area where I met my bride. I earned an Associate’s Degree in Criminal Justice and served as a part-time peace officer with the sheriff’s department for seven years, while working in a government “think tank,” and earning my B.A. degree in business and my M.B.A. in organizational management.

The thesis that I wrote for my M.B.A. degree involved the application of proven secular business principles and practices to the business administration of the local church. We were very active in the local Assembly of G-d church at the time, where I was serving as a Deacon, adult Sunday School teacher, assistant choir director, and junior high pastor. Just about the time that I was finishing my thesis, my pastors (there were three full-time pastors at that time) approached me and asked if I had ever considered entering pastoral ministry. With their encouragement and support, as soon as I finished my M.B.A. program I enrolled at Bay Cities Bible Institute (now Bay Cities Bible College) in Berkeley, California, in a program that would permit me to work on a Master of Arts degree in Bible through evening and weekend classes that I could manage to schedule around both my occupation and my ministry activities at the church.

Two years into my three-year M.A. program I was offered a faculty position at Spring Valley Bible College and Seminary (now Golden State School of Theology), also in the San Francisco Bay Area, with the promise of tuition assistance in exchange for my teaching and administrative services. I completed my Master of Theology, Doctor of Theology, and Doctor of Ministry degrees (all summa cum laude and valedictorian) at that school, and served them for several years in various teaching and administrative roles, which included Professor of Theology, Assistant Dean of Directed Individualized Studies, and Vice President of Academic Affairs, and I taught classes in Systematic Theology, Cults and World Religions, and English Grammar and Composition to undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate students. One of my major accomplishments at Spring Valley was the redefinition of their entire academic program and reorganizing the academic program from a semester system to a quarter system, which allowed the school to expose their students to 30% more information in the same period of time, and the total reorganization and redefining of the school as Golden State School of Theology.

During my tenure at Spring Valley/Golden State I also served two churches as a bi-vocational Associate Pastor. I later participated in the startup of Grace School of Theology and Ministry in Pleasant Hill, California, where I served for two years as Administrator, Registrar, Librarian, and Director of Information Services, with the primary responsibility of establishing the school with the state and federal governments as a nonprofit corporation, and obtaining from the California Department of Post-Secondary Education the necessary authorization for the granting of academic degrees, and assisting in the development of the school’s curriculum.

Over the next several years I served as Associate Pastor of several different Baptist churches, and was ordained in 1991 by a multi-denominational Ordination Council that including Pastors from Assembly of G-d, American Baptist, Southern Baptist, Conservative Baptist, Independent Baptist, and Independent non-denominational congregations. We moved to Knoxville in 1992 and joined Ridgeview Baptist Church, where I served as a teacher in the adult department, and from which I provided much pulpit supply to area churches over the next three years. We moved again to West Virginia in 1995, where I did some more pulpit supply for the Southern Baptist Convention before joining an independent church as Associate Pastor in 1996.

With a strong educational background in Systematic Theology and over 20 years of bi-vocational pastoral ministry in a somewhat diverse group of denominations, I was left with the inescapable feeling that somehow there had to be “more” to true Biblical “religion” than is being taught in the churches. For nearly as long as I had been studying the Bible, I had felt that there was something terribly wrong with the rift between Christians and Jews. I simply could not understand (and still can't understand) why it is so difficult for Jews to understand that their Messiah has already come, just as the prophets said He would. I also found it very strange that Christians should have difficulty understanding that “Jesus” was a Torah-observant Jew who did not come to start another religion, but to show His Jewish brothers the correct way to have a relationship with G-d,^[3] and that Christianity, when correctly understood, is actually a branch of Judaism. It was also extremely difficult for me to clearly understand for many years why it was that the more I studied the Scriptures, the more I found myself thinking and feeling “Jewish.”

