Habbakuk 2
I will stand at my watchpost; I will station myself on the rampart.
I will look to see what [God] will say through me and what I will answer when I am reproved.
Then Adonai answered me; he said, “Write down the vision clearly on tablets, so that even a runner can read it.
For the vision is meant for its appointed time; it speaks of the end, and it does not lie.
It may take a while, but wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay."
OUR PURPOSE, VISION, MISSION AND GOALS
The purpose for which this Congregation and spiritual community exists is to glorify God, to worship Him in spirit and truth, and to serve Him in full submission and surrender.
As a Congregation, it is our vision to establish and maintain a place of convocational worship of the One True God – the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – according to the Holy Scriptures and to urge Jewish and Gentile believers to become true disciples devoted to serving Messiah Yeshua and one another.
In response to the Great Commission outlined in scripture (Matthew 28:18-20), it is our mission to proclaim through word and deed the Good News of the love of God in the redemptive sacrifice that Messiah Yeshua provided to the world, to the Jew first and also to the Gentile (Romans 1:16).
Our goal therefore is to train up the body of Messiah for the work of the ministry: to become disciples spreading the Good News of Yeshua, to promote unity between Jew and Gentile in the Messiah, and to foster worship, instruction, fellowship, and accountability in Him.
Understanding the roots of faith in God through Yeshua the Messiah, we are committed to rekindling the understanding of and teaching the inherent Jewish foundation of all the Scriptures in order to...
...proclaim Yeshua (Jesus of Nazareth) as the Messiah of Israel and of the whole world
...be witnesses of His resurrection and the indwelling power of the Ruach HaKodesh [Holy Spirit]
...bring Jew and Gentile alike to a redemptive knowledge of Yeshua through faith in His sacrifice as the full and only atonement for all of mankind's sin
...provide believers in Messiah Yeshua an opportunity for weekly Shabbat worship and annual Feast days' convocational fellowship in accordance with the Holy Scriptures
...foster the spiritual growth of those who have received Yeshua as Messiah into their lives, which comes only by a life fully surrendered to Him
...provide for the spiritual education of both adults and children in a manner consistent with and in fulfillment of the Holy Scriptures
...advocate, among the body of believers in Yeshua, a reconciliation between Jew and Gentile and a restoration of the first century Jewish roots of the Faith
...provide a setting where believers in Messiah Yeshua who have acknowledged a call to the restoration of first century Jewish roots of the Faith can express their faith without compromise
...identify all believers in Messiah - Jew and Gentile alike - as natural as well as adopted members into the original “Olive Tree,” of equal value and preciousness to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
...identify with, uphold, support, love and defend in obedience to scripture and in fulfillment of biblical prophecy, the Jewish people and their importance to the world and to worldwide redemption as well as the right of self-determination without persecution of the Nation-State of Israel - the historical and biblical homeland of the Jewish people
...support worthwhile and biblically sound causes that promote the Good News of Messiah through active and practical participation
...impact our local and other communities for good through charitable giving, involvement in community programs, and practical activities that promote God’s love for humanity
WHO ARE WE?
We are a Spirit-filled, Scripturally-founded, uncompromisingly prophetic ministry of reconciliation and restoration, proclaiming the redemptive work of Jesus to the world and each other in preparation for the coming of the King Messiah.
Beth Yeshua means House of Salvation - House of Jesus [Hebrew: Yeshua]. He is whom we are about. We realize that whether we are Jewish believers in the Jewish Messiah or Gentile believers and grafted into the original olive tree, we are brought equally into a profoundly intimate relationship with God (Romans 11:23) through Yeshua. We are family - a living example of what the bible means when it says, "Jew and Gentile, one in Messiah" (Ephesians 2:11-13).
CBY is a place for everyone who wants to celebrate their faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It is just as importantly a place for those who are still seeking and want to explore more of the uniquness of Whom scripture claims to be the One True God of creation. To be clear, we are not necessarily called to help people become more Jewish. We are called to help people become more "Goddish" - more like Yeshua.
By the same token, we all know that Yeshua is the Jewish Messiah, and that the bible and the history of God's interaction with His creation has been and always will be founded and manifest within a Jewish context. Since all of us who have acknowledged Jesus as King and as redeemer are partakers in the rich sap of the original olive tree (Ephesians 3:6) and fellow citizens with the Jews of the commonwealth of Israel (Ephesians 2:19), it is fulfilling to realize our faith is rooted deeply in the Judaism of the bible. It is the faith of Jesus, the faith of the original followers of our Messiah. Jesus did not come to establish a new religion, but to fulfill an eternal promise.
Our congregational family consists of committed followers of the God that is the same yesterday, today and forever, the God of Israel (Luke 1:68), and our relationship with Him is established through the atoning blood of Messiah Yeshua (Isaiah 53:1-10) - the King of Israel (John 1:49).
HOW MIGHT WE BE DIFFERENT?
There are differences in the way we all express ourselves when it comes to our faith. The Messianic Community recognizes several things based on a purely biblical precedence:
"TEXT WITHOUT CONTEXT IS PRETEXT"
The Messianic Movement is not a "new" denomination. In fact, it is not a denomination at all. It is a spiritual renaissance. The Messianic Movement predates the destruction of the second temple in 70 AD. Importantly, unlike what many call the "Hebrew Roots" movement, the Messianic Community is not in competition with the Gentile Christian Community...but rather WE, the Believing Community, are united as one in Messiah and can learn much from deeply exploring the Jewish roots of our common faith and even living it out much the way Jesus and His early followers did. Moreover, it is clear to many that by engaging in a deeper understanding of those Jewish roots, there is a more complete, a more accurate, and a more full understanding of the truth of scripture, of the teaching of Jesus and the New Covenant writers.
