Rabbi Yeshua: Founder of Christianity

James Hugg Interview

Tim Moore: Well James, Dr. Hugg, welcome again to Christ in Prophecy!

James Hugg: Thank you Tim, it’s a pleasure and an honor to be with you today.

Tim Moore: I think you’ve actually been on this program before but some of our viewers may not realize that you are one of the longest-serving trustees, if not the longest-serving trustee of the Board of Directors of Lamb & Lion Ministries. So I’ll just ask right off, how did you get associated with Lamb & Lion Ministries and become inflamed about the excitement that the Lord is indeed coming soon?

James Hugg: Well, let me take you back to 1982. I was a member of a church in Houston when we invited Dr. David Reagan, the founder of Lamb & Lion Ministries, to speak about Bible prophecy and my heart was prepared to receive the message that Jesus is coming soon.

I spoke with Dr. Reagan after his presentation and he learned that I’m a scientist who believes the Biblical account of God’s Creation of the universe in six 24-hour days. And he invited me to be interviewed for his daily radio program and we recorded a two-week series of interviews. After that, Dr. Reagan invited me to become the youngest trustee of Lamb & Lion Ministries. Now I’ve been a trustee for over 43 years. I guarantee I’m not the youngest any longer.

Tim Moore: No sir but again, you have been serving faithfully the Lord for many years and with this ministry and we certainly are grateful for your discernment and your wisdom and the leadership that you’ve provided. One of the details I think is pertinent even as we get into a conversation about this book that once again some of our viewers may not know, is you discovered as an adult that you actually have Jewish heritage. In other words, you are a Jew as well. So how did you come about discovering your own Jewish roots?

James Hugg: Well, I discovered my hidden ancestry. It was actually Dr. Reagan who inspired me to take a look and find out. But it’s a common story, the hidden ancestry because many Jews have been taught that they must cease being Jewish when they accept the Messiah as their Lord and Savior. But if you recall, Yeshua and His disciples continued worshiping in the Temple and observing the Jewish feasts and Paul always taught in the synagogues. They never gave up their Jewishness.

Of course, I’m grateful that my ancestors found and trusted Yeshua. I started attending Messianic Jewish congregations and I became a part of worship teams. I met my wife in such a congregation and we each separately had visited Israel and that inspired a strong desire for us to become Israeli citizens or to make Aliyah, which means going up to Israel and we wanted to contribute to building up the nation.

So we finally had that opportunity when our children were seven and five years old, pretty good ages to learn Hebrew. So my family and I are now both dual citizens of the US and Israel.

Tim Moore: Well, I know that that has been a blessing to you and I know that you did contribute there, living in Israel to the ongoing blessedness and prosperity of that land. You mentioned going up, making Aliyah.

We know that almost 2000 years after Yeshua was born in Judea and grew up in the hill country, the elevated portion of the country west of the Sea of Galilee, today most Jews mistakenly think that Jesus, which is the Greek version of his name, that’s how we oftentimes say His name in English even, is the Gentile Messiah and so most Jews do not realize that Jesus, Yeshua, was born a Jew and died under a sign that actually declared “Him King of the Jews.”

James Hugg: The Jewish prophets anticipated two Messiahs. The one that the Jews were waiting for and they’re still waiting for was called Messiah, the Son of David or the Conquering King. Now He’s the Messiah that those Palm Sunday crowds wanted to put a crown on as their king so that He would be a warrior to defeat the Romans. He’s also the one Messiah that Christians are waiting for Him to return.

But the Jewish sages identified a second Messiah, Son of Joseph or the Suffering Servant. Now very few Jews were waiting for that Messiah but that is precisely the role that Yeshua played. The mostly Gentile church worships this suffering Yeshua as Messiah, or as we call Him, Jesus Christ. Now when Yeshua returns, the Jews will learn that one perfect Jew, Rabbi Yeshua, fulfilled both Messianic prophecies by coming to Earth twice, first to suffer and second to reign.

Tim Moore: You just mentioned the very title of your book, Rabbi Yeshua: Founder of Christianity and so James, why is it so important, not just for Jews but even for Gentiles to recognize Jesus’ or Yeshua’s Jewishness? And so even as you talk about the two Messiahs expected, didn’t He come as the Savior for all mankind but specifically the Jewish Messiah for all mankind?

James Hugg: You’re certainly correct there. Now, the Bible is mostly a story about God’s dealings with a particular people that He called out, they’re called Hebrews or Israelites or more commonly today just simply Jews. Now God chose them to make an example of the Jews. He blessed them when they obeyed and He punished them when they did not. But He never, ever wavered in His love and promises to them. The greatest evidence that Yeshua is coming soon is the existence of the Nation of Israel.

God made many promises to Israel and the fact that He is keeping those promises despite the human failures of the Jews should strengthen our faith that He will keep every promise to the mostly Gentile church. Yeshua said that the way that we treat the least of His Jewish brothers and sisters is how we’re treating Him. When we bless Israel, called “The apple of God’s eye,” God reciprocates by blessing us.

Tim Moore: I am reminded over and over again, as you read the entirety of Scripture, God had great disdain, He actually condemned those nations surrounding Israel who even dared to say “aha” as He was disciplining the sons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So even as He was disciplining those He loved, He didn’t tolerate the surrounding nations even gloating over that discipline for a season.

Obviously we know from Scripture that Jesus, Yeshua, I’ll refer to Him as Yeshua for the rest of this conversation because that is His Hebrew, His Jewish name, but Yeshua came to the Jew first and then or also to the Greek or to the Gentile. So really His message of salvation was to the Jew first but all of us who have been grafted into this family of God have received salvation through again, Yeshua, our Jewish Messiah.

