Category: Theology

These Became Part Of Tikkun 

At the Kingdom Living Congregation in the Kansas City area on June 19, 2021, I reviewed the foundations of our theology in a biographical way.  Here is the progression. 

When I was 19 years old as a sophomore at The King’s College in New York, in the fall of 1966, I discovered that the teaching I had embraced, the Pre-Tribulation Rapture, was not in the Bible. It was a shock. Though I had a Reformed Pastor in high school that did not believe it, I was convinced by my Dispensational mentors and teachers.  This began 3 ½ years of skepticism and very difficult searching.  As I built back theological understanding, there was a progression.  These points of conviction are today established in part of the Messianic Jewish Movement, but all of the points are foundational in Tikkun, our American and Global network.  

1. Understanding the relationship of Law and Grace.  I had amazing professors in college and graduate school who were, without my knowing it, helping my theological understanding in a way that would prepare me for Messianic Jewish leadership.  In dealing with the issue of the relationship of salvation by grace and the Law, I became convinced that Reformed theology was right on this and not dispensationalism.  We are saved by grace through faith and through not good works of our own. However, that grace is transforming and leads to obedience to the Law as rightly applied in the New Covenant.  This is affirmed in Romans 3:31, and 8:3 and explained in Calvin’s Institutes, Book II, Section VII.    
2. The Mosaic Covenant is a Covenant Grace and Salvation.  In 1969 I was taught by Dr. Samuel Schultz who wrote The Gospel of Moses and Deuteronomy, The Gospel of God’s Love.  I was also introduced to Meredith Kline of Gordon Conwell Seminary and his Treaty of the Great King.  I understood from them that the Mosaic Covenant material was in the form of a vassal treaty from the 15^th century B. C.  Its form proved that God saved Israel by grace and then required obedience as a thankful response.  It was not given as a covenant of works righteousness.  The New Covenant is a greater grace covenant than Moses and gives much greater power for obedience.  The Mosaic Covenant is a covenant of salvation by grace. 
3. We are to build Acts 2:42 Community (1970-71):  In 1970 Patty, my wife today, and I were searching for the meaning of the Church.  We were not satisfied with just going to meetings.  We met with fellow students who believed we were to build lasting communities with intimate shared life, covenant relationships that would last a lifetime.  We were to build community under an eldership.  We were to be like an extended family, a tribe in Yeshua.  This has been my ideal ever since. 
4. The Gospel is the Gospel of the Kingdom (1971).  I was before 1971 skeptical about the last days (eschatology) My spiritual father from Wheaton, the college chaplain, Dr. Evan Welsh, gave me a book. With tears in his eyes he said the teaching that my father gave is returning to the Church.  He gave me George Ladd’s book, The Gospel of the Kingdom.  It was so important.  I came to understand that the New Testament is eschatology and teaches that the future Kingdom has broken into this age with the coming of Yeshua and the gift of the Spirit.  The Gospel is the invitation into the Kingdom of God which is here now, but only partially. It is already but not yet, inaugurated but not consummated.  When the Kingdom is extended to the nations, history is moving toward the second coming of Yeshua where the not yet will be fulfilled.  We are called to live in and from the Kingdom.  The Kingdom is seen when people live by the Kingdom and its power is shown.
