Sid Roth

Sid: I’m interviewing Ron Cantor and I’m speaking to him at his home at a city right outside of Tel Aviv, Israel.  Ron is Executive Pastor of  Tiferet Yeshua it’s a Messianic Congregation in Tel Aviv and Tiferet Yeshua means the glory of Jesus.  And speaking of the glory of Jesus Ron I am told that things are going on in Israel as far as Jewish evangelism like have not been in centuries.  What are you seeing going on?

Ron:  Well, we in our congregation we’ve been enjoying a wonderful season really from February of this year we’ve seen many Israelis’ come to faith.  We immerse 10 Israelis’ over the summer in the Mediterranean Sea.  And every service the presence of God is there.  And so we’re very optimistic we’re expecting more.  And I would invite all of your listeners around the world to agree with us in prayer because we need the prayers of the believers all around the world in order to be strong.

Sid:  Now we’re interviewing you on your brand new book “Identity Theft” because the churches identity has been stolen. And we’re still trying to now… now the way that you’ve written it it’s masterful.  Now you could have written a book on facts, but instead the Holy Spirit directed you to write a novel about a Jewish reporter that an angel apprehends and takes him back in time.  It’s a fabulous premise on the book, but you work in all the facts in the story line; people will not want to put the book down.  You have humor in the book, but you also have some moments from history that are very sad.  For instance, let me take you back to a Roman emperor by the name of Constantine.  What affect did he have in this identity theft?

Ron:  Well he was the first Roman emperor to embrace Christianity in 312 and he… up until that the other ten Roman Emperors before him were very hostile to the faith.  Hundreds of thousands of believers were martyred in the Roman Empire primarily because they would not proclaim that Caesar was god.  During those times Caesar was considered a deity and once these people began believing in Yeshua they could no longer confess publicly that Caesar was god.  So they would be killed, but Constantine he became a believer. The problem is that he felt that a part of his mission; I say he became a believer, I don’t know based on the fruit after that it’s hard for me to believe he was genuinely born again.

Sid: No I doubt seriously that he was because as I read history he literally started merging paganism and Christianity which was one of the worse things that ever happened to Christianity.

Ron:  Right, and in 325 he instructed the Bishops of Nicaea to get rid of Passover. Up until that point when the church would celebrate the resurrection of Jesus they would use the Jewish feast of Passover.  It made perfect sense because it happened at the same time.  But he was anti-Semitic and he did not want to honor the Jewish people.  Somehow he must have forgotten that Jesus was a Jew and all of the Apostles were Jewish.  But he wrote to the Bishops of Nicaea and they got rid of Passover.  And they took the pagan feast of Ishtar which then became Easter and that’s what we celebrate today. And in addition to that he created the idea of celebrating the birth of the Messiah in addition to his death and he created Christmas and Easter.

Sid: Okay, what affect did it have on a Jewish person that embraced Jesus; was part of the church but wanted to still observe the Sabbath, observe Passover?  What would happen to them?

Ron: That became illegal that became against the law.  You were not allowed; Jew or Gentile to embrace the Jewish feasts, to embrace the Sabbaths. In fact in the year 364 the Council of Laodicea they actually, they formally declared Sunday as the Lord’s day. And they said no longer shall you rest on the Sabbath, the Jewish Sabbath, you must rest on Sunday.  Here’s exactly what the wrote “Christians shall not Judaize and be idle on Saturday; they shall work on that day.  The Lord’s day, meaning Sunday, they shall especially honor and being Christians shall if possible do no work on that day.  If however, they are found Judaizing, which means resting on the Jewish Sabbath, they will be cut off from Christ. So when the church should have been concerned about things like adultery or in the modern era pedophilia or things like their worried passing laws that which day somebody rests.  It’s absolutely crazy to the point that if you celebrate the Jewish Sabbath you will be excommunicated; you won’t go to heaven; you cannot partake of the Messiah.

Sid: Well what about something like baptism; how did that get so changed?

