When you think about the gospel of Yeshua, what exactly comes to your mind? What is it about this gospel that makes it good news? To be honest, prior to becoming a “Torah Observant Believer”, I really never gave it much thought, at least not enough to really consider answering this question. I have been in the Christian Church for well over thirty years. I was not just a “pew warmer”, I attended Bible Studies, worked in various church ministries, have been a Pastors aide, been on the ministerial staff, preached messages, and worked the altar. I don’t say this in a way as if to puff myself up, but rather to show that I have been deep in this thing. Yet, in all my years in the church, this question had never really been asked, let alone taught. Don’t get me wrong, the gospel had been mentioned numerous times, and to the masses, we understood it in its generic form, simply meaning “good news”. For this reason, I felt that this would be a great topic of discussion. I asked this question to a handful of Christian ministers, just to get the idea of their views. In doing so, I wanted to point out what church leadership teaches to the laity, as opposed to me just saying what I think they teach, based on my own opinions. As we dig into this topic, bear in mind that the views being expressed are those of the ministers I asked about the gospel.
Two people out of the six responded fairly similar. To them, the good news, the gospel, is about the coming of Yeshua to save man, this being done by His perfect life and perfect sacrifice, followed by His death and glorious resurrection. For the most part, everything is centered around Him, and with good reason, it should be, however, there is still quite a bit left out. I believe that if this same question had been asked in the first century, it would have been answered quite differently. It would seem that over the centuries the essence of the gospel would began to change into something more gentile based rather than Hebrew based, if that makes sense. According to another one of the ministers, the gospel is that God fulfilled His promise of sending the Messiah to deliver His people and provide salvation for the people of the world. I really thought this was a great answer as well, in that it addressed the Jews first, and then the gentiles, but even this answer is lacking in essence.
From looking at the answers given from these various ministers, it would appear that they are not fully aware of the fullness of the gospel. Yes, Yeshua is chief cornerstone of the gospel, but we need to first understand why. For this, a good starting point would be to ask, what did this mean to the Jews of His day? In order to understand their point of view, we must go back to Abraham. It was to Abraham that God made a covenant, to not only make him a father of many nations, but also to give them their own land. This promise was made in Genesis 15:17-21, 22:15-18, here we see that Israel, who at this time would be a nation with no nation, waited patiently for this promise to come to pass. Upon accepting the Covenant on Sinai, there were stipulations that needed to be adhered to if indeed they were to remain in that land. As we see throughout the Old Testament, they had several issues with keeping their end of the bargain, which led to numerous exiles from the land. Eventually, 10 of the 12 tribes would be lost to history because they refused to accept the kingship of Judah. Prophets such as Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and Isaiah, to name a few, all prophesied about a future restoration of the land. Ezekiel 37, the prophecy of the “dry bones” is by far one of the most magnificent prophecies concerning the restoration of the kingdom to the people of Israel. On this promise, every Jew, and I would even dare to say, everyone from the other ten tribes of Israel awaits.