5. We are to be a Connectional Church (1971)  (a church of city: Presbyterian (1971).  As the pull toward ministry returned to me, I asked the question, how is the Church to be ordered or governed?  I saw a disaster in college days in an independent church. No one could bring correction.  Then I understood that by the time of the end of the New Testament period, some cities had thousands of believers like Jerusalem.  They met in different house gatherings, but all were under one eldership of the city.  The cities were also linked.  The closest thing to what I saw in the Scriptures was Presbyterianism, where the churches were one in each city under an eldership.  I went to Presbyterian seminary and joined a Presbyterian Church.
6. Jews Who come to Faith are to Identify and Live as Jews, as part of their people.  (1972-1973) Through Chaplain Welsh at Wheaton, I was encouraged to consider being called to the Jewish Presbyterian Church in Chicago where he was the interim minister.  I was called and accepted at the First Hebrew Christian Church, June 1972.  There some of the elders had come to believe in continuing Jewish life and identity in Yeshua.  They challenged me.  I studied the issue for a year, both biblically and in scholarly writings.  From the example of Paul, the early Messianic Jewish Community and Romans 9-11 especially, I came to believe that Jews who come to faith in Yeshua are called to identify and live as Jews and that Messianic Jewish congregations were crucial to fulfill that calling.  We became Adat Ha Tikvah Congregation.  We also affirmed embracing the Jewish rabbinic heritage where it is coherent to the Bible. 
7. We must embrace Charismatic power, deliverance and healing.  (1975-1976).  I was challenged to bring psychological and spiritual health to very troubled people in my congregation.   I was not succeeding.  Through a dear couple whom I led to the Lord, I was encouraged to go to a church meeting with leadership that believed in deliverance.  I discovered deliverance ministry and inner spiritual healing when there were few books on the subject.  We learned by doing.  From this experience, I was now a committed charismatic that saw the power of the gifts of the Spirit in operation. 
8. God Will Restore His Church, Eph. 4, John 17:21, Acts 2 and Five Pillars. (1980).  I was called to Beth Messiah Congregation in Rockville, Maryland outside of Washington, D. C.  (January 1978). A leader in one of the local churches visited me at our home and asked if I believed in the restoration of the Church.  I did not know what he was talking about.  I asked him if he believed in the restoration of Israel.  He was replacement theology and said, the Church is Israel.  He later had a total change of view on this.  Within the next month in a devotional time, I experienced a visitation form the Lord.  He encouraged me by sharing that all I was came from a succession of impartations from parents, relatives, and godly leaders.  He also noted that my calling was connected to honoring my Jewish father and the heritage of my Norwegian mother.  He then said that my Jewish calling was very rooted in my Norwegian ancestors. I later traveled to Norway and found that there was a heritage of support for the Jewish people and their restoration to the Land reaching back to the mid-19^th century.   After this, God led me to connect John 17:21 and Ephesians 4:11ff.  I came to conviction that God would restore his Church to unity as both passages envision and that through five-fold ministry, especially through apostles and prophets, we would see the fulfillment of the prayer of Yeshua for unity and the vision for unity and maturity in Eph. 4.  This would be a key to the salvation of Israel and the return of Yeshua.  Our network that today is called Tikkun was started in 1984 to live out these convictions. 

