Immanuel.at Forum for Discussion Discourse 1114: The teaching of the Messianic Jews

(Letter of Instruction of the Messianic Jews, by J. Damkani / Commentary, J. and E. Damkani Israel, 00, 2013-09-02)

(…) I know these things are important to you and I appreciate that. And yet we have different priorities, a different calling, and we just cannot really get into all these discussions. There are so many people out there waiting for the Gospel, this always has to be our first priority since God called us to do just that: preach the Gospel to the Jew first.

I did find a teaching Jacob taught some time ago – about the Covenants – and I believe this explains very well (much better than what I tried before [in Discourse 1112 / F.H.]) how we see things. And since you carefully study your Bible I am sure you can agree with it. I am attaching it here.

Much blessing to you, Elisheva

Damkani
Damkani
Damkani
Damkani

https://www.trumpetofsalvation.org/

There are currently efforts by Jacob's wife Elisheva to retain her alleged share of the ministry's estimated 78 million shekels in funds and assets. (approximately US$24 million). The funds are in Elisheva's personal bank accounts in Israel and in Germany, and in Jacob's personal accounts in Israel and Singapore. I have personally verified this with Elisheva. Assets include three apartments (one of which was recently sold), a house, a farm, and a 50-bed hotel (also recently sold), all registered in the Damkani's names, sometimes jointly and sometimes individually. Trumpet of Salvation has no known assets. Funds from recent property sales are currently in the personal bank accounts of Jacob and Elisheva. Donations to the Trumpet were directed to Jacob and Elisheva's private company and then used to purchase real estate or deposited into their personal bank accounts.

Emilio Daniel "Missions Report Israel" (MRI) (11 Hayarden Tel Aviv – Jaffa 6332534 srael)

(Did Jacob Damkani steal the name "Trumpet of salvation for Israel"?)

Many thanks, Elisheva, for having taken the trouble of looking out this interesting article of your husband’s for me. The invitation to study this Letter of Instruction and examine its statements in the light of the Bible was one that I was happy to respond to – on the one hand because I too have been intensively concerned of late with the different covenants of God, and on the other, because the teachings of the Messianic Jews have so far regrettably only found mention in peripheral remarks or footnotes at Immanuel.at, without any attempt at going to the heart of the matter. So I am very grateful – partly too in the interest of my readers – finally to be able to work with competent statements and doctrinal formulations representing the position of the Messianic Jews.

As was of course to be expected, Jacob Damkani’s arguments in this work are based on widely extensive experience and a comprehensive knowledge of the Old Testament. What however particularly interested me in his account was the very special view that Messianic Jews have of the Bible – of the Old and New Testaments.

I translated the English text of this Letter of Instruction into German (Die Bünde Gottes, von Jacob Damkani) and also had it translated into Italian (Le Alleanze di Dio, di Jacob Damkani) and posted them online. So, first of all my quotations can be checked, and also so that interested German- and Italian-speaking readers may be able to peruse Mr. Damkani’s work. In my commentary here I will just insert those passages which struck me as relevant in the course of my studies. These are the passages that appear important, which I will be examining in detail.

And here, right away on the first page of Mr. Damkani’s exposition, we find some interesting statements which may be able to give us an insight into what the Messianic Jews – by contrast with many Christians – understand by evangelization of the Jews. He writes as follows:

"To my sorrow, a lot of Christians do not really understand that Jews do not have to be converted to any other religion; they do not have to leave their heritage and their Jewish faith, because if God gave identity to any group of people, He gave a really clear identity to Jewish people. It is not meant for them to leave their identity and to become something else, to become Christians. In the mind of Jewish people the Christianity is something else than what you think that the Christianity is." (God’s covenants, by J. Damkani, Abraham/04)

Now that is also something different from what I had in the past taken Messianic Judaism to be. An evangelization which tells the Jews that they do not need to convert at all undermines the foundations of Christian faith, namely Jesus Christ and his death on the cross for the sins of all human beings – including the Jews as well!

Damkani’s statement, "In the mind of Jewish people the Christianity is something else than what you think that the Christianity is." may be true. But Christianity is not about what is going on "in the mind of Jewish people," but what our Lord Jesus Christ tells us about it in the New Testament.

And he tells us there about the Jews – with the exception of the disciples, who, however, were Christians – nothing good. J. Damkani should read this carefully. Especially what the Lord said about the Jewish scribes, who finally condemned him to death on the cross.

Then the high priest tore his robes and said, "He has blasphemed! What further need do we have of witnesses? He deserves death!

Mt 26,63 But Jesus kept silent. And the high priest said to Him, "I adjure You by the living God, that You tell us whether You are the Christ (the Messiah), the Son of God." 26,64 Jesus said to him, "You have said it yourself; nevertheless I tell you, hereafter you will see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming on the clouds of heaven." 26,65 Then the high priest tore his robes and said, "He has blasphemed! What further need do we have of witnesses? Behold, you have now heard the blasphemy; 26,66 what do you think?" They answered, "He deserves death!" Mt 26,63-66;

The Mosaic religion was probably the right religion. However, among the teachers of Israel, from the scribes of the Sanhedrin two thousand years ago, up to the smallest rabbi of the today’s time, people have mixed, who do not serve God, but the Satan.

The Mosaic religion may be the right religion. But all the same, the teachers of Israel – from the scribes of the Sanhedrin two thousand years ago, down to the most insignificant rabbi of the present day – have also included people who serve not God but Satan.

You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father.

Jn 8,43 "Why do you not understand what I am saying? It is because you cannot hear My word. 8,44 "You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Jn 8,43-44;

Mt 3,7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, "You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Mt 3, 7;

Mt 12,34 You brood of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak what is good? For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart. 12,35 "The good man brings out of his good treasure what is good; and the evil man brings out of his evil treasure what is evil. Mt 12,34-35;

Mt 23,32 "Fill up, then, the measure of the guilt of your fathers. 23,33 "You serpents, you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence of hell? Mt 23,32-33;

And they will be so guided by their spiritual father that they will interpret the Mosaic Old Testament in such a way as to prepare for the coming of the Antichrist. We find them quite simply asserting that Jesus of Nazareth, the true Messiah, was an impostor and blasphemer – and on that basis you can quite happily reinterpret all the prophecies of the Tanach (the Old Testament) as referring to a Messiah (the false Messiah) who is still to come.

So what is a matter of extreme urgency is that it should finally be made clear to the Jews that they have been betrayed by most of their religious teachers for the last two thousand years. So long as the Jewish people fails to understand this betrayal, they will – notwithstanding their right religion – be adhering to a false faith, will die in their sins and end in damnation.

This is the biblical reality, this is what we must be saying to the Jews. Anyone who tells them that "they do not have to leave their heritage and their Jewish faith" is completely missing the seriousness of the situation, and is leading this people even more deeply into error, in the false conviction that they "do not need" to convert. Exactly the opposite is the case!

Jn 8,21 Then He said again to them, "I go away, and you will seek Me, and will die in your sin; where I am going, you cannot come." 8,22 So the Jews were saying, "Surely He will not kill Himself, will He, since He says, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come’?" 8,23 And He was saying to them, "You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world. 8,24 "Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He (the Messiah), you will die in your sins." Jn 8,21-24;

If the Jews want to be saved, they have no other possibility whatever other than by leaving "their heritage and their Jewish faith". For this we only need to be minimally acquainted with the Mosaic religion and the history of Israel.

The altar of burnt offerings in the Temple.

As is generally known among Jews of the Mosaic faith, the old Israel served its God in the Temple in Jerusalem. This also involved the sacrifice of animals on the Temple’s altar of burnt offerings on various occasions. Sacrifice was to be made, in accordance with God’s commands, only on this altar of burnt offerings and only in this Temple in Jerusalem. Offerings were not to be made in any other place.

Be careful that you do not offer your burnt offerings in every cultic place you see.

Deut 12,13 "Be careful that you do not offer your burnt offerings in every cultic place you see, 12,14 but in the place which the LORD chooses in one of your tribes, there you shall offer your burnt offerings, and there you shall do all that I command you. Deut 12,13-14;

But quite apart from all these sacrificial ceremonies relating to a specific occasion, there are also the "daily" or "abiding" offerings (tamid). This comprises the morning and evening offering in the Temple. For this sacrifice, two one year old lambs must be offered every day on the altar of the Temple, as a sign that God dwells in the Temple and is present among the sons of Israel (Num 29:38-46)

Having confidence in this offering, every Israelite could ask for his guilt to be forgiven without being obliged to take part in the sacrificial ceremony in person. The word tamid literally means "the abiding", and signifies the "constant forgiveness of the (forgivable) sins which God allows to humanity based on this daily sacrifice".

