Sid Roth - How Did a Jewish Jesus Become So Gentile?
Sid Roth: Have you ever wondered why the Jewish Messiah became so gentile? Next on this edition of It's Supernatural!
Sid Roth: Hello. I'm Sid Roth your investigative reporter. I'm here with Jeffrey Weiss, a Jewish man that had a radical encounter with Jesus the Jewish Messiah. Jeffrey was born in Queens, New York, a public accountant, very successful in real estate development in southern Florida. Jeffrey, you actually have a photographic memory.
Jeffrey Weiss: Yes I do, Sid, and some people consider that a blessing and some...
Sid Roth: I would love to have had it.
Jeffrey Weiss: Well it's actually a curse because things are too easy or at least when I was in high school and college they were too easy. And as a result of things being that easy to absorb I became lazy where I didn't want to read and there wasn't a desire to read.
Sid Roth: And yet you married a Christian woman who began praying for you. And one day you're watching a television program, Robert Schuller, and something strange happened.
Jeffrey Weiss: Yes, Sid. I had prayed to God that if Jesus was real for him to reveal him. And it was only a couple days later that I was channel surfacing and caught Robert Schuller on TV. And Robert Schuller is this grandfather type, not this fire and brimstone pastor, so it's something that a Jewish boy could listen to and not get offended. And so rather than just switching by I listened a little bit to Robert Schuller and he was promoting a new book that he had, "Life's Not Fair, but God is Good". And all of a sudden I sensed that I had to have that book, which is amazing because as I said, I didn't read books.
Sid Roth: Right.
Jeffrey Weiss: And my wife came home from church and immediately by walking in the door I said, Marion, I need you to get me a book. I need this book, "Life's Not Fair, but God is Good" by Robert Schuller. And she said, "Wait a minute, you want a book? Because you don't read. Number two, you want a book from a pastor"? And my wife is a bargain hunter, but it didn't matter. She was going to get that book and she paid retail. She paid jacket price for that book. And the amazing thing is that she got that book within about three days. It was there. But then my desire to read it had waned and the book went on the shelf, and it stayed on the shelf for about three weeks. And then one morning, it was a Monday morning at three a.m. I had this stirring. I could not sleep. And I had gotten up, and I came downstairs, and I was drawn to this book that was on the shelf. And I pulled the book off the shelf, and I started down, and started to read, and from 3:00 to 5:00 I had read this book, and then put it back on the shelf. The next morning at 3:00 I'm stirring again. I'm downstairs doing the same thing, 3:00 to 5:00, I'm reading this book. On Wednesday morning, same thing. This is the third morning in a row I'm down from three to 5:00. And I was being prepared, I guess, for that fourth morning, when Thursday morning, 3:00, here I am being stirred again and I'm downstairs reading this book. And there were a couple of things that came through this. It was dealing with those who had physical handicaps but were spiritually strong, those who were not successful in the way we look at success as secular businessmen, but were successful in the eyes of God. And there was a very powerful message coming through this book. And then at 5:00 in the morning, there was this warmth, this tremendous sensation, this power that came upon me that is almost very difficult to explain. It was something that I had never experienced, something that when people talk about born again experiences, you know, I used to scoff at born again experiences, and here at five a.m. in the morning.
Sid Roth: You're telling me there's something tangible that occurred.
Jeffrey Weiss: Oh there was something powerful. And for a man who never wept, never cried because that's not a macho thing to do, at 5:00 in the morning here I am weeping and crying because I was realizing that as a Jew here's the Messiah that had been hidden from me for 47 years, and it was an absolutely powerful, powerful time for about a half hour from five to 5:30. Meanwhile, my wife is upstairs and she hears a little bit about what's going on, and she's ready to come down, and it's like the arm of God was upon her. And she heard, "No, do not go downstairs. He's mine".
Sid Roth: Did you hear that? Do not go downstairs. His wife heard. She's upstairs, "Do not go downstairs, he is mine". But what I want to know is how did something that started out so Jewish, and Jeffrey Weiss, it did start out so Jewish. They observed all the biblical festivals. They were all Jews until the first non-Jew became a believer in Jesus, how did something started so Jewish evolve to what we have today?