In 1985 my family was privileged to participate in a tour of Israel, and to my total amazement I found that for the first time in my memory, I felt truly at home—as though I had finally returned to the place for which I had been homesick my whole life. Even with the ever-present threat of terrorism, I felt more at peace and much safer on the streets of Jerusalem at two o’clock in the morning than I ever felt on the streets of San Francisco at two o’clock in the afternoon.

It was about that time that my mother, our family historian, discovered genealogical records of my father’s ancestors through his mother. My paternal grandmother had died while my father was in his early teens, and neither my father nor my grandfather had any detailed knowledge of her family roots. What my mother’s research uncovered was that my grandmother was a Jew whose ancestors all bore traditional Jewish names like Joseph, the son of Issacher, the son of Joseph, the son of Jacob, the son of Solomon, the son of John, the son of Israel, the son of John, and so on back to 1474. Their family name Levitt or Leavitt traces back to various spellings, all very similar in form to the name Levite, which was the name for the descendants of Levi who served in the Tabernacle and later in the Temple. Unfortunately, documentation for my father’s father’s lineage is only traceable to his grandfather, who was adopted with no other family records. My mother is now tracing her side of the family tree to see if additional Jewish roots can be found.

Can it be mere coincidence that I have for so long felt Jewish to the very depths of my soul? Is there some deep-rooted “racial memory” struggling to surface into my conscious mind? Can it be (G-d forbid!) that I am becoming “mystical” in my old age? Is this how people feel who believe they have been abducted by UFOs? Has the crew of a UFO abducted me in the middle of some starless night, and have little gray men implanted these feelings into my mind? Are there others somewhere in the world who share these same feelings, or are they mine alone? Or am I simply “weird”?

Or can it be that in these Last Days the LORD is calling out the remnant from the ten “Lost Tribes” of Israel [those of Jewish heritage who, like me, have not know their ancestry and have thus been separated from their birthright] in preparation for the final restoration of His Kingdom on earth? Is there any Bible evidence to support such a notion? If so, am I one of those being called out? [The answers to those questions are among the many issues that will be addressed in great detail during this series of studies.]

It was my burning desire to find answers to those questions that started me on the quest for my “Jewish Roots.” How could I hang on to those beliefs I had developed over years of study, prayer, and meditation on G-d’s word, and yet be able to experience the “Jewishness” that my soul craved? I began searching the Internet for answers, looking for someone—anyone—who felt as I did.

I contacted Jews for Jesus seeking information on how I could learn about my lost Jewish heritage without giving up my Messiah. They told me that I should simply be satisfied that I was a Christian and let it go; I already had Jesus and didn’t need to know about anything Jewish. I contacted the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention (my “own folks” at the time) because they have a website on which they talk about the necessity of “planting Messianic synagogues.” They told me that they couldn’t be bothered to help me in my quest, because “there aren’t enough Jews in West Virginia to make it worth our time.” [There are only an estimated 40 to 50 Jewish families in the five-county area where I live.] I contacted several other “Jewish outreach ministries” and they all seemed to be interested in only one thing: converting Jews into Gentile Christians. I didn’t feel like that would do me much good, because I already was one of those!

Then in early 2000 I came across an organization called “Messianic Bureau International,” which seemed to be exactly what I was looking for. The Director of the organization is a very personable gentleman who has a background very similar to my own. He is now a Messianic Rabbi, but was formerly a pastor with the Assemblies of G-d, and his grandparents were Jewish. He has been most helpful, and the materials from his ministry have been excellent sources of information. Since becoming acquainted with MBI [the use of whose source materials I also gratefully acknowledge], I have met a number of other leaders in the “Messianic Movement,” and there seems to be a common trend among most of those with whom I have had contact: they have brought most of their denominational “sacred cows” into the Movement with them. The result is that within the Movement there seem to be approximately the same numbers of interpretations of Messianic Judaism as there are Christian Denominations and Jewish Sects from which these men came.

