WHEN DID GOD FIRST TELL CHRISTIAN JEWS
TO QUIT PRACTICING JEWISH RELIGION?from
JEW, GENTILE, AND CHURCH OF GOD
Maurice M Johnson vs. George R Dickson
"Church of Christ"
Public Joint Discussions, 1957
Bakersfield, California
Now here, turn in the meanwhile, if you will, with me. The middle wall of partition referred to Ephesians 2:14, "Even the law of commandments contained in ordinances." It was given to Israel, and it distinguished ... God's distinguishing line between Israel as a nation and a race and the other nations of Gentiles. But in Hebrews 8 we read it's ready to vanish away, he didn't say it'd already vanished away practically on earth.
You see, Dickson's failure, I called his attention over and over again, but it's like water on a ... well, where am I, not like water on a pig because they ... they like it, see. But anyway, I've called his attention over and over again to this fact. I've asked him this question more than one ... I don't know how many times in the written questions: When, listen now, when did God first tell Christian Jews to quit practicing Jewish religion? And he hedged and dodged and said, "I don't know", and maybe told the truth, I don't know.
But let him tell you in his last speech, when did God first tell the Jews that when Christ cried on the cross, "It's finished", there was an earthquake and a veil that was then in the temple was torn from top to bottom, and that was explained by a skywriter all of sudden appearing right up over the cross for all the Jews with no ... and then God had a writer up there say, "Now that means that all the physical religion, meats and drinks and divers baptisms and circumcision and all has been nailed to the cross." According to him and almost every sectarian under heaven, that's about what they would had to have been, because they say that ...
One of the questions answered, last night maybe, I've forgotten when, he said ... maybe it wasn't a question, when he said that the physical religion was nailed to the cross and it stopped at the cross and God wasn't pleased with any of it since the cross. No indication that God was pleased with anybody practicing physical religion after the cross. And yet I answered in a similar that, to that, I said, "In light of what Paul said in Acts 23, "having obtained help of God ...", no, he said, "I’ve continued unto this day in all good conscience." had Timothy circumcised, Acts. 16:3; he had his head shaved with a Jewish vow, Acts 18:18; and in Acts. 21 he went into the temple, joined four Jews that had a vow, and went through one of the water baptisms, Jewish purification rites, and went into the temple to wait until a blood sacrifice was offered.
Now that ... I asked him in the very first discussion down in Los Angeles, and I said, "Did Paul do wrong in prac..." and I listed those things there, and his answer was, "No. Paul didn't do wrong." he's evidently forgotten that, see. Of course Paul didn't do wrong. Why? Because God hadn't yet revealed, it wasn't God's time to reveal; he was carefully waiting, waiting, waiting for Israel; he let them ... he left the temple standing, though it had prophesied before the cross it was going to be torn down. "Not one stone will be left upon another," Christ said. And cross, that's before the cross, he left the temple standing, and it wasn't destroyed for 40 years ... secular history tells us, in the days of ... Titus went over... During the entire Acts period the temple program was never... even the apostle Paul going into the temple and practicing Judaism to prove that he had never yet taught the Jewish Christians to forsake Judaism.
My friend, that's a part of the Word of God, and it's so misunderstood today. It is so misunderstood today. It's at the bot... now the Campbellites say that the reason we don't have physical miracles today, healing, and so forth, is because they were just to confirm the Word, and as soon as all the Word was confirmed, they stopped. Now that's partly true, but it's not the whole truth. There's not the faintest hint that there was any physical miracles to confirm Paul's letters from the Roman prison. I challenge him to try to find any miracles in connection with confirming Paul's letters written after Acts 28.
The physical miracles stopped with Acts 28:28, as soon as God was through with the last natural olive branch, as soon as the message quit being given to Jew first. Then the physical miracles stopped, and not till then. And then all water baptisms, meats and drinks, and divers baptisms, as well as the new covenant supper stopped! That's why there's not a hint of the new covenant supper, there's not a hint of the new covenant supper after 1 Corinthians 11. Why? Because the truth about the new covenant and the people is gradually given in 2 Corinthians to where we get in 2 Corinthians 5:16, "henceforth know we no man after the flesh, though we have know Christ." That is, circumcised as a eight day old Jewish baby boy, and so forth. Christ said, the night he was betrayed to the apostles, 12 apostles, "Ye are they which have companied with Me during My temptations, and I appoint unto you a kingdom as My Father appointed Me. You shall sit at My table, in My kingdom, and sit on twelve ... and eat and drink with Me, and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel."
I've asked him, and he's dodged and ducked and evaded over and over again, "Which ... which tribe are you a member of? Which tribe are you a member of? What about the 144,000, 12,000 out of each tribe, and the tribes are named over in the book of Revelation." He has no answer at all, nothing but dodge and sneer.