Jeffrey Weiss: Well I was driven to do tremendous study and many times it was 12 hours a day where I was into the Bible in the concordance and anything I can get my hands on. So here this non-reader is now grabbing, and what was coming out was this foundation that I never had. Even being Bar Mitzvahed and going through confirmation I never had this foundation. And the truth started to be revealed. And if we go back we see that the early church in the first century was Messianic. It was Judaic. It was Hebraic. As a matter of fact, the Bible says that they were Messianists. They were followers of The Way. The word "Christians" is not used. And when you get and you start to see this there are questions that arise.
Sid Roth: But in the New Testament it says they were called Christians.
Jeffrey Weiss: In the New Testament it says the word "Christian" came out of Antioch and it's the only place that it is used. And in Antioch, there are some representations pointing back to Antiochus Epiphanes when he took Jerusalem and renamed Jerusalem Antioch. So we had something coming out of Antioch that was, it appears to be something different than that which was coming out of Jerusalem. So we see when Paul, for example, Rav Shaul refers to himself as not a Christian, but a follower of the sect of The Way, which was Judaism.
Sid Roth: So the whole thing is Jewish. Where did the break occur?
Jeffrey Weiss: Like anything else, I guess, you go one generation and things start to change. And in the middle of the second century, the Hellenistic wisdom that had started to infiltrate the church, that Hellenistic wisdom was taking precedence.
Sid Roth: Now what he's talking about is the Greek wisdom was replacing the biblical Jewish thinking, and this started to transition the whole mentality of the church. We'll be right back after this.
Sid Roth: Hello. I'm Sid Roth your investigative reporter. I'm here with Jeffrey Weiss and we're trying to figure out how something so Jewish got to be in the Jewish community the opposite of Judaism and in the Christian community the opposite of Judaism, and yet the whole thing started Jewish. Now maybe we can understand a bit if we read some quotes on people that are known as the "church fathers", famous church fathers from history. Justin Martyr, in 167 A.D. said that he was one of the first to accuse the Jews of inciting to kill Christians. Origen in 254 accused Jews of plotting in their meetings to murder Christians. Eusebius alleged that Jews each year at the holiday of Purim engaged in ceremonial killing of Christian children. St. Hilary of Poitiers, in 367, said the Jews were a perverse people forever accursed by God. St. Ephrem, who wrote many of the early church's hymns, some of which maligned Jews even to the point of calling the Jewish synagogues whore houses. St. John Chrysostom in 344 said that there could never could be expiation for the Jews and that God had always hated the Jewish people. He said it was incumbent on all Christians to hate the Jews. The Jews were assassins of Christ and worshipers of the devil. St. Cyril gave the Jews within his jurisdiction a choice of conversion, exile or stoning. St. Jerome, in 420, translator of the Latin Vulgate proved that Jews are incapable of understanding scriptures and that they should be severely persecuted until they confess the true faith. St. Augustine called Judaism a corruption. "The true image of the Jew," he said, "was Judas Iscariot, forever guilty in ignorance, spiritually". In 1099, the Crusaders went into Jerusalem, locked all the Jewish people in the giant synagogue, set it ablaze and marched around singing, "Christ we adore thee". Martin Luther, in 1544, said that Jews were ritual murderers, poisoners of wells and he called for all Talmuds and synagogues to be destroyed. And in the Encyclopedia Judaica, Martin Luther made the statements that, this is what it said in the encyclopedia, "Short of the Auschwitz oven and extermination, the whole Nazi Holocaust is pre-outlined here". Adolf Hitler wrote in "Mein Kampf", his autobiography, "Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the Almighty Creator. By defending myself against the Jew I am fighting for the work of the Lord". You see, many of the early church fathers began to spiritualize the scriptures. It's called allegorical meanings. And as a result they came up with what's known as replacement teaching, which meant the church replaced Israel, the church has all the blessings and the Jewish people have all of the curses. Now Jeffrey, would you say that's where it really started when they started spiritualizing the scriptures and disregarding the literal meaning?
Jeffrey Weiss: That poison that started to come in to that which was Jewish or Hebraic, I mean, with the words you just read are absolutely amazing considering that these are followers of a Jewish Messiah. And yet all this poison that started to come in, like I said, from the church fathers is that the church fathers got away from the foundation that was built upon by the prophets and the apostles. So they got away from what the apostles were preaching and teaching. And the ones like Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, and etc. started all this and then Constantine put the seal to it.
Sid Roth: Now Constantine was a Roman emperor and what did he do?
