The Lost Kingdom at Malchut 2020

I recently attended the three day Malchut 2020 Friends & Torah Club conference hosted by First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ) in Orlando, Florida. It was awesome! The front page of their program has these words: 

At Malchut, you are going to be inspired, equipped, and strengthened in your role as part of a growing movement of disciples who are working together to bring the kingdom of heaven to earth.

Annual FFOZ Leadership Conference

Malchut means “Kingdom”, a concept at the center of the gospel message. In the kingdom, the King of the Jews will be recognized as the King of kings, and all nations will be subject to the throne of King Messiah. We see you as a leading example of this forthcoming kingdom reality. Malachite is about building. Building relationships. Building a leading community. Building the kingdom.

FFOZ Teachers and Presenters:

Ryan Lambert     Damian Eisner      Boaz Michael       Aaron Eby

Staff sine 2018    Staff since 2018   Staff since 1992   Staff since 2003

Daniel Lancaster

Staff since 2000

There are now over 500 Torah Clubs in the world! My wife and I have gone through 4.5 years of Torah Club at the Mars Hill church in Grandville, Michigan, and they were exciting times. I hope to be part of another club within the year. If you do not know about Torah Club, then I direct you to: https://torahclub.ffoz.org/  

——————- I encourage you to be a friend of FFOZ! and join a Torah Club

The first session at the conference was taught by their director of education Daniel Lancaster. He is also the main speaker at the Beth Immanuel Messianic synagogue in Hudson, Wisconsin. He is an awesome teacher!

The title of his session was the “Lost Kingdom.” Christianity lost touch with many things when it became primarily Gentile - and the Messianic Kingdom is one of those things. You may recall that after Yeshua revealed himself after his resurrection, his disciples wanted to know “Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” And He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority.” The time they were referring to is the Messianic Era, or the Millenium. This thousand year period written about by Isaiah, has been hotly debated throughout church history. In fact, I wrote about it extensively in this blog a few years ago when I quoted from a book I have called The Thousand Years. Search in the archives to learn more.

The problem began when the early Catholic leaders (such as Eusebius, Constantine, Dionysius, Jerome, Augustine) started interpreting many prophecies allegorically, rather than literally, which is how the Jews looked at these prophetic utterances. Concepts in the prophets, such as the Torah shall go forth from Jerusalem, the wedding supper of the lamb, a thousand year reign on earth, weapons turned into plowshares (no more war), and the Lion will lie down with the Lamb, were too utopian to be believed and put too much emphasis on Israel. So they were spiritualized for the church. The problem has affected many other teachings as well. The bottom line is that the church stopped believing in the Kingdom era and didn’t teach it. It became lost; the allegory placed the meaning on the church and the truth fell by the wayside with the Jews.

Lancaster summarized this with the thought that "eschatology shapes the destination of our faith. If we have our eschatology wrong, we have the Gospel wrong."