Re: Eileen...

Eileen,

Thank you for your kind and thoughtful response. From your many posts, you have my deepest respect and highest admiration. I am thankful you are exploring the Jewish roots of our Faith. I trust your discernment skills in evaluating any group you study with because I know you will test all teachings with the Word of God along with prayer to the Holy Spirit.

I have great respect for Messianic Jewish congregations. However, I know that it is possible for a Messianic Jewish congregation (or any group) to fall into error. I read somewhere where you were questioning the doctrine of the Trinity and this concerned me. When I looked over MJR’s website, I felt an entire new set of concerns -- especially if your current congregation endorses his site. After you have had more time to look over his site, I would greatly appreciate your thoughts regarding it.

My purpose for linking to the History of the Worldwide Church of God was twofold. It is a wonderful ‘Saul of Tarsus’ type story of how a cult can find the Truth. It also demonstrates how a person can fall into apostasy and start a cult when he loses sight of the great doctrines of the Bible and starts making up his own rules. Some of the hallmarks of Armstrong’s cult were his emphasis on aberrant prophecy, the Sabbath, the denial of the Trinity, and his denial of celebrating Christian holidays.

Having said that, I fully understand that a Christian or a Messianic Jew can worship on the Sabbath, deny Christian holidays, and hold to varying views on prophecy. I believe these are non-essential issues to our salvation. Where I have concerns is when a group makes these issues ESSENTIAL for salvation. I have seen groups do this. I respect your decision to worship on the Sabbath and to deny Christian holidays such as Christmas.

From personal experience, I know that a Sabbath keeping church can turn the Sabbath into a burden, rather than a day of rest. The problem comes into play when a church leadership starts defining exactly ~how~ the congregation is to ~keep~ the Sabbath. All sorts of conflicting rules and regulations (applied to different people) easily make Sabbath keeping as cumbersome and difficult to ~keep~ as it was for the Old Testament Jews. I learned this lesson the hard way.

The limitation of written communication is that it is difficult for us to get all of our points across in a meaningful way. I am best witnessing one-on-one, face-to-face with Bible in hand and prayer. If you will take the time to prayerfully consider the info on the websites I link to, I believe you will understand what I am trying to get across. I don’t want to debate with you, I only want to lend some insight learned from personal experience.

What is most important to me is to preach Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. I know that the enemy of our souls does all in his power to distort, confuse, change, add-to or subtract-from the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He often does this with peripheral issues and rabbit trails that lead away from the Gospel. My only motivation with you is that I don’t want to see you deceived in any way. I greatly value our on-line friendship. I agree with you that we live in a time of great apostasy – that is why discernment is so very important to me.

Be sure to check out the Gospel Outreach website, (especially his personal testimony and his article about the Sabbath under Seventh Day Adventism —- under ‘Different Gospels’) and the CARM website. In my opinion, both have excellent information on the Sabbath in light of the New Testament.

CARM