For me, it started around the middle of October. I've always been interested in foreign languages, anyway, and I'd heard some interesting things about Hebrew. I decided to check it out, and I found Passion For Truth Ministries' You Tube page (which has a very good series on the Hebrew alphabet). Through that "chance" finding, however, I was taken somewhere I did not expect.
The questions have been presented to me in the last year or two, mostly through my own church, but also in my own Bible study, as to why there seems to be such a discrepancy between what we see in the "church" today and what is described in the scriptures. The apostles, continuing ministry after the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, were seeing and performing miracles - and on a regular basis. Healings, resurrections, you name it; they saw the Holy Spirit move in ways that we seem to be begging for today. Why do we pray and ASK for God to heal, when they simply commanded it to be done and it was? (See Acts, chapter 3) Why don't we see people flocking to the gospel today as they did when it was preached by the apostles? Jesus said that those who believe will heal the sick (Mark 16:17-18), so why aren't we?
I have come to realize that many of God's people are seeing these discrepancies and feeling dissatisfied, not with Christ, but with our seeming innability to do His work. We feel as if there's something we are missing - something that, if we could grab a hold of it, would bring everything together for us. Sincere believers, laymen and Pastors alike, are seeking God and trying to grow in our faith and understanding of God so that we, too, can do the work the apostles did.
So, by "chance" (of course, God's hand is in all - nothing is truly chance) I inadvertently stumbled into what has been coined, the Hebrew Roots Movement. Having only been listening in for 2 months now, I do not know enough about the movement itself and all of its beliefs, etc. to feel comfortable recommending to to you outright. However, I found that they address many of the issues that I mentioned. Not only that, but their explanations are definitely worth a serious look.
Their premise is that we (Christians) have separated ourselves from the original faith. In the time of Christ (and for a few hundred years after), the Christians were simply Jews (and, ultimately, Gentiles) who believed that Christ was the Messiah - we were a sect of Judaism. It wasn't until after this several-hundred year period that we ended up being a separate entity. Fast forward a couple of thousand years, and now, we're attempting to find power in a religion that bears little resemblance to the teachings of Christ and the examples of His disciples. We are following a Jewish Rabbi and Messiah that we don't understand by reading His Words (translated several times over, and not always accurately) from a Western world view with little to no understanding of the background and foundation of our faith. The Hebrew Roots Movement is an attempt to go back to the first-century understanding and practice of the faith in order to reclaim the Power of God the first century believers experienced.
I have found the teachings that I've heard thus far to be insightful, sensible, and sincere. Only the Word of God can validate whether or not they are true, and I will leave you to determine that for yourself, if you are inclined to do so.
However, the changes in my life that are resulting from this minor change in my faith have not been minor, and they've not always been well-received by others. There are concerns that I am leaving Christianity, and that some of the changes I'm making amount to a rejection of my family and the Christian church. As I said, this "series" in my blog is meant to be basically a journaling of my own journey (hoping to find others of you who are interested in or experiencing the same things), so I will be addressing these objections in future posts. This one, seems to me, to be quite long enough! I am not trying to sell you on the teachings of this movement, but I am blogging through this so as to create a forum where these things can be debated, discussed, and shared. Today, however, I'll leave you with links to 2 YouTube accounts that I have found helpful. The first is Passion for Truth Ministries, as mentioned before. The second is Michael Rood. His videos are much shorter, in case you're in a time crunch (which you very well could be if you've read this whole thing! ;) )http://www.youtube.com/user/PassionForTruthVideo
http://www.youtube.com/user/aroodawakening
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