By Reuven and Mary Lou Doron
Ministry Contact: OneNewManMail@aol.com

Historically, the three weeks between July 20, 2008 (17th of Tammuz) and August 10, 2008 (9th of Av), represent a season of danger, mourning and destruction for the Jewish people. According to Rabbinic source, there is a particular hideous demon power assigned for this season which repeatedly manifests death, hatred and devastation during this very time.

On these dates the Babylonian army destroyed the first Jerusalem Temple (586 BC), the Roman legions destroyed the second Temple (70 AD), the stronghold of Bar Kochba fell, ending the final stand of Jewish independence against Rome (135 AD), France expelled its Jewish population (1182 AD), England expelled its Jewish population (1290 AD), Spain expelled its Jewish population (1492), Polish Jews were massacred by Chmelnicky (1648 AD), Nazi atrocities strategically were carried out on these dates during WW2, and more…

Needless to say, as many of the intercessors have already noticed, these days can be characterized by spiritual heaviness, anguish and grief. Pick up the weapons of worship and praise, therefore, and make these days of vigilance, warfare and heightened prayer instead. God is on the move and His desire for our lives has not changed. In fact, as the global stage turns darker and more challenging daily, God’s strategic purpose of drawing Israel and the Church to Himself in One Body is more embattled and crucial then even before.

The Root of All Divisions

As we consider the unfolding drama of Israel coming under greater and graver pressures, the Church of the Lord Jesus experiencing early revival stages, and the coming together of the two, we face the deepest, widest, and most ancient of schisms in the fabric of humanity. There has never been a more severe disconnection with such far reaching consequences than the one between Jew and Gentile.

This break started as soon as God called Father Abraham and appointed him to become the father of a nation. This nation, according to God’s Word, will be His “… own possession among all the peoples . . . a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” (Ex. 19: 5-6) The very fabric of humanity was rent at that moment as the Lord God separated unto Himself a people group who would be different, exclusive, and set apart for a specific purpose. As is often the case, the setting apart of the one necessitates establishing distance from the others, and the chasm began to grow.

Balaam, while prophesying over Israel by the Spirit of God, described it this way, “Behold, a people who dwells apart, and shall not be reckoned among the nations.” (Num 23:9) By divine decree and in order to fulfill her divine purpose, the nation of Israel was therefore placed on a lonely path as soon as she emerged from the Egyptian furnace where she was forged in flames of suffering and slavery.

God's Remedy

As we know from scripture, Abraham’s call came immediately following the account of the Tower of Babel. We can say that the Lord’s choosing and fashioning Israel was His antidote and remedy to the great calamity and judgments stemming from this catastrophic and global rebellion against God’s authority and sovereignty. Even as humanity united in blasphemy to “build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name” (Gen 11:4), God was already preparing the cure! In the midst of global anarchy, as all humanity opposed God, denied His Lordship, and resisted His messengers, a nation was sovereignly called into being by grace for the work of redemption.

In other words, Abraham emerged on center stage at the very same time when (the previously united) human family was splintered into hostile factions and scattered into the remote regions of the world. As soon as Abraham was called by God to “Go forth from your country, and from your relatives and from your father’s house, to the land which I will show you” (Gen 12:1), a deep divide occurred in the human race.

From that point of Genesis chapter 12 and on to the end of Malachi’s prophecy and the closing of the Old Testament writings, we witness the relentless and exclusive dealings of God with one nation only, Israel! During these 2,000 years, this one nation was the sole recipient of the revelation of God, His favor, His blessings, His chastisements and His judgments. All other nations, in fact the rest of humanity, could relate to and interact with the God of creation only through the agency and the mediation of Israel.

The Israel of God Appears

As the Old Testament writings record God’s dealings with the human race through one chosen nation, so the New Testament writings display the expansion and extension of the divine plan to all humanity. The Holy Seed of God was planted in the womb of Israel, the way was prepared for His appearing, and the Messiah was born to become the Savior of the world. When He, in turn, fulfilled the requirements of the Law, lived a perfect life, and fell into the ground as the Seed of the Kingdom only to be raised again, the church was born!

As it is written, “God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son.” (Heb 1:1-2) The same Word, which in the past came through Moses, the prophets, the scribes and the seers of Israel, now came clothed in human flesh to provide for the reconciliation of all mankind to God.