The destruction of the Temple.

On 1 July in the year 69 AD, Titus, the son of the reigning Roman emperor Vespasian, was sent to Jerusalem to end the Jewish War as supreme commander of the army delegated to this task. In April of the year 70 he marched on the city with a host of four legions and numerous auxiliary troops from tributary kings (Josephus, Bell, 5,40-6,120). Titus besieged the city, surrounding it with a high siege wall (Josephus, Bell, 5,130-135.491-511; Tacitus, Hist. 5,1.10-14).

In early September, AD 70, Jerusalem then fell to famine. There was also a bloodbath, which Titus, it is claimed, tried in vain to prevent(!). The Temple, where 6000 Jews had taken refuge – placing their trust in an oracular prophecy that the sanctuary would be saved in the Last Days (Josephus, Bell, 6,285f) – was destroyed by fire. According to Josephus, Titus tried up to the last, in vain, to prevent the destruction of the Temple (Bell, 6,241.266). This was the way in which Titus wanted to be exonerated from personal responsibility for the disaster visited on the Jews. But the soldiers, in their blind fury, ignored his orders (Bell, 6,254-259). The city was razed to the ground. Only the towers of the citadels were left intact, and strengthened for future use by a military garrison.

If we look at the above accounts of the historians, we can see that it was not worldly power – in the form of the Roman general Titus – that aimed to destroy the Temple. On the contrary, Josephus tells us that Titus ordered his troops to save the Temple above all. But this entire war was not being decided on an earthly level. It was God the Almighty who had determined that both the city (Lk 19:41-44) and the Temple (Mt 24:1-2) were to be destroyed. And so Titus had the experience – probably for the first time in his life – of seeing Roman legionaries refusing to carry out an order from their commander. Instead, they stormed the Temple and burnt it to the ground.

But why has God decided to destroy this city and the temple? Another statement of the Lord’s, at first sight quite unobtrusive, tells us more. When we look at it closely, we find it contains quite unexpected implications. The Pharisees had found fault with the Lord for his assertion that he was the Son of God, on the grounds that he had only himself as witness, whereas in Jewish law at least two witnesses were necessary, so his testimony, they claimed, was untrue. In Jn 8,24 he therefore tells them,

In the above scriptural passage the Lord reiterates the prophecy "You will die in your sins", both in Jn 8,21 and in Jn 8,24. For the Pharisees to whom he was speaking, this was just further proof that this Jesus of Nazareth could only propagate lies and had no idea of the Mosaic commandments. After all, the Law (the Torah) gave them the sacrificial ceremonies of the sin offering and guilt offering as described above, through which they were able to obtain forgiveness of their sins. And what is more, they had the tamid, the daily repeated offering in the Temple by which God granted them constant forgiveness of those sins which can be forgiven.

Neither the Pharisees at the time, nor the majority of biblical commentators today realized the dreadful seriousness that lies at the back of these few words. And it is right here that we find the key to understanding the actions of God in relation to his people Israel. Just by regarding the surface of this pronouncement, we can see first of all that the Lord of course was not speaking out of ignorance – in fact, it was the Pharisees who had no notion that 40 years later neither the Temple nor the altar would exist, so that it would no longer be possible for the priests to carry out the prescribed offerings in the Temple at the sacrificial altar.

The consequence of this was that all Israelites – from the destruction of the Temple and sacrificial altar right through to the present day (!) – have been without any possibility of having their sins forgiven, and so, just as the Lord prophesied, have died in their sins. And both in accordance with Mosaic and with Christian teaching, all these many people have thus been lost and will spend eternity in damnation.

But when we proceed to consider this passage in greater depth, we can recognize an even more serious implication in the background. Whereas many Israelites in the time of Jesus supposed that in rejecting the Nazarene they were entirely in line with Mosaic law and with the commandments of their God, in fact this was just the path that they had abandoned. The Jewish Sanhedrin, under its high priest Caiaphas, condemned Jesus because he confirmed to them that he was the Son of God:

Then the high priest tore his robes and said, "He has blasphemed! He deserves death!

Mt 26,63 But Jesus kept silent. And the high priest said to Him, "I adjure You by the living God, that You tell us whether You are the Christ (the Messiah), the Son of God." 26,64 Jesus said to him, "You have said it yourself; nevertheless I tell you, hereafter you will see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming on the clouds of heaven." 26,65 Then the high priest tore his robes and said, "He has blasphemed! What further need do we have of witnesses? Behold, you have now heard the blasphemy; 26,66 what do you think?" They answered, "He deserves death!" Mt 26,63-66;

They found him guilty and deserving of death because he said that he was the Son of God. But in order to avoid dirtying their hands, and wanting to ascribe the guilt of the execution to the Romans, the Sanhedrin – the religious leaders of Israel – spread abroad the accusation that Jesus had said he was the king of the Jews (Jn 18:33-35). Under Roman jurisdiction this would amount to the criminal offence of rebellion and insurrection against the authority of the emperor in Rome, for which according to Roman law death on the cross was the penalty (Jn 19:12).

But by denying Jesus as their Messiah, condemning him to death and handing him over to the Romans to be crucified, the Jews had also denied – and lost – their God.

Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father; the one who confesses the Son has the Father also.

1Jn 2,22 Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son. 2,23 Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father; the one who confesses the Son has the Father also. 2,24 As for you, let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the Son and in the Father.1Jn 2,22-24;

Jn 14,6 Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me. Jn 14, 6;

Jn 5,22 "For not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given all judgment to the Son, 5,23 so that all will honor the Son even as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him. Jn 5,22-23;

He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life.

1Jh 5,10 The one who believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself; the one who does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has given concerning His Son. 5,11 And the testimony is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. 5,12 He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life. 1Jn 5,10-12;

Along with other scriptural indications, the above prophecies constitute a further proof that since that point in time Israel has no longer had any connection with its God, and so is – in a double sense of the word – a God-less nation.

Listen, O heavens, and hear, O earth; For the LORD speaks, "Sons I have reared and brought up, But they have revolted against Me. "An ox knows its owner, And a donkey its master’s manger, But Israel does not know, My people do not understand. Alas, sinful nation, People weighed down with iniquity, Offspring of evildoers, Sons who act corruptly! They have abandoned the LORD, They have despised the Holy One of Israel, They have turned away from Him. Where will you be stricken again, As you continue in your rebellion? The whole head is sick And the whole heart is faint. Isa 1, 2- 5;

For two thousand years Israel has been God-less – and still is.

And here we can now see the reason why God had the city of Jerusalem and the Temple destroyed by the Romans. After the killing of his Son on the cross, God abandoned the Temple, the city and the people of Israel. In the following report of the death of Jesus on the cross from Mt 27,45-51 we find two concrete indications of this.

My GOD, My GOD, why have You forsaken Me?" And behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two.

Mt 27,45 Now from the sixth hour darkness fell upon all the land until the ninth hour. 27,46 About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, "ELI, ELI, LAMA SABACHTHANI?" that is, "My GOD, My GOD, why have You forsaken Me?" 27,47 And some of those who were standing there, when they heard it, began saying, "This man is calling for Elijah." 27,48 Immediately one of them ran, and taking a sponge, he filled it with sour wine and put it on a reed, and gave Him a drink. 27,49 But the rest of them said, "Let us see whether Elijah will come to save Him." 27,50 And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit. 27,51 And behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth shook and the rocks were split. Mt 27,45-51;

The last words of the Lord on the cross were "My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?". It was the moment at which the sin of the whole world was laid on the Son of God, and the Holy Spirit of the Father was compelled to leave the Son, because he cannot coexist in a body with unforgiven sin.

On the one hand this was the event to accomplish which the Son of God had come into the world – so as to make the vicarious sacrifice acceptable to God for the sins of all humanity.

On the other hand, however, this dying cry was a prophecy for the Jews, who from now on were precisely in this situation. As their Messiah had prophesied to them "Unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins" (Jn 8,24), they no longer had any possibility of their sins being forgiven, because God had forsaken them.

So when you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide My eyes from you; Yes, even though you multiply prayers, I will not listen.

Isa 1,14 "I hate your new moon festivals and your appointed feasts, They have become a burden to Me; I am weary of bearing them. 1,15 So when you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide My eyes from you; Yes, even though you multiply prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are covered with blood. 1,16 Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; Remove the evil of your deeds from My sight. Cease to do evil. Isa 1,14-16;

And then there is the circumstance that the veil of the Temple, which served to separate the holy place from the holy of holies in which God dwelt (Ex 26:33), was torn in two pieces from top to bottom – a further confirmation of the fact that God had abandoned the Temple and that the people of Israel, who had become the murderers of his Son, were from now on God-less.

