David & Batya

by Avram Yehoshua
www.SeedofAbraham.net

On Thursday, June 26th, 2008, Ruti and I went into Jerusalem to do a favor for a friend and in the process we met David & Batya (daughter of Yahveh) and were able to witness to them in their apartment. An older couple in their late 60’s, they both had come to Israel from Iraq in 1950.

After speaking with them for a few minutes, Batya commented that she felt she could trust us. It was the Lord. We hadn’t had the opportunity to speak of Messiah Yeshua yet, but were looking for an opening to do so. One came after David spoke about how the greatest Commandment was to love your neighbor as yourself (Lev. 19:18). I agreed.

Spring-boarding off of what the Apostle John said (1st John 4:20), I told them that anyone can say, and many do, that they love God (Shema Israel: Dt. 6:4-5) whom they haven’t seen, but the proof of that love for God was if they loved their neighbors whom they had seen. David and Batya liked that.

Batya had been trained in a religious school when she was a young girl and her grandfather knew Torah (the first five books of the Bible) extremely well. Batya said that she could remember everything and while we were there I could tell that she was knowledgeable in the Word. They both liked us, our demeanor, and the way that we dressed.

I told them that what they liked about Ruti and me had to do with the Messiah changing us to be more like Him:

‘We have come to believe and to know the Messiah of Israel. His name is Yeshua from Nazareth.’

Batya jumped right in and said that she had seen some television program with Christians on it and that they had done a lot of things like the Jews (e.g. they prayed to God from the Psalms and sang Psalms).

I asked them if they had a Tanach and Batya got it. I asked her to read Isaiah 53. I then spoke of how the Messiah was said to be a sacrifice for our sins. After that she read Jeremiah 31:31-34, which speaks of the New Covenant for Israel, and in that, God would take away our sins and we would all come to know God. I told them that this only happens through Messiah Yeshua.

After a while we went to Ezekiel 36:24-27 so they could see that God was going to bring us Jews back to the Land that He had given to us, sprinkle us with clean water to take away our sins and give us His Holy Spirit.

‘With belief in Yeshua as Messiah, our sins are taken away and we are given the Holy Spirit to be able to know God our Father and His Son, our Messiah.’

I directed them to Psalm 118:22 to show them that even though we Jews have generally rejected Messiah Yeshua, God knew 3,000 years ago that we would reject Messiah. The builders that the Psalm speaks of were the Jewish leadership in the Sanhedrin and the Stone that they rejected was the Messiah, but Yeshua would become the CornerStone of God’s design for Israel.

Then we referenced it to Zechariah 6:12-13. It speaks of the Branch (another name for the Messiah) who would be the one to build God’s Temple, both here in Israel for His thousand year reign and also in the New Jerusalem where God will truly be one with His people.

All in all we must have spoken with them about Messiah, from our own experience and from Scripture, for an hour or more. They were very interested. When we left I gave them the Acts 2-4 handout as well as the Prophecy Card. The Holy Spirit had opened their hearts to the Word of Life. They invited us for dinner after they would return from going abroad. They wanted to know more about Messiah Yeshua.

Heading into the center of Jerusalem we went to The Village Green, the buffet type restaurant where one can get salad, potatoes, soup, lasagna and good bread, etc. We got our trays and went outside to sit. It was a beautiful day in Jerusalem and it was good to be alive in Messiah Yeshua.

While we were eating, a young woman came up to out table and asked,

‘Do you mind if I ask you a question?’
‘Of course not,’ I said.
‘Your clothes are beautiful, but why do you wear them?’

I told her they were designed and made by my wife Ruti and I introduced her to Ruti. I explained that I wore the clothes for modestly and also to be able to wear the tzit-tziot in a more biblical manner.

Alona was about 21, pretty with brown hair and told us that she was learning at a rabbinical school. I said it must be Reform, as the Orthodox don’t allow women to learn, but she said it was a ‘new’ Orthodox. I asked her if they taught her anything about Messiah and she said, ‘No.’ I said,

‘We’re Jews that believe that Yeshua from Nazareth is the Messiah.’

For the next several minutes I spoke of Yeshua from the Tanach and how Ruti and I had found Life in Him. Then her friend Ishka joined us. She was about Alona’s age, pretty with blond hair, and she attended the same rabbinical school as Alona.

Ishka was a little more aggressive, with questions like, ‘How could God have a Son?’ I said,

“Haven’t you read Psalm two where God says that He will place His Messiah on Mt. Zion vv. 2, 6), and then Messiah says that God had said to him (v. 7), ‘You are My Son. Today I have begotten you’? To beget someone is to have them made in the same image as the one who begot them.”

I explained how Adam was created first and then from Adam came Eve. Adam and Eve had been ‘one,’ so to speak, and then God made them ‘two.’ When they would come together they had children in their own image and likeness. They had begotten those children.

With Messiah we see the same thing because He is the Light that appeared on the first day of Creation. Ishka didn’t understand that and so I said that even the Rabbis said that Messiah existed before Creation. Then I asked her,

‘What light was made on the first day of Creation, Ishka? It can’t be the light of the sun or the moon or the stars as they’re not made until day four.’

She didn’t know. I told her to,

‘Ask your rabbi. He’ll tell you that it was the Light of Messiah. So, if this is so, and it is, how can Messiah be the Son of David if Messiah existed before David?!’

Of course, she didn’t know, but it went far enough to show her that the Jewish Messiah had existed before the world was created and was God’s Son. Then I continued with Psalm two (‘You are My Son. Today I have begotten You,’ v. 7)…

‘God begot the Messiah who is one with His Father and therefore, deity. This is what Isaiah 7:14 spoke of when he stated that an almah, a young woman who had never known a man, would conceive a son and that His name would be Immanuel, God is with us.’¹

I gave them both the Prophecy Card and Jewish Newsletter 33: Has Messiah Come?! which speaks of when the Messiah would have to come to Israel (before the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D.).²

They returned to their table and we continued to eat, but the Lord led me, after a while, to go over to their table and say to Alona,
‘Don’t be afraid, Alona. Yeshua really is our Messiah. Ask God about Him. He will show you.’
I had sensed that Alona was feeling the pull of what it would be like to consider Yeshua as the Messiah and how the traditional Jewish community would react against her. The Lord knew that and had sent me over to her table to encourage her in finding out about her Lord and Savior.
Would you please pray for David & Batya, Alona & Ishka? Pray that our Father would draw them into the Kingdom of the Son that He loves and fill them with His Spirit of Life. They are Jews that need the Life that only Messiah Yeshua can give them.