Our Guest Ron Cantor

SID: Ron, you’re just exploding with so many concepts that many of our viewers have never heard. Let’s go back to what we ended with. You said the Jews killed Jesus, the Gentiles killed Jesus. So speak a little more about that.

RON: Well the Bible is very clear. In Acts, chapter 4, verse 27, it says, “Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in the city to conspire against your holy servant, Yeshua, whom you anointed.” That pretty much covers everyone. You know what I find interesting, Sid, is nobody goes to Rome to blame the Romans for killing Jesus. It wasn’t Jews who put the spikes in Yeshua’s hands and feet. It was Roman soldiers. But you never hear of anybody going to Rome and saying, oh, you Christ killers. It’s always just the Jews. But at the end of the day, I know who killed Jesus, and it was me, and it was you. He died because we sinned. If it wasn’t for our sin, he would not have had to die. And you know what he says John, chapter 10? He said, “No man takes my life. I freely lay it down.”

SID: But why, like in the Gospel of John it says, the Jews did this to Jesus, the Jews did that to believers in the Messiah. That would trigger some anti-Semitism.

RON: Well if you actually look at who they’re referring to, the Jews specifically meant those from Judea, not all Jewish people. But even if you look deeper in context, for instance in John 18 and 19, it refers to the Jews. But then it refers back to a conversation that the Jewish leadership had after Lazarus was raised from the dead, and that was just a small group of Jewish leaders, and it refers to that small group of Jewish leaders as “the Jews”. So typically, in John 18 and 19, when it says over and over again, “the Jews”, it’s referring to the high priests and the small group of Pharisees that met with him.

SID: Okay. I want to take Ron back to the involuntary witness protection program that Jesus has been in and is about ready to come out as Yeshua. As a matter of fact, it does say on the cross in three languages, “King of the Jews.”

RON: Right.

SID: So tell me how something so Jewish, I mean, everything you told me is Jewish, became the opposite in Judaism? It’s so Jewish that 3000 men plus women and children on the day of Pentecost, Shavuot, they were baptized, and they thought baptism was a Jewish thing. They didn’t say, oh we’re going enter a new religion called Christianity and this new thing. No, baptism was Jewish. All throughout Jerusalem, there were baptismal tanks or mikvot, where Jews would go into those before they would bring their sacrifice to the devil. And this grew as something Jewish. But as Gentiles began to come into the Kingdom, they quickly overshadowed the Jewish wing of the body of believers, if you will.

SID: They outnumbered us.

RON: Absolutely. And then in 49, the year 49, Claudius, the Roman emperor, kicked all the Jews out of Rome, now not just non-Messianic Jews, non-believers, all the Jews, Messianic Jews, everyone. They were kicked out. And then five, six years later, he dies. The Jews are allowed to come back into Rome. But during the time while they’re gone, the Roman believers, very young Roman believers, who by the way had no Bible during that time, because there was no New Testament. There was only the Torah scrolls and the writings. And when the Jews were kicked out, they took the Bible with them. So they had no means for revelation. But they still came up with the theology that God was punishing Israel by having the Jews kicked out of Rome. So when they came back, they were treated like second-class believers. Now when Paul hears about this, he writes this wonderful book called Romans, and sends it to the believers in Rome and he says, “Listen, the Gospel is to the Jew first, then to the Greeks.” In Romans 11, he says, “Has God rejected Israel? By no means.” King James, I love it. God forbid. He repeats it in verse 11 and then he goes on in verses 17 to 23, 24, some of the most scary verses in the Bible, where he says to the new Gentile believers, “Do not turn against the Jewish people. You are wild  olive tree branches, who have been grafted into this godly root. And yes, some of the Jews have been broken off, but God can graft them in. But don’t judge them, don’t be arrogant,” I’m quoting now, “don’t be arrogant, but be afraid. God can graft them back in.” And so he was warning the Gentile church. I don’t believe he was just speaking to a few Roman believers during that time. He was speaking to the church of the ages, and he was saying, “Do not turn against your elder brother, Israel.”

SID: So talk that way to a Gentile pastor that is against the Jewish people having the Land of Israel, against the Jews, because they’re forever cursed, talk to him right now for a minute.

RON: Well if you love Yeshua, if you love Jesus, you got to realize that you love a Jew. You love the writer of the Bible that says, “God can never reject Israel. Only if the sun disappears, the moon disappears,” Jeremiah, chapter 31 says, “only then can God reject the nation of Israel.” I would encourage you to read the scriptures afresh, let your minds be cleansed from what you learned about replacement theology, and just read the Bible without anyone else telling you what it means. And just like I would challenge Jewish people to read the Old Covenant, and ask yourself, apart from the rabbis or anyone else, is Yeshua the promised Messiah, I would challenge you to read those promises of God to Israel. And see if you alone in your study would come to the conclusion that the Jewish people have been replaced by the church.

SID: What about End Times? What if a Christian does not understand the Jew and Israel, and even worse, is anti-Semitic in these last days that we’re living in?

RON: Well I think it would be just a rude awakening for somebody who is anti-Semitic and a believer in Jesus to find out when he comes back, that he’s Jewish. This man that they love is one of them. I would warn them to very careful. The warning in Romans 11 is very clear. God said, “I can break you off, too, if you are not kind towards the Jewish people.” I would just challenge everyone at home to read Romans 11, verse by verse, for yourself and see what conclusion you come to. But I personally believe that as we get closer to the coming of Yeshua, that this issue of Israel will be a dividing, just like abortion. I don’t believe that you can be a born again believer in Yeshua and celebrate the murdering of unborn children. I also don’t believe that you can be an on-fire born again believer in Yeshua and say, God is against Israel, God is judging Israel, God hates Israel, as many church fathers actually say.

SID: Well you’ve got a lot to be thinking about. But the most important thing to be thinking about is, is Jesus your Lord. But he’s come out of the witness protection program. No more identity theft. Is Yeshua, the King of the Jews, your Messiah and Lord? How can you say you love God and be separated from God by your sins? The blood of Yeshua washes away your sins, makes you clean, as righteous as the Messiah and then you ask the Messiah of Israel to live inside of you. Do that right now. You’ll find out he is pure love and loves you.