And this too had been prophesied to them by the Lord while he was still alive:

Your house is being left to you desolate!, until you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the LORD!’

Mt 23,32 "Fill up, then, the measure of the guilt of your fathers. 23,33 "You serpents, you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence of hell? 23,34 "Therefore, behold, I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes; some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city, 23,35 so that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.

23,36 "Truly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation. 23,37 "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling. 23,38 "Behold, your house is being left to you desolate! 23,39 "For I say to you, from now on you will not see Me until you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the LORD!’ Mt 23,32-39;

Here above, in Mt 23,38, the Lord says to the Israelites: "Behold, your house is being left to you desolate". This is originally a saying of David (Psalm 69,25: «May their camp be desolate; May none dwell in their tents.»), which Peter also quotes in Acts 1,20, in his address on the election of a new twelfth apostle instead of the traitor Judas Iscariot, together with another saying of David, from Ps 109,8: «… Let another take his office.»

It is significant that these two sayings of Daniel apply not only to the traitor Judas Iscariot, but also to the betrayal of the people of Israel against their Messiah. Their house will be left desolate – God has dissolved the covenant with Israel – and their office – the government in the Kingdom of God on earth, the Millennium – will be given to to a people, producing the fruit of it (Mt 21,43).

From the biblical point of view, then, ever since its rejection of the Messiah and the subsequent destruction of the Temple, and so of the sacrificial altar in Jerusalem, the people of Israel have had no possibility – for all the time between the Lord’s death and resurrection, and his Second Coming to enter on his rule in the Millennial Kingdom – of entering into any kind of interaction with its God, either through prayer or through sacrificial offerings. So they have not had any forgiveness of their sins either, unless they convert to Jesus Christ – as a result of which, though, they would then be Christians.

Paul saw this very clearly in the Holy Spirit when he wrote to the Galatians, "But you, brethren, like Isaac, are the children of promise." So the believers in Christ are the children of the free and of the promise, and Israel, they are the children of the bondwoman, the ones bound to the law, they shall not inherit with the children of the free woman.

Gal 4,26 But the Jerusalem above is free; she is our mother. 4,27 For it is written, "rejoice, barren woman who does not bear, break forth and shout, you who are not in labor; for more numerous are the children of the desolate than of the one who has a husband." 4,28 And you brethren, like Isaac, are children of promise. 4,29 But as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so it is now also. 4,30 But what does the Scripture say? "Cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of the bondwoman shall not be an heir with the son of the free woman." 4,31 So then, brethren, we are not children of a bondwoman, but of the free woman. Gal 4,26 – 31;

The teaching of the Messianic Jews.

So a form of evangelization which tells the Jews that "they do not have to leave their heritage and their Jewish faith" and that "they do not need (...) to become Christians" is completely wrong. This kind of "evangelization" will change absolutely nothing for the Jews: they remain God-less, as they have been for all of the past two thousand years, and so have died in their sins without any kind of forgiveness – unless they have experienced a true conversion to Jesus Christ.

And then Mr. Damkani writes about the love of God:

"God loves us. He greatly loves us, with great love, with unfailing love. Our love is very much conditional; our emotions are changing, our attitudes change, our personality changes. He does not change. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. His love is surpassing our tiny little mind that we have. His love is something magnificent, awesome, powerful, true, and everlasting. And He loves us so much, that He created us to His own likeness, to His own image. He wants us be confident about that love, and to trust in that love." (God’s covenants, by J. Damkani, Abraham/09)"

This passage on the love of God is not only very beautifully expressed – one also gets the impression that it is genuine. Quite in contrast with many preachers and evangelists in our German-speaking countries, he does not indulge in superlatives and talk about "the infinite love of God" or "the unconditional love of God" – phrases with which our Christian preachers seem to vie in outdoing one another.

The Bible does tell us that God loves us ‒ otherwise he would not have allowed his Son to be crucified for our sins on the cross. But it doesn’t speak of God’s love being "infinite", or "unconditional" either. Anyone who has even a partial understanding of the semantics of his language will recognize at once that a love of this kind would be subject to no temporal limits, and qualified by no moral conditions ‒ just because it is infinite and unconditional.

But if God’s love were like this, it would entail that God would have to allow all criminals, mass murderers, atheists, tyrants and any other kind of scumbags ‒ right from the beginning of the world until its end (infinite time!!) and without any contrition or conversion on their part (no conditions!!) ‒ to enter into eternal life. This of course is nonsense, but as many preachers promulgate this doctrine on every possible occasion, people finally come to believe it ‒ failing to realize that with this kind of infinite and unconditional love, God would have to forgive all human beings their sins without any kind of counter-performance on their part, and so no sacrifice would be required any longer, and Jesus Christ would not have had to die on the cross.

If this sacrifice of Jesus Christ actually was necessary, this is proof that God, first and foremost, is a God of righteousness and that his righteousness called for a sacrifice to atone for all our sins. This sacrifice could actually have been required of each and every one of us, but God, in his love toward humanity, sent his Son ‒ the only person who could pay for all our sins through his death on the cross

Anyone who fails to accept this redeeming sacrifice for his sins in faith will not be able to appeal to the so-called unconditional love of God – let alone "the identity of the Jewish people" – but will be judged in accordance with the justice of God and will not see God’s kingdom.

And here we can see the pernicious influence and serious danger of these thoughtless speech bubbles issuing from the mouths of "evangelists" who do not want to bring people to God but are more concerned to heap glory and credit on themselves. But while we must certainly be aware of this love of God, it is at least as important that we should subject our own love of God to repeated scrutiny.

As Mr. Damkani also writes, perfectly correctly:

"It was the holiness of God who could not tolerate sin, which pushed Adam and Eve from his presence. In other words, God must bring sin to judgment." (God’s covenants, by J. Damkani, Abraham/06)

Yes indeed, it was the holiness and absolute justice of God that could not tolerate sin – the disregard of the commandments of God (Ex 20:3-17; Mt 5:21-48). And not just in connection with Adam and Eve, but in relation to the sin of all human beings who have ever lived and ever will live. Only a person who accepts this vicarious sacrifice of the Son of God on the cross in faith can appease the justice of God and will be saved.

The biblical Trinity and some other specifics of the biblical Christian faith.

The Old Covenant.

Jacob Damkani then goes on to talk about the covenant of God with Abraham and Israel, and raises the question who broke this covenant.

"Who then is breaking that covenant? We see Gen. 17:14, which says: "Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant." So who is breaking the covenant? Only an eight-day old baby – or actually his father, who is not circumcising him. Only a person who is not circumcised is not in the covenant. As long as you are circumcised as an eight-day old baby, who does not understand anything, you are in the covenant. It has nothing to do with the law, nothing to do with any commandments, nothing to do with any rituals and traditions, nothing to do with the teaching of any rabbi, nothing to do with anything expect from God. Can you take a look at that? And praise God for His unconditional love and covenant! It has nothing to do with you, but has everything to do with Him. He has never forsaken or left His nation. They are still His people and they will ever be His people. This has nothing to do with them." (God’s covenants, by J. Damkani, Abraham/26)

"They are still His people even if they are away from Him, turning their back on Him, spitting on Him." (God’s covenants, by J. Damkani, Abraham/30)

With reference to circumcision, Paul has left us a very clear statement on this point:

Behold I, Paul, say to you that if you receive circumcision, Christ will be of no benefit to you.

Gal 5,1 It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery. 5,2 Behold I, Paul, say to you that if you receive circumcision, Christ will be of no benefit to you. 5,3 And I testify again to every man who receives circumcision, that he is under obligation to keep the whole Law. 5,4 You have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace. 5,5 For we through the Spirit, by faith, are waiting for the hope of righteousness. 5,6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything, but faith working through love. Gal 5, 1- 6;

As Paul here also says, in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any effect – the only thing that counts is faith working through love. And anyone who thinks and teaches that this circumcision makes him part of any kind of covenant, so that he is justified by God for that reason, is severed from Christ and has fallen from grace, and is leading astray those who accept his doctrine. And precisely this is the answer to the question which the Jews – according to Mr. Damkani – ask themselves in their innermost being: "Why do we go through all the things we go through? Why are there all these problems?"

