April 10, 2017 Show with Stephen Atkinson on “The Passover Through Christian Eyes”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Now here's our host Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth who are listening via live streaming.

This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 10th day of April 2017 and it is the day of Passover, the first day of Passover.

It comes at sundown today and it is very providential on this day of all days that we have in studio again visiting

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Stephen Atkinson, assistant pastor of Covenant Church, which is a congregation in the

Presbyterian Church in America, which is commonly known as the PCA in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and he's also the

North American director of Christian Witness to Israel. And what better guest to have on a day like today, the first day of Passover, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you to Iron Sharpens Iron, Stephen Atkinson.

Chris, it's really great to be back with you. I'm delighted to be here and it is providential, but we take too much credit for that.

We simply said this is a day that we could make it work. I'm glad that I'm here to do that and to talk about a subject that is dear to my heart, that is bringing

Christ the Passover lamb to our Jewish friends and particularly to our Jewish friends here in the

United States. And before we get into the subject at hand, I know that you've given your testimony a number of times in the program, but we, it seems, have new listeners joining us every week that we know of.

It might even be every day for all I know, but every week

I notice people that I haven't recognized their names or email addresses before contacting us.

And for those of our listeners who have not heard your testimony, why don't you at least give a summarized version of how you came to Christ, what was the religious atmosphere of your upbringing, and what providential circumstances did the

Lord use to draw you to himself and save you? Sure. One of the amazing things that I just bow and wonder and worship day by day is the way in which the

Lord orders our footsteps. I think maybe it is as the older you get, you think through the providences of God in your life, and maybe someday in my retirement years

I'll write a book on God's amazing providence. But I grew up in a church -going home.

It was a home that had the Bible as important and church as important, but the gospel really wasn't clearly brought forth, either in church or even in my home.

I'm thankful for even that security that the Lord preserved me in such a situation, and indeed ultimately then brought me to faith.

And again, we look back and wonder, how did that happen? Why me, you know, in terms of my whole family, in terms of my parents, grandparents, great -grandparents, there's no one that I can point to that was a believer.

My parents ultimately did come to faith, and I'm so thankful for that. But in my initial home setting,

I was simply brought up in the safety and security of the surroundings of church, churchianity,

I suppose. But the Lord opened up the gospel to me, particularly through the ministry of a young intern in my church at that time, and some friends in the youth ministry at the church.

And I realized that I was not walking the way I should, and that I needed to come to the cross.

And I found Christ, and in those days, again, the teaching in my church perhaps was not as clear and distinct and solid and upbuilding as I would have desired, but nonetheless, again, the

Lord preserved and provided. And so I felt, again, a strong call, a very particular providential incident that drew me to consider the gospel ministry, even as a 19 -year -old.

I was studying just a general arts degree at that time, and I finished that arts degree and then went into seminary.

And so I was out in ministry preaching, very young, age 25, and I got my first senior pastor at age 27.

But what did I know when I'm 27 years of age? And I'm thankful that through all of that and through all the years and, you know, 30 -plus years now of preaching, the

Lord continues to teach and continues to show by amazing providential incidents that He is in control of my life, and I simply can respond and say,

I am your servant. Use me and enable me to be part of the kingdom work to which you've called me.

Amen. Well, how did you get involved with Christian Witness to Israel, which is one of the oldest

Christian outreaches to the Jewish people? And this may surprise many of our listeners, but Christian Witness to Israel is a theologically reformed organization or ministry, and many involved in Jewish evangelism believe that that is the exclusively the neighborhood of dispensationalism and so on.

But Christian Witness to Israel is clearly a reformed ministry and goes back to the 19th century, correct?

Yeah, we are 175 years old this November, and we began 1842 out of really,

I suppose, the burden of the Scottish Presbyterians in the 1830s, and Robert Murray McShane was very prominent in the building of that burden, and indeed he providentially prayed the opening prayer at the first ever meeting of our ministry in 1842.

And so we are 175 years old, but we don't simply rest on the history and rest on our laurels.

We have a work to do in the present, and the burden that drove men like McShane and Bonner, and indeed

C .H. Spurgeon was involved in our ministry in his era as well. But that burden that drove those men to desire

Jewish people to come to know Jesus is that same burden that drives us, and it's the same thing that I want to see driven and multiplied here in the

United States, because I think, as you have rightly said, there is a lot of interest in Israel, but very little of what we might call a reformed interest.

And when I use that term, I use it simply in the sense of a solid biblical and theologically robust understanding of what is

Israel and what is our calling towards the people Israel. And it can be easily summarized in Romans 10, 1, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved.

And that, I suppose, could be the motto of our ministry, as it rightly is the motto of many

Jewish ministries. How did I come into CWI? Again, providentially.

I don't trust my own judgment, and I'm thankful that the Lord guides our footsteps in every way.

And I could term it a heavy providence and a delightful providence. I had a situation in a church that might be termed a heavy providence, and I don't need to go into details concerning that at the present time.

But in the midst of that, I had a delightful providence in which a brother pastor that I had known for probably 30 years previous, he called me up and he was on the board of CWI.

And he called me up and asked me, would I be interested in coming out of the regular pastor?

I had been a regular pastor for 18 years. And he phoned me up and said, would you be interested in becoming the

CWI rep for Ireland? Your name has been mentioned, and we think you'd be a good fit for the post.

And in the midst of the heavy providence and the difficult situation I was in, again, not trusting my own judgment, but committing myself to the company of many advisors.

I spoke with colleagues and friends, and they responded, Stephen, yeah, we think this is for you.

We think this is a good fit. And that was 13 years ago, and I've never looked back since.

Week by week, year on year, I grow more and more passionate for this cause, as the burden of the ancient people grows heavy on my heart.

And I desire to see, particularly here as he has now brought me across the pond to the

United States, that I would see the church mobilized to recognize this important mission field that's on our own doorstep, where, again,

I've repeatedly said, 42 % of the world's Jewish population live in the United States.

So churches, Christians here in the United States, let's get our act together and see this important mission field that the

Lord has preserved and placed providentially right next to us.

There's no other country on the planet that has as many Christians and Jews living side by side.

We have approximately 5 to 6 million Jewish people living in the United States.

How many Christians? Well, again, conservative estimate, maybe it's certainly in the millions, maybe tens of millions in the

United States. No other country on the planet has as many Christians and Jews living side by side.

And even the resources we have and the opportunities we have here in the

U .S., I would simply say that to whom much has been given, much will be required.

And therefore, again, as our Scottish forefathers with limited resources, but with a theological burden, were so passionately concerned to bring the gospel back to those that brought it to us, namely the

Jewish people, I want to see the same kind of burden become a flame across this land that my

American cousins, my American friends, will really desire to bring the gospel right on their own doorstep to their

Jewish friends. One of the things that you and I have discussed before, before we go into our discussion on Passover itself, and obviously

I misspoke in a sense, today really, well, it isn't the first day of Passover right now because there's sunlight streaming through my window.