Jeffrey Weiss: Constantine came out with what I call Constantine's Christian Creed. He, the world looks upon the fact that Constantine brought Christianity to the pagans. In essence, what he did was bring paganism into Christianity. And what he did was his hatred of that which was Jewish or Hebraic, he outlawed everything that was Judaic, that was Hebraic. He outlawed the Festival of the Lambs and the whole world knew the Festival of the Lambs was Passover. He outlawed the Sabbath and in doing so created a new day called the Sol Day, S-O-L, D-E-I, the day of the sun.
Sid Roth: Why did he do this?
Jeffrey Weiss: One was for his hatred of Judaism. The second was the...
Sid Roth: Excuse me. Why did he hate Judaism?
Jeffrey Weiss: The Romans hated the Jews because the Jews would not assimilate. They would not become part of the puppets of the system. They kept their own identity. So they were hated because of the fact that they would not assimilate. And what Constantine was trying to do was get everybody to assimilate to have no factions.
Sid Roth: Well that's what politics is all about, coalitions.
Jeffrey Weiss: That's exactly what it is. But in his decree he made it illegal for anyone to worship on the Sabbath, illegal to observe the Passover observances, illegal to do anything that which was understood as being Jewish and to accept the new Roman religion, Christianity. So that which was started off as being Messianic Judaism within a period of 300 years now became sealed as that which belonged to the church of Rome, totally different from that which was started there in Jerusalem.
Sid Roth: What happened to the church itself as they picked up these pagan customs and merged them with good meanings in reference to Jesus? What happened to the church itself when this occurred?
Jeffrey Weiss: Well like anything else when you start to deal with leaven, you will then corrupt everything, and dealing with the church here, the church started to be corrupted. It got into its own control. There was a spirit of control that was over and above the Roman Catholic Church. And if we go through history we see even though there was the Protestant movement that came out of Roman Catholicism.
Sid Roth: But I read quotes by Martin Luther.
Jeffrey Weiss: Which clearly say what? The same Anti-Semitic hatred. So for a Jew to come to accept a Jewish Messiah who the world accepts as a gentle Messiah becomes even more and more difficult.
Sid Roth: It gets very intriguing. But there's a good answer and there is a victory that is ahead. Don't go away we'll be right back.
Sid Roth: Hi. I'm Sid Roth here with Jeffrey Weiss and we're chatting about how something so Jewish became the opposite of Judaism. We're talking about the Christian church. But before we continue with Jeffrey Weiss, Janie in the control room, who's up next week?
Janie: You'll be interviewing Dr. Gary and Marie Hill. And when Marie Hill was pregnant they had an ultrasound done and it showed that five-eighths of her brain, of the baby's brain was missing. And so they were having faith to believe for a miracle. I mean, the baby was going to be born a vegetable without part of the brain, but five-eighths of the brain was recreated.
Sid Roth: Supernaturally recreated. Thank you, Janie. Jeffrey Weiss, I've got to understand, you said that basically we think Constantine was unifying the church and making all of Rome Christian. But in effect, he was, had a calculated plan of coalition of merging paganism into Christianity. Give me some examples of this.
Jeffrey Weiss: Well for example, one of the things that he did in dumping the Festival of the Lambs, which was Passover, is to bring in the pagan festival of Easter. And we can document when he did this and also document the fact of what the apostles passed on, and they passed on all these, what is perceived as Jewish tradition, and these are Feasts of the Lord from Leviticus 23. These are not Jewish feasts, but they are feasts of the Lord, they're appointed times of his. In addition, he brought in Christmas or Christ-Mass in creating the birthday of Christ, when in essence it was the birthday of Tammuz, going back to Semiramis and Tammuz, back to the Babylonian religion, so he was bringing pagan worship in. If we want to go back to Scripture and see when Messiah was born, we can see precisely that he was born in September around the appointed times, around Rosh Hashanah, for example, which would have been consistent. And yet what Constantine did was to bring in the Tammuz. A matter of fact, even the sign of the cross was the sign of Tammuz going back to the time of mourning and weeping for this, what was the resurrected sun god. So we have a whole pattern here of that which is biblical and that which is Hebraic getting dumped, and that which is pagan being pulled in, and that was in 325. And here we are today almost 1700 years later and what do we have? Those same practices are part and parcel of what is accepted Christianity.