The Jews broke their covenant two thousand years ago, and God dissolved it. The destruction of the Temple, the sacrificial altar, the annihilation of Jerusalem and the expulsion of all the Jews from their country into the Diaspora was the punishment of God for this atrocious deed. Since that time, the Old Covenant with Israel has no longer existed. But there is a New Covenant for all human beings, established with the blood which the Son of God shed on the cross for us (Lk 22:19-20). And only someone who accepts this New Covenant – for the last two thousand years, and until the end of the world – is redeemed from his sins and saved and will enter the eternity of God.

Unfortunately Damkani now does go on after all to talk about God’s "unconditional love and unconditional covenant". As we already explained earlier, the love of God is so great that he allowed his own Son to die on the cross for the sins of the entire world. But God’s love is not unconditional, otherwise there would have been no need of this same vicarious sacrifice of the Son. God would have been able, in his "unconditional" love, to forgive all human beings all their sins (without any kind of condition), and our Lord Jesus Christ would not have had to die.

So here again we are faced with an unreflecting statement, and that applies likewise to the "unconditional covenant", as Damkani sees it in the above passage – which he then however immediately himself contradicts, in demonstrating that there was a condition associated with this covenant, namely the condition that Jewish children should be circumcised when they were eight days old.

As we can see here very clearly, the arguments of the author are altogether biblical – but unfortunately, most of them are based on the Old Testament and the Old Covenant. Through their rejection of the Messiah, our Lord Jesus Christ, however, the Jews – notwithstanding circumcision – have broken their covenant with God, because by killing the Son of God they broke the supreme commandment of any kind of covenant with God:

You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
(Deut 6,5)

Anyone who reads the New Testament will recognize this reality in hundreds of statements. Here is a short summary:

Finally the author tries to resort to the specious argument often advanced by the Jews in order to wash Israel clean of its guilt in having had the Son of God put to death. He writes:

"To my sorrow most of the church, primarily the catholic church hold Israel responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus, with a lot of persecution against Israel, not understanding that if Israel did not take the Lord to the cross, where would you be today! There would be no salvation, no redemption, no forgiveness, no reconciliation of man back to God apart from Yeshua going to the cross. No one can blame Israel because the Romans are not less guilty and the gospel makes it really clear to us that both the Jews and the Gentiles are guilty. But Christianity holds Israel responsible and this nation has been persecuted again and again by the Church in the name of Jesus. But this is the Lord doing and it is marvelous in our eyes." (God’s covenants, by J. Damkani, The day/10)

This is rather similar to a situation where someone kills the father of his friend, and then counters the son’s reproaches with the argument that if he had not done away with his father, the son would not be as rich as he now is, because he would not have inherited anything.

If we study the New Testament attentively, it is altogether obvious that at the start of his public mission Jesus was given the task by God of just approaching the lost sheep of the house of Israel:

Do not go in the way of the Gentiles, but rather go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

Mt 10,5 These twelve Jesus sent out after instructing them: "Do not go in the way of the Gentiles, and do not enter any city of the Samaritans; 10,6 but rather go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." Mt 10, 5- 6;

This is also confirmed through the encounter of the Lord with the Canaanite woman, the text of which – just like the sermon of Peter in Acts 3:26 – leaves no doubt at all about this fact:

But He answered and said, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."

Mt 15,21 Jesus went away from there, and withdrew into the district of Tyre and Sidon. 15,22 And a Canaanite woman from that region came out and began to cry out, saying, "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is cruelly demon-possessed." 15,23 But He did not answer her a word. And His disciples came and implored Him, saying, "Send her away, because she keeps shouting at us." 15,24 But He answered and said, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." 15,25 But she came and began to bow down before Him, saying, "Lord, help me!" 15,26 And He answered and said, "It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs." 15,27 But she said, "Yes, Lord; but even the dogs feed on the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table." 15,28 Then Jesus said to her, "O woman, your faith is great; it shall be done for you as you wish." And her daughter was healed at once. Mt 15,21-28;

The kingdom.

But it then became clear that Satan had more adherents than God in Israel (Mt 12:34; 23:32), and when the Jews rejected the Son of God and accused him of being Beelzebul (the ruler of the demons, Mt 12:24), the Father changed his instructions. From that time on and till today, what applies is the commission to preach the gospel "to the remotest part of the earth" (Acts 1:6-8).

Truly I say to you that the tax collectors and prostitutes will get into the kingdom of God before you.

Mt 21,28 "But what do you think? A man had two sons, and he came to the first and said, ‘Son, go work today in the vineyard.’ 29 "And he answered, ‘I will not’ but afterward he regretted it and went. 30 "The man came to the second and said the same thing; and he answered, ‘I will, sir’ but he did notgo. 31 "Which of the two did the will of his father?" They said, "The first." Jesus said to them, "Truly I say to you that the tax collectors and prostitutes will get into the kingdom of God before you. Mt 21,28-31;

So it is not as if God can be held responsible for the rejection and murder of his Son by Israel, because he wanted to save the world in this way – a view favored in Jewish circles. Salvation was first of all offered to Israel, but as so often in its history, Israel refused to accept God’s guidance.

And the statement by Mrs. Damkani in her commentary quoted above: "(…) since God called us to do just that: preach the Gospel to the Jew first" simply contradicts the statements of the Bible. As Paul confirms here below, the Gospel already had been preached first to the Jews two thousand years ago, but they refused it and they refuse it until this day.

Acts 13,46 Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly and said, "It was necessary that the word of God be spoken to you first; since you repudiate it and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we are turning to the Gentiles. Acts 13,46;

But even if the Jews had accepted their Messiah at that time, the non-Jewish world would have been saved as well. For in a passage that Mr. Damkani himself cites, God promised:

Gen 12,1 Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go forth from your country, And from your relatives And from your father’s house, To the land which I will show you; 12,2 And I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great; And so you shall be a blessing; 12,3 And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed." Gen 12, 1- 3;

God here promises to Abraham that in his name all the families of the earth will be blessed, and so should be saved. We may take this occasion of remarking that the promise in Gen 12,3, which the Jews and the "Friends of Israel" like to see as referring to the Israel of today, did not apply to Israel at all, but rather to Abraham, the spiritual founding father of all correctly believing human beings (Rom 9:8).

So in all cases the entire world would have been given the chance of conversion and salvation. Only when Israel refused the Messiah and sent him to death on the cross did God reject Israel, dissolve the covenant and make this hideous deed into a blessing for the whole world, after which "the tax collectors and prostitutes will get into the kingdom of God before you" [sc. the Jews].

But we find a complete lack of understanding of the New Testament in Damkani, when he comes to speak of the question of this kingdom of God:

"Time in the sight of god is an important element. In the fullness of time He comes again. This time it is not about another Moses or another Isaiah; this time the Messiah Himself comes and offers them the Kingdom. From the beginning of His ministry until the end of it, Yeshua speaks about the Kingdom. The parables have to do with the Kingdom and His teaching has to do with the Kingdom. From the beginning till the end He offers Israel is the Kingdom of God on earth. And as you well know, once again, they refuse Him. They refuse God, who brought them out of Egypt and they ask for a king; they refuse Him when Messiah comes and offers them the Kingdom. But did God give up on His people? Did He tell them He would replace them with Gentiles, with a bunch of Christians? Did He do that? No, God forbid! If that had happened, maybe one day He would have come to these Christians to tell them they were not good enough and would have passed on to Muslims instead." (God’s covenants, by J. Damkani, New Covenant/22)

When our Lord Jesus Christ comes again, he will not offer Israel the kingdom, but will kill the false Messiah, the Jewish Antichrist, who will then be sitting in the recently rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem and pretending to be God (2The 2:34, 7-12). And then he will raise his people – that is, his people who have borne fruit ("a bunch of Christians") from the dead, and rapture them together with the Christian faithful who are still alive (1The 4:16-17).

But the Israelites lost the kingdom of God once and for all, when they rejected the Son of God. This was indeed confirmed for them by the true Messiah while he was alive.

The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people, producing the fruit of it.

Mt 21,33 "Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard and put a wall around it and dug a wine press in it, and built a tower, and rented it out to vine-growers and went on a journey. 21,34 When the harvest time approached, he sent his slaves to the vine-growers to receive his produce. 21,35 The vine-growers took his slaves and beat one, and killed another, and stoned a third. 21,36 Again he sent another group of slaves larger than the first; and they did the same thing to them.

21,37 But afterward he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ 21,38 But when the vine-growers saw the son, they said among themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and seize his inheritance.’ 21,39 They took him, and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.

21,40 Therefore when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those vine-growers?" 21,41 They said to Him, "He will bring those wretches to a wretched end, and will rent out the vineyard to other vine-growers who will pay him the proceeds at the proper seasons." 21,42 Jesus said to them, "Did you never read in the Scriptures, ‘The stone which the builders rejected, this became the chief corner stone; Those came about from the Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes’?