Phase one of God’s great plan of salvation was accomplished as Israel brought forth the Savior of the world. Now, as a bloody and exhausted womb after the birthing of a child, the nation of Israel was laid aside for a season while the grace and power of God was flooding the earth through the ministry of the Apostles and the witness of the expanding Church. The people of Israel in exile, the national life almost extinct and the land itself trodden under foot by heathen, the nation of Israel was “put on hold” while the “Israel of God,” His newly fashioned spiritual nation was growing in strength and going forth by His power.

The church was now anointed and commissioned to carry the testimony of the Living God to all creation. Healing, forgiveness and divine acceptance were displayed to the lost masses of a dying world as the church declared and demonstrated the Kingdom of God. A new race was spiritually born in the earth; a race whose members had their primary citizenship in Heaven and who carried the DNA and image of God. These men and women are fashioned not after the likeness of the first Adam who fell, introducing condemnation and death into the world, but after the likeness of the Second Adam who prevailed, establishing righteousness for all who believe.

However, the ancient gulf between Jew and Gentile was still not bridged. The deepest of all divisions, the one between Israel and the nations, worked its way into that new race of the redeemed and found toxic expressions within the new peoplehood of God. While at the cross of the Lord Jesus complete reconciliation was accomplished, we do not yet experience the fullness of it. At the cross, man was not only reconciled to God, having our sins atoned for, man was also reconciled to man and to creation as all hostilities, rivalries and prejudices melt in the presence of God. However, we know and cannot hide from the tragic truth of lingering disunity, racism and lack of reconciliation that has plagued church history down to this very day.

Why Are We Divided?

It is not the existence of various streams or the great variety of expressions in the Body of Christ that grieve the heart of God. As it is written, “There is a river whose STREAMS make glad the city of God.” (Ps 46:4, emphasis ours) Rather, it is the lack of unity among them that often holds back God’s pleasure and full endorsement. It is not because some have different callings, temperaments, or diverse anointings; rather it is the arrogance, the exclusivity and the lack of brotherly love that turns the Father’s face and favor from us.

Many are the schisms in the Body of Christ today. Many are the petty divisions between churches, movements and denominations. These are obstacles to realizing the unity of Psalm 133 that alone attracts the fullness of blessing and fulfills the promise the Lord Jesus gave us in John 17:21, saying, “…that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.” Why hasn’t the Church learn from her history? Why such endless divisions in the Lord’s House? We believe that the reason is that the deepest of all schisms, the most ancient of divisions, have not yet been healed; the one between Gentile and Jew.

One Family Under Heaven

Paul, seeing the coming disintegration of the Body of Christ into many separate, disjointed fragments (which took place as early as in the first century AD), addressed the very root of the problem when he wrote to the Ephesian disciples. Paul exhorted the church to recognize that since the heathen nations now have access through the gospel into the commonwealth of Israel, there should be no further division between Jew and Gentile. He reminded the Gentile believers of their carnal and idolatrous lineage, and then emphatically declared that Jesus “… Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one, and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall.” (Eph 2:14). By revelation, the Apostle saw and declared the reality and necessity of a unified and cohesive people group whose new birth takes precedence over national allegiances and ethnic identities.

Continuing this revelation, the Apostle unveiled the mystery of the “one new man” (Eph 2:15). This new race, he wrote, is destined to carry the presence of the risen Christ throughout our sick and dying world; a great company of the redeemed which is made up of both Jew and Gentile alike, yet in itself is neither. Still, in spite of the apostolic exhortation, the tragic schism remained in force, plaguing the Church till today.

So fractured and disjointed the Body of Christ became in the early centuries of this era that much room was given for idolatry and deception, plunging the Church headlong into a thousand years of darkness. The Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and Europe, once steeped in the power and the glory of the early days of the gospel, now laid in spiritual deception and slumber as politically driven religious institutions and pagan powers competed for control over the masses. Even secular historians refer to this period when the Church was asleep as the “Dark Ages,” when no field of human existence was advanced as industry, science, education and society shrank backwards in the face of the spiritual oppression.

Centuries of reformations followed, accented with frequent revival movements to this very day when both Israel and the church are being gradually restored, yet we still are faced with deep divisions within the Church and between Jewish and Gentile brethren. Jewish believers, carrying wounds of past rejection and insecurities, often separate themselves from the Church and create an exclusive environment where the unique ethnic flavor of the Hebrew nation can be preserved and expressed. Gentile churches, often influenced by pagan practices, view with curiosity mingled with contempt these attempts of the Jewish brethren to experience the life of God through traditional Jewish filters.

