It's Supernatural

Sid:  I am so excited because we are at the fullness of the Gentile Age, that means according to the words of Jesus, “That the spiritual scales are coming off the eyes of Jewish people.”  And I was instructed many years ago by God to find ten people that are Jewish that believe Jesus is the Jewish Messiah and write a book.  And their stories will be so fascinating that unsaved Jewish people would read their stories, but work into the storyline is scripture. Unsaved people won’t read scripture, but they’ll read a book that has fascinating stories and so I was obedient to the heavenly vision and the book “They Though for Themselves” came out.  We have over 850,000 of these books in print, most in Russian and being distributed systematically throughout the former Soviet Union.  And one of my favorite testimonies in the book is Sharon Allen, because she had such a unique background.  Sharon was very active in the Chabad House in Hassidic Judaism; her daughter was enrolled in the academy.  Her husband was not Jewish, he was planning on converting to Judaism and just before he was ready to convert there was one requirement he could not say yes to he had to renounce Jesus as the Messiah, and Sharon was shocked because he loved Judaism so much, he just didn’t even know that he still believed in Jesus.  He never went to the church or anything, and so she decides this is mischugah, this is crazy; I’m going to read through the Bible and prove to my husband that Yeshua is not the Messiah.  Sharon what happened?

Sharon:  Well, what I did is I started doing my research into the Hebrew Bible and then I went to the Jewish bookstores and I kept getting more and more books on Jewish history, Jewish tradition and of course I read the Talmud, the Midrash.  I read the Shulchan Aruch, with all of the ancient Jewish writings because when I read the Hebrew Bible many of the scriptures in there resembled what people were saying about Jesus and I knew that everything that God wanted us to know about His Jewish Messiah would be in the Hebrew Bible so that we Jews would be able to recognize Him when He would come.  And so when I finished reading the Hebrew Bible there was so many things in there sounded like what Gentiles were saying about their Jesus.

Sid:  You know the one thing that really stuck with me so strongly was when you were wrestling with this, when you had no one to help you but God himself and His holy scriptures; you came across a very interesting character in scripture called the Angel of the Lord.  And then you were shocked that He was actually worshipped.  You’re not supposed to worship an angel; what effect did this have on you?

Sharon:  Well, in Hebrew we say, He’s a Malach HaShem, Malach is Aramaic for messenger and so in the English Bible it says the Angel of the Lord, but in the Hebrew it actually means a messenger of the Tetragrammaton the holiest Name for God.  And every time He appeared to the patriarchs, to the people in the Bible they would see Him, they would fear for their lives, they would fall on the ground and they would say that, they would die because they’ve seen God face to face.  And instead of this Malach HaShem, this messenger of God that carries the holiest name of God within His name; and instead of him saying, “Oh no, I’m just a mere angel, I’m just a mere created being, an angel, don’t fear for your life, you are not going to die.” He never corrected them, but he said to them, “Peace, Shalom.”  He comforted them and then He gave them the information that He wanted them to convey to others.  In other words it is astounding that an angel wouldn’t have corrected them and said, “No, no, no I’m just an angel,” but no He allowed them to believe that they were seeing God faced to face.  The only way He corrected them was to say “You’re not going to die and I give you peace; I give you God’s Shalom.”  And this happened so many times throughout the Hebrew Scriptures.  And for example, in the book of Judges He comes before Manoah so astounded by what he’s seeing that he wants to offer sacrifice and of course and an angel would never have been able to accept a sacrifice.  But this Malach HaShem was very very unique messenger of God accepts the sacrifice and actually goes into the flames and as this Malach HaShem lifted up to the heavens Manoah uses the term pelly, this is pelly which means wonderful, but actually it’s a Hebrew word that can only be attributed to God.  And so we see that in the Hebrew Scriptures there is someone who appears in the shape of a man who actually is not just representing God but seems to be God and to accept sacrifice and everything that goes along with being the Holy One, God.  And this I found astounding and so actually later on when I actually read the New Testament finally I read the New Testament after I became a believer because I became a believer just by reading the Hebrew Scriptures and all of the ancient Jewish documents.  Because even ancient Jewish documents talk about the two pictures of the Messiah that’s in the Hebrew Bible.

Sid:  But Sharon Judaism was so and even today is so important to you, the Rabbis as a class say that Jesus isn’t the Messiah, you’re convinced that Jesus is the Messiah, didn’t you figure that maybe you missed something and He really wasn’t?

Sharon:  Yes, you know it was through my research over and over and over again pouring over all the ancient documents I kept going back to the Jewish book stores, I even bought anti-Missionary books with names such as “You take Jesus, I’ll take God.”  And another book called, “I was a Jewish Cult Buster” all of these books and of course Gerald Sigal’s book called “The Jewish Response to the Christian Missionary.”  And what I kept seeing over and over and over again is that the modern day approach to the Messiah has changed completely changed to what the ancient Jewish writings told about who the Messiah would be; how He would come and where He would born and what He would accomplish and how He would die; and it is all there.  Not just in Hebrew Scriptures but in ancient Jewish documents where the Rabbis spoke of how the Messiah would be and what he would accomplish.  There is a wonderful book by Raphael Patai called “The Messiah Text” which speaks about these ancient documents and how the ancient rabbi’s recognized that there were two pictures of the Messiah in the Hebrew Bible.  They even had names for them, Mashiach ben Yoseph, Messiah son of Joseph, who would come as the suffering servant and Mashiach ben Daveed Messiah son of David, who would come as the Concurring Hero King.  And so time and time again as I researched…

Sid:  But isn’t it fascinating that before the Messiah came they had this revelation knowledge that the Messiah would suffer on behalf of the sins of Jewish people.  The Messiah would be King and rule over Israel and there would be peace on earth.  So the only way they could figure it out before the Messiah came was two Messiah’s but what about one Messiah, two appearances?

Sharon:  Well, it’s kind of interesting because they saw a picture emerging even when they studied the Hebrew language within the Hebrew. Hebrew is the language made up of root letters and when you go and you analyze the root letters it speaks mountains of what the Hebrew writers were trying to convey.  You know that every Hebrew name has a message within every name, every Jewish child that’s born is given a Hebrew name, not just an English name but a Hebrew name and within that name it says that it speaks of the nature and the character of what that name means.  And I found in Genesis Chapter Five there is a genealogy and I thought well, I’m wondering if this is something that is unique to only the Bible and it is there’s a list of names.  We know that there are Adam, Seth, Enoch, Cain and all; the first ten genealogies and when we study that a picture emerges.

Sid:  So let me repeat with you just said, the first ten names mentioned in the Bible starting with Adam going to Noah, each Hebrew name has an English meaning.  And you looked up the English meaning and it almost made a sentence, not almost it made a sentence when you strung the means of each of the first ten names found in Genesis Chapter five. What message did you get from just stringing the definitions of these names together to form a sentence?

Sharon:  Well, I broke down every single name and I do need to say that I did use Hebrew lexicons and I used the Hebrew English…

Sid:  Well, we are running out of time, what was the sentence?

Sharon:  The sentence is Mankind turns their faces towards and are appointed mortal grievance sorrow to lament and to mourn.  And then it goes on to say God who is praised comes down to instruct and to consecrate; He is sent forth as a Prophet Priest to be smitten and scourged to die, to give rest and security and then to give a quiet attitude of peace, Shalom.

Sid:  You know when you mediate on this you have got the best description of the Messiah, Yeshua Jesus.