It begins at sundown today. And one of the things that we have discussed in the past is that some ministries typically that identify themselves as messianic, and of course, not all,

I'm trying not to broad brush here, but some of them have a misplaced emphasis on the nation of Israel, where the allegiance to the nation seems to be first and foremost at the expense of the actual souls of those

Jews living there and globally. The eternal life of Jewish people is infinitely more important than the government or even in the existence of a plot of real estate in the

Middle East. And it seems that some people have far more of an emphasis on that nation, which actually is an atheist and socialist nation in the

Middle East. I think you're right. I'm not saying that land issues are unimportant.

I'm not saying that issues of eschatology even are unimportant.

I'm not saying that matters pertaining to Jewishness are not important.

But what I would say is if, as you rightly pointed out, if there is a misplaced emphasis, if land becomes more important than the

Lord, if a rapture becomes more important than the Redeemer, if blood moons becomes more important than a bloodied

Messiah, if Jewishness becomes more important than the Jew called

Jesus, all of those things I've got issues with. It's the misplaced emphasis.

Not that those issues and many, many more are not important. They are important and we need to debate them and we need to discuss them and people will have differing views on them.

But when the land becomes the one thing, I'm sorry, you can have the land and be lost.

They need the Lord Jesus. And shouldn't it be, shouldn't our friends who are very militant about the

United States, and in fact, you know, all of the Western world being in unity and having an allegiance to the nation of Israel, which

I'm not saying that that is wrong. I'm not saying that that's improper. I think that they are our greatest ally in the

Middle East. But those Christians that think that that is of primary focus, even if it's unconsciously they're thinking that way, and if you were to disagree with them eschatologically or in some other way that involves the nation, if you don't believe the nation is a fulfillment of biblical prophecy, they will very often despise you.

They will call you a heretic, an anti -Semite, a liberal, all kinds of things.

They have to be reminded that when that nation began, I'm talking about the new nation that we see today, there were literally or virtually no conservative

Jews involved in that. They were not the Orthodox or Hasidic Jews participating in this.

They were very opposed to it because they believed that the Messiah had to usher in the existence of Israel.

That's right, and that's where it can get very complicated. And we in CWI don't regard the land as unimportant, but we regard the people as of primary importance, as you've rightly said.

They have a never -dying soul, and we need to bring the gospel to the Jewish people.

The land issue is a secondary one, and some eschatological issues are also somewhat secondary.

Having said all that, I repeatedly use a phrase, theology drives missiology.

In other words, if we get our theology right, then our missiology flows from that.

And sometimes we can have a theological understanding, even of the end times, which includes the land, includes the

Jews going back to the land, includes a rebuilding of the temple, it includes a ton of other things.

And therefore that theological position will have implications on the missiological outworking of that.

In other words, if that's your theological position, your mission is let's get them all back to the land, let's find the red heifer, let's get them getting all the implements put together to build the temple.

My issue with that theology is, one, I don't see it, as I understand a

Reformed perspective in the Scriptures, I don't see it in that way. And very specifically, I don't think my forefathers saw it in that way, if we can think of our

Presbyterian forefathers or our Baptist forefathers. And I don't think, as I see it even in Scripture, the

Apostle Paul, his heart's desire, his prayer, his weeping, his burden, was for the

Jewish people to be saved. And it just seems to me that we have got distracted on a ton of different things, and we have lost that one emphasis on what the

Scripture speaks of as the one thing needful. Yeah, and the reason that I brought up the fact that it was the secularist and the liberal

Jews that were primarily involved in Zionism, the restoration of the

New Israel, I brought that up just because of the fact that those who have different biblical interpretations of fulfilled prophecy or eschatology are being accused of anti -Semitism, and that is an absurd notion when you have

Jews who did not—Jews en masse—who did not believe that this was

Israel. Many have come to accept it, perhaps even the majority, I'm not sure. Well, I do think that we

Christians have—and even as citizens, either in the

U .S .—I'm not a green card holder. I'm the legal resident, as it's termed.

I'm still—I suppose I used to be an alien. I'm now a regular person, perhaps.

I don't know what that means. But as we citizens or as people who live in a political landscape, we have political positions.

And it is right that as we look at the land of Israel or the nation of Israel, that we see that as a democracy in the

Middle East and that is an ally, and we may have reason for having that kindliness towards our allies in certain parts of the world.

So that's fine. The issue goes to another level, though, whenever Christians will say, well, we've got to stand with Israel and we've got to bless

Israel. Well, first of all, I got to ask that question. What does it mean? What does it mean to stand with Israel?

What does it mean to bless Israel? And we need really to flesh these terms out. I think sometimes we use these terms so loosely, and we're not really even thinking deeply as to what are the implications of—

We'll definitely define those terms the way you think that they should be appropriate. The way I think of them, again, standing with—if

I stand with someone, it may be because they need help.

If I stand with a little old lady who needs some help as she needs to cross the road, or if I stand with someone who has just lost a loved one,

I might get alongside that person and be of some even physical assistance.

So again, going back to the political question, we may stand with a political ally, but in terms of our unconditional standing with Israel as a nation,

I think there are reasons why we, as Christians, perhaps we can't say that unconditionally, because Israel is not a

Christian nation. Why should we expect a non -Christian nation to act in a certain way, and why should we simply be standing unconditionally with a nation that may not act totally in a

Christian way? I think politically we may stand with them. I think theologically is where I would bring the point to.

And so again, going back to our Presbyterian forefathers, they desired to express something of a standing with, with a desire to bless with the gospel.

And so ultimately, it all goes back to the gospel. The standing with someone, maybe on their deathbed,

I have done so in my pastoral ministry, where I will sit with someone or effectively stand with someone on their deathbed, and I want to tell them about Jesus, and I want to read them the

Scriptures, and I want to bring them eternal truths that will enable them to cross that great river that they are about to cross.

So our standing with Israel must be to bring them to that point, to bring them to the gospel of Jesus, their

Messiah. And of course, then, another word in those phrases that needs to be clarified is the word

Israel itself, because in fact, someone today, immediately when

I told them that my guest was the North American director of a

Christian witness to Israel, he immediately thought it had something to do with the nation of Israel, because of the word

Israel in the name. But that has more than that one meaning. Of course, because what does it mean in the

Scriptures? As we read of what the Apostle Paul would speak of when his heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel, what was it?

Well, it was for Israel, the people. Or if we read Romans 9 through 11, where Israel is mentioned, what does it mean?

Again, it means the people. When our ministry began 175 years ago, our ministry was actually named by a different name.

It was the British Society for the Propagation of the Gospel Among the Jews, because actually, in those days, there wasn't

Israel, it was Palestine then. And so our ministry, as we have renamed it to be

Christian witness to Israel, Israel in our name simply means the Jews, and it's bringing the gospel to the

Jewish people worldwide. In fact, people would be surprised to discover that Palestinians is really, when you speak of the

Palestinians as an ethnic people, this is a modern invention. The term

Palestinian was always associated with the Jewish people until the 20th century, really.

Well, both, although the term Palestine came really in the second century.

And I think I have a problem at times when I hear preachers talking about Jesus walking in the hills of Palestine.

No, he didn't. We don't read of that in the scripture. We read of him in Galilee or Judea or Samaria, or there were so many different regions.

