Import jQuery

Weekly Bracha 46

Fine Messiah-loving peoples of the interwebs, welcome! Enjoy the weekly bracha, summarizing this past week (or two!) in the Messianic blogosphere. Only the important stuff. Plus relevant news items from the Jewish and Christian worlds.
  • The Scoop About Paganism – Messianic organization First Fruits of Zion has published materials that are already causing a stir: In What About Paganism?, Toby Janicki attempts to sort through the crazy “paganoia” and junk scholarship to get to the bottom of holidays like Christmas and Easter, and in doing so, refutes Easter’s links to the Babylonian goddess Ishtar. 40 comments on this blog, many more on their Facebook page. This is bound to shake some things up.
  • WikiLeaks and Israel – Love ‘em or hate ‘em, WikiLeaks’ public dump of thousands of classified documents has some interesting world intelligence on Israel. Maoz Israel summarizes.
  • New Messianic music album – A friend of mine, Troy Mitchell, has published his first Messianic album, Yoke of the King. Check it out! As a Messianic music lover, it’s one of the best albums I’ve heard in years.
  • Amish come to Israel, ask for forgiveness – Repenting from their long history of anti-Semitism and Replacement Theology, the Amish said publicly,
    God reminded me that this is not who He is. We no longer want to reject you or look at you as not being God’s people. You were God’s people long before we were.
  • Intermarriage among Messianics – blogger James Pyles and I have a series of posts on Jew-gentile intermarriage:
  • Donate money to supply families devastated by Israel fires – The Messianic Jewish Alliance of America is supplying furniture and supplies to Israeli families devastated by the recent Israeli fires. Can you spare a few dollars to donate? 
  • All That The Lord Hath Spoken – James on Torah observance for gentiles, with comments getting into the Didache, the state of Messianic Judaism, and more.

8 comments:

  1. Are you late or am I early? Seems like forever since the last Bracha. Oh, and your turn on the "intermarriage" blog post series. Since you have young children, maybe you can share a few words about raising them in a Messianic context. Just a thought.

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  2. Yeah, I'm late. We missed last week's bracha, too.

    Shame on me. Shame on me. I know.

    I've been busy building the bracha futures, you see. :-) So I've been neglecting the current bracha a bit while I get that off the ground.

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  3. No worries. Just a friendly ping. :)

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  4. As far as Toby Janicki's "What About Paganism?" audio series, I'm in the middle of the third (of four) disc and anticipate finishing up the series very soon.

    The commentary is quite fascinating and raises some issues I hadn't previously considered. Naturally, I'll be writing a review, probably on my congregation's blog, in short order.

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  5. Bravo to Tony Janicki! Takes some guts in his world. I note some of the commenters continue to cite Hissop. Depressing. But the fact that he and FFOZ is doing this gives me some hope. Because historical truth matters.

    Todd

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  6. I just finished my write up: What About Paganism? A Review. A very illuminating look at a very controversial topic.

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  7. James - read your review. Think I will order this CD even though I have spent alot of time on this in the past.

    Todd

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  8. I'm sure FFOZ will appreciate it, Todd. After you've listened to the teaching, I'd be interested in knowing what you think.

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