UNITY

 

Awakening the One New Man

 

 

Free Chapter Courtesy of Peter Tsukahira

 

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Jonathan Bernis Jewish Voice

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Bill McCartney Promise Keepers

 

Sandra Teplinsky Light of Zion 

 

Peter Tsukahira God's Tsunami

 

Raliegh Washington Promise Keepers

 

Robert Wolff  Awakening One New Man

 

 

  
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Back Cover Summary

 

 

 

What is God's Plan for Unity?

 

These 12 Biblical Authorities take a Fresh Look at The One New Man

 

Unity - Awakening the One New Man reveals: Since the beginning, our Lord planned to single out the Nation of Israel. Then, after Messiah comes, to reunify Israel and the other Nations. The appointed time has arrived. This is the hour for Unity.

 

Unity - Awakening the One New Man confirms: Yeshua's sacrifice as the Passover Lamb satisfies all of God's requirements for redemption and restoration to reunify the Kingdom of God. Yeshua has become our peace. This is God's plan for Unity.

 

Unity - Awakening the One New Man explores: God's sovereign alliance between Jews and Gentiles will reunify believers. These 12 noteworthy authors, Messianic Jews and Christians, show us that understanding this vital connection fulfills the call to Unity.

 

Grasp our True Identity in Unity

Awakening the One New Man:

 

         * One New Man is the Identity Given to Us by God

           * Recognize the Lord's Calling on My Life

           * Understand God's Plan to Build His Kingdom

           * Allow the Spirit to Refocus My Identity

           * One New Man is the Harbinger to Messiah's Bride 

 

Free Chapter

CHAPTER 9

Israel and the Tsunami of World Revival

Peter Tsukahira,

Or HaCarmel, Director

I am an Asian-American-Israeli. By that I mean I have an Asian face, an American way of speaking, and an Israeli passport. My grandparents were immigrants to the United States from Japan over 100 years ago. They settled in southern California but were not allowed to have American citizenship until decades later. My parents were born as children of these immigrants and grew up as U.S. citizens. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, over 100,000 Americans of Japanese descent, including many of my relatives, were relocated from the West Coast to internment camps hundreds of miles away in the desert for the duration of the war. They lost property, careers, and most importantly, their freedom. This was a shameful chapter in American history that, years later, President Clinton, writing in a personal letter to all Japanese-Americans who had been interned, said was based on "prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership."

In the years immediately following the war, Americans were still dealing with its aftermath and the divisions it had created. In the late 1940s, my parents moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I was born and where my father earned his Ph.D. in Asian history at Harvard University. He taught there and at UC Berkeley before deciding to pursue a career with the U.S. Department of State.

 

We relocated outside Washington, D.C., and again experienced anti-Asian sentiment, as there were neighborhoods in the 1950s that did not welcome people of Asian descent. Ironically, the neighborhood where my family finally bought a home had a majority of Jewish families, since they also felt similarly excluded. In 1960, my father was assigned to the American embassy in Tokyo. So, when I was ten we moved as a family to Japan, which was still in the process of rebuilding after the devastation of World War II. In those days, "made in Japan" meant cheap, low-quality imitations. It was an incredible experience to witness the unfolding of what the world would later see as Japan's "economic miracle."

 

When I finished high school, I went back to the Boston area for university. There at Tufts University, I met and later married a Jewish woman from New York named Rita. We met in 1969 and were thrown together during the chaotic and sometimes violent era known as America's countercultural revolution. In 1973, the loss of my best friend to suicide drove me out of Boston to New Mexico in search of a new identity. Rita joined me there, and was picked up while hitchhiking and invited to a coffeehouse ministry in Santa Fe called "Shalom." It was at "Shalom" that she heard the Gospel for the first time from another Jewish former hippie and commune founder, Eitan Shishkoff. Within a few weeks, we both committed our lives to the Messiah of Israel and were married soon after. In response to God's call to ministry, we attended a Bible school in Dallas, Texas, and then a seminary in southern California. Integral to our call was a clear sense that we were to eventually serve Him in the land of Israel.


 

During my years in seminary, I had difficulty paying our expenses, and through a friend found a job in a mini-computer company as a programmer and later in marketing. This job experience provided a vehicle for us to move to Japan in the early 1980s. Rita taught communication at a local university and I worked in the burgeoning Japanese computer industry while helping to establish and lead an international congregation in Tokyo. In December 1987, the doors opened for us to immigrate to Israel. We arrived directly from Japan the day after the start of the first intifada, or Palestinian uprising. Israel's ongoing conflict with the Palestinians has had a defining influence on our lives in Israel over the past more than 20 years.

 

What has it been like for a person like me with Asian ancestry to become an Israeli and then a leader in the embryonic and emerging Israeli Messianic community? Well, to be sure, God has allowed me to be stretched spiritually and molded like clay for His unique purposes. I sometimes say that the difference culturally between Japan and Israel is like the difference between silk and sandpaper! This is not a value judgment-each has its own particular use and one cannot be substituted for the other.


