Mishpachah Yeshua Newsletter

A Newsletter To The Family Of Jesus From Restoration Ministries

The Hebraic family is not simply an individual or private matter.
Rather, it is an institution in which the whole community has a stake.
Thus, the Hebrew word “mishpachah,” meaning family, not only refers to parents and children,
but to the whole extended family worldwide in the body of “Yeshua”—our Jesus.

[click here for a printable copy]


October 2000 Topic: We Must Go Back Before Going Forward

Dear Friends,
During our recent trip to Los Angeles, our host, Maurice Mouton, drove me around to show me the area. At one intersection as we stopped for a traffic light, the Holy Spirit spoke to me: "Rodney King. Pay attention to this intersection." As the light turned green and we drove off, I mentioned to Maurice what God had just told me. Maurice replied, "Don't you know what intersection this is? Right where we were stopped is where Reginald Denny was dragged from his truck because of the Rodney King beatings by the police. This is the intersection where the riots began."
As we drove through the Watts area I began to see that we were driving through a “racial reservation”, much like those on which the white man forced the Native people. In the midst of the poverty Maurice showed me a $40 million “church” being built and another $25 million edifice which was already in decline. When we stopped to get a cup of coffee at a donut shop, a man who attended the $40 million structure spoke to us, “Isn’t God blessing us? Did you see the size of the church He is giving us? I am there every chance I get.” I was saddened by how He measured God’s love.
If you have ever been to the Philippines you see in the poorest of villages these monstrous ornate churches. The people have been taught that God demands these costly buildings, and that if you don’t die in the church building you may not make it to heaven. So you find anxious believers at the building at every opportunity. All I could see was Satan ripping off the poor in God’s Name;  and now I was seeing it again in L.A.
I later mentioned to my friend Maurice, “If all the white church leaders were dead, your people would still enslave each other. Your church leaders have learned the white man’s ways of religious enslavement well.” Maurice sadly understood, because the reason he was showing me these tributes to men was because they hurt his heart so much in face of the surrounding poverty.
As I was proofing the first draft of this newsletter, Sue handed me this email from Christian pollster George Barna:
“If you were to name the top four issues that you find most challenging in ministry, the chances are good that they would include reaching the unchurched, effective discipleship, building lay leadership teams, or how to evaluate your ministry.  When we surveyed church leaders last year, those were among the top issues mentioned.  In a new all-day seminar based on new research just completed, George Barna will detail:
•  Discipleship is often ineffective because churches equate it with Bible knowledge. Barna's research found that discipleship programs that fail to instill passion for Christ in people are not likely to generate positive results—no matter how many verses people memorize.
•  Most churches use work groups, not lay leadership teams, to facilitate ministry. Churches that use teams have less conflict, fewer full-time staff, and more extensive ministries than churches that rely on staff and work groups.
•  The typical church evaluates its ministry, but uses relatively meaningless criteria. The most common evaluation criteria are attendance, membership, revenue, ratio of pastoral staff to congregants, and square footage.  Barna's research indicated that those measures are interesting but ultimately insignificant since they do not relate to the church's primary reason for existence—life transformation”(all italics added).
Is Barna right: The purpose of the church is life transformation?

“The Black Man Needs To Be Welcomed To This Land”
While at Maurice and Lydia’s home, we had the opportunity to share the Hebraic truths with quite a few people. To our wonderful de-light we found that God had given Sue and me the same deep love for the Black people as He has for the Native people.
I mentioned to them the burden the Native people have for the Black people as "having been treated worse by the whites than the Native was. The Native people at least have the land upon which to build their heritage. The Blacks are still seeking an identity because they were torn away from their land through slavery.” When I told those present in the living room that evening about the concern of the Native people for them, tears came to some eyes. I mentioned that some of the Native men want to come and welcome the Black people to the land so that they can build a future for their families and no longer view themselves as ex-slaves.
What the Native men are proposing is in line with God’s command to the Israelites if aliens settled among them to raise their families:
“‘You are to distribute this land among yourselves according to the tribes of Israel. You are to allot it as an inheritance for yourselves and for the aliens who have settled among you and who have children. You are to consider them as native-born Israelites; along with you they are to be allotted an inheritance among the tribes of Israel. In whatever tribe the alien settles, there you are to give him his inheritance,’ declares the Sovereign LORD” (Eze. 47:21-23).

What thrilling fulfillment for Sue and me to see the Hebraic foundations go trans-cultural! We think about David Wilkerson's third prophecy from the 1980's that the major cities of the US would be aflame in race riots. Is God giving us a chance to forestall that by sharing the Hebraic foundations with different tribes, races, and ethnic groups?!
Is the blessing for all of us found in going back before we can go forward?