When Paul wrote of the breaking down of “the barrier of the dividing wall,” he laid the sword of the Word with apostolic authority upon the root and the cause of all divisions in the Body of our Lord. While the One New Man Company is in the heart of God’s purpose of restoring humanity to Himself, and since Jew and Gentile together form this company through humility and brotherly love, it has become a major target of demonic assaults throughout the centuries.

The Battle We Have to Win

As long as Jew and Gentile remain unreconciled in the truest and deepest meaning of Christian love and oneness of spirit, there will always be divisions throughout the Body of Christ! As long as we refrain from self-denial and promote self-preservation rather than unity, there will always be legal right for sectarian spirits to plague the church.

The root of all divisions is hidden in the ancient soil of hostility that still exists between Jew and Gentile, between Israel and the nations. This cursed soil has produced nothing but thorns and thistles for millennia, perpetuating and worsening the breakdown. Yet, by the blood of Messiah, even this soil can be cleansed, redeemed and bear better fruits.

Was it not the Lord’s own prayer that “they may all be one?” (John 17:21) And did He not call us to be “perfected in unity” so that “the world may know that You [the Father] did send Me?” (John 17:23) According to scripture it was because they did not discern the Body rightly that many of the Corinthian disciples became weak and sick (1-Cor 11:29). If we will not seek for, discover and appropriate the grace of God to find agreement with other streams and movements, even as to the blending of Jewish and Gentile expressions, we will not taste of the full victory that was wrought on the cross. This victory is reserved for a united church, for a peaceful household, for the ONE NEW MAN Company.

Where is the Prophetic Insight?

As with all problems, true and lasting solutions only come when we deal with the root issue. This principle of ‘healing at the root’ clearly appeared when the sons of the prophets cried out to Elisha when the axe-head fell into the Jordan River during their construction project. Elisha’s reply to their cry was “’Where did it fall?’ And he showed him the place. So he cut off a stick, and threw it in there; and he made the iron float. (2 Kings 6:6) That which was lost was restored at the exact spot where it sank! The same is true for us today.

The prophetic insight directed the search to the very place where the damage occurred, and there the power of God worked. Likewise, we will do well to search out the cause of all divisions and sectarian strongholds at the exact same spot the roots first appeared, between Jew and Gentile, between Israel and the nations.

The Lord promises to give us both the wisdom and the strength as we apply ourselves to this battle. And even as the presence of Jesus, symbolized by the branch Moses cast in, turned the bitter waters of Marah sweet (Ex 15:25), so the presence of Jesus properly applied to the poisonous root of sectarianism will bring restoration and healing, turning that bitterness also into sweet.

Where did our axe-head fall? Where did we lose it? When exactly and over what did the Church begin to divide? Was it not over the arrogant contentions as to who is first in the Body, who is more prominent, and whose position is higher before God? Was it not into the soil of Jewish stubbornness and Gentile arrogance that the earliest seeds of sectarianism were first sown, as both groups questioned and wrestled with their position and identity before God?

Jewish pride and self-preservation on the one hand, coupled with Gentile insecurities and arrogance on the other, gave rise to Jewish exclusivity and Gentile “replacement” mentality. Spreading deeper into the Body of Christ, this root of division and sectarianism worked its way to divide and break down the emerging fabric of God’s new community, the ONE NEW MAN.

Act Now

Those who are of the prophetic and redeeming nature of Christ must apply both faith and labor toward the healing of that ancient wound if we are to see the full restoration of the people of God. We can continue our labors, wrestling against the many manifestations of our disjointed condition; or we can go to the core of the issue and disarm the spirit of sectarianism right where it was originally planted, between Jew and Gentile! Thank you for investing faith, hope and love in this important task.

While the nation of Israel remains in need of your prayers as she braces for the impending storm, we encourage you to also keep the Body of Believers in Israel in your prayers. As a practical expression of your faith, you can provide direct support to Israeli Messianic Believers through our ISRAEL FUND which targets disciples persecuted for the Faith, people of excellence, and those with hearts to do great things with God as He establishes His Kingdom in Israel during these turbulent times.

ONE NEW MAN CALL is a faith ministry supported by friends of the Ephesians 2:14-15 vision of Jew and Gentile dwelling as one in God’s Olive Tree. To learn more, to support our work, or to provide direct financial help for Messianic Believers in the land of Israel, contact us at the address below.

In His grace,

REUVEN AND MARY LOU DORON
(C) 2008 One New Man Call

One New Man Call
P O Box 164.
Hayfield, MN 55940 USA
507-438-9096
OneNewManMail@aol.com