For the first 9 years of its existence, I led the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations.  The UMJC affirmed the first six points of this theology.  However, despite my efforts, they did not generally affirm the seventh and eighth points.  I am committed to the UMJC for the first 6 points.  Tikkun embraces the seventh and eighth.  Much of what I taught in the early years was also taught by Dr. David Stern.  His books and mine are quite parallel. 

“Let no one deceive you in any way, for the Day will not come unless the rebellion comes first and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the one destined to be destroyed.” II Thes. 2:3 TLV

The other day in my prayerful reflections during devotions, I was reflecting on the great apostasy.  The translation in the Tree of Life Version, a Messianic Jewish version, does not use the word apostasy, but rebellion.  The idea that has been most prevalent in the Church has been that this refers to a great apostasy of part of the Church.  This is known among Roman Catholics and though not an official doctrine, the idea of a great apostasy is well known. Protestants historically did not think of the Roman Catholics since they were already written off as in apostasy.  Rather the Evangelicals of 80 years ago saw this as the apostasy of mainline Protestants who gave up the classical definitions of biblical authority and were embracing critical theories of the Bible and questioning classical doctrines.   The return of the Lord is near they thought.  

However, some 80 years later I am wondering if the great rebellion or apostasy is not about the Church per se though it would certainly affect the Church.  I am thinking about the rebellion in our present western culture against God’s creation order itself.  We are presently seeing a level of this rebellion beyond anything I know of in my study of world history.  Theologians speak of common grace, the grace that perceives aspects of the Law of God such that societies are preserved though they do not have the Gospel or the revealed Law of God.  Ancient China spoke of a pattern of life that was enjoined by heaven that was taught by Confucianism.  Lao Tzu spoke of the Tao, the way, that also enshrined such principles that were rooted in some level of transcendent reality.  In Hinduism, laws of right and wrong determined one’s fate in the laws of Karma and the wheel of birth and reincarnation until one attained righteousness sufficient to escape and attain the bliss of heaven.  African tribes knew of transcendent laws that bound them as did native Americans.  We can go on and on.  

One thing common to all these cultures is the clear distinction of male and female.  Sometimes that distinction was defined in ways that severely oppressed women, as in Chinese culture.  Indian culture had much more romantic notions of the relationship of men and women in their old myths.  It was clear that women were distinct, had monthly cycles, produced and nursed babies and then experienced the end of that time in menopause.  Men had a whole different physiology. Homosexual attraction was known in the ancient world and the response to it varied.  However, the idea that men were not really men and women not really women was not rooted in any of the ancient cultures.  C. S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man described the common grace ethical standards common in many cultures.  Of course, in the Western world, the dominant view came from the Bible and taught that God created humankind as male and female. No other category is in mind, though we understand that rarely after the fall there are rare genetic aberrations of dual sexual characteristics.  Now the culture of the west is in a radical rebellion against the binary biblical presentation and thus also against the binary idea of most cultures. We are seeing a radical rebellion beyond anything that has ever taken place in history, against the creation order itself.  And this does influence weak church leaders to go along with some of the gay agenda in amazing compromise.  One friend who is a Bible school leader spoke of this as the running out of the grace of common grace.  However, it is well to look a little deeper and see the progression. 

The big idea of rebellion in the 19^th century was naturalistic evolution developed by Charles Darwin.  His idea was big and radical.  It was that the whole of earthly life, the flora and fauna, could be explained by chance mechanisms from the inorganic to the simplest forms of life and then by natural selection leading up to the pinnacle of evolution, due to their ability to speak and reason and understand, human beings.  The idea seemed so powerful that some Christians and Jews tried to make peace with the idea of God and evolution by positing theistic evolution where God was involved in the process.  However, we should make no mistake about it, the big idea is that any appeal to design or a designer is superfluous.  I have written about this extensively.  It does not matter to these theorists that this idea is ultimately incoherent.  That the leading American philosopher, Thomas Nagel, in his book Mind and Cosmos, shows the systematic incoherence, hardly makes a dent in the culture.  He instead is vilified as having left the reservation.   That the leading former atheist and British philosopher of science, Antony Flew, came to the same conclusion does not matter.  Several former atheists as well have come to the same conclusion.  Nagel argues that the reason the evidence cannot break through is that people do not want to believe in God. Naturalistic evolution is their preferred narrative or myth.  Evolution, however, did gives us fixed categories since male and female perpetuate the species and the rebellion against this was not in view.  Perhaps there were genetic or environmental reasons why some would be homosexual, but homosexuality was not a favored orientation since there is no survival of the species value in it.  The aberrations are tolerated but the idea of men being men and women being women in general was still very much held by evolutionists.  After all, from a genetic point of view, every cell in the body was either male, xy, or female, xx.  Scientific naturalism actually led to some fixed notions of human nature as genetically and behaviorally determined.  The idea that free will was an illusion was common.  With genetic determinists, all is determined by genes, but behavioral naturalists like B. F. Skinner saw the genetic component but with higher animal organisms, all was determined by operant conditioning.  All of this was part of scientific naturalistic modernism.  This entire atheistic philosophy was a most profound rebellion against God.  