However, to my great relief I have discovered that I am not alone. There are literally hundreds of thousands, or perhaps even millions, of people just like me in their desire to worship Yeshua HaMashiach as He was worshipped in the first century, remembering that there were almost no Gentile believers in Messiah until well into the second century. At this writing, according to one Internet source, there are an estimated three million people involved in various forms of Messianic Judaism worldwide.

So how did it come about that there are so many people with the same apparent “racial memories” and desires that have been plaguing me?

One intriguing theory (generally called the “two house” or “two stick” theory) goes this way:

After the death of King David, his son Solomon succeeded him with harsh policies that split the already fractured monarchy into the northern House of Israel (meaning “he will rule as G-d”) and the southern House of Judah (“to worship with outstretched hands”). These separate kingdoms co-existed for quite some time, but they were constantly in friction with one another, even to the point of war. The Bible refers to this time as the “enmity and vexation” between the tribe of the becor or birthright (Ephraim), and the tribe of the shevet or scepter (Judah). Ephraim (“fruitless”) was the youngest son of Joseph (“increase”), from whom the first northern kings descended. According to Genesis 48:19, Ephraim’s descendants were destined to become the melo hagoyim or “fullness of the Gentiles.” Romans 11:25-26 states that when “the fullness of the Gentiles has come in … the Deliverer (Messiah) will come from Zion, He will remove ungodliness from Jacob.”

How is it that the descendants of Jacob through Ephraim were to become “the fullness of the Gentiles” and how is it that when Messiah returns “the fullness of the Gentiles” will come in? And what is it that they are to “come in” to?

Through the prophet Hosea’s marriage to Gomer and their three children, G-d shows us a strange thing indeed. The House of Israel (the Ephraimites) in exile was given three new names:

   • Yizre’el or Jezreel, a play on the name, “Israel,” which means “God will sow or scatter like seeds,”

   • Lo-ruhamah, “without mercy” or “without covenant,” and

   • Lo-Ammi, “not My people.”

According to Hosea’s prophecy, “God will scatter these people like seeds throughout the earth; they will no longer be called ‘My people’ and they will live without the covenant.” Scattered like seeds all over the world, the descendants of these exiles have since been totally assimilated into Gentile cultures. They have forgotten that they are children of G-d’s covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They no longer remember that they are Israelites. They deny their Israelite heritage and deny that they are part of G-d’s covenant people. True to G-d’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:3b to literally “graft” part of his seed into every family of the earth, the tribe of Ephraim in its assimilation may now very well comprise part of every race, ethnic group, and culture, or the “fullness of the Gentiles.”

Now, I want you to keep in mind that the Hebrew word goyim that is translated “Gentiles” is also translated as “nations.” An Orthodox Jewish Rabbi was being interviewed on the Zola Levitt television program recently (July 2001), and he pointed out that, at the present time, the citizens of Israel come from over 108 different nations. There are Dutch Jews, German Jews, Russian Jews, Ethiopian Jews, Pakistani Jews, American Jews, Spanish Jews, and even some Chinese Jews. Each of these groups considers themselves to be Dutch, German, Russian, etc.; but yet they are first and foremost Jews. So Israel has literally become a “nation of nations” or a “nation of goyim.” Is it possible that Romans 11:25-26 should be interpreted to mean that when “the fullness of the nations has come in … the Deliverer (Messiah) will come from Zion” — that is, when at least some Jews have returned from each of the nations in which they now reside?

This theory is not without its significant problems, however; and what seems to be the opinion of a majority of its proponents is that everyone who has ever come into a covenant relationship with the Messiah has at least a drop or two of the blood of the Patriarchs flowing in their veins. That is, nobody who is totally Gentile has ever been “saved.”