21,43 Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people, producing the fruit of it. 21,44 And he who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust."

21,45 When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard His parables, they understood that He was speaking about them. 21,46 When they sought to seize Him, they feared the people, because they considered Him to be a prophet. Mt 21,33-46;

But the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Mt 8,11 ."I say to you that many will come from east and west, and recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven; 8,12 but the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Mt 8,11-12;

The remnant.

Israel is no longer the people of God. God’s people are those people who bear fruit – for all of the last two thousand years. But as Paul writes in Rom 11,5, a remnant has come into being in Israel as a result of God’s gracious choice:

In the same way then, there has also come to be at the present time a remnant according to God’s gracious choice

Rom 11,4 But what is the divine response to him? "I have kept for Myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal." (1Ki 19,18) 11,5 In the same way then, there has also come to be at the present time a remnant according to God’s gracious choice. 11,6 But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace. 11,7 What then? What Israel is seeking, it has not obtained, but those who were chosen obtained it, and the rest were hardened; 11,8 just as it is written, "God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes to see not and ears to hear nit, down to this very day." 11,9 And David says, "Let their table become a snare and a trap, and a stumbling block and a retribution to them. 11,10 "Let their eyes be darkened to see not, and bend their backs forever." Rom 11, 4-10;

1Ki 19,18 "Yet I will leave 7,000 in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal and every mouth that has not kissed him." 1Ki 19,18;

What Israel was seeking – the kingdom of God – it has not obtained. It has been taken away from them. But they have nonetheless achieved election. Just a few of them, that is, who have carried this seed in themselves for generations which will only be born when the Messiah comes again, to enter on his dominion in the Millennium. They are the ones to whom all the promises to Israel apply (e.g. Isaiah chapters 41 and 42, Jeremiah 23,3-8 and chapter 31) – those promises which the Zionists in Israel so shamelessly lay claim to, even though they do not fulfill a single one of the associated conditions.

However, it would probably be wrong to assume that these Jews are to be found in the state of Israel of today. Since this election of God to which Paul refers in Rom 11,5 above must, after all, be detectable in these people in one way or another, the bearers of this divine promise, in my view, are those Jews who are the only ones who refused to immigrate to the newly established state of Israel in 1948 – the "Baal" of the present day.

It is the Orthodox Jews true to their faith all over the world who have remained in the Diaspora, because they know from their scriptures that a return to their country in keeping with the will of God will only be possible when the Messiah comes, as the following statement by Moishe Arie Friedmann, Chief Rabbi of the Orthodox Jews true to their faith in Vienna confirms:

(Texts in a black frame are quotations from visitors to this site or from other authors.)

(Statement by Moishe Arye Friedmann, Chief Rabbi of the Orthodox Jewish congregation, Vienna 13. 7. 2002)

"With the Holocaust as a justification, the state of Israel was founded by the use of force, which contradicts the will of God (Hos 1:7). As Jews true to our faith we accept the fate of the Diaspora which God has laid upon us. But the founding of the state of Israel has not just damaged the Jews on this religious plane; the means and the methods used by Israel to secure its existence against the Palestinians damage all Jews world-wide, and encourage the rebirth of anti-Semitism. For Jews true to their faith it is clear, however, that the Diaspora is the fate laid upon us by God until the coming of the Messiah."

"Authentic RABBIS Always Opposed Zionism And The State of Israel"

Austria Presse Agentur ‒ APA [Austrian Press Agency] 13. 7. 2002

Their descendants are the "bride" (Isa 62:5) who will be betrothed to the Almighty in righteousness and justice, in lovingkindness and compassion (Hos 2:18-22). The rest of the people, however – from that time to today, and right into the Millennium, if they have not converted to Jesus Christ – remains unconverted, has no forgiveness of its sins (Jn 8:24) and so goes to damnation. And this is also confirmed by Paul, shortly before his above statements in his letter to the Romans, when he quotes Isaiah (Isa 10:22):

Through the number of the sons of Israel be like sand of the sea, it is the remnant that will be saved.

Rom 9,227 Isaiah cries out concerning Israel, "Through the number of the sons of Israel be like sand of the sea, it is the remnant that will be saved; 28 for the Lord will execute His word on the earth, thoroughly and quickly." 29 And just as Isaiah foretold, "unless the Lord of Sabaoth had left to us a posterity, we would have become like Sodom, and would have resembled Gomorrah." Rom 9,27-29;

So it is this progeny whom God in his omniscience has known in advance at the time of Paul (Rom 8:29), elected (for inclusion in the Book of Life) and reserved for himself (Rom 11,4-5), and these are the ones Paul is referring to when he writes in Rom 11,1, "I say then, God has not rejected His people, has He? May it never be!" But this progeny will only be born in the distant future, when the Last Days are past and the Millennial Kingdom of peace of our Lord Jesus Christ dawns.

Rom 9,1 I am telling the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience testifies with me in the Holy Spirit, 9,2 that I have great sorrow and unceasing grief in my heart. 9.3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed, separated from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh, 9,4 who are Israelites, to whom belongs the adoption as sons, and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the Law and the temple service and the promises, 9,5 whose are the fathers, and from whom is the Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.

9.6 But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel; 9,7nor are they all children because they are Abraham’s descendants, but: "through Isaac you rdescendants will be named" 9,8 That is, it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are regarded as descendants. Rom 9, 1- 8;

Behold, I will cause those of the synagogue of Satan, who say that they are Jews and are not.

Rev 3,9 ‘Behold, I will cause those of the synagogue of Satan, who say that they are Jews and are not, but lie – I will make them come and bow down at your feet, and make them know that I have loved you. Rev 3, 9;

The new covenant.

But seeing that in the New Covenant God desires that all human beings – including the Jews – shall come to knowledge of the truth (1Tim 2:3-4), in other words to knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ (Jn 14:6-7), and so be saved, in his grace he has also offered the stubborn Israelites the opportunity of having their personal sins forgiven through the vicarious sacrifice of the Son of God.

The forgiveness which the priests of Israel, until two thousand years ago, were able to obtain from God at the sacrificial altar of the Temple through the twice daily offering of a lamb for the sins of the entire people (the tamid), has now been brought before God under the New Covenant through the once-and-for-all sacrifice of the "Lamb of God", the Lord Jesus Christ, on the cross for the sins of the world and accepted by God for all those people, including the Jews, who avail themselves of this redeeming sacrifice in faith.

So it is important for the Jews to recognize that God acts quite differently from the way they act themselves. With God there is no "clan liability" such as one often hears about in today’s Israel with reference to the Germans of the present time. By contrast with the Jews, who "cannot forgive", God has long since forgiven everything. It is not God who prevents them from coming back to him – it is the present-day people of Israel, who do not want to admit the guilt of their fathers, and to distance themselves from it, and so of their own accord persist in refusing the grace of their God.

Even if in ancient days there was a proverb in Israel – "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge" – God does not attribute the guilt of the fathers to their descendants. What holds good here is the word of Jeremiah, who saw this time coming and told the Jews that they would break the covenant of God, but this guilt would not be imputed to their sons.

Jer 31,29 "In those days they will not say again, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, And the children’s teeth are set on edge.’ 31,30 "But everyone will die for his own iniquity; each man who eats the sour grapes, his teeth will be set on edge. 31,31 "Behold, days are coming," declares the LORD,

"when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah,

31,32 not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them," declares the LORD. 31,33 "But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days," declares the LORD, "I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. Jer 31,29-33;

Israel broke the old covenant in sending the Son of God to the cross. But this guilt of the fathers is not attributed by God to their descendants. Through the blood of the Son of God (the Lamb of God) on the cross, God has made a New Covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah (Hebr 9:11-15).

And just as the covenant that God made with their fathers when he brought them out of the land of Egypt was sealed with the blood of the sacrificial lamb –

Ex 12,12 ‘For I will go through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments – I am the LORD. 12,13 ‘The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live; and when I see the blood I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. Ex 12,12-13;

– so too the New Covenant was sealed in the blood of the Lamb of God, our Lord Jesus Christ:

This cup which is poured out for you [the apostles were Jews} is the new covenant in My blood.

Lk 22,19 And when He had taken some bread and given thanks, He broke it and gave it to them, saying, "This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me." 22,20 And in the same way He took the cup after they had eaten, saying, "This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood. Lk 22,19-20

And just as in Egypt the blood of the lamb at the gates of the houses saved the occupants from the death angel of God’s wrath, which killed all the firstborn in Egypt, so the blood of the Son of God saves us from the wrath of God, which demands our death because of our sins.