Post Modernism rebelled against Scientific naturalism and its determinism.  Rooted in French Existentialism, these folks argued the consciousness itself changed the game of human life completely since one can now choose any orientation to life.  Existence precedes essence, means that there is nothing essential to human nature.  Rather the ego knows itself to be radically free and can choose any lifestyle that can be envisioned.  This leads to radical relativism.  This radical relativism is also atheistic.  There is no meta narrative, that is no story to explain our origins or destiny from a transcendent reality or God.  This philosophy is the height of rebellion.  The post moderns choose with no ground a Marxist or other norm where all human beings are to be included as equal whatever their orientation.  There is no defense for this ethical norm since it is not based in anything but raw assertion.  And raw assertion is all we have left on the basis of this philosophy.  Hitler and Nazism, now hated, was raw assertion as well. The rebellion against God’s creation order for men and women is profound and as deep as one can imagine.  It leads to supporting the choice of a children, a boy to self-define as a girl and to support his choice even by hormone suppressant treatment and surgery to cut of the genitals and to create an artificial vagina and for the girl to cut off her breasts and to create an artificial penis.  Though only a small percentage wants to do this, their choice must be validated and fully affirmed.  Parents themselves cannot stand in the way and social services might see to it.  So inclusive must we be that we must have neutral language that no longer uses male and female pronouns but neutral pronounces so that transsexuals will not feel marginalized.  If you think this is exaggerated, look up Nancy Pelosi’s rules for language in the congress.  Full including means not speaking of men and women or boys and girls for these very terms will leave people out.  Sexually, among consenting adults, all arrangements must be affirmed, homosexual couples in fidelity, homosexuals not in fidelity, bisexuality, and polyamorous relationships. Indeed, the traditional family, called the nuclear family (this was not the traditional ideal by the way, but the extended family supporting the uniqueness of a couple and their children) is rejected as a tyranny.  Anyone who disagrees and speaks up about it is accused of hate speech and called a homophobe and a transphobe.   This fits the program of the late post-modernist, Herbert Marcuse, who saw redefining language as a key part of power assertion.   The socialist paradise requires overcoming the backwardness of the nuclear family. 

This is the deepest rebellion that I know of in history and could be preparing the way for the great rebellion under the Antichrist.  Maybe the Antichrist will restore religion and present a new age god who is inclusive of all sexual orientations.  We have never seen anything like this. In addition, the apostasy from common grace affects some in the Church, even some who claim to be evangelicals who profess a falsely called “love” which is not love.  Love seeks the destiny fulfillment of each person in this life and eternal life.  It warns to flee from the wrath to come and to avoid the destruction of Hell.  It is as in the days of Noah, and one can see with the world going this way, the terrible judgment of the book of Revelation is just.  I did not mention China in this article  There is the rebellion in China to the will of heaven views of ancient Chinese philosophy and the elevation of man in an atheistic system of control that brings its own judgment. 

What then is our hope?   It is that the in these times of darkness, the book of Revelation envisions a true Church with great power gaining a great harvest, including 144,000 from the tribes of Israel.  The eternal Gospel is proclaimed and a great harvest from all peoples will not be thwarted.  (Rev. 7, 14)   God is more than up to the challenge of this great apostasy. 

As a student at Wheaton, I was able to study under the famous philosopher, Dr. Arthur Holmes.  He was fond of calling for us to engage in world viewish thinking.  This meant that the Bible provides us with the foundations for thinking about every sphere of life and engaging every academic discipline from a Biblical perspective.  To do this, we have to know the Bible and its theology well and what it teaches in every subject.  This includes our relationship to God first of all, but then marriage and family, neighbors, civic life, law and justice, the courts, artistry, social sciences, science, economics and much more.  Christian worldview thinking is not possible for people who think that Torah has been done away.  Much of what the Bible has to say on the different spheres of our existence is based in the Torah.  The disturbing thing is that most Christians do not think this way.  They think that the “Old Testament” is a past book.  It provides the predictions of Yeshua and some good devotions in the Psalms, but that is the end of it for them. They have no idea of the Torah being the foundation for justice issues and the key to our understanding and involvement in culture.

