Last year marked the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. It is counted from the event when 95 thesis were nailed at the church door in Wittenberg, Germany, by one Catholic priest, doctor of theology and an Augustinian monk named Martinus Lutherus. Some other date could have been chosen as well, as the Reformation was a […]
Standing back to get a bird’s eye view of history through the lens of bible believers, we find many important landmarks in the calendar year of 2017. These notable points in history, spanning four hundred years from 1517 to 1917, involve both Christians and Jews, and all point to the centrality of Israel in God’s […]
In Matthew 15, we read the story of Jesus meeting a Canaanite woman. After initially dismissing her pleas for help, Yeshua (Jesus) ends up healing her daughter and acknowledging the woman’s faith. As one of the few encounters between Jesus and non-Jews recorded in the gospels, this passage has been interpreted as providing a model […]
Nearly twenty years ago, the Caspari Center began an empirical endeavor to gather specific information regarding Messianic believers in Israel. Where did they gather? What did they believe? How big were their congregations? How were these congregations structured? How many Jewish believers were there in the Land? The Caspari Center survey entitled Facts & Myths […]
Some have wondered why, if Jesus’ life was a perfect sacrifice, Jesus didn’t die on Yom Kippur instead of Passover. During the first decades after the resurrection, when the early Christian community was primarily Jewish, believers continued to participate in Yom Kippur and the rest of the yearly festival cycle, though their understanding of those […]
These were the words and testimony of Zechariah, John the Baptist’s father, at his son’s circumcision (Lk 1:63). Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth were devout Jews, childless and well-advanced in years, living in the time of Herod, king of Judea. Both were descendants of Aaron, of priestly family, and Zechariah served as priest before God, […]
Since 2013, Caspari Center’s Israel Director Alec Goldberg has been producing weekly programs in the Russian language that are broadcast by Haifa-based online TV ministry Oasis-Media. One of the teaching series from the past year, entitled “Forgiving Our Debtors”, featured a detailed exposition of the parable of the unmerciful servant (Matt. 18:1-35). At a […]
A deacon friend of mine was studying the book of Daniel with some Orthodox rabbis. In the midst of all the reading and the discussing that one might expect at such a bible study, one rabbi pointed to a particular passage in Daniel and claimed that it was messianic in context. He stated that that […]
Some years ago, when video tapes were still in use, I watched a message given at a conference by an American minister. Unassuming, simple, and dead serious about his work, the way he related to his own personal story impressed me deeply. The man’s parents had had a dysfunctional marriage. As a family, they had […]
What does it mean when we say “the time of God’s favor”? It is a phrase (et ratzon) found in the Hebrew Bible which has made its way into Modern Hebrew, though today it is used to signify “the right time”. In ministry, I have witnessed specific times and events when God is at work […]