For this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins.

Mt 26,27 And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you; 26,28 for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins. Mt 26,27-28;

This is not like the old covenant which God made with their fathers and which they then broke – this is a new covenant, with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, but also with all humans in whose inmost being God has implanted his law and written it on their hearts (1Tim 2:3-6; Rom 5:18).

May God grant that as many Jews as possible may finally come to understand this! Amen.

Epilogue

The last section of his letter of Jacob Damkani’s instruction has the title "Yeshua – the Salvation". Based on his argument that Jesus in Israel should not be called "Yeshu", because this is a curse in Israel ("may his name and his memory be wiped out"), but rather "Yeshua", which actually was the correct name of the Lord and means "redemption", Mr. Damkani again explains why people in Israel cannot believe in Jesus Christ.

Following a retrospective view of history, involving the crusades, the inquisition and the sufferings of the Jews in the pogroms of the early Middle Ages, he quotes Deut 13,1-11 and the commands of Moses with reference to the false prophet, and explains that the Jews are just incapable of seeing Jesus of Nazareth as anything but a seducer and a betrayer of God:

"When people read this passage, particularly the religious people, do think that – although Yeshua did signs and wonders, did all the marvelous works – all they can think is that He has come to take us away from the God of Israel to other gods. That He has come to bring us the stones, woods and statues of clay, medals and glasses that you see in the churches. All they can think about is that Yeshua has come to mislead the people of Israel to worship other gods. When looks at the church today, especially the Catholic Church, coming and bowing down before the cross, doing crucifixion above their heart, coming and bowing down before the statues. Israel literally thinks that this is worshipping of idols and statues might by hands. When they read this passage, they think that this is what Yeshua has done. Yeshua has come to take us away from the God of Israel who took us out from Egypt and He has brought us other gods, which are made by hands; statues, crosses of wood. And do you understand the punishment that the Law is taking about here? You take such a person and you stone him to death. Literally, that is what they think. They think we are coming and presenting Yeshua who is betrayer of the God of Israel, who is bringing other gods in the midst of Israel and should be killed. Thanks to God, we are living in the democratic nation and they cannot do it nowadays.

There might be days when they might really do it; this country is moving fast toward where Teheran and Iran are. The religious parties are gaining more power and room in the Parliament of Israel. They get more seats in every election and have a powerful leverage on the Government of Israel. This is all due to the hunger and thirst, which exist in heart of this nation. Where do people go? They go to the religion. There are a lot of religious seminars taking place and many secular people take part in them. They are moved by preaching of those rabbis into absolute fear to repent better to the Law of Moses. It is getting harder and harder in the streets. Some people can get very violent. The religious people have at least seven radio stations and they keep talking about us in the radio stations. My name is being declared over the waves of the radio. They have such a system that when we are sharing on the beach or in the market place it only takes one religious guy to take a look at us, to make a telephone call to the radio station and they will announce it to people. It is the matter of minutes before around 20-30 religious people come from every direction to attack you. Can you imagine what a network they have built in this country? But the Lord is ahead of all this." (God’s covenants, by J. Damkani, Jeschua Salvation/04)

As unfortunately common practice, here too the Catholic Church (as "the Church") is simply equated with Christendom, and as a result true Christianity – and especially our Lord Jesus Christ himself – is burdened with all the crimes and falsifications of faith which the Catholic Church has been guilty in the course of its history.

Those familiar with the history of this same Catholic Church are not going to be too surprised. For example, in the Austrian daily newspaper Kurier: Vatikan: Die guten und die bösen Päpste ["Vatican: the good and the bad popes"], we read:

"They covered the complete range of human possibility, the approximately 265 popes in the Catholic Church: one finds among them schemers, despots, criminals, murderers and sex-obsessed monsters. But of course there are also benevolent, exemplary servants of God and saints in the truest sense of the word. Yes, there have been all of these in 2,000 years of church history."

And these Catholic criminals are to blame for the world not taking God seriously. Who would take seriously a God whose alleged "representatives" on earth are "schemers, despots, criminals, murderers and sex-obsessed monsters", who may then even also be "canonized"?

With reference to the miracles that Jesus worked in Israel, the Lord himself showed them that it was not "faithfulness to the law" which prevented the Jews from believing in him, but purely and simply their recalcitrance and their evil hearts.

If the miracles had occurred in Tyre and Sidon which occurred in you, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.

Mt 11,21 "Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles had occurred in Tyre and Sidon which occurred in you, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.
11,22 "Nevertheless I say to you, it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you. Mt 11,21-22;

"You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father."

Jn 8,For if the miracles had occurred in Tyre and Sidon which occurred in you, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. 8,43 "Why do you not understand what I am saying? It is because you cannot hear My word. 8,44 "You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. 8,45 "But because I speak the truth, you do not believe Me. 8,46 "Which one of you convicts Me of sin? If I speak truth, why do you not believe Me? 8,47 "He who is of God hears the words of God; for this reason you do not hear them, because you are not of God." Jn 8,43-47

The argument that the Jews cannot believe in Jesus because of the commandments of Moses actually overlooks many prophecies in the prophetic books (e.g. Isaiah chapters 11 and 53, Jeremiah chapters 23,5-8 and 31, Micah chapter 5 and Dan 7,13-14), as well as some prophecies to be found in the Tora (the Pentateuch – the five Books of Moses), which should quickly be sufficient, at least for today’s Jews, to banish any remaining uncertainties. For example, the prophecy of the sacrificial death of the Messiah, which the Jews have been able to read in their Law since millennia.

In the fourth book of Moses (Numbers) we have the report about the revolt of the people of Israel when they were on Mount Hor, and had no bread and no water. And they again complained to Moses and Aaron: "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?" Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died.

When the people recognized their sin, Moses prayed to the Lord. And God told him to make a serpent of bronze and nail it to a standard and set it up in the middle of the camp.

Num 21,4 Then they set out from Mount Hor by the way of the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; and the people became impatient because of the journey. 21,5 The people spoke against God and Moses, "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this miserable food." 21,6 The LORD sent fiery serpents among the people and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. 21,7 So the people came to Moses and said, "We have sinned, because we have spoken against the LORD and you; intercede with the LORD, that He may remove the serpents from us." And Moses interceded for the people. 21,8 Then the LORD said to Moses, "Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a standard; and it shall come about, that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, he will live." 21,9 And Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on the standard; and it came about, that if a serpent bit any man, when he looked to the bronze serpent, he lived. Num 21, 4- 9;

This was the very first prophecy of the atoning death of the Son of God on the cross. – And it is there in the Jewish Tora!! Just as at that time the bronze serpent was lifted up, and those Israelites who looked at it had their sins forgiven and were saved from certain death, so too was the Son of Man lifted up on the cross. And anyone who believes in this vicarious sacrifice will have his or her sins forgiven, and will be saved and will have eternal life. And this too has been confirmed by the Lord’s own words:

As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up.

Jn 3,14 "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; 3,15 so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life. 3,16 "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. 3,17 "For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. 3,18 "He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. Jn 3,14-18;

So what Moses writes in his fourth book as a prophecy of the Son of God (Num 21,4-9) is something the Jews couldn’t care less about – but what he told them in the way of commandments (Deut 13,1-11) they scrupulously adhere to. But this makes it evident to any impartial observer that only those texts from the Tora are being quoted which are designed to justify the rejection of this Jesus of Nazareth.

But even in this fifth book of Moses, which the Israelis purport to take so seriously, Moses makes a prophecy which permits us to see Israel – above all the Israel of today – in a quite special light.

And evil will befall you in the latter days, for you will do that which is evil in the sight of the LORD,

Deut 31,28 "Assemble to me all the elders of your tribes and your officers, that I may speak these words in their hearing and call the heavens and the earth to witness against them. 31,29 "For I know that after my death you will act corruptly and turn from the way which I have commanded you; and evil will befall you in the latter days, for you will do that which is evil in the sight of the LORD, provoking Him to anger with the work of your hands." Deut 31,28-29;

Very likely this last will and testament of Moses cannot be fitted into the picture that Israel wants to have of itself today and would like to put across to the world. So they will find yet more reasons why this text is irrelevant to Israel.

What people in Israel – as Damkani acknowledges – have still not understood and do not want to understand is the fact that in the New Testament what meets us is a New Covenant. Anyone who claims that he cannot believe in this because he feels bound by the ancient covenant of Moses, would also have to reject this same covenant of Sinai – on the obvious grounds that the covenant of Abraham preceded it, so he ought to feel bound by the earlier one.

