Messianic Jews Respond to Hagee

As a follow up to my previous post about John Hagee's new book, In Defense of Israel, I offer a few thoughts from the realm of Messianic Judaism. A friend, who is a Jewish believer, sent me a link to a statement put out by the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations (UMJC) regarding the book, in which he argues that Jesus never claimed to be the Messiah for the Jewish people, only the Savior of the world (the world excluding the Jewish people, presumably). It's no surprise that they do not find his views favorable; I thought they did an admirable job of shooting his claims down (which is not hard to do, hence the short space it took them to do so).

But I found their final paragraph enlightening:

To teach that Jesus did not come as the Messiah for the Jews is ultimately anti-Jewish. Jesus becomes the savior of the world, but with no particular relationship to the Jewish people. If Jews want to respond to him as savior they have to leave Israel and its messianic hope and become part of something universal. In contrast, when we declare Jesus to be the Messiah of Israel, we do not invalidate Israel or the Jewish people. Yes, Jews need to respond to Jesus, as do all people, yet in this response they discover that he is distinctly Jewish, distinctly relevant to them, and very much a part of the Jewish story.

This was something I had not thought about, but is completely true if one takes Hagee's viewpoint. If Jesus did not offer salvation to the Jews, but only to the rest of the world, then for a Jewish person to follow Jesus, they would have to renounce Judaism, since Jesus never offered them salvation. They'd have to become a Gentile in order to follow Jesus. After all, as Hagee says in his promotional video, "how can the Jews be blamed for rejecting what was never offered?" (For the record, I am against "blaming the Jews" on some corporate level for rejecting Jesus, that's not the point I'm arguing). Turning Hagee's thought on its head, how can the Jews accept what was never offered? The answer (as the UMJC points out): cease to be Jewish.

I encourage you to read the fuller response written by Rabbi Russell Resnik, who handles a few more issues of interest.