 

Our two children have grown up in Israel. Our daughter was two when we moved from Japan and our son was born on Mt. Carmel. In one sense, I am repeating the new immigrant experience of my grandparents-however, in a completely different context. Spiritually, it could be said the following Scripture applies to me:

 

"So you shall divide this land among yourselves according to the tribes of Israel. You shall divide it by lot for an inheritance among yourselves and among the aliens who stay in your midst, who bring forth sons in your midst. And they shall be to you as the native-born among the sons of Israel; they shall be allotted an inheritance with you among the tribes of Israel. And in the tribe with which the alien stays, there you shall give him his inheritance," declares the Lord God(Ezekiel 47:21-23 NASB).

 

My life has been lived between three very different cultures. As a Japanese-American, my early years were spent as a bridge between East and West. Later, as an Israeli immigrant, I accepted an even greater challenge. Nevertheless, I have found my new homeland to be rich beyond description in truth about God and the Bible. As a Gentile, "grafted" into the Abrahamic tree by faith, I have discovered and received an abundant inheritance here in this land.


 

In 1991, just after the end of the first Gulf War, we joined with another couple, David and Karen Davis, who, like ourselves, were new immigrants, a Jew and a Gentile called together for God's purposes. They were pioneering a rehabilitation center for Jewish and Arab men in our city. We began praying together and soon felt God was calling us to begin a new congregation in our city. From the start, this ministry was built on the foundational value of the "One New Man" as found in Ephesians 2:15. That is Jew and Gentile together as a dwelling place for God in the Spirit. Over the years, we have been privileged to participate in the planting of several other Hebrew and Arabic-speaking congregations. All of our own ministries, including the shelter for women started by Rita in 2003, are focused on serving both Jews and non-Jews with the same love of God.


 

God's original calling for the Jewish people was to be blessing to the rest of the world. When God called Abram to be the special instrument of His will, He made it clear there was divine purpose behind the offer of covenantal friendship. God said:

 

And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed (Genesis 12:3 NASB).

 

This is reiterated in the prophets when Isaiah wrote concerning God's servant, Israel:

 

He says, "It is too small a thing that You should be My Servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved ones of Israel; I will also make You a light of the nations So that My salvation may reach to the end of the earth" (Isaiah 49:6 NASB).

 

Again in the New Testament, when Jesus preached in His own hometown of Nazareth, according to Luke's account in chapter 4, the initial Messianic proclamation He made was greeted with approval. Then He reminded the Jews gathered in the synagogue that the prophet Elijah was sent to help a Syrophoenician (Lebanese) widow and his disciple, Elisha, healed only a Syrian general of leprosy. Sadly, the latter part of Jesus' message was met with hostility. Despising their calling to bless the Gentiles, the people of Nazareth wanted to kill their town's most famous son.


 

The apostle Paul makes the point in Romans 11:29 that the "gifts and calling of God are irrevocable" (NASB). In context, the inspired writer is applying this truth specifically to Israel, in spite of her disobedience. We Gentiles may "borrow" this verse for other uses as the Holy Spirit leads, but when we are finished using it, we should return it where it was found! What are the "gifts" God has given Israel if they do not include the land to be a nation, and what is the "calling" if not to serve as a priestly kingdom (see Exod. 19:6) and to take God's message to the rest of the world?


 

As Rita and I traveled from the United States to Japan and then to Israel, I began to see a majestic end-time convergence between God's plan for Israel and His plan for the nations. The "Bride" that will welcome the Messiah's return will be a "One New Man" company made of all nations, tribes, and tongues. Of course, His Bride can never be complete without the Jewish people. Paul wrote in Romans 11:25-26 that Israel's salvation is not independent from revival in the nations:

 

For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery-so that you will not be wise in your own estimation-that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in; and so all Israel will be saved; just as it is written, "The Deliverer will come from Zion, He will remove ungodliness from Jacob" (NASB).

 

As both Israel and the nations rise to the fulfillment of their respective callings, we will begin to see the completion of God's end-time purposes. At the end of Matthew's Gospel, Jesus personally predicted two great prophetic fulfillments that must take place before His return. The first is found at the end of Matthew 23. He said:

 

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling. Behold, your house is being left to you desolate! For I say to you, from now on you will not see Me until you say, "Blessed is He Who comes in the name of the Lord!" (Matthew 23:37-39 NASB)

 

Jesus' words mean there must be a Messianic Jerusalem that will welcome Him back as Messiah and King. Today, we sing that last verse in Hebrew, "Baruch haba bashem Adonai," as an intercessory prayer on behalf of unbelieving Jerusalem. A Messianic congregational leader who came to faith in the 1960s told me that at that time he knew of only five other believers in Jerusalem. Now we estimate there are between 10,000 and 15,000 Israeli Messianic believers in the country, and many of them are living and worshipping in Jerusalem. Progress is being made toward the fulfillment of Jesus' first prediction.