It wasn't called Palestine in those days. And indeed, it was named Palestine really to thumb the nose at the

Jewish people because it referenced back to the Philistines as you pronounce it over here.

And it really was to, the Romans named it that, to be kind of a thorn in the side of the

Jewish people when the Jewish people had been expelled and dispersed after the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70.

Right, but this understanding of these people there now being Palestinians as if they are a separate ethnic group or country, this is something that was foreign from history.

Well, again, they have made up their own identity as well, and almost have taken on an identity and a cause and even a narrative.

There's a lot of talk these days about fake news. And it seems to me that we need to be so, so careful about narratives and even a greater understanding of history.

I think I've maybe shared this the last time I was with you or some previous visits, but the narrative on Northern Ireland during my days of growing up, the narrative in these shores in the

United States, certainly in some of areas of Boston and Chicago, was that those

Brits were oppressing the poor Catholic Irish. And so the narrative was presented, we need to raise money in the pubs and bars of American Irish in Chicago or whatever, and money was raised to fund terrorism.

And so the narrative that was told here was a false narrative. And I think, again, in the

Middle East, and indeed, not just in the Israel and the Israeli Palestinian issues, we need to be so careful about what we're hearing and what we're reading.

Just as even today, with regard to fake news, and with regard to the news channels and what is being presented as news, which is more, this is my

British take on the American news channels, but it's nothing more than political propaganda on whatever side of the fence you are.

And I crave narratives, and I crave news, and I crave that kind of, just give me that understanding of what is happening.

Let me think it through. Don't give me one minute of news and then 59 minutes of comment of what you think is going on in the world.

But that's another story for another time. You've really got me sidetracked there.

Well, I want you, when we return from the break, I'm sure that we will eventually get into the actual subject of the

Passover. But when we come back from the break, you had a very fascinating experience in Denver that I wanted you to share with our listeners that in some way relates to some of the things that we've been already discussing about people who have a misplaced emphasis when it comes to Jewish outreach.

Yeah, about a month ago I was at a conference in Denver, and I'll talk about that whenever we get back. Yeah, we'll be back after these messages if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own for our guest

Stephen Atkinson, who is the North American director for A Christian Witness to Israel.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen, if you just tuned us in on this dawn of Passover.

We have as our guest today, returning to the studio, Stephen Atkinson. He is the

North American director of Christian Witness to Israel, and we are discussing not only an appropriate methodology of reaching out to the

Jewish people with the gospel to put things into perspective according to the priorities, first and foremost, being bringing praise, honor, and glory to God, being faithful to his word, and having a compassion for the never -dying souls of the

Jewish people, first and foremost, above any other area that we may have legitimate rights to debate or disagree over regarding eschatology or biblical prophecy, and so on.

Stephen also is the assistant pastor of Covenant Church, which is a church in the

Presbyterian Church in America, also known as the PCA, in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Before we continue with our story about Denver, Colorado, perhaps he could tell our listeners something about Covenant Church.

We failed to mention that earlier. Well, as you rightly say, I'm a member of the PCA in beautiful Northwest Arkansas.

My senior pastor has been there 30 years. He was a church planter, and he was indeed the means of me coming over here, and the ministry of CWI making its way over here as he and the congregation there enabled me to be called in that manner, and a visa was enabled, and ultimately now

I'm on a green card, and so I'm good for 10 years according to immigration, and so I'm very thankful for Covenant Church and for the way in which these things have happened providentially.

And hopefully there'll be nothing in this broadcast today that expedites your expulsion from this country.

You never know with Iron Sherp and Zinaria. You never know. And if anybody is interested in learning more about Covenant Church in Fayetteville, Arkansas, you could go to their website, covenantchurchpca .org.

That's Covenant Church PCA, which stands for Presbyterian Church in America, .org, covenantchurchpca .org.

And also the Christian Witness to Israel, North America, their website is cwina .org,

CWI for Christian Witness to Israel, NA for North America, .org, cwina .org.

You had informed me about something interesting that developed in Denver, Colorado, at a speaking engagement that involved the live streaming of a rabbi in Israel, some message he was giving, and I'm not talking about a

Messianic rabbi or a Christian rabbi, an Orthodox Jewish rabbi.

This was a regular rabbi, and I had been asked to take part in this conference, and the conference organizers had deliberately decided they wanted to expose the congregation to perhaps things that we maybe wouldn't be wholly in agreement with.

But the reason that was given to me was that if you get a vaccine, you'll get a little bit of the disease, but I kept saying, well, if you get too much of the disease, though, then you get sick.

So the situation that was desired was to expose to some of the other things that are out there.

And indeed, for me, I had known theologically certain things that were out there, but I was able to see them a little bit up close and personal through the weekend.

So it was helpful to me in that regard. But there was one incident on the Saturday afternoon where the organizers were live -streaming this rabbi, and again, the conference was entitled,

Why Christians Should Stand With Israel. And I had my reasons and even my explanation as to what that means, but the rabbi obviously wanted to deliver his impression of what that meant.

And what that meant for him was very specifically that Christians should leave Jews alone, that they should respect

Jews and their Judaism, that they should come visit the land and enjoy

Jewishness in the land and enjoy all of those kinds of things.

But primarily, he simply said, you really must not consider us as an evangelistic project.

In fact, that was the liberal approach to Christian missionary involvement in Africa and all of the foreign lands where Christianity might have been a minority.

Missionaries were told by liberals just to bring food and dig wells and keep your religion to yourself.

Don't nail your religion to the natives' feet, all that nonsense. And of course,

I listened to this, and I wonder, would you have done the same thing?

It sounds as if you probably would. But I listened to this kind of approach, and I could contain myself no longer.

And I simply said, and I posed the question at the conference, which then was transferred, again, live to our rabbi friend.

I posed the question just like this, that in the light of Psalm 67, your ancestors, your

Jewish ancestors prayed that the world might know

Israel's God and his salvation. And my question and my point was, my

Scots ancestors were dancing around stone images in the days when in Psalm 67, your

Jewish ancestors prayed that the world and the nations may know your

God. And my question was, why did you not leave us alone?

And he fluffed and he huffed and puffed a little bit, but never really responded to my question.

And I simply then followed up and said, I just want to say thank you, and thank

God that your ancestors did not leave us alone. And you see, to remind our listeners of the

Psalm, Psalm 67, we sometimes either sing this

Psalm, or we sing a version of it, or we read it, and we immediately Christianize it.

And there's a legitimacy to that. But let's try and put place ourselves in the original context of Psalm 67.

Consider, you know, a thousand BC, a little prayer meeting in Jerusalem, and these little group of Jewish people are saying, may

God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us, that your way may be known on earth, your saving power or your salvation known among all nations.

Let the peoples praise you, O God. Let all the peoples praise you. Let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you judge the peoples with equity and guide the nations upon the earth.

