The 144,000

LET'S COME TO TERMS WITH THE FAITH OF THE FIRST CENTURY

< There is a sect of Hasidim in Brooklyn who claim their Rebbe is G-d and that they are STILL part of Orthodox Judaism, demanding to have it BOTH ways, as it were. This is basically what is going on in the Temple with Paul and James in Acts 21, the two of them wanting to have it both ways. The fact is, Paul submits his Gospel to a Torah observant Temple-attending (Luke 24:53) synagogue based (James 2:2, see Greek NT) sect (Ac 24:14) of Judaism who live a Torah-observant life in Jerusalem even though they are Spirit-filled believers (Ac 2:4) and in Acts chapter 21 Paul submits to their authority and goes into the Temple to show that he too is an "Orthodox" Jew and has not repudiated his faith (Ro 9:1-5), preaching the Gospel in shul every Shabbos, circumcizing the Jewish boy (with a Jewish mother) Timothy (Ac 16:3) and preaching in Shul every Shabbos as long as he was permitted to do so. In Romans Paul built up messianic Torah observant Jews who were weak in justifying faith (Ro 5:1) in believing (Ro 15:13) that Moshiach is the Mesharet Bnei HaMilah (Ro 15:8) just as some uncircumcised were weak in justifying faith (Ro 5:1) in terms of the righteousness "of faith that Abraham had in his uncircumcision (Ro 4:11). The hard center of his "Christianity" (an unknown concept in the first Century) was this sect of Judaism (Ro 9:1-5) with its "orthodox" (straight teaching is the meaning of the word "orthodox") Jewish teaching. So no one is being deceived by our translation, the Orthodox Jewish Bible, and we are not members of a weird group. Download our translation now free of charge.

Unfortunately, there are many "Sha'ul-type" persecutors who have never experienced the joy of the new birth and of "Moshiach in you the hope of glory." Not long ago our street team was giving out Biblical literature in Brighton Beach when a group of "Sha'ul-type" detractors began to scream and harass and shout down every word until police had to intervene to tone them down. They shouted, "You believe in three g-ds" [but see the second and third columns of page 2 at http://www.afii.org/ojbible/0002.pdf and also this. ] . (We believe that Hashem is One in His underlying being and threefold in the distinctions of His kedushah.) They also shouted, "Your Messiah is an idol"
[but compare Daniel 3:12

Tragically the voices of these "Sha'ul-type" detractors were filled with anguish as they tried to contradict the Scriptures. Though Sha'ul of Tarsus stood silently at Stephen's martyrdom, a martyrdom he helped to engineer, silent or not, the angst and rage in the heart of Sha'ul likewise boiled over against the early Messianic Jews. Such is religious zeal without knowledge. The pain in the voices we heard calling out to protest our message was like that of a soul screaming in its descent into gehinnom. How tragic that many do not recognize their Moshiach, who like Yosef Ben Ya'akov is presumed dead by his brothers.

We know that the scales will soon fall off the eyes of many of these opponents and they will then turn the world upsidedown as Messianic advocates, just as Rav Sha'ul did when he became Moshiach's shliach. Remember Paul once had a zeal for Hashem without knowledge, zealous for the Torah Sheb'al Peh (Galatians 1:14) but lacking the Ruach Hakodesh. As he says, "With regard to kin'a (zealousness), persecuting the Adat HaMoshiach; with regard to tzidkat HaTorah, I was medakdekim bmitzvot unreprochable" (Pp 3:6). When this rabbi met the Moshiach and was given knowledge, he "followed the Lamb wherever the Lamb would go." If the Spirit of Moshiach forbid him to go into northern Asia Minor (Acts 16:7), he would go instead to Philippi. Like a model of the 144,000 in Revelation 7:4 and Revelation 14:1-5, especially Revelation 14:4-5, Paul showed us a zealous Chasid. We need to see the modern Hasidim as Shaul's of Tarsus, who when they come to faith will turn the world upside down. This is a historic opportunity in the history of Jewish Outreach;. This is why the Yiddish on our website is important. Yiddish is their primary language. Think of what a tragedy it would be if Sha'ul of Tarsus had never come to faith. Think what a tragedy it would be if these "Sha'ul-type" detractors never turn to Hashem in true teshuva. This website is our meager attempt to avert that tragedy.

I was talking to an important Evangelical leader today and I told him that the largest unreached people group [without their own NT] in the U.S. is not the Apaches and is not on some reservation out West but is, believe it or not, right here in New York City. I have been working on a Hasidic (Ultra-Orthodox Jewish) YIDDISH translation of the Greek NT since I got my doctorate at Fuller over thirty years ago. This necessitated learning Talmudic and Rabbinic literature and languages and many years of study. Here is a sample from 2Cor. There is no NT anywhere in the world that I know of specifically appropriate for this endogamous ultra-zealous Yiddish-speaking vast sea of humanity except the one we are now finishing and that I have been preparing with all their relevant pious native euphemism ( i.e., yires Kavod for "the fear of the L-rd" etc). Last summer 80,000 copies of the DVD of the Yiddish translation I worked on of the Warner Brothers screenplay about Moshiach was mass-mailed to Hasidic homes in Brooklyn where over 300,000 of them live (there are also vast numbers of these Yiddish speakers elsewhere in Israel and the world). When Ananias was dispatched to Saul of Tarsus on the Street called Straight, it was like being an emissary to one of the 144,000 who would turn the world upside-down, because this rabbi Paul the Apostle was no laid-back secularized Jew like Simon Peter the fisherman, but rather Saul of Tarsus was a r-e-v-v-e-d up motorcyle of a chasid who would outwrite and outcongregationplant and outrun Peter to Rome. Believe it or not, some of these Sauls in Boro Park, Williamsburg, and Crown Heights are starting to come to faith as a result of this 80,000 Yiddish Moshiach film mass-mailing. All they need now is a Shulchan Aru