 

The second end-time prediction Jesus made is found in Matthew 24. In response to a direct question about the end times from His own disciples, after giving a list of signs that describe our day with uncanny accuracy, Jesus said this:

 

This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come (Matthew 24:14 NASB).

 

Here, again, we see the dual emphasis in the "One New Man" expressed as Israel together with the nations in God's plan for the world. Jerusalem must be saved and welcome Jesus back as King. At the same time, all nations must experience revival through the Gospel of the Kingdom. Because of the modern "resurrection" of the nation of Israel and the re-emergence of Messianic Jews after 2,000 years of a primarily Gentile church, we are the first generation to see the coming fulfillment of the "One New Man" with our own eyes!


 

The Gospel of the Kingdom is more than a message of salvation. The Kingdom of God that Jesus preached was rooted deeply in the identity of Israel as a nation. Jews know that God became King of Israel in the desert after the exodus from Egyptian slavery. Jews also know that God ruled Israel with laws that extended to every area of society and culture. The Gospel of the Kingdom therefore is a nation-forming, culture-transforming message. It is revival that reforms.


 

In the early years of Christian history, the Gospel moved powerfully out of Israel into the Gentile world. Paul's Macedonian vision in Acts 16 made it clear that God's strategic direction for the Gospel of the kingdom was west. Even though initially the message of the New Testament went out in all directions, the record of where it took root and transformed culture shows the Gospel of the Kingdom always moved to the west even until today.

 

During Paul's lifetime, the Gospel saturated the Greek-speaking world. Our earliest New Testaments are written in Greek and contain letters to Greek cities like Philippi, Corinth, and Thessalonica. Paul preached on Mars Hill in Athens to the philosophers there. Then the Gospel message continued west, following the roads that, according to the saying, all led to Rome. There the Gospel of the Kingdom fought a life and death struggle with the Roman imperial system for more than two hundred years. Early Christians became identified as enemies of the state. At various times they were cruelly persecuted and brutally martyred. Still the followers of Jesus' Gospel persisted and eventually they outlasted the mighty Roman Empire.

 

Rome became increasingly corrupt and collapsed. Barbarians from the north sacked the great empire. Who were these semi-civilized, pagan tribesmen? "You will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not frightened, for those things must take place, but that is not yet the end" (Matt. 24:6 NASB).

 

The barbarians that sacked Rome were called Goths, Visigoths, Vandals, and the Huns. History shows that they were gradually transformed by the Christian faith. Pagan tribesmen were the ancestors of the very civilized Swiss, Dutch, French, British, and Germans of today. The miracle of Christian Europe is that local people and their leaders began to believe a Gospel that was at first totally foreign to them. Christianity moved like a tidal wave across the continent, transforming whole nations and sinking down into the roots of European culture.

 

The story of how a mighty Christian civilization arose in Europe is too complex for one person to tell, but in general, the Gospel of the Kingdom provided Europe with a foundation of truth that many built upon. Artists and scientists, scholars, merchants, and lawmakers discovered, created, and governed in ways that over time resulted in unprecedented knowledge, wealth, influence, and power.

 

Eventually, the accomplishments of European nations began to tower over the rest of the world. Europeans navigated the globe and became dominant politically and militarily. Were European people smarter than everyone else? Did they work harder? This cannot be true. Chinese scientists invented gunpowder and printing centuries before they were known in Europe. The Arabs were more advanced in mathematics. Why did Europe prosper so spectacularly and become so dominant? The answer must be that in Acts chapter 16, the apostle Paul, an Asian Jew by birth, saw a European Gentile in his Macedonian vision and took the Gospel of the Kingdom west.

 

Actually, Paul surely understood God's strategic direction for the Gospel by the end of his apostolic ministry. In the fifteenth chapter of his letter to the Romans, Paul wrote twice that he intended to come to Rome on his way to Spain. Fourteen hundred years before Columbus discovered America, Spain was the "end of the world" and as far west as anyone could go in Paul's day.

 

Wherever European Christians went throughout the world, they also took the Gospel message. The seeds of faith were planted by missionaries, both Catholic and Protestant, in every continent. Eventually, however, in Europe, Christian culture became too dominant. New Protestant movements like the early Baptists, Quakers, Mennonites, Huguenots, and Puritans found no freedom to worship God as they understood Him from the Bible. Some of them called themselves "pilgrims" and looked for a new world to find freedom. They decided to leave Europe and went west across the great Atlantic.