And so it continues. And the prayer there of the psalmist, and indeed the prayer, we might say, of that little group of faithful Jews 3 ,000 years ago, was that God would graciously shine upon the

Jewish people so that the nations of the world, so that my Scots -Irish ancestors would come to know

Israel's God and his salvation. And that is what has happened. Thank God, even as I look at my family tree and see, as so far as I'm aware, no one who knew the

Lord, but the Lord broke in, and the Lord brought the fulfillment of that psalm into my life.

And the prayer of those faithful Jewish people 3 ,000 years ago was fulfilled in me coming to know their

Messiah and, of course, Israel's God. So my response to him was, no,

I will not leave you alone. And indeed, a little later in the conference, I suppose I pressed it a little far and I put on my

Liam Neeson voice and I said, I will find you and I will tell you about Jesus.

How did he respond to that? That was later on in the evening, so he didn't have an immediate answer.

But again, I stress that this is unavoidable. We must bring

Jesus before the Jewish people. They did it to us.

Praise, thank God they did it for us. Amen. I have a very close friend that I've had since 1990,

I believe, Robert Unger, Orthodox Jewish individual. He would definitely be in the political right as far as the spectrum is concerned.

Most people would view him as a very conservative person politically, but he has abandoned the term conservative because he doesn't think there's anything left to conserve.

He thinks that the country has become so liberal that conservative is not even an appropriate term because we need to be revolutionary rather than conservative.

But one of the things that I admire about him is that he has, over the years that I've known him, he's come to appreciate the fact that Christians care about his eternal soul enough to evangelize him even at the risk of making him or other

Jewish people uncomfortable. He has come to see this as something that is only a logical fruit of somebody that really believes what they say they believe.

That's wonderful. That's wonderful that he has realized that because the other side of it is that we are being told, leave us alone.

Indeed, some so -called Christian pastors are telling the church, leave them alone.

Like John Hagee, for instance. Like him. There are others, but yes, it's that kind of theology.

Some in the Roman Catholic Church would say that we don't need to evangelize our Jewish brothers because they are already children of God and we need not bring them any gospel because they need not any transformation.

To the law and to the testimony, what says the scriptures? And immediately we run to find what the

Apostle Paul did or what did the Apostle Peter do on the Day of Pentecost.

The Day of Pentecost, he's gathered for a Jewish festival and there are all these faithful Jews that are gathered and suddenly

Peter preaches a sermon and tells them that you guys have really messed up. Jesus the

Messiah, my dear friend and rabbi, you killed him with the help of lawless men, with the help of those

Romans, Jews, and Gentiles together, put him on the cross, but God has raised him.

Now, let me tell you about Jesus and you need to be summoned to come to Christ.

So what did Peter do? What did the Apostle do when he went into every

European city? He found the synagogue first. I've got to go call in here and talk with Shmuel about Jesus.

I've got to call in here and talk with Yohanan and tell him about Jesus. Paul, the

Apostle to the Gentiles, goes into every synagogue he could find to tell them about Jesus.

So I find it just ludicrous that either Christian pastors or some

Christians or others suggest that we should simply leave them alone.

My CEO friend and colleague with CWI in the UK, he was brought to faith by a

Gentile. He's a Jewish believer and he was brought to faith by a Gentile going out of his way to tell him about Jesus.

And I find it strange, but he has said to me, Stephen, you know, you Gentiles are better evangelists of Jewish people than us

Jews. And I challenged him a little bit on that. He said, no, no, he says, this is what's happened to me, that you went out of your way to tell me about Jesus and all our missionaries must do the same.

And it goes back to really what I was saying earlier, that the gospel came across from Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, unto the ends of the earth.

The gospel came across to us. They did not leave us alone, thank God, and we must return that to them.

Amen. And well, I'm going to wait for us to begin our discussion on the

Passover because we're going to another break in six minutes, so I will wait till after the break to begin that discussion.

I don't want to interrupt you midstream on that discussion. But this political correctness is very disturbing when it comes to especially those who claim to be

Bible believing Christians and evangelicals, how they will put Jewish people in a certain category as if they're safe, just because they're

Jewish, when in Jesus's day, they weren't safe. But just because they were Jewish. In fact, they weren't safe anywhere in the old covenant, just because they were

Jewish. My heart's desire and prayer to God is that they will be safe, is that they will be saved.

Amen. And that they will enjoy that shalom. Again, thinking back to that conference, I used an illustration, it might be helpful, about standing with Israel.

And I used the illustration of the Titanic. The Titanic was the greatest ship ever built.

Of course, it was built by Northern Irishmen. I don't know if you want to take credit for that. Well, let me tell you.

You see, if you know the whole story, the Titanic was the greatest ship ever built, built in Belfast.

But, and this is where I'll get myself into real trouble. It was sunk by the pride of an

English captain. The English captain would not heed the warnings of the iceberg, because he wanted to get in record time across the

Atlantic. You really want to stir up some old feuds. There you go. It's the Scots -Irish versus the

English again. There you go. But we have the greatest ship ever built, and we have pride which brings it down.

And what did I do to use the illustration? Well, we have the old covenant came with glory, says 2

Corinthians 3. It came with glory. It was a glorious thing. I think sometimes we in New Testament Christianity tend to just ignore two -thirds of our book.

There is glory in the old covenant, but then there is surpassing glory in the new covenant.

And I think we need to realize that the old covenant, in a sense, the Titanic had a lifeboat, and out of that was

Jesus. And what do you do with folks who are standing on the Titanic?

Do you shuffle the deck chairs on the Titanic? Do you stand with the people on the Titanic as they are going down, or do you point them to the lifeboat?

And so with our Jewish friends, do we simply stand with them as they go into a lost eternity, or do we say, here's the lifeboat that you guys brought forth, that to you, as Paul writes in Romans 11, to you belong the covenants, the promises, the giving of the law, the human ancestry of Christ?

And Paul wept, because from that pedigree came the Messiah, and yet they don't know their own

Messiah. And that is what makes us weep today. So we will stand with Israel, we will walk with Israel, we will weep with Israel, but above all,

I will find you, and I will tell you about Jesus. Amen. You know, I can recall being at a meeting at a certain radio station that I'm not going to mention, and there was this

Jewish celebrity there who was a political, conservative political talk show host who was being added to the lineup of this

Christian station. And he, during his speech, said that his

Jewish friends were saying to him, are you kidding me? How could you, as a Jew, be joining the lineup of an evangelical

Christian network? They're going to want to convert you, it's going to be a mockery of your faith, and all these kinds of things.

And he said, nothing could be farther from the truth. In fact, I've been welcomed to this network with open arms, and I've been assured by the leaders of this network that we don't want you to convert.

We think you're more valuable in the conservative political arena being a

Jew, since there are so few Jews standing up for conservative ideals and morals in the political arena.

We need you to stay the way you are. And I was thinking to myself, what a despicable, selfish, and misplaced emphasis.

They were more concerned over politics than this man's never -dying soul. Absolutely. And perhaps they were more concerned over ratings than this man's never -dying soul.

That's probably more accurate as well. And I'm still, those words echo in my mind.

He thought that was a wonderful thing, and it is quite sad indeed.

But anyway, please join us on the air when we return from our break with a question of your own for Stephen Atkinson at chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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That's linbrookbaptist .org. Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen, if you just tuned in to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio today.