Ron:  Well, that’s really interesting because if you take away 2000 years of history you’d understand that baptism is Jewish.

Sid: Yet I’m going to take you back Ron to a Jewish college student that doesn’t believe in Jesus and if someone says “You must be born again and baptized,” what would have went through your mind?

Ron:  I would have said “There can be nothing more un-Jewish than being getting baptized.” It’s one thing to secretly believe in Jesus but being publicly baptized in an essence is to say I am no longer a Jew I’m cutting myself off from my people.  That’s how I felt.  But as I begin to study I began to realize that emerging of water started with the Jewish people.  We see John the Baptist who sounds like a Christian figure. I often ask people when I’m speaking if I mention Jeremiah, Ezekiel, or Isaiah do you think Christian or Jewish?  And they all say Jewish.  And I say what about John the Baptist?  And they say; “Oh Christian” but he wasn’t a Christian. John the Baptist was a Jewish prophet just like Jeremiah; Isaiah, Ezekiel. And what he did was he prophesied the coming of the Lord and he called people to repent and he would immerse them in water to express that.  But not only John in Jerusalem; did you ever wonder Sid how Peter and the other apostles immersed in water 3000 Jewish men plus woman and children on the day of Shavuot?  There could have been as many…

Sid: Listen I’ve been out to the Jordan and I’ve had baptism services and it’s a lot of work; how did they do it Ron?

Ron:  And there’s no water in Jerusalem; in Jerusalem you’re on top of a mountain there’s no river; there’s very little water.  The answer to the question is this, archeologists have found over 50 immersion tanks surrounding the temple.  Now why were they there? Well, whenever a Jewish person would come to Jerusalem to make a sacrifice before they could to into the temple courts with their sacrifice they would have to go in for one of these immersion tanks and get ritually clean.  This was very very familiar to Jewish people, so when Peter commanded that these 3000 Jewish men be immersed in water they didn’t say “What is water immersion, what is this is this a new religion?”  No they were familiar with it in fact they had already probably been immersed that week because they had come up from the nations to celebrate the feast of Shavuot, Pentecost, and probably made a sacrifice at the temple they were completely familiar with whole idea of baptism. But what happened in the Middle Ages, particularly in Spain, is that when the Jews of Spain were told; my wife’s family were run out of Spain 500 years ago.  They were told either be baptized as a Christian or get out of our country.  So this left a horrible taste in the hearts of Jewish people for centuries.  So when we think of baptism sadly as Jewish people we often think of something completely and totally not Jewish.

Sid: You know Ron I’ve studied the Jewish mikvah, where baptism really came from, and I like some of the principles.  For instance, it’s a self-immersion because they don’t want anyone but God to touch them.  And so many times when I have a service in Israel I make it a mikvah service; because many have already been baptized in a traditional sense and it’s one of the highlights of our tour.

Ron:  Amen (Laughing) it absolutely is and it’s completely Jewish. It started with the Jewish people and continues today.

Sid: In a couple of sentences why did you call it “Identity Theft?”

Ron:  Because Jesus was robbed of His Jewish Identity. I told myself when I got born again in 1983 “I’m no longer a Jew.”  Well anybody that read and studied the New Testament would know that that’s ridiculous.  But Jesus was made over the centuries his hair was colored blond and his eyes suddenly became blue many people might think He was Norwegian or Danish but certainly not an Israeli.  I’m not really talking about the tone of his skin or his eyes.  I’m talking about the promised Jewish Messiah.

Sid: But wait a second now I see why that’s important for a Jewish person but why is it important for a Gentile Christian?

Ron:  It’s important for the Gentile Christian because it’s their roots it’s what they believe.  Would you like to be married to somebody for 20, 30, 40 years and then find out that their background was completely in utterly something other than what you believed, that would be shocking. We try to introduce people to the real Yeshua and why He came.  He came in response to the prophesies of the Jewish prophesy.

Sid: Ron, we’re out of time.