Of significant concern to the Jewish community, and what makes this teaching actually anti-Semitic, is that this movement makes out all Gentile Christians to be Jews, most of whom just don’t realize that they are Jews.^[4]

This is, of course, an extremely valid concern. With all Jews in general, and the Nation of Israel in particular, fighting desperately to retain their right to exist as a nation and as an identifiable ethnic community, the threat of being “overrun” by millions of “Gentile want-to-be Jews” who are claiming to be the legitimate heirs to the Covenants and to the Land (Replacement Theology) is totally unacceptable. After all, that is precisely what Gentile Christianity has been claiming since 325 CE when Constantine declared “Christianity” to be the official religion of the Roman Empire, the hundreds of thousands of pagan Gentiles instantly became “Christian” [though most of them didn’t even know it], and Jewish believers in their Messiah were given the choice to either give up all aspects of their “Jewishness” or be “excommunicated” from what was what prior to that time an extensively Jewish, and originally an exclusively Jewish, branch of Judaism called “The Way.”

The International Messianic Jewish Alliance (IMJA) has published an excellent and scholarly refutation of the “Two-House” theory entitled "The Ephraimite Error" by Dr. Kay Silberling that may also be found mirrored here. The “Two-House” theory is rejected by all but the “extreme outer fringe” of Messianic Judaism. The conclusion of this Position Paper is as follows:

But whatever the truth of this “two house/two stick” theory may or may not actually be, it is clearly evident that G-d is doing a work in the area of the Land that he promised to Avraham, Yitzhak, and Ya`akov, and their descendants forever. In 1948 Israel again became a nation, dwelling within the borders of the Promised Land for the first time since the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus in the year 70.

But in 1967 virtually the entire Islamic world attacked the little nation of Israel (Six-Day War). To put this in perspective, Israel consists of only 8,020 square miles with a population of approximately 5,749,760. By comparison, the little state of New Jersey has an area of 8,722 square miles and a 1990 population of 7,730,118. In just six days, out-gunned by nearly 24 to 1 (based on total estimated population of all countries, see table), tiny Israel had soundly defeated all her surrounding nations and nearly doubled her geographical area, having driven back her invaders far into their own countries.

The results of that war were without question by far the biggest upset since David killed Goliath (a truly fitting and prophetic picture). And little Israel’s victory would have been absolutely impossible without the direct intervention of the hand of G-d.

When Israel regained control of Jerusalem and won such an incredibly improbable victory in the Six Day War, a great number of Jews recognized this event as a partial fulfillment of prophecies in both the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible, or so-called “Old Testament”) and the B'rit Chadasha (Apostolic Scriptures, or so-called “New Testament”) that speak of Messiah’s imminent return to establish the Kingdom. And as the B'rit Chadasha specifically points to Yeshua of Natzeret (Jesus of Nazareth) as the Messiah, they were spiritually awakened to acknowledge Him as such. As their ancestors did in the first century, these “completed Jews” have rightfully elected to retain their Jewish identity, and have incorporated the worship of Yeshua HaMashiach (Yeshua the Messiah) into their traditional form of worship.

Shortly after the end of the Six-Day War, there occurred a thing unheard of in the history of civilization. The nations of the world rose up against tiny Israel who had so courageously defended herself against an invasion of overwhelming odds, and demanded that the big bully nation of Israel give back all the land she had conquered from her poor, defenseless invaders. Unfortunately for Israel, the world’s last superpower, the United States, supposedly the last remaining “Christian” nation on earth, has also taken a stand against Israel in this issue (more unfortunate for the U.S. than for Israel), apparently forgetting the warning of the prophets:

Rickard [Ari] Levitt-Sawyer
tywl yra (Ari Levitt)
ThM, ThD, DMin, MBA, CNHP
Congregation B’nei HaMelech
Family Bible Ministries
Parkersburg, WV
June 16, 2001

For additional information on how we arrived at our present theological position, please refer to our in-process book, The Model for the Messianic Community.

[7] I have taken the liberty of rendering the Sacred Name [YHWH] as Adonai rather than as Lord.

http://familybible.org/About/Teaching.htm
was last revised at 03:26 PM on Friday, 12 September 2008