After the Temple was destroyed, the Jewish sages and rabbinical leaders were tasked with reorganizing the faith expression of Judaism without the centrality of the Temple and the sacrifices. This was a daunting task and they did so through much struggle, debate and in the midst of fierce persecution by a predominantly hostile Gentile world. The Torah, the Prophets and the Writings of the Hebrew scriptures informed the foundation of this evolving Jewish faith expression. The Oral Traditions passed down through the generations, the requirements and rules that broadly expounded upon the biblical narrative, also informed this expression. The rabbinical debate and struggle were recorded through commentaries contained primarily in the many Talmudic writings - the Mishnah and the Gemara - the central texts of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious expression (halakha) past down through the post-Temple period until today.
The Talmudic writing has been given a seriously bad rap by many in both the Jewish and Christian faith communities. But, understanding the context and content of those texts are of importance for at least two reasons: 1) they have their roots deep in the Jewishness of second temple religious and social thought, the religious and social construct that informed the teaching and life of Jesus and His followers; and, 2) they help us to understand the evolution of Jewishness in order to be able to engage in intelligent conversations with our Jewish brothers and begin to fulfill the challenge of Rav Shaul (the Apostle Paul) in "being all things to all men" (1 Corinthians 9) - understanding that even though he was called as the apostle to the Gentile world, even Paul always FIRST engaged with his Jewish brothers and sisters in healthy discussion (Acts 13:14, 14:1, 17:1-2, 17:10, 17:16-17, 18:4, 18:19, 19:8, 28:17).
The Messianic movement, initially fully embedded in the Jewish world view and made up entirely of Jewish men and women, is the foundation of what has evolved to become the Christian world view. Yet, the great writers of the Gospels and the Epistles of what was canonized as the "New Testament" all lived and had their faith expression within an entirely Jewish context. Their audiences and those that became fellow-believers in the King Messiah were a mixed group of Jewish and Gentile followers. The struggle of the early movement was how to integrate both Jews and Gentiles into the Jewish Messianic world. The struggle was just as intense as the rabbinic struggle.
Persecution from the Gentile world, struggles, misunderstandings and disagreements between the Messianic and Rabbinic communities, and many social and political upheavils led to a gradual seperation of the Jewish and Gentile worlds and the chasm that grew over the centuries that led to two completely disconnected faith expressions. What Messiah had accomplished to bring redemptive unity between the Jewish and Gentile world through Him by destroying the wall of partition that disobedience and sin had created (Epeshians 2), was now built back by the enemy of God as a wall of hostility. Being the minorities and often held forth as scapegoats, both the mainstream and Messianic Jewish communities, were broadly and severely persecuted by misguided and bigoted political and religious Christianity, leading to an endless cycle of enmity and resentment.
Yet, through it all, and only by the grace and power of God both Jewish communities have survived as the remnant of what was spoken of by the prophets of scripture throughout the millenia. And, above all, scripture has proven to be true: God's promises continue to be fulfilled with unquestionable clarity to this very day. Although with very real and some imagined differences, the evangelical Christian community, the rabbinic Jewish and the Yeshua following Messianic Jewish communities all rely on Scripture as the foundation of their common faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. How they view the Messiah is different.
The Messianic Jewish movement is as foundationally Jewish as our Messiah himself. A plethora of recent scholarship has rightly concluded that Jesus never advocated, nor did He ever demonstrate or advocate for a rebellion against Judaism or jewishness. On the contrary, He was unequivocal in his Jewishness in all He said and in all He did. His early followers were no different. Our faith is the faith of the Bible, "Biblical Judaism," and is centered on the Messiah and the redemption that comes only through Him.
In summary, from a purely historical perspective, Yeshua was Jewish (Matthew 1:1-2), was raised in a Jewish home (Luke 2:21-23), and ministered to Jewish people in a Jewish land (Luke 4:15-16). His disciples and early followers were all Jewish. The writers of the Bible were Jewish. And for a time, the faith was exclusively Jewish (Romans 9:4-5). It is estimated that there were upwards of 1 million Messianic Jews in and around the first century. It seems to us that the centrality of Jewish thought, Jewish expression and Jewish life to the Jesus believing community and the importance of exploring the faith expression and teachings of Yeshua and His followers to the non-Messianic Jewish community, are so very important to those who are curious about God's redemptive relationship with His creation.
Today, there are tens of thousands of Jewish believers, and many many more Gentile believers who have captured the beauty of the Messianic movement. There are literally thousands of Messianic congregations around the world - in North and South America, Africa, Asia, Europe, and Australia.
Jeremiah 31
“Here, the days are coming,” says Adonai, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Isra’el and with the house of Y’hudah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers on the day I took them by their hand and brought them out of the land of Egypt; because they, for their part, violated my covenant, even though I, for my part, was a husband to them,” says Adonai. “For this is the covenant I will make with the house of Isra’el after those days,” says Adonai: “I will put my Torah within them and write it on their hearts; I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will any of them teach his fellow community member or his brother, ‘Know Adonai’; for all will know me, from the least of them to the greatest; because I will forgive their wickednesses and remember their sins no more.”