A Rabbi looks at the Last Days by Jonathan Bernis.
Chosen Books, 2013 233 pages £10.99 ISBN 978 0 800 795 436 Kindle version also available
The subtitle of this book gives a fairly clear idea of its direction and content – ‘Surprising insights on Israel, the End Times and Popular Misconceptions’.
Rabbi Jonathan Bernis is a Messianic Jew, in other words, he has come to recognise Jesus Christ as the Messiah and trusts Jesus as his saviour.
In part, Rabbi Bernis fulfills what St Paul prayed for in Romans ch 10 – “Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they [the Jews] may be saved.”
In the course of the book, the author states that there were more than 500 Messianic Jewish congregations around the world in 2012, including at least 50 in Israel itself.
This observation is one among many that the author avers to be one fulfillment of many other Old Testament prophecies. To take just one example, Zechariah ch 12 verse 10 says “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of compassion and supplication, so that, when they look on him whom they pierced, they shall mourn for him…”
One might well judge that the Rabbi is revealing clear bias in what he writes when he insists that Israel, using the name as an eponym for those holding to the Jewish faith, has a crucial role to play in accomplishing God’s purposes for the world at large.. There is reason enough for him to do so because of a widespread belief known as Replacement Theology. Replacement Theology has as its fundamental purpose to propose that the church of the New Testament has replaced Israel of the Old Testament. Not so, says Rabbi Bernis. God did not wash his hands of the Jews when the church came into being. The Jews are still, even today, his chose people; God has never annulled that promise or covenant – they still have a part to play in achieving God’s ultimate purpose for the world and the whole of humankind he created, as indeed does the church. The author fully recognises the responsibility of the Christian church in this regard.
In just over 200 pages the Rabbi, who accepts Jesus Christ as Messiah and Saviour, explains how the Jews have always been integral to God’s strategy through human history, why they have been continually persecuted, what is their present situation and how, reading the signs of the times, we can discern the End Times, the times that precede the Second Coming of Jesus.
Few know the Scriptures so intimately and can expound them with such insight and understanding as well as Jews can. For a different slant on prophecy viewed through Jewish eyes this book is quickly read and easily absorbed. You have but to decide whether you agree or not.
Raymond Wilson