DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES

DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES
adopted by the “Messianic Witness Fellowship” in Israel (Name in Hebrew: , Abbreviation:

Moved by a deep sense of urgency and personal responsibility to the State of Israel in this age of near-apocalyptic ordeal, we the undersigned, hereby undertake to promote, in harmony with our faith and in unison with the high-priestly prayer of our Messiah Jesus (Yeshua) in John 17:21ff, the Association of all Messianic Congregations in Israel, so designed as to develop under the grace of God into a creative and redemptive community of all Believers in the Land.

With this supreme goal of oneness in view, we call upon all Messianic Congregations to share our concern for our People and to join us in a teamwork which could well change the character and the destiny of Israel in her hour of need.

As a preliminary statement of our aims, made in order to lay the foundation of our common venture in faith at its formative stage, the following guidelines are adopted by us with one accord.

1. First of all we reaffirm our commitment to the living God of Israel who, true to His eternal promises, acts in His sovereign power in order that they shall be His People and He will be their God again (cf. Jeremiah 24:7). He has never ceased to work in their midst, even through judgment in the darkest hours of their history. Until in our own day He has granted them a new lease of life as a free nation, gathering them in their ancestral homeland and restoring their worldly fortunes. This miracle of restoration, taking place in our generation after two millennia of servitude, is an event which staggers the historical imagination and moves people all over the world, as shown by political reactions on the international scene to the fact of Israel. In this light the establishment of the State of Israel should not be ascribed to a turn of Fortune's wheel , but should be viewed with the eyes of faith in the biblical perspective. Thus brought within the scope of God's plan of salvation for our People, it becomes fraught with a meaning and acquires a dimension reminiscent of the divine election of ancient Israel. As the chosen People was originally called into being by the gracious will of the Lord to be a blessing to all the families of the earth (cf. Genesis 12:3) and to serve Him as “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6), so it is now summoned to become under this charge a missionary people for the common wealth of all mankind. It is in the wake of this hallowed tradition that our People is roused to new life as a free nation which derives her right to exist from the will of the Lord, peremptorily laid down as it were by a Testamentary disposition. The beginning of such priestly office thus foreshadows on earth the advent of the end-time and the establishment of the kingdom of God.





2. In the context of such vocation it is obvious that the national and spiritual rebirth of Israel cannot be conceived in the parochial sense of a ghetto-community which fails to do justice to the universal import of her biblical call: Israel should stand on a higher spiritual plane, namely on the Mountain of the Lord (Micah 4:1-4). She is in conscience bound to free herself from the shackles of her long exile and to attune her spiritual life to the key of her new freedom in the full acceptance of her Messiah Yeshua. The constraints of atavism built into the halakhic law nip in the bud the creative and regenerative power of the indwelling God, thus checking the process of our People's spiritual recovery. But, mindful of the prophesy in Isaiah 6:13, that the stumps left in the field are the holy seed (“zera kodesh”) wherefrom the new Israel will spring up, we can firmly believe that our hope of salvation will not be thwarted, as attested by the Evangelist's expression: “Salvation is of the Jews” (John 4:22).





3. We are in dire need today of a new kind of pioneer, the pathfinder of the Holy Spirit, who clears our way and cements our fellowship: “Build up, build up, prepare the road! Remove the obstacles out of the way of my people - for this is what the high and lofty One says, He who lives for ever, whose name is holy” (Isaiah 57:14f). This is a time to build - and there is no more glorious way to do so than the blazing trail which leads from the Bible to the recognition of Yeshua's messiahship, and through Him to the spiritual self-determination of our nation.





4. We have thus not only heard the stupendous message of Yeshua of Nazareth, but also believe in the depth of our heart that He is, in the biblical figure of the Suffering Servant of Jehovah (cf. Isaiah 53), the true Messiah of Israel and the Light of the World, in accordance with the teaching of our Hebrew prophets. By faith did we receive through His self-sacrifice a justification pleasing to God, which has set us free from our congenital sin. No man ever spoke like Him with such accents of love, with such bowels of compassion, “to the lost sheep of Israel”. Nobody but He, dwelling in unity with His Father, had such a close intimacy with the Creator of heaven and earth. In the light of His messianic consciousness He was also a man after the heart of God, and as such He willingly assumed the twin biblical roles of Son of Man and Redeemer (cf. 1st Timothy 2:5f). Recent Jewish scholarship rediscovers in Him, in keeping with the promises and with the tradition of Israel, the bearer of two crowns: the titles of Messiah and Son of God (Geza Vermes). By the same token the Gospel is “a document of the Jewish faith” (Rabbi Leo Baeck). Accordingly the resurrection of Yeshua is not only a sign, but the actual manifestation of the divine power, which seals His Lordship as Kyrios.
   In this capacity Yeshua will bring the truth of the Bible in Spirit-filled life among us at this time, leading our People into paths of righteousness. In Him do we recognize the Redeemer of Israel and the Prince of Peace (“Sar Shalom”) prophesied in Isaiah 9:6. In Him a new, all-embracing Pentecost will direct our steps toward the goal set before us, namely to bring men of all races, and not only our People, to share ONE Spirit, ONE mind and ONE communion , whose foundation-stone is laid in Yeshua the Messiah (cf. 1st Corinthians 3:11, Ephesians 4:4ff).





