Weekly Bracha 24

This week (-ish) in the Messianic blogosphere, plus related items from the Jewish and Christian worlds. 

• Remembering Moishe Rosen – Moishe Rosen, founder of the controversial Jews for Jesus organization, passed away of prostate cancer this week.
  
  
• David Horowitz at UCSD – Watch this to the end, your jaw will drop:
  
  
  
  
• Messianic congregation hosts Modern Orthodox rabbi – Beth Immanuel, the Messianic congregation sabbath fellowship of respected Messianic teacher Daniel Lancaster, recently invited a Modern Orthodox Jewish rabbi to speak at their congregation. New understandings, and mis-understandings, result.
  
  
• Do Jews have salvation outside of Yeshua? – Michaela wonders: if God-fearing Israel had salvation outside Yeshua prior to Messiah’s arrival, do they not have salvation outside of Yeshua after his arrival, too?
  
  
• Praise -pr-h! – Thought some Messianics might get a kick out of this. Praise the L-rd! :-)
  
  
  
• Neo-Messianism or Deja-Vu all over again? – New Messianic blog! Dan Benzvi offers his insights into the Messianic movement and provides a healthy counter to all the bilateral ecclesiologists out there; gotta keep them honest!
  
  
• The Spirit of Messianic Judaism – Derek Leman happily proclaims, “Shavuot with my synagogue friends yesterday revived a bit of optimism for me. I am skeptical that any synagogue or Jewish group had as fine and as spirited a Shavuot in Atlanta yesterday as we did.”
  
  
• Effects of anti-nomianism – Nate Long examines the Puritan writings of Isaac Ambrose, and notes how Christianity is still plagued with this “Jesus did it all, so we don’t have to do anything” idea:
  

  He [Ambrose] acknowledges that spiritual duties were not popular in his day, due in part to the reality of antinomianism that was prevalent in his region of Lancashire. This tended to minimize the necessity for spiritual disciplines since they believed that Jesus had already accomplished all that was required and therefore, there was no need to spend one’s time in cultivating a deeper personal relationship with God.

  
  
  
• Shavuot: A jewel worth dusting off – Rabbi Joshua Brumbach on Shavuot and its significance in the world to come.
  
  
• YeshuaFilm.com needs donations – The documentary film on Messianic Judaism needs about $50,000 in the next few months. If you’d like to support this work, donate here.
  
  
• Talking for Weeks, in Tongues – The Jewish daily Forward talks frankly on the correlation between Shavuot, in which God’s voice went out in 70 languages to give the Torah, and the story of Acts 2, in which the apostles of Jesus receive the Holy Spirit and begin speaking in foreign languages…all during the feast of Shavuot. Hat tip to Aaron Eby.

Podcasts

• What could an egalitarian Messianic movement achieve? – John McKee takes an excursion from his Timothy study to discuss male/female issues in the Messianic movement.