Our guest has been and will continue to be Stephen Atkinson, Assistant Pastor of Covenant Church in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and the

North American Director of Christian Witness to Israel, also known as CWI, and we are about to enter into a discussion on the

Passover. We are today now in the dawn of Passover. Passover begins at sundown today, and if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

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Thank you very much for your time. We are now returning to our discussion with Stephen Atkinson of Christian Witness to Israel, and I'd like to begin our discussion on the

Passover, but first we are going to go to a listener in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, CJ, who asks,

Do Jews who are not Christians worship the same one true God that Christians worship, knowing that they do not believe in the

Trinity? It is a good question, and it sometimes can be misunderstood in terms of what the question is and in terms of the answer that may be given.

I'm giving that just really as a disclaimer. We worship the

God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, yes, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Jewish believers in the Old Covenant days worshiped

God, the living and the true God. They did not know him, perhaps, as the three -in -one.

They knew him, again, from the Scriptures in some understanding of a plurality of majesty, perhaps, and the

Hebrew would suggest that, but they did not know him in terms of the

God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. But they were saved by his blood.

They weren't saved by work. So Old Covenant believers are saved in exactly the same way as New Covenant believers.

They look forward. They looked forward in faith, and we look back in faith.

So they wouldn't have had the whole picture, but nonetheless, they received in faith that gracious gift of salvation.

But the question, perhaps, is a little bit more specific. For Jewish people today who worship according to the

Torah but do not know Jesus, are they worshiping the same God? Sometimes people will say yes, and sometimes people will say no.

I think it is a theological question. I think what I would stress is some missiologists would say that Muslims worship the same

God, because the word for God in Arabic is Allah. So when they worship

Allah, they are worshiping God, the one true living God. And I would have to say no, because just because they use a word doesn't mean they're worshiping the true

God. But there is a sense of continuity of Christians, Jewish Christians or Gentile Christians.

There's a continuity with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And I'm really not ducking the issue.

My Jewish friends who worship God are worshiping as so far as they know the

God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but they do not know Jesus. And therefore, they are lost.

And we have unashamedly said that. No one can come to the Father but through Christ. Except for me, of course. So I'm trying not to duck the issue.

They are lost, and they need to hear the gospel. But I think also we need to retain our continuity with the believers of the

Old Testament. And that's why I say that we Christians are worshiping the God of Israel.

So in answer to the question, it's a long roundabout answer to the question perhaps, it's not really so much are

Jews worshiping the same God as us? I prefer to answer it, are we worshiping the same

God as the God of Israel? And we would say, yes, we are because of the

Lord Jesus Christ. We are worshiping the same God in the Old Covenant or the Hebrew Scriptures, and not necessarily the

God of those in modern -day Israel. And so today is the dawn of the first day of Passover.

Tell us, I mean, most of our listeners will have a cursory—at least a cursory—knowledge of Passover, if not an in -depth one, but you have all kinds of listeners to this program.

You have people who are new Christians, you have people who are seasoned Christians, people who are pastors and theologians, you have people who are not even

Christians at all. I even have Muslim listeners and so on, on occasion, who have written to me, and people of other faiths, and people who profess to be agnostics or atheists.

Why is this day so important on the Jewish calendar? Tell us biblically and historically what this event was all about.

I think even just to take one step back from that, and maybe lighten it a little bit, but I have a three -sentence phrase which summarizes the whole of the

Jewish festivals, and I hope it's not too banal to say, but if you want a quick summary of all the

Jewish festivals, I can give you in three sentences. They tried to kill us,

God saved us, let's eat. And drink.

And so tonight the Jewish people will remember that, that they tried to kill us.

The Egyptians tried to kill us. God saved us. And Lechaim, so let's eat.

And they will have a sumptuous meal tonight. And there's a number of different things that will be going on even prior to Passover, and in the evening, and the symbolism that proceeds throughout the evening, and even the festivity and the feast, will all represent a number of different things.

And so I thought it might be helpful just for us to discuss or to walk through some of those things.

The festival itself celebrates the deliverance of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, and all the symbols on the table, on the

Passover table, and the various things that they proceed through in terms of what they sing and what they read, all point back to that event.

One of the things I find very interesting is the way in which the Apostle Paul uses some of the symbols and some of the aspects of Passover, and helpfully explains things to us

Gentiles, and indeed brings the importance of some of these things into a new covenant context, and even within, therefore, what our

Lord did in the night he was betrayed, and what Christians do then in terms of the

Lord's Supper. There is a time of preparation, if we can slip back one day prior to Passover, or even before that, there is a great deal of cleaning that goes on in the

Jewish household. Obviously that has not occurred in the studio. I'm not going to mention anything of the studio.

I'm very comfortable sitting here. As you know, I was on a long trip in Indianapolis and didn't have time.

Well, you need to get ready for Passover, brother. So the

Jewish household will be cleaned, the children will be cleaned, they will be given new clothes, there will be a cleansing in preparation for Passover, and particularly a cleansing of leaven, of yeast, and the eradication of yeast from the household.

There is the putting out and casting out of the leaven, and all that leaven, they actually deliberately leave a few crumbs for the children to find, and they go on a hide -and -seek and find this last little bit of leaven, these last few crumbs of bread or cake or whatever it might be, and they take it and they wrap it in paper and they burn it the next morning.

So, what would be this morning? So they would, on the day before Passover, there would be a very deliberate cleansing and removing of the leaven in preparation for Passover, and it reminds me, therefore, of what

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 5 and verse 7, where he says, "...cleanse out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump as you really are unleavened.

For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth."

And I think it's helpful for us Christians, even as we then take our New Testament or our

New Covenant counterpart of the Passover and enjoy the

Lord's table and come to communion. And again, the Apostle Paul writes of the preparation for coming to the table, and he says, "...let

a man examine himself, and so let him eat." And in a sense, what he's doing there is simply saying, in Passover, we cleanse the whole house, we search the whole house, and we get rid of the old leaven.

And in our New Testament context, we are to do self -examination. We are to see, test me, try me,

O Lord, see if there be any wicked way within me and lead me in the way everlasting. And it is a good principle for us, as we think of our

Jewish friends cleansing the house for Passover, that we

Christians do a soul search, and the house of our lives, the house of our souls, that we examine ourselves as we come to the

Lord's table, as we come to the Lord's worship. Now, I'll list some of the other elements that would be, or list all of the elements that would be present at the

Passover meal, because there is a very specific and important change that takes place after AD 70 as to how this day is celebrated.

Well, it is, there is no sacrifice, obviously, but there will be a lamb bone on the

Passover plate, which will symbolize the Passover lamb. There will be a roasted egg, and there are a number of different reasons and suggestions as to what that symbolizes, and of course, there's no one, it doesn't simply symbolize one thing, but the roasted egg will symbolize roasted sacrifices.

An egg also symbolizes new life. The hard -boiled roasted egg, some suggest it symbolizes

Pharaoh's hard heart. And indeed, the blackened roasted egg will symbolize the destruction of the temple, and the blackening burning of the temple.