5. In the light of this biblical insight we view the proposed Association as an undertaking to proclaim the messiahship of Yeshua, and we resolve to adopt for it the name of “Messianic Witness Fellowship” (in Hebrew: , abbreviated in its initials: , meaning the “image” of God according to which man was created). We will set forth Yeshua's message in terms essential to our redemption, spelling out as well what the Gospel reveals to our People in relation to socio-political issues. We will thereby bring our distinctive contribution as messianic Believers who profess their faith to the cause of peace, freedom and justice in full loyalty to our State. For only through the love of our Lord and in His service can we transcend the self-destructive particularism which affects our public life, overcome anxiety and fear, instil a new sense of sharing and solidarity into every soul, build the household of Israel on the bedrock of a common allegiance, and transmute our precarious tenure of Erets Israel (the Land of Israel) into a shining example of full legitimate right.





6. We acknowledge as ours the “perfect law of liberty” made accessible to us by Yeshua our Messiah as a deliverance from our sin (cf. Galatians 5:1; James 1:25). We are confident that the organs of our State will guarantee the full exercise of such freedom of faith and conscience as is attested in the Holy Scriptures by the constant openness of leading personalities - whether patriarchs, judges, kings or prophets - to the Word of God as revealed to them from time to time.
   As we recognize in Yeshua our Redeemer, we discern that “God is Spirit, and His worshippers must worship Him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24). And the spirit of truth in turn will teach us (cf. John 16:13) that in Yeshua the Messiah alone is our salvation, and that “there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we can be saved” (Acts 4:12).
   We uphold accordingly the unrestricted right of every soul to pray and to witness in this “Spirit of grace and supplication” (Zechariah 12:10). The democratic character of our State confers on us the freedom to claim from our whole People, at this time of stress and strain, to turn to Yeshua the Messiah in contrition as He sets about to accede to the throne of David and establish on earth His eternal reign of peace with righteousness and justice (cf. Isaiah 9:6).
   Being thus charged with the constant care of our People as its watchmen within the meaning of Ezekiel 3:17ff, we conceive of our Messianic Witness Fellowship as a free enterprise, wholly independent from any other organization, whether religious or secular, though seeking to engage in dialogue with all men of good will. We will devote all our energies and skills to the welfare of our People and promote, in the light of Yeshua's message of love, the reinstatement of Israel as “mamlekhet kohanim” (kingdom of priests), which will inaugurate for all to see the messianic fulfillment of the new Covenant prophesied by Jeremiah (31:31-34). Only by bringing our People into vital relation with Yeshua as Messiah can our Association bless and enrich its common life in all fields of endeavour. We will therefore engage in heart-to-heart converse with the whole nation in order to win their confidence, to improve their inter-personal relations and to meet the existential issues confronting them.





7. We wish at this point to dispel a common prejudice which acts as a deterrent to those who long to embrace or confess the messianic faith: the delusion that by so doing they loose ipso facto their Jewish national identity. The contrary is true: by confessing Yeshua as “the mighty God” (“El gibor”, cf. Isaiah 9:6 and 10:21), the chosen People recaptures the sense of its unique vocation as a kingdom of priests. Paul the Apostle likens this process to the engrafting of a detached branch to its “own olive tree” (Romans 11:24). Therefore the messianic faith is not an alien product, but the authentic and profound expression of our national and spiritual self. Orthodox Judaism is unable to grasp the fact that the presence of the Most High (the “Shekhina”) was made accessible to all nations through what Yeshua accomplished at Golgotha (cf. Matthew 27:51). The rabbinic polity may at best be understood as the historical arrangement which was instrumental in the preservation and the survival of the Jews as a People under the shield of the exilic tradition. The true Jewish self-understanding, however, finds its deep significance in the messianic faith in Him who, in organic connection with the national and spiritual restoration of Israel, is to be acknowledged as her “king and shepherd” (cf. Ezekiel 37:24f). By the same token a Jew who enters the new Covenant with Yeshua as Messiah recovers thereby the unique meaning of his vocation as part of the People's “remnant” (cf. Isaiah 10:20ff), that is of the nation reborn in the Spirit and reinstated in her priestly office.





8. We are deeply grateful to our Messiah Jesus Christ that He has already provided us with the Community Center, where we can work according to the above mentioned principles. In this connection we specially thank all those Fellow- Christians under the nations who have enabled us to glorify the name of our Messiah Jeshua among our own People. We are absolutely aware that the future range of our work completely depends from our financial resources. In our prayers we turn therefore to the Lord of Harvest asking for His personal support and protection and that He may touch the hearts of our promoters in such a way that our organization will get the status of an acknowledged institution established with the necessary equipment which is the prerequisit for our work by which we can spread the word of our Lord Jeshua, conform to a research institute with its own library.