Sid Roth: You know, the thought occurs to me in Romans, the 11th Chapter, the 11th Verse, it says, "Salvation has come to the gentile to provoke the Jew to jealousy". Now what would provoke a Jew to jealousy, Jeffrey Weiss, celebrating Easter with Easter eggs and bunnies after the fertility goddess Ishtar to commemorate a great event, the resurrection of our Messiah or Passover?
Jeffrey Weiss: It is very clear that if we see a gentile observing Passover for the reason that it's his Messiah and he's thankful to the Jews for his Messiah, and he understands the death on the Passover, and he's understanding the message of communion by partaking of the third cup of the Passover Seder, and the Afikoman and what that means, the Jew starts to get jealous. The unbelieving Jew sits there and goes, what is he doing? When that same gentile is involved in the observance of Shavuot,
Sid Roth: Pentecost.
Jeffrey Weiss: Pentecost, as it's gotten its Greek name, it becomes something that a Jew starts to get, really question and saying, what is going on? If all of a sudden a gentile starts to wear a tallit, a prayer shawl, not for the reason of wearing one to say look what I'm wearing, but understands the significance and the power, and the authority that's in that garment, and is thankful for his Jewish Messiah. That secular Jew is now very jealous. He's got to figure out what's going on.
Sid Roth: You know, another Messianic Jewish friend of mine by the name of Dick Reuben has the statement, "When the foundation or the pattern is right the Glory comes down". Isn't it interesting, Jeffrey, that so many miracles by Jesus took place when? Oh Shabbat, on the Sabbath.
Jeffrey Weiss: They took place on Shabbat, they took place as they touched the hem of his garment and we missed that. What is the hem of his garment? It's the tzitzit on the bottom of the, it's the fringe on the tallit.
Sid Roth: You're talking about that woman with the hemorrhage, the issue of blood, reached for the tzitzit, the fringe, and when she touched that she was healed.
Jeffrey Weiss: She was healed. And we see a number of references to the garment and to the fringe, and it's something that we should be proud to wear as opposed to something that in the gentile eyes, looking at it, this is something that is Jewish and frowned upon. The Lord said that we should wear fringe on our garment and it's right there in the Book of Numbers. It's right there in the Jewish Torah.
Sid Roth: You know, this isn't such an easy subject. There's been a lot of controversy in these areas, and let me tell you the best that I've been able to come up with and to understand this. The best I've come up with is this isn't a matter of salvation. No, because our festivals are all fulfilled in a person, the Jewish Messiah, Yeshua. But it's a matter of connectedness with our Jewish roots. After all, one of the commandments says honor your mother and father. It's, I believe there are secrets, there are mysteries in the biblical festivals that when the church unifies and becomes one Jew and gentile, one new man in Jesus, there will be revelation knowledge of these biblical festivals. After all, in the Book of Leviticus it says, "to have a holy convocation", which means to have a holy rehearsal of great events that God will do and has done in the past, or will do in the future. So I believe there are such blessings for the church when they, not as a matter of, oh, legalism, but in a manner of wonderful celebration and joy. Jeffrey, are you seeing that there is something going on, brewing worldwide of Christians coming back to their biblical roots?
Jeffrey Weiss: There's an awareness going on that we have seen all over. We've seen it in Israel. We see it where I'm from, from Hilton Head, South Carolina, that there is a renewal, a revival that God is stirring in the hearts of people who may not have all the pieces, but understand something is missing, something is wrong, and they're being brought back into a picture of Abraham, a picture of faith and obedience. Because by coming by faith it's having an obedient walk. It's the desire not to walk pursuant to rules, but to want to please our Heavenly Father.
Sid Roth: You know, mishpochah, our Messiah prayed a prayer, "I pray that they might be one". Who, who is He praying? Baptists and Catholics? No, Jews and gentiles, so that the world will believe. When Jew and gentile are one new man in the Messiah it will release something in the spirit realm to cause the world to believe. And then the next verse says, "And the same glory that was on me," on Jesus, "will be on them". We're in the last of the last days and God is restoring Jews and gentiles as one new man in Jesus. Let me introduce to you the awakening of the glorious one new man congregation. Are you a part of it? You're part of it through the blood and the name, and repentance, and Jesus, the Lamb of God, the Passover lamb that took away the sins of the whole world. Are you under his blood of protection right now?