So we've got the lamb bone, we've got a roasted egg, there will be bitter herbs, you say herbs,

I say herbs, tomato, but there will be bitter herbs, yes,

I'm becoming American, okay? And so there will be parsley, or sometimes celery or lettuce, and there will be horseradish.

And the herbs are very deliberately tasted at various parts of the evening, and the specifics of that is to bring forth tears, because they were in slavery in Egypt, and the weeping and the tears of their enslavement are represented in the bitter herbs and the horseradish.

Then also they have an interesting little mix, which is called kharoseth, which is a sweet mix of nuts and apple and honey.

And again, in the symbolism, there's a symbolism of fruitfulness, there's a symbolism of sweetness, and in the midst of the bitterness, there is sweetness.

In the midst of their slavery, there is the deliverance, there is the promise, and there is then the ultimate deliverance.

So again, on the Passover plate, there will be those items that will display, and as they proceed through the evening, they will be not only remembering the bitterness, bitter tears, they will also remember the sweetness of deliverance.

They will also have four cups of wine, and wine gladdens the heart.

And according to the rabbis, it is okay to get a little shicker at Passover.

And now, is this canonical advice, or is this rabbinical tradition?

I think this is rabbinical tradition, that it is okay to enjoy and gladden the heart with four cups of wine.

Now, of course, the four cups take place over about three to four hours of their evening meal, but it is four cups of wine.

They also set out a fifth cup for Elijah. So there is a fifth plate for Elijah, and going through the evening as well, there is a time when they send the children to the front door to look down the street to see if there is an old guy with a beard that might be appearing, because they set out a place for Elijah, in the hope that Elijah may show up at their

Passover meal, because before Messiah comes, Elijah will come.

I remember doing a Passover demonstration in Kansas, and I sent this young kid out the door to see if there was any old guys with gray beards walking the street, and he came back in and said, yeah, there's a lot of them out there.

I need to be careful where I tell that. So they have the cups, they have a fifth cup for Elijah, and then they have the matzah, and the matzah tash, or the matzah bag, has three sections to it.

So there will be three pieces of matzah, and if anyone has ever seen any matzah, or if you haven't, just quickly google it and you'll see an image of matzah, and it's very distinctive.

You are definitely in the heartland of America if you've never seen matzah. If you've never seen matzah, there you go. Matzah is distinctive, it is pierced and striped.

And that's not even necessarily what was being used, it was unleavened bread to be sure. Unleavened bread, unleavened bread.

But if you buy the kosher matzah today in the stores, you will, and you look at it, you will see that it is pierced, little dots in it, and it is, the way it's been baked, there are stripes.

So what immediately comes to mind when you hear that phrase, pierced and striped? Right, the Lord's punishments.

And not only the Lord's punishment, but the prophesied Lord's punishment. So you don't think this is coincidence?

I do not think this is coincidence. Again, some would suggest, and this is not totally verified, but some would suggest that in Jewish seders today, there are some traditions that have come in that may be

Christian, in the sense that in the early church or post -temple destruction, when

Christians and Jews were generally meeting together, and the followers of the way were simply a sect within Judaism of the day, and so they may have enjoyed

Passover together, and there were perhaps some Christian symbolism went into the seder.

In fact, we're going to stop right there because I don't want to cut you off in mid -sentence, and we're going to go to our final break, it will be briefer, and when we return, we will conclude with the remainder of what we have on the

Passover, and if anybody would like to join us, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

In fact, let me just quickly, before we go to the break, and you can answer it when we return, we have

B .B. in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, there is a difference of opinion amongst

Christians on whether or not we need to use unleavened bread when we celebrate the Lord's Supper to parallel what took place at the

Passover. Do you think that this has any relevance at all? And perhaps you could answer that when we return, and then you could pick up where you left off.

I will do so. And if anybody, as I said, would like to join us, now is the time to do so because we are running out of time.

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Chrisarnson at gmail .com if you have a question for our guest on the

Passover, and please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence. We'll be right back after these messages, so do not go away.

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We hope that Iron Sharpens Iron Radio blesses you for many years to come. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arns. And if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with about 25 minutes to go has been and will continue to be

Stephen Atkinson, the North American director of A Christian Witness to Israel.

And we are discussing the Passover right now. And before the break, BB in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania wanted to know if Christians should be using unleavened bread in their

Lord's Day service observance, their Lord's Supper observance, or does it not matter at all?

I think it's fair to say that we want to be as close to what was the original.

And my personal preference would be for using unleavened bread or using matzah. To me, that makes normal sense.

In fact, to me, it's rather strange. And I travel around a lot of churches, and I don't make an issue of it.

And I wouldn't be legalistic about it. And it's not something to die for, perhaps. But I think if we're trying to make sure that we show a continuity with that Christianity is

Jewish, as Edith Schaffer's book rightly points out, that we would use what

Jesus used when he said, this is my body broken for you. He broke matzah. And there's no question of that.

That's what happened in the upper room. And therefore, I would agree with the listener and suggest that perhaps more and more churches just need to think a little bit more as to what should we use.

And again, I think even in the break, you and I had a little bit of a conversation as well.

And we don't use orange juice. We use grape juice, whether it is alcoholic or non -alcoholic or, again, fruit of the vine.

But we use the fruit of the vine. We don't use the fruit of the orange tree. And I think with regard to the bread, it would be more authentic, and indeed meaningful, and perhaps even meaningful to our

Jewish friends who may stumble in our services and wonder, what are you doing here with yeast?

Because in actual fact, as we pointed out earlier, they cleanse the house because yeast represents sin.

And for us to eat bread with yeast in it is almost suggestive that it's okay to sin.

Again, I'm not really trying to make hard and fast rules here, but I would simply make a plea for us to be a little bit more thoughtful.

And endeavor to be authentic. And so I'm with your listener, and I would plea for unleavened bread.

Yes, just like no matter what side of the baptism issue you are on, you happen to be

Presbyterian, I'm a Reformed Baptist, we still believe that water is involved and that the application of water to the baptismal candidate is involved, and not just the waving of a glass of water over the head of the person.

Or a glass of orange juice. In fact, I remember Robert Shuler saying that he baptized someone in the waiting room of a doctor's office by dumping fresco over their head or some ridiculous thing.

But anyway, never mind, I'm going to say something that I'll regret later.

But anyway, if you could pick up where you left off as well. Where did I leave off? Well, we were talking about the elements of...

I think we'd got on to the matzah, and the piercing and striped matzah.

It's indicative of the piercing and Jesus' own stripes, we may say, involved in his sacrifice.

And tell us about the afikoman. Yeah, I'll come to that in a moment, because that is a very vital point too.

The matzah itself, there are three matzah, and I think what I was referencing a little earlier too was there may have been some

Christian traditions that had come in. And of course, the rabbis today totally say, no, no, no, no, no.

But why three matzah? Why a matzah tash? Why a matzah bag with three?

And some scholars would suggest that it represents Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And of course, the rabbis will say, no, no, that's just crazy.

But the truth is, they really don't know exactly why there are three.

They will have reasons why there are three matzah, but they won't exactly say they know why. So this is a non -canonical element.