When the covenant with Moses was introduced, how was that people did not insist on the covenant with Abraham? How was it that people did not argue at the time that the Sinai covenant of Moses would result in apostasy from the God of Abraham and Israel? But this was something Israel didn’t have any problem with. So was Abraham less important than Moses? Hardly. Then why did people accept the covenant of Moses? Because it’s there in the Bible? But the New Covenant of the Son of God is also there in the Bible!

And here we can see the root of the problem, which has remained the same for the last two thousand years: people are just unwilling to accept this Jesus of Nazareth as the Son of God, the bearer of a new Covenant of God for all human beings. Abraham one could accept, and Moses, but who was Jesus?

With this New Covenant for all human beings, of course, Israel would lose its unique position. It would no longer be possible to look down on the rest of the human race, as for instance Yitzhak Shamir, Prime Minister of Israel from 1983 to 1984 and again from 1986 to 1992, made extremely plain an interview with Newsweek on 11 April 1988:

"And looking down from the height of this mountain, and from the point of view of our thousands of years of history, we say to you: Compared with us, you are like grasshoppers."

That is the true mentality of the people of Israel. That is the hubris which led them, two thousand years ago, actually to reject the Son whom God had confirmed as his (Mt 3:16-17; 17:5) and have him put to death by the Romans.

But whether Israel will accept it now or not – as a people, they have lost the benefit of God’s election. Since the veil of the temple was torn from the top to the bottom (Mt 27:50-51), God has abandoned not only the temple but also this people. A small remnant certainly has been elected, but this seed will only be born when the Messiah – the true Messiah – returns after the Great Tribulation and the persecution of Christians, to enter on his dominion in the Millennial Kingdom of Peace.

But before that the false Jewish Messiah still has to come. He will treat Jesus Christ, the Son of God, just as contemptibly as today’s Israelis do. He will claim that Jesus was not the Son of God but an impostor and blasphemer (1Jn 2:22) and that he himself is the "genuine" Messiah. He will rebuild the Temple, bigger and more beautiful than ever before, and take his seat in it and state that he is "God".

I have come in My Father’s name, and you do not receive Me; if another comes in his own name, you will receive him.

Jn 5,39 "You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; 5,40 and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life. 5,41 "I do not receive glory from men; 5,42 but I know you, that you do not have the love of God in yourselves. 5,43 "I have come in My Father’s name, and you do not receive Me; if another comes in his own name, you will receive him. Jn 5,39-43;

Our Lord here compares this "other" with himself. The Son of God came as the Messiah, so the other, this son of Satan, will also come as the Messiah – as the false Messiah. And like the real Messiah, he will also be a real Jew – neither blond nor blue-eyed.

"But we believe in unchangeable God. His word to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is an everlasting word. Israel missed the mark in the first round. And again, in the second round, when Messiah Himself came, they missed the mark. But the prophets are very clear: He will come back again. And when He will come again, in the third round, every knee shall bow and every tongue confess. They will recognize Him. They will recognize Him to be of their own flesh and blood, not a blond, blue-eyed Yeshua. They will come to understand who He really is, just like the brothers of Joseph. Do you remember the brothers of Joseph? They first wanted to kill him, then they ended up selling him as a slave to Egypt; they were in hunger and in thirst, and came to buy some bread. They came to ask for bread from Joseph. When they looked at him all they could think of was that he was an Egyptian, a Gentile. Just like the Jews look at Yeshua, and all they can think about is blond, blue-eyed Jesus, Gentile, European, something the western world has developed." (God’s covenants, by J. Damkani, New Covenant/23)

And he will finally bring Israel what they have so long been anticipating: the "kingdom", the antichristian world government in imitation of the Kingdom of Peace of the Son of God – in the same way as the foundation of the nation of Israel in 1948 was an imitation of the prophecies referring to the gathering of Israel by God.

"Because it has to do with his name, with his purposes, with his plan to bring the final redemption and salvation: kingdom on earth that has to do with this nation he chose for himself." (God’s covenants, by J. Damkani, New Covenant/05)

"Time in the sight of god is an important element. In the fullness of time He comes again. This time it is not about another Moses or another Isaiah; this time the Messiah Himself comes and offers them the Kingdom. From the beginning of His ministry until the end of it, Yeshua speaks about the Kingdom. The parables have to do with the Kingdom and His teaching has to do with the Kingdom. From the beginning till the end He offers Israel is the Kingdom of God on earth." (God’s covenants, by J. Damkani, New Covenant/22)

Since all this fits in perfectly with what the Israelis want to believe – as also, incidentally, do the "Friends of Israel" in many evangelical congregations – the Antichrist will be received with joy and jubilation. In all areas he rules he will introduce the Mosaic religion, in its antichristian interpretation, as the state religion (Mt 10:17; 23:34), possibly he will ban the New Testament, and the few real Christians who are left will be persecuted, scourged in the synagogues and thrown into prison.

The blasphemy by those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan.

Rev 2,9 ‘I know your tribulation and your poverty (but you are rich), and the blasphemy by those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. Rev 2, 9;

This or something like it is what is going to happen, when we look closely at what is stated in the New Testament. It’s just a pity that Jews hardly ever read the New Testament. Otherwise they might realize the truth of all this, and perhaps come to modify their point of view.

Christian Evangelization in Israel.

In many Christian congregations in Germany the "Israel movement" ‒ Evangelical Christian Zionism, that is ‒ has acquired a footing. This is an organization dedicated to the goal of effecting a so-called "aliyah" (the Hebrew word for repatriation), with the help and financial support of members of the congregation, so as to bring Jews from Russia and other nations to Israel. Here they are joining in a project founded by the American Steve Lightle (of Seattle, Washington), who announced that he had received a vision from the Lord in 1974 about the return of the Jews from the USSR. As biblical proofs, the preachers of this aliyah refer the brethren to prophecies in the Old Testament where it is stated that the Jews will be brought to Jerusalem by the Gentiles. If we take a closer look at these quotations, however, we can quickly see that all these prophecies refer not to our own times but to the Millennial Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ in the still distant future.

Ms. Hannelore Weitzel (International Network of Reconciliation, Regd. Assn.) was involved with this movement for many years. Like other brethren and sisters in the congregation, she believed in these preachers and was firmly convinced that what they said was the will of God. Until one day certain inconsistencies in their interpretation of the Word of God came to her attention, and she took the trouble to consult these prophecies in the Bible herself. And as she writes in her own words:

"We also thought at the time that Jews should be brought to Israel. We "believed" in the "vision" of Steve Lightle! We thought we were only permitted to "conduct a dialog" with the Jews – that was what people told us. But then all at once GOD spoke! What we did not know at that time, in the years from 1997 to 2001, was that Operation Exodus, and many others (Organizations of the "Israel movement") had been obliged to sign a contractual agreement with the state of Israel, or with the Jewish Agency, involving the promise NOT to say anything about JESUS CHRIST!

So they were only able to do this work, and are able to continue it today, because they have been obliged to leave the SON OF GOD out of the picture. With this "contractual alliance", an accommodation with the state of Israel which involves meeting its demands, you and they have clearly invalidated the great commission given to the congregation by JESUS CHRIST himself (see Matth. 28, 18-20).

So these Christian organizations are only allowed to finance and carry out the "repatriation" (aliyah) of the Jews from Russia and other countries if they give a contractual undertaking to the Israel immigration authority (the Jewish Agency) that they will not evangelize in Israel. What this amounts to is that Christian evangelization in the state of Israel is forbidden.

Jacob Damkani gives seminars and lectures at his hotel Hotel Gilgal in Tel Aviv, which are attended by believing Christians from evangelical congregations in Germany and other European countries. In the course of these, he tells them to evangelize on the streets of Israel’s cities, and teaches them – with a great deal of enthusiastic eloquence – to see the anticipated attacks of the Israelis (abuse, curses, spitting and in some cases brute violence on the part of religious fanatics) as a "taking up of the cross" and as "pure joy".

"We are not to be shaken about anything going on in the streets: screaming at you, shouting at you, cursing you, spitting at you, whatever. Count it all joy; consider yourselves as ambassadors of God, as the royal priesthood. Consider the privileges as well as the duties God has given you." (God’s covenants, by J. Damkani, The Day/23)

This is a perfectly accurate representation of reality – as shown by the report of a German group which visited Mea Shearim, a district of Jerusalem:

"It was all quite wonderful to begin with. We had time for ourselves, the whole group got out of the bus in Mea Shearim and we went for a walk around this Orthodox quarter of Jerusalem. After a short time a car stopped by us, and the driver beckoned me over. He asked me the meaning of the words written on our T-shirts. It was a text from the Book of Ruth (1,16), "Your people shall be my people, and your God my God". As it was written in Hebrew, I replied that he must be able to read it himself. He agreed in a friendly way, but said he just wanted to know whether I knew what it meant. I assured him that I was aware of what was written there, and that I loved Israel, God’s chosen people, with all my heart. I explained to him what we understand by this verse. He was very pleased, said goodbye to us in a very friendly way and drove on.