“Shake the Dust Off Your Feet”
One of our stops in Califor-nia was cut short. We were amazed to find that the person who invited us believes that God wants His church to evolve into whatever man dreams up as acceptable. We couldn’t understand his invitation for us to come with our emphasis on going back to the Hebraic foundations which influenced the early Church. We left perplexed until we got back to Maurice and Lydia’s again where Sue spotted an article in one of the major Christian magazines.
Many of you who have taken the time to discuss and apply the truths of the Hebraic Restoration recognize that it is a quiet movement of humble faceless people who seek the intimacy and spiritual power of the early Church. In the main article of the magazine we faced first-hand the comments of an internationally known church leader espousing what we termed the “evolutionist view”. His teachings undergirded the importance to God of building the $25- and $40- million edifices. Remember, the Hebraic Restoration is at its best a living room movement burdened to represent Jesus to our families, friends, neighbors and co-workers. The evolutionists put on concert performances and call it worship. They even hire somebody to lead the performance. Hebraic worshipers sing spontaneously from their hearts. I’ll quote some of the article. It’s sadly amusing; no, it is sickening:

“All through the body of Christ there are many people who keep saying...we need to get back to having a first-century church...I couldn’t disagree with that more. The last thing we need is a first-century church. What we need is a 21st-century church...We are witnessing the greatest change in the way of doing church since the Protestant Refor-mation. Authority is being delegated by the Holy Spirit to individuals, not groups.” The writer foresees regions controlled by 25 apostles under the direction of one head apostle. It just so happens that he was head apostle over two groups of lesser apostles...

He Loves Me
We also were privileged during our trip to have an all-too-brief visit with our friend Wayne Jacobsen. We have had his book, The Naked Church, listed on the back of our newsletters for some time. During our visit he gave us copies of two new books he has written, He Loves Me, and Tales of the Vine. The latter is a condensation of  The Vineyard, which you may have already.
When we got back to Flagstaff the Holy Spirit got me right into He Loves Me. Sue and I both began vying for time to read it. As I read I found myself being healed of circumstances surrounding some personal betrayals from our time at the retreat center. The more I read what the Father had given Wayne, the more I came to realize why the evolutionist spirit is prospering in the church today.
In order for the evolutionists to dominate Christiandom, they need your fear and shame  to control you through false guilt. Shame and false guilt have busied many into keeping the contrived religious systems running. If they can’t use fear and shame, they’ll teach that God’s grace excuses you in your sinful choices because you’re already forgiven anyway. Neither of these are in the character of God, nor are they found in those who follow His Son.
Wayne takes us back to the death of Jesus on the cross—but not the appeasement view that Jesus died on the cross to appease the righteous requirements of a holy God. It is this view that the evolutionists rely on to keep shame-ridden people serving their edifices. Opposing this view, Wayne scripturally explains the loving motive of the Father and Son behind the crucifixion. Knowing the intensity of God’s love frees you forever from groping about in the fear that you can’t measure up to His expectations, or that you must stay busy to please Him.
Next to the Bible, I believe He Loves Me is a must for anyone who has ever been hurt by others or feels that they can never please God. I can assure you that once you experience our Father’s love as He truly desires, you will never need to approach Him in fear.
I don’t often recommend books in our newsletters. But you can tell by the amount of space I am committing that this book is important. It is a terrific way to go back to understand what our Father has always wanted. While you are ordering, you might as well get Tales of the Vine, because once you finish He Loves Me you will hunger for more!

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery” (Exo. 20:2).
To rephrase this: “I am the Lord your God, Who brought you out of shame to know My love.” A personal love relationship with His people is what God has wanted with us ever since He created Adam and Eve. Many of the Jewish people missed this and instead got embroiled in legalistic observance. Rather than love Him, they scrupulously kept His commands without a loving relationship with Him. Even when God gave them the Ten Commandments He was trying to let them know how personal was the relationship He wanted: “I am the Lord your God.”
Our Father also creates a sequence when He says, “[I show] love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments” (20:6). Obedience flows from a loving relationship. Jesus affirmed this when He told us, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him” (John 14:23).
The emphasis is not on our obedience to prove our love. Humans do that with each other. With God our obedience flows from our love for Him, yet our obedience earns us nothing from Him. He loves us regardless of our actions or behavior, and loves us enough to experience the consequences of our choices.
This is difficult for many of us who have perceived our Father through the way our parents or others have trained us. People often use behavior as the measurement of affection. Our Father, in His love-filled foreknowledge, knows everything we will ever do. NO WHERE IN THE SCRIPTURES CAN YOU FIND THAT HE WITHDRAWS HIS LOVE FOR ANY REASON. YOUR SINS MAY BRING YOU FEELINGS OF GUILT OR SHAME BUT THEY DO NOTHING TO CHANGE HIS LOVE!!!