Yeah, yeah. Well, we haven't got clarity with regard to...

It's like a fiddler on the roof. Tradition, tradition. There are many, many traditions that have come in over the years that the rabbis will give reasons for, but they're maybe not foolproof reasons as to why they do certain things.

So we have three matzah. Why? I might suggest, well, maybe some messianic, maybe some early believing

Jews put this in, but we have a situation where three matzah are in the bag, the middle matzah is taken and is broken.

What does that represent? Again, we can immediately see Christ's symbolism there.

Not the first, not the third, but the... The middle matzah is broken. And you mentioned Afikoman, and that's a very important point, because that middle matzah, as it is broken, the half of it which is broken is then wrapped in a napkin, is taken away, is hidden from view for the next three hours as they have their meal.

And after three hours, that broken middle matzah placed in a napkin is brought back.

And I've got to say, you know, can you not see something in the symbolism of that, of Jesus being broken?

This is my body broken for you. He dies. He is placed in a napkin, not for three hours, but three days, and he is brought back.

And he, again, displays himself as the one who is alive forevermore.

And again, the Afikoman, it is called the Afikoman. Again, different people will explain that in different ways.

Scholars would suggest it has Greek and Hebrew roots to it. But they tend to be united in suggesting that the word means, he who is coming again, or he who is coming after.

So we have this half matzah that is brought back, and it represents he who is coming again.

I've got to say, that's Christological. I've got to say that that's messianic. In the

Jewish Passover that they will be doing this evening in their homes, and it points to Jesus.

Pray, pray, my Christian friends, pray that God will open their eyes, will take the veil from their eyes, and see

Christ in the Passover. Amen. One thing that we kind of glossed over, but I think is very crucial because it involves the very atonement for sin that Jews need today, and without them bowing the knee and worshiping the

Jewish Messiah, or the Messiah of Jew and Gentile, the Lord Jesus Christ, the one true

Messiah, without that Messiah, they will not have eternal life.

They will have no atonement, and that is connected to the Lamb being absent from the

Passover plate today. Yeah. They don't have, either on Yom Kippur, they don't have an atonement, or in Passover, they don't have a

Passover. They don't have Christ, our Passover Lamb. And so we, again, we must take them back to Leviticus, or to their book, and say, without the shedding of blood, there is no remission for sin.

And I'm sorry, Mr. Rabbi, you can't just make it up, and just say, well, you just got to be sorry for your sin now, and it's okay, and God's okay with that.

No, he said, without the shedding of blood, there is no remission for sin. And we've got to say, well, we have the shed blood.

And they used to, from the beginning, from the very beginning— So, for all those years, God demanded blood, he demanded death in the place of another.

Why is it that God simply changes his mind and said, it's okay, just have a little bit of Jewish repentance there, and that's okay.

I'm sorry, that doesn't cut it with anyone. God is, I am the Lord, I change not.

So how can the rabbis reinterpret what those scriptures originally said pertaining to a blood sacrifice, a necessary blood sacrifice?

And indeed, some in the ultra -Orthodox will continue to sacrifice chickens.

And it's frowned upon to some degree, but some will do that because they recognize it has to be blood.

And this is why we've got to take them back to this and show that the blood sacrifice was made in the

Lord Jesus Christ. And it had to be a spotless lamb, did it not? Yes, yes. Civilizing a perfect, sinless

Savior. Yes. And here we have the spotless lamb. This is a story that we've got to tell.

This is something that we need to bring to our Jewish friends. This is the greatest story ever told. And they brought it to us, and they brought that sacrifice to us, that we might have our sins washed away.

How dare we withhold such amazing gospel truth from our

Jewish friends? Now, why is it that when the temple was destroyed in A .D.

70 that there were no sacrifices continuing after that?

For instance, when an average Jewish family was partaking in the

Passover the way it was originally intended, with the sacrificed lamb, were they not doing this in their own homes, from their own flocks, or were they actually traveling to the temple?

How did that work? Well, again, after the temple was destroyed, there was no possibility anymore.

No, I meant before the destruction of the temple. Well, for the full following of the rules, you came to Jerusalem for the temple feasts.

And that's why, whenever I mentioned earlier Pentecost, there were a large group of Jewish people from all over the known world.

They had come. Why did they come? They didn't celebrate Pentecost in their own localities.

They came to Jerusalem, and it was there that Peter preached Christ, and then they were sent out to their synagogues to tell others about Jesus.

So it had to be in Jerusalem. And the Jew today has to wonder, and they must have been wondering since A .D.

70, why God would allow the Roman armies to destroy that sacred place if he was not pouring out chastisement.

Well, they have reasons for that. They will have answers to that. They will have reasons for that.

Not reasons that we will be sufficiently satisfied with, but they will have reasons for that. But you're absolutely right.

God did something decisively in ending the whole sacrificial system because the one sacrifice had already been made.

And they really have no legitimate claim to an atonement. They have really created a fantasy world in regard to that, an unbiblical, uncanonical, even according to their own

Hebrew scriptures. I believe so. I think this is where we need just to have a little bit more of an insight into modern

Judaism, because while we have 2 ,000 years of church history, and indeed some of it is bad church history pertaining to the

Jewish people, a lot of it is bad church history, but we have also got to bear in mind 2 ,000 years of rabbinic reinterpretations.

So I go and I ask my Jewish friends, and they ask me, well, are they going to be like the

Jews that we read of in the scriptures? And I said, no, no, no, no. They're probably far, far removed from that, because Mr.

Rabbi has so reinterpreted things that don't assume that your understanding of Jews and Judaism from the scriptures is going to be the same as the shul down the road.

Now, would you agree with the assessment of one of my Messianic Jewish friends, who's now with the

Lord, actually, in heaven, my dear friend Marty Fromm, who I miss greatly. He was a precious brother and dear friend.

Even though we had differences on eschatology and things like that, we were very good friends for quite a number of years, going back to 1985, actually.

And he just went home to be with the Lord in glory about a year ago or so. But he said that an

Orthodox Jew would look upon you with horror and perhaps even consider you a blasphemer if you were to walk over to the plates of those celebrating the

Passover, and perhaps even in a naive way, thinking you were being hospitable and trying to be original, started carving up a lamb on their plates.

That would be something that looked upon as horrific, because there is no sacrifice. There's not supposed to be a lamb there.

Yeah. They would be horrified. We've got to be sensitive.

We've got to be sensitive to our friends. The veil is still over their eyes, and we've got to pray that that veil would be removed.

They have experienced a hardening, in part. There is a judicial aspect to that, but there's also a divine, providential aspect to it, in the sense that they have experienced a hardening for our sakes, for us

Gentiles, so that we may know mercy. Thank God that he has been merciful to us unclean goyim.

But with the mercy that we have received, we are to respond to them with mercy.

RJ in White Plains, New York, wants to know, should we have no fear of judgment as God judged

Nadab and Abihu for offering strange fire when we participate in the

Seder that has new, uncanonical elements added to it? I'm tempted to say no comment.

To getting into a strange fire debate, I think that will demand several more hours.

