5 steps to … “heaven”?!
The notion that the 5 steps proposed by David Lazarus that Israeli believers ought to take are things nearly all believers already , at least in principle, agree with. His abject and unscriptural argument that the lobbying of the Israeli government by philo-Semitic and pro zionist Christians abroad on behalf of the Body of Messiah in Israel is an “either – or ” situation to his 5 steps is an unscriptural and illogical proposition.
‘Appealing to Caesar’ is entirely scriptural, as is incontrovertibly established in scripture. The Apostle Paul (cum Rabbi Shaul of Tarsus), as a Jew , appealed three times in Caesarea to the Roman authorities for protection not only himself, but on behalf of the rights of believing Jews to proclaim their message against the rabbinic establishment / Sanhedrin who were denying Jewish believers those rights and persecuting them. I am left wondering – ‘what does David Lazarus know that Paul The Apostle did not’, and even if Paul had been wrong, why did God inspire the accounts to be included in His Word as examples for us?
There is a clear and unambiguous scriptural history with Apostolic precedent for foreign believers coming to the aid of Jewish believers in Israel from abroad (Acts 11:30).
There is already a consensus of agreement with the things advocated in David Lazarus’ 5 steps. I do not know of a single congregational leader in Israel who would not propound these same points. The substance of these 5 steps are not new and are not rejected by scarcely anyone.
The notion that receiving help from abroad would cause the national loyalty of Israeli believers to be called into account is not plausible. Everything from the Jewish National Fund (JNF) to the World Zionist Organization (WIZO), to the Technion and Hebrew University are funded from abroad. Silicon Valley finances Israel’s high tech belt in Herzilya with development capital. Secular Israelis just accept these realities and generally don’t care, and don’t view these institutions or industries as non Israeli anymore than they view an IAF pilot flying an American F 35 as not Israeli. It just doesn’t matter to them. The Haredim of course may say that Jewish belief in Yeshua is a foreign import, but the Yad L’Achim etc.. are going to condemn Israeli believers in Yeshua with every invented charge and malicious accusation they can anyway. They of course demand others ignore the fact that the coffers of their own yeshivas are filled with dollars from New York, and that Bnei Barak and Mea Shearim are indeed a foreign religious culture imported from the shtetyls of Eastern Europe. Most secular Israelis don’t like, trust, or respect the Haredim due to their refusal to serve in the IDF, and a perceived social parasitism. It doesn’t matter to most secular Israelis (or even to many masoratim) what the Haredim say about anything.
The argument that believers from abroad coming to the help of Israeli ministries, congregations, and a Messianic children’s school in Tiberias, and David Lazarus’ 5 steps are mutually exclusive reactions to the current opposition by the modern rabbinic authorities against believing Jews in Israel is incongruous with the apostolic example demonstrated in scripture. With respect, David Lazarus does not make a scripturally or practically credible case.