However, the problem is not only Christians, but Messianic Jews.  The professions of Torah loyalty are often merely a matter of commitment to aspects of Jewish specific law, circumcision, Sabbath, Feasts, foods, and often Rabbinic traditions.  These are important aspects of our covenant as Jews, however the universal is what Yeshua called the weightier matters of the Torah. Often the Messianic Jewish approach is shallow. Sometimes the Torah is compromised by Rabbinic approaches that do violate the heart intent of the Torah and like Yeshua said, “make void the world of God by traditions of men.”

The Barna organization estimates that only 7% of Christians have a worked-out world view. This is why our political and social disagreements are often based on surface arguments and do not get to the root of the issues.  I think when I have said that I vote for the leaders and party that take us more in the direction of God’s Law, I think that goes over the head of many.  The idea that the Torah will give us direction for the major issues of our time is not perceived.  Historically, many did believe this, from Arminian Methodists to Reformed Calvinists.  Brilliant scholars like Dr. Walter Kaiser, former President of Gordon Conwell still argue this.  I try to show this in my book, Social Justice.  But it is more than that issue.  The Bible gives us a framework for the purpose of art, literature, science, and so much more.  We have to study the Bible with an eye to its implication for all disciplines.  I think many are arguing over issues without the foundation first in place, a true and deep biblical understanding.  The lack of this understanding is why some of our young cannot address the movements of sexual liberation in our culture from a compassionate, but Torah based perspective.  It is why some are given to socialism.  Unless we discuss the foundations in the Bible we are only ships passing in the night in our interactions.  We do not really connect. Our Tikkun books, authored by Dr. Michael Rudolph, Torah in Messiah, provides a good beginning to see how Torah can be applied today.

Because this is fresh in the news, and I wrote a book related to the God’s creation order, I write this article as God makes distinctions in creation for mutual blessing in an order of interdependence.  One of those wonderful distinctions are male and female that enrich our lives in so many ways.  Of course, we think about marriage as one of the highest expressions of mutual blessing and interdependence to come from the male and female distinction.  However, mutual blessing sometimes comes from the very different natures of male and female. They have different insights and operate in different ways.  It is sometimes difficult to define the differences with clear lines. Those who have studied the theory knowledge know that no definitions are airtight.  All definitions have fuzzy edges and have exceptions to the definitions or descriptions.  However, that does not mean that the general descriptions of differences are not legitimate.  Those descriptions should not preclude those who do not seem to fit the way of the general patterns of distinctions from fulfilling roles and directions that do not fit the general pattern.   And culture does have influence on how distinctions are presented.  However, there is a distinction between male and female that greatly enriches our lives.

Right now, we are seeing a war on sexual distinction, that God made us male and female.  Recently, the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops put out a statement warning about new policies by President Biden supporting radical abortion promotion and radical gender confusion.  They pointed to the creation order of male and female and said that this should be embraced by society. They were not speaking against basic civil rights for LGBTQ people but against the promotion of a way of life that does not embrace and promote the general truth of creation distinctions in sexuality and traditional marriage and family.  The Biden administration then put out an executive order that required girls and women’s sports teams to accept men who identify as females.  This is very destructive to women’s sports and all the gains women have made.  The Democratic House of Representatives now seeks to put out rules eliminating gender language and to replace them;  no more father, mother, brothers, sister, aunt or uncle, etc.!   One pundit joked that we can not celebrate the first female or woman Vice President!  We should not assert that she is a woman in a transgender world.  There are people who say we should drop the terms man and women.

So why is this happening?  It is because Satan hates God and his creation.  His creation distinctions enrich life and bring joy to God Himself.  Satan seeks a leveling and destruction of the creation order itself.  His followers especially are part of the thrust in destroying monogamous heterosexual marriage and family.  Radicals have historically seen the traditional family as a barrier to an equal and socialistic society.

What is our response?  It is to be zealous to preach the Gospel and to proclaim the truth of the Law of God and his creation order, and to not back down.  Hope it motivates you to get my book!