Well, obviously, you don't really believe that, since you enjoy and participate in Seder demonstrations.

No, I make it very clear when I do a demonstration that it is just that, though, that it is a demonstration, because I'm not

Jewish. I'm doing one this Thursday, actually, in a

Presbyterian church, and I will make it clear at the outset that it is a demonstration in order to display

Christ in the elements of the Passover. There is a sense in which

Passover changed post -destruction of the

Temple. There is a sense in which there has been some measure of fluidity and more traditions being added to the

Passover. And so, you know, I wouldn't enter into the strange fire debate on something like that.

Well, I definitely want you to have an uninterrupted period of time now to just summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners before we run out of time, and then if we have time, we'll go to another listener question if we have one or so on.

Again, I go back to where I began. The wonderful truth is that by the grace of God, the message of Israel's God and his salvation has come to us, and I want to unavoidably and unashamedly bring that gospel back to our

Jewish friends. And as we are at Passover evening, that I would ask my

Christian friends to be praying for our Jewish neighbors that God would open up their eyes, and that by his grace, even in the reading of the scriptures that they'll be reading, that they will consider who it speaks of.

Search the scriptures, they speak of me, said Jesus. And what did he mean by that? He actually meant the

Jewish scriptures, because that was the only scriptures at the time. And so the Jewish scriptures that they will be reading, they speak of him, and the

Passover itself will speak of him as the Lord takes the veil away from their eyes.

I remember, I need to tell a little story, I remember hearing the story of Moshe Rosen from the finding member of Jews for Jesus.

He was a friend of James Montgomery Boyce, was he not? Yes, I believe he was, yes. I was never privileged enough to meet him, some of my colleagues did meet him.

But I did hear the story of his first attendance at church when it was communion.

And he had started to attend church, and again, we need to come to a sensitivity and an understanding of our

Jewish friends, what it would be like for them to come into our churches. Will they see something that is recognizably connected to their religion?

Or is it going to be completely foreign? As I said earlier, Christianity is Jewish, we need to show some measure of continuity.

And so Moshe Rosen started attending church, and this very helpful lady explained to him, now you stand up here, you sit down there, you sing this, you do this, you do this.

And so he was learning all the various things week in, week out. And then the week was coming along that it was going to be communion.

And she said to him, it's going to be communion next week. Oh, you'll love that, because it's just like Passover.

And he thought, okay, all right, I know this one, okay, I'll come really prepared.

So the Sunday arose, and he came along to the church for communion.

And he decided he wouldn't have any breakfast, because if it's like Passover, he doesn't need any breakfast, because Passover he thinks of as a sumptuous meal.

So he comes along, and he comes into the church, and he sees this shroud over something.

And he'd heard about these Christians, and what these Christians might be doing with a body and blood of the

Lord. And he's starting to wonder, what's going on here? Is there a body under that shroud?

And then he sees these deacons come up, and they lift the shroud off, and there's this little cup, and there's this little piece of bread.

And he says, this is supposed to be like Passover? This is nothing like Passover.

But it alerted him to the fact that we have gone some ways away from Passover.

Now when we come to our Lord's Supper, yes, it's bread, it's wine, and there is a simplicity to the meal.

But we do need to be sensitive to our Jewish friends, and our Jewish friends who may come into our churches.

So you don't believe, as some sects do, that the

Lord's Supper should be a Passover Seder exactly the way it used to be? No, I don't think that's what the

Lord has instituted for us, and I don't think that's what took place in the New Testament church.

There were Passovers. And indeed, the apostle continued to, as I read in 1

Corinthians, let us keep the festival. So he was keeping the festival. But there was also the love feasts, and there was also the communion, and there was also the eating and drinking in that context of the

New Covenant and the institution of the sacrament as the Lord gave it. Now there are some

Christian congregations, fellowships, brotherhoods, denominations that will have the

Lord's Supper every week, and there are some that have it monthly, some of them will have it biannually, and some will follow the

Jewish calendar and have when Passover begins. What is your understanding of that? Do you think that it really matters?

Again, I've been in churches where all of the above kind of thing—well, maybe not all of the above, but I've been in a denomination where it was celebrated twice a year.

I've been in churches where it was once a month. I've been in churches where it was every week. My personal preference probably is to be once a month, but that's simply a preference.

I find sometimes if we're doing it every week, it loses something of our preparation, perhaps.

In the old Scottish manner, it was celebrated twice a year, and there was a whole weekend of preparation, and it was a very large event.

And not only on the Sunday and then the Monday, there was a Thanksgiving as well, and so there was a heightening of the sacrament and the coming to the

Lord's Table. And I like that sense of having a heightened understanding of the privilege that is ours at the

Lord's Table. So I would probably go further than every week, but maybe more frequently than twice a year.

But as the local eldership would consider appropriate,

I would happily submit to that. And I want to make sure, before we run out of time, that our listeners have your contact information.

Once again, the Covenant Church in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where you are an assistant pastor, their website is covenantchurchpca .org,

Covenant Church, P -C -A, which stands for Presbyterian Church in America, covenantchurchpca .org.

And also the website for Christian Witness to Israel North America is

CWI, for Christian Witness to Israel, NA, for northamerica .org,

C -W -I -N -A .org. Do you have any other contact information that you'd like to share with our listeners?

It's all there on the website. If you want to get my email address, it's there on the website as well. I'd love to visit with you.

I'd love to visit churches. If we have time, Chris, I'd like to really just draw things to a conclusion.

As our Lord drew it to conclusion on the night in which he was betrayed, there were a number of things that happened in the upper room, and we could helpfully discuss them.

But I want us to think about what he sang as that last song of the night, because they would have sang the

Halal Psalms. We read in the scriptures that when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the mind of olives.

Well, that's not entirely accurate, they really sung a psalm. And the last one would be

Psalm 118. And if I could just simply read a couple of verses, I think it's very, very poignant for us to think of Jesus on the night in which he was betrayed, singing these very verses.

Psalm 118, verses 6 and 7, we read this. This is

Jesus saying this, singing this, The Lord is on my side, I will not fear. What can man do to me?

The Lord is on my side as my helper. I shall look in triumph on those who hate me.

And then further down to verse 22 to 24 of Psalm 118, The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.

This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes. This is the day that the

Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. And Jesus on the night in which he was betrayed ends the evening, indeed begins the next day, by saying this is the day.

This, this is the day the Lord has made.

And for the next 24 hours, what is going to happen? As sundown, as he goes out, he goes to be betrayed, to be mocked in trial, and to be crucified and die.

For sinners like you and me, this is the day. So tonight we celebrate with our

Jewish friends the day the Lord has made, and we will rejoice and be glad in it.

Amen. Well, thank you so much, Stephen Atkinson, for being my guest today. I'm so delighted that the Lord providentially worked it out so you would be in the studio with me rather than on the phone on this very appropriate day, the dawn of Passover, as it approaches now as I look out the window and the sun is going down.

I hope that you return very soon and very often to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. I will do so. Thank you.

And I hope everyone listening will always remember for the rest of their lives, Jew and Gentile alike, that Jesus Christ is a far greater