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The unusual suspects

25 Jewish people defy the final taboo

THE UNUSUAL SUSPECTS
25 Jewish people defy the final taboo
By Richard Gibson
Christian Focus. 192 pages. £6.99
ISBN 978-1-84550-414-4

This book gives us 25 short but heart-warming and challenging testimonies of Jewish believers in Yeshua/Jesus as Messiah and Saviour.

Readers will be encouraged to read how God in his sovereign love and power has changed the lives of a very diverse group of people — coming from observant backgrounds and godless, atheistic or eastern religions, some with stable, loving parents and others from dysfunctional families.

Inevitably, such a book of Jewish testimonies speaks into controversial biblical/theological issues. Should Jewish believers remain thoroughly Jewish as Christians? Has God revoked the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants with Israel because of his people’s sin? Or are God’s gifts and call irrevocable (Romans 11.29) — and what does that mean in its context? Is the Christian church something Gentile which started at Pentecost or is it the continuity of the congregation of Israel? The Greek ekklesia is used for the Congregation of Israel in the Septuagint. So are Jewish believers in Jesus the Messiah merely part of the Gentile church or are Gentile believers grafted into the tree of Israel (Romans 11), from which some (but not all!) Jewish branches have been temporarily cut off?

Rejoicing in the growth of Messianic fellowships around the world, we look forward to the great day when not only the pleroma/ fulness of the Gentiles will have come in to Jesus, but also pas/all Israel will be saved. Neither ‘fulness’ nor ‘all’ can possibly indicate a tiny minority, so we look forward to considerable movements of Jews and Gentiles of every background coming to living faith in Jesus Christ. In the context of this book we should mention that ‘Israel’ in Romans 11.11,25,26 clearly refers to the Jewish people. Richard Gibson’s easy-reading book records 25 of God’s ‘all Israel’ — Hallelujah!

Martin Goldsmith,
Jewish, an ex-OMF missionary, and part-time lecturer at All Nations Christian College; attends his village Anglican church