During the time of Yeshua, one of the biggest reasons that the Jewish leadership did not accept Him as Messiah was because of the fact that they were focused on the aspect of Him defeating those who oppressed Israel, and restoring the land, as opposed to His initial arrival as a suffering Savior. In their eyes, regardless of how many miracles performed, He could not be the Savior because He did not restore the land. Understand, Israel was severely oppressed under Rome, and they longed to be free of Rome’s tyrannical rule. So the people continued to wait, and wait and wait. The coming of Yeshua was indeed good news, but only a part of the good news. We see in Acts 1, that the Apostles asked Yeshua prior to His ascension, about when He would restore the land to Israel. Just before they asked this, He had instructed them about going to Jerusalem and waiting for the promise of the Father. What promise? They were thinking the “kingdom”, but He was referring to the Holy Spirit. So let’s put this in perspective. The good news to the Jews, was about the restoration of the kingdom, a promise made a long time ago. However, giving them the kingdom without dealing with the “sin” issue would cause history to repeat itself all over again. For this reason, Messiah came, to show us the way, become the perfect sacrifice, and then filling us with the Holy Spirit so that we would be fit to live in the land. Understand, God’s desire has always been to dwell with His people. Before the sin in the garden, God dwelled with Adam and Eve, but sin caused His presence to be removed. Although God desires to dwell with us now, the sin issue has not been completely erradicated yet, so He can’t. Yeshua initially came to prepare us and get us to a state where it would be possible for this to happen. This is why He came, lived a perfect life, died and resurrected, that He might send us a Comforter to help us walk right, that we may be found fit to dwell in His kingdom. It is also quite interesting that the first century’s church never even considered the idea of dwelling in Heaven as a reality. Remember, in their day, there was no KJV bible in circulation, nor was there an Epistle from Paul to misunderstand. For them, their source of information came from the Tanakh (Old Testament), and know for certain, not one Old Testament Prophet implied that heaven would one day be their home, but rather the opposite, that they would dwell in their God given land, Messiah would reign there on the throne of David and all of their enemies would be defeated.
So where did the idea of living in “heaven” come from? It was definitely not from the Old Testament Scriptures. In fact, this view did not become the norm until long after the Apostle’s day. I can say this with a certainty because, during their day, all they had was the Old Testament, and anything they wrote had to line up with what was written. With no texts to back up this teaching, anyone daring to teach this would be the textbook definition of a “false prophet”, in that he is adding to Torah. That alone proves that this teaching would have to have been started long after the Apostle’s day, and during a time when the church had become Gentile led. Again, this is apparent because a non-Jew would not have a problem with adding to Torah, seeing as he would not respect the authoritativeness of it, the way a Jew would. It must also be understood that the Messianic prophecies concerning Yeshua point to Him and His “holy ones” dwelling in Jerusalem, not heaven, and this is to be for a thousand years. Again, when the New Testament is read, and not gauged by the Tanakh, it becomes very easy to misunderstand what is being said, and this is evident by those who hold the “heaven” theory, disregarding what was written in the Tanakh.
In my opinion, I think we need to look at this from another perspective. All of the promises in the Bible were to the Jew first. And while it is true, that God planned to eventually bring in the nations, it would not be until after the Risen Messiah gave the Apostles the green light to take the gospel to the nations. Paul talks about how we as gentiles were grafted into the commonwealth of Israel (Romans 11). It is therefore through the Jews that we are able to be a part of this. Had they walked perfectly and done all that God required, we might not have had the chance to be partakers of this grace. Am I saying they are better than us? No, not at all, but, they are the ones that the promises were given too. Personally, I think we should take joy in this, because if indeed we have been adopted into this, we were handpicked specifically. Much like when a woman gives birth, she has no choice in what she gets, or how the baby will look, but an adopted child is chosen based off of preset desires.
For the most parts, these ministers have somewhat of a grasp on what the gospel is, but a majority of it is based more on church theology and not biblical text. This happens when we refuse to look at the text from a Jewish perspective, but rather a gentile one. I have admit, there was a time that had you asked me what the gospel was, and what makes it the good news, my answer would have sounded much like theirs. I mean theologically it sounds perfect, but from a “churchy” perspective. If you were to ask me now, my answer would be much different. I would explain the good news as, the Messiah coming to restore man to a state where we can once again be in pure relationship with God, dwelling with Him and His people in the land that He promised to restore back to them. All in all, in looking at the definition of the gospel according to the modern day church, although they miss the gist of what the gospel really is, the definition that they do have is one that does still bring about a change in their lives and the lives of those they come in contact with, and that is what counts. I also feel that if the modern day church was to catch the full revelation of the gospel, this would indeed shatter the antisemitism that flows through the veins of the church, thereby causing them to seek to unite with Israel rather than feeling as though they have replaced them. But, this is just my personal opinion