Then we went on for a good hour through the quarter and just looked around, prayed and blessed the people we came across. We hardly spoke to anybody. When our free time was coming to an end, we gradually set off on the way back. In a side street a young Orthodox Jew spoke to us ‒ his unfriendly manner and gestures made it plain to us how very much he wanted us to leave that place. We wanted to get back to the bus. After we had taken a couple of turnings, more and more young religious Jews suddenly started coming up to us and demanded emphatically that we should disappear. The crowd we were faced with grew rapidly. We went on ‒ still without speaking to them ‒ in the direction of the agreed meeting point.

The crowd was completely stirred up, and became more and more aggressive. As well as yelling at us, they now started throwing things. First a glass of water hit my back, then an egg flew past me and hit one of the brethren walking in front of me on the back of the head. The attack had begun. Now somebody hit me with a stick on the legs and the hips from behind, and soon after that what seemed to be a pretty big stone hit me from behind on the head. Finally somebody, again coming from behind, tore my T-shirt. After that we crossed the road at a big crossing, and then finally two soldiers turned up and escorted us safely to the bus."

These young people "hardly spoke to anybody", "just looked around, prayed and blessed the people we came across". And then they were suddenly encircled by a crowd of religious Jews who abused them and threw things at them. If they had just taken the trouble to glance at Wikipedia and look up "Mea Shearim", they would have been forewarned that their visit was likely to be disastrous:

Me’a She’arim is situated today in the western part of Jerusalem. Its inhabitants are interested in the most literal interpretation possible of the Torah and the Talmud, and are divided into a number of different faith communities. They are to a large extent united in the strict observance of the rule of no work on the Sabbath, in keeping the rites of the Jewish festivals and rejecting the secular state of Israel.

On the access roads leading to the quarter there are signs in several languages warning tourists of the mandatory requirements for dress and behavior. Women, for example, must not enter the quarter in pants. And tourist groups are regarded as undesirable. Individual visitors are tolerated, if they pass through the quarter with an appropriately respectful attitude. On the Sabbath all electrical appliances are switched off that a person might need to use at this time, even the cash dispensers. You mustn’t use a camera or a mobile phone either. Ultra-Orthodox Jews in districts like Me’a She’arim speak Yiddish as their language of everyday discourse.

Israel Israel
Numerous posters in Mea Shearim warn women and tourists that inappropriate dress is strictly forbidden! The main street of Mea Shearim.

WIKIPEDIA

So what on earth were the people responsible for organizing this "evangelization tourism" thinking of? To enter a district of Jerusalem that is almost exclusively inhabited and run by Orthodox Jews, where tourist groups are not wanted and Christian evangelization is forbidden altogether, with a group of 50 Christians all wearing orange T-shirts with the wheedling Hebrew text, "Your people shall be my people" – ?!

The fact that in Israel Christian evangelization is banned by the state, and the Israelis would actually kill Christian missionaries – as Damkani himself writes, "If you tell religious Jews that you are a missionary, they will kill you" – proves beyond any doubt that the overwhelming majority of the people of Israel hate the Christians and their Christ. This was also prophesied to us by our Lord when he was alive:

Jn 15,20 "Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A slave is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My word, they will keep yours also. 15,21 "But all these things they will do to you for My name’s sake, because

15,22 "If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. 15,23 "He who hates Me hates My Father also. 15,24 "If I had not done among them the works which no one else did, they would not have sin; but now they have both seen and hated Me and My Father as well. Jn 15,20.24;

Because Israel does not know God the Father, who sent the Son, Israel has been God-less for two thousand years. That is the reality of the Bible, and that is the truth to which our Lord Jesus Christ gave perfectly clear expression on repeated occasions (1Jn 2:23; Lk 10:16; Jn 5:22-23. 15:23).

And no efforts of interpretation by Mr. Damkani, however euphemistic like the following, can make any difference to that:

"The reason we are going through this teaching of covenants and of the stone that the Lord laid in Zion, is to make us understand how much the gospel and the salvation has to do with Israel. There are a lot of Christians coming to this country and no matter how much you explain them to be aware of how to present the gospel to these people, they keep talking about Christianity. They keep talking about how to become a Christian. They keep trying to persuade them to become Christians. But Yeshua has not come to bring a new religion to the world. Yeshua was promised to Israel within the framework of the Covenants, within the whole issue about the stone, which the Lord laid in. Israel has rejected it not to stumble over it but to provide salvation for the Gentiles; not to bring a new religion to the world but to reconcile man to God." (God’s covenants, by J. Damkani, The day/36)

OK – and with such an attitude of mind Adolf Hitler would have to be seen as the founder of the state of Israel?! Because if he had not had six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, the international community of nations would never have turned a blind eye in 1948 to the Jewish military’s expelling the Palestinians from their own land of Palestine, requisitioning their houses, agricultural equipment and all their stores and then presenting it all to the world as the new state of Israel.

And the "Friends of Israel" in the Christian evangelical congregations and organizations in Germany think this is all wonderful, and have no idea what is really going on here. – Just what are these people thinking of?

Now although, as Christians, we are obliged to observe the commandment of our Lord in Mt 28,19 –

– it is also essential that we comply with the other commandment of the Lord which he pronounced in this connection:

Lk 10,10 "But whatever city you enter and they do not receive you, go out into its streets and say, 10,11 ‘Even the dust of your city which clings to our feet we wipe off in protest against you; yet be sure of this, that the kingdom of God has come near.’ 10,12 "I say to you, it will be more tolerable in that day for Sodom than for that city. Lk 10,10-12;

The proclamation of the gospel must not degenerate into an annoyance for people. God the Almighty does not compel anyone to convert. It is and must always and everywhere remain (even in Israel!!) a free decision for each individual person to take an interest in the Christian faith, and then to accept the offer of God in his Son Jesus Christ and come to believe.

And it is the perfect right of every individual, which God respects, to decline this offer. To continue "evangelizing" such people in spite of everything reduces the redeeming sacrifice of the Son of God to a "clearance sale" and brings the gospel into disrepute.

Discourse 1114 – The teaching of the Messianic Jews – the Analysis.

(Texts in a black frame are quotations from visitors to this site or from other authors.)

(Letter of Instruction of the Messianic Jews, by J. Damkani / Commentary, J. and E. Damkani Israel, 00, 2013-09-02)

The altar of burnt offerings in the Temple.

The destruction of the Temple.

For two thousand years Israel has been God-less – and still is.

The teaching of the Messianic Jews.

The biblical Trinity and some other specifics of the biblical Christian faith.

The Biblical Trinity and some other specifics of the biblical Christian faith

The Old Covenant.

Israel in the light of the Bible.

Based on the Old Testament

Based on the New Testament

The kingdom.

The parable of the unfruitful vineyard.
(Isa 5,1-7)

The remnant.

(Texts in a black frame are quotations from visitors to this site or from other authors.)

(Statement by Moishe Arye Friedmann, Chief Rabbi of the Orthodox Jewish congregation, Vienna 13. 7. 2002)

The new covenant.

Epilogue

Christian Evangelization in Israel.

Discourse 1114 – The teaching of the Messianic Jews – the Analysis.

(Texts in a black frame are quotations from visitors to this site or from other authors.)

(Letter of Instruction of the Messianic Jews, by J. Damkani / Commentary, J. and E. Damkani Israel, 00, 2013-09-02)

The altar of burnt offerings in the Temple.

The destruction of the Temple.

For two thousand years Israel has been God-less – and still is.

The teaching of the Messianic Jews.

The biblical Trinity and some other specifics of the biblical Christian faith.

The Biblical Trinity and some other specifics of the biblical Christian faith

The Old Covenant.

Israel in the light of the Bible.

Based on the Old Testament

Based on the New Testament

The kingdom.

The parable of the unfruitful vineyard. (Isa 5,1-7)

The remnant.

(Texts in a black frame are quotations from visitors to this site or from other authors.)

(Statement by Moishe Arye Friedmann, Chief Rabbi of the Orthodox Jewish congregation, Vienna 13. 7. 2002)

The new covenant.

Epilogue

Christian Evangelization in Israel.

The parable of the unfruitful vineyard.
(Isa 5,1-7)