 

In 1620, a small ship called the Mayflower sailed from Plymouth, England, with 102 pilgrims and settlers bound for America. They landed in what later was called Massachusetts and within one year, half had died. Still, in the years that followed an increasing number of pilgrims continued to arrive in the New World. What motivated them to accept such risk and harsh conditions? A vision of a "new Jerusalem," that is, a new nation built on Christian principles that would guarantee the freedom of every individual to worship God according to the Bible.

 

In a relatively short period of time, historically speaking, the United States emerged as a powerful nation, bursting with creativity and vitality, with "liberty and justice for all." Soon American achievements in science, industry, agriculture, law, and business management made it tower over all that had been previously accomplished in Europe. Were North Americans more intelligent than everyone else in the world? Did they work harder? The key to American greatness lies in the fact that the apostle Paul took the Gospel west in Acts chapter 16 and that the United States was established on a godly, biblical base by the Founding Fathers.

 

During the last hundred years, the Gospel has moved powerfully in Latin America and Africa, sweeping millions into the Kingdom. Great change is taking place around the world, but nowhere more significantly than west from America, across the Pacific Ocean, in East Asia. Presbyterianism traces its roots to Scotland and the ministry of John Knox nearly 500 years ago, but today the largest, most vibrant Presbyterian churches are found in Korea. Methodism began almost 300 years ago in England, but today the largest and most rapidly growing Methodist churches are found in Korea. Pentecostalism began in the United States 100 years ago, but today the greatest Pentecostal church, which is also the largest single congregation in history (weekly attendance close to 800,000), is the Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul, Korea. When did Korean Christianity reach such massive proportions? Only in the last 50 years. Dr. David Yonggi Cho began the Yoido Full Gospel Church with five members in 1958.

 

The wave of transformation through the Gospel of the Kingdom predicted by Jesus 2,000 years ago is still moving westward, but it is moving faster now, and the wave is much larger. It is a veritable tsunami of revival and reform. The modern Christian revival in Korea is only surpassed by what has taken place during the same time period in China. Now it is estimated that there are 135 million Christians in Mainland China, about 10 percent of the total population and almost double the size of the Chinese Communist Party. Visitors to churches in China often comment on the passion and commitment of the Chinese Christians in the face of ongoing persecution. What massive changes lie ahead for this region?

 

The leading edge of this westward sweeping tidal wave of spiritual transformation is defined by the fact that in Asia today, almost all the Christians are first-generation believers. As Asian Christians mature spiritually, they are growing in the revelation of God's faithfulness to His original covenant people, the Jews. There is also an increasing desire to reach out as brothers in the Lord to Messianic believers in Israel. Moving west from Korea and the Chinese coastal regions, the Gospel of the Kingdom is now impacting India and Southeast Asia with unprecedented and amazing force. The recent surge in numbers of new believers in this generation alone is nothing short of breathtaking. Today, some of the largest church buildings in the world are being planned or under construction in India and Indonesia (the world's most populous Muslim nation). At the same time, the economic power of Asian countries, especially China, is beginning to be felt around the world.

 

Where is this giant wave of revival and transformation heading? Westward, across Central Asia, through the "back door" of the Islamic world and back to Jerusalem, where it all began. If you look west along the ancient "Silk Road" from India, you see Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. Each of these countries is now in the awful grip of "wars and rumors of wars," just as Jesus predicted to His disciples in Matthew 24. We should not overlook the fact that in both Korea and China, war and social upheaval immediately preceded massive transforming revival. Jesus said,

 

The time has come to awaken the "One New Man" vision that was such an important part of the New Testament writers' world-view. The two great prophetic fulfillments taught by Jesus to His disciples on the Mount of Olives (where He will return) have now become visible for the first time in two thousand years. Through the growth and maturity of Israeli Messianic Jews in the face of deep cultural and spiritual resistance, Jerusalem will eventually say, "Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!" to Yeshua, the Jewish Messiah. This is converging with the "fullness of the Gentiles" coming to faith through the Gospel of the Kingdom in every previously unreached nation. The point of convergence is in Israel and the joining of Jew and Gentile in one body through the shared sacrificial work of Jesus, the Son of God.

 

As a prophetic and apostolic body, members of the Kingdom everywhere should stand in support of Israeli Messianic Jews and also pray for great end-time revival in the remaining unreached nations-primarily the Islamic world. In our own congregation on Mt. Carmel, Messianic Jews and Arab Christians regularly meet to worship, pray, and serve the Lord together. It has been my privilege over the years to travel both to East Asia and Europe with believing Jews and Arabs to demonstrate our unity in Messiah through conferences and church services. The inspired psalmist wrote, "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: May they prosper who love you" (Ps. 122:6 NASB).

 

The way to pray for the peace of Jerusalem is to pray that the Prince of Peace will rule in the hearts of Jerusalem's people and that He will bring Jews and Gentiles together as "One New Man," His beloved body, the end-time Bride.

 

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