Friday, May 9, 2014

Lest We Be Disqualified from the Race


On Holy Thursday evening, I spoke with one of my neighbours who recently retired as the Pastor of a church in Montreal. He is a Messianic Jew and his congregation was predominately Russian. He told me that Easter was not important and it was the Passover that should be celebrated. I asked him, “How so? Is the Passover not a Jewish feast?" He told me the apostle Paul said that Christ is our Passover. I told him that I was familiar with 1 Corinthians 5:7. I also reminded him of what Paul said in the Book of Romans, “that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved.” While secular Christians and Jews have commercialized Easter much like Christmas, it remains a Christian holy day which commemorates the Resurrection of our Lord.

A co-worker of mine told me that he was attending a book review with a number of local pastors. He said one of the books they reviewed recommended doing away with the Old Testament. The author claims the Old Testament is for Jews and the New Testament is for Christians. That is pure, unadulterated foolishness. The New Testament and Old Testament are inseparable. The New Testament unfolded from the Old Testament, hence the term Judeo-Christianity.

Jesus is the fulfilment of Messianic prophecy documented in the Old Testament a.k.a. the Holy Scriptures of Judaism. Isaiah the prophet described Him as “Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.” The Gospel of John and the Nicene Creed describe Him as the incarnation of the eternally begotten Son of God. Moreover, Jesus was manifested as a Jew. Christians must love the Jews but never go soft on the Jews. Just as there is no hope for Gentiles unless they embrace Jesus as their Saviour, there is no hope for Jews unless they embrace Jesus as their Messiah. Jesus is indeed the Saviour, the Deliverer, the Messiah, the Christ; co-eternal and co-equal with God the Father.

“For this reason we must pay closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. For if the word spoken through angels proved unalterable, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?”

5 comments:

  1. Scriptural references: Romans 10:9; Isaiah 9:6; John 1:1-3,14; Hebrews 2:1-3

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  2. The Protestant Old Testament is identical to the Holy Scriptures of Judaism. It consists of the 39 protocanonical books. The Catholic Old Testament includes seven additional books as well as additions to Esther & Daniel. They are called the deuterocanonical books or second canon.

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  3. The Race: 1 Corinthians 9:24-27

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  4. By secular Christians, I mean those who are merely born into the Christian culture. They are worldly as opposed to religious and either atheists or agnostics. An atheist says, “There is no God” while an agnostic says, “I can’t know.” There are also reverent agnostics who believe in God but don’t believe that anything can be known with any certainty about God or the supernatural.

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  5. Related articles: type multicultural or Pasch into my search bar.

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