So how did you go about in this book, James, emphasizing Yeshua’s Jewishness, the Jewishness not only of Himself but also His disciples and all the various locations and activity that are included as you essentially step through the Gospel accounts of His life and ministry?

James Hugg: Well, let me tell you the process. We were living in Israel for seven years and we were active in a Messianic Jewish congregation when I started asking the Lord in prayer, first, teach me how to be a fisher of men, especially for the not-yet-saved Jews. And second, I really wanted to participate in the reconciliation of Gentiles to the Jewish Messiah, to support the fulfillment of that fathers and children prophecy at the end of the Book of Malachi.

The answer was to write a book combining multiple teaching features. One, to use a Messianic Bible translation and there was at the time an excellent one by the late Dr. David Stern who lived in Jerusalem. Second, I wanted to harmonize the four Gospel eyewitness accounts. Third, I wanted to put the accounts in chronological order. Four, to point to and quote the fulfilled prophecies in the life of Yeshua. And finally five, to insert my editorial comments, including several essays to explain the context of the Jewish biblical traditions.

Tim Moore: You do that very beautifully because all throughout this book, I think you’ve hit every one of your goals, James. You did describe chronologically the events in Yeshua’s life and you combined all of the different Gospel accounts into one that is easy to follow. You actually provide references for where those citations or those accounts are in the various Gospels. Obviously we know that some Jews are skeptical.

Well, the New Testament, as we would refer to it as Gentile followers of Yeshua, that’s the Gentile Bible. And yet many Jews have not read the accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, who were Jewish writers. They had recorded either as their own eyewitness or as collecting the accounts, as Luke did, writing to another individual and so they are giving us detail basically from a Jewish perspective, and yet sometimes the Jewish skeptics today reject the validity of these accounts because they simply haven’t read.

If they read, many times they recognize, “Wow, this is talking about a Jew. I had no idea that what you call Jesus, He was Jewish?”

James Hugg: Well, the New Covenant is really focused on Yeshua’s fulfillment of prophecies from Jewish prophets. They come from the Hebrew Scriptures or what we might call the Old Covenant. Yeshua, according to the testimony of the eyewitnesses, lived a sinless life. He taught with amazing wisdom, performed all of the miracles expected of Messiah. He offered Himself as the perfect Passover Lamb sacrifice. He wore my crown of thorns and He was crucified in our place. He died and He defeated death, rose from the grave and ascended to Heaven to sit at God’s right hand until His return to Earth as Messiah, Son of David.

Tim Moore: I think one of the mysteries, and I’ll call it that, of the Old Testament, that even Jews have to grapple with is why God, who over and over and over again condemned the sacrifice of children, as a matter of fact, I think one of the reasons that the United States of America is under the condemnation of the Lord, at least on the trajectory we’re currently on, is because of the engagement in idol worship with all of our materialism and child sacrifice, He called that an abomination.

And yet one time, He told Abraham to take his son, his only son and to sacrifice him. Now we know that He stayed the hand of Abraham but it is a mystery, why would the Lord God, who called this an abominable practice, actually command Abraham as a step of faith to sacrifice his son? And yet we know from the hindsight of the revelation of Yeshua coming to Earth and dying as God’s only Son, that it was a preview, a foreshadowing, a prophetic pointing to the only Son who would be sacrificed on our behalf.

James Hugg: I’ve heard rabbis explain or try to explain the story of Abraham and one explanation is that he was commanded to prepare his son for a sacrifice and the command to actually execute him on the altar didn’t come. In fact, he got the exact opposite. “Abraham, stop. Now I know that you trust me and your faith is considered as righteousness.” But of course, God did order, command His Son and His Son obeyed.

Tim Moore: I think it’s so beautiful to realize when you go to Israel and you go to the various places, one of the most poignant to me is the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus in His humanity, Yeshua being fully human, said “Lord God, Father, if it’s possible, take this cup from me.” And yet He submitted Himself to the will of the Father.

Here again, it’s hard for some Jews to accept that God would have a Son and that the Son would be submissive. But this is a picture throughout Scripture, so many different references in the Old Testament prophetically and so James, I’m so glad that you brought all those prophecies to bear even as you were describing the account of the New Testament.

And really the Jewish authors of the Gospels did the same thing. Over and over again, they pointed back and Yeshua pointed back to prophecies that were being fulfilled in His life. This was done to fulfill the prophecy of this particular prophet or that particular prophet and so you have kept that emphasis throughout your account of Rabbi Yeshua.

James Hugg: I wanted a book that had all of these features and would be easy to read and to remind me of all of these. Sometimes I’m asked, “Well, can you prove to me that Yeshua is the Messiah?” It’s much easier I think to prove that no one else could possibly be the Messiah. It’s mathematically certain that Yeshua is the only viable candidate. He came at the appointed time according to prophecies by prophets like Daniel or even Balaam. He had a perfect genealogy recorded by Matthew and Luke, and He fulfilled every one of over 100 Messianic prophecies of His First Coming. Who else could be the Messiah?

Tim Moore: James, that’s a beautiful point that you make. Just recently, I was talking to some friends who were contemplating going to Israel on a pilgrimage with me and they inquired about going to Bethlehem and I said “Well frankly, I don’t go to Bethlehem anymore because Bethlehem has been walled off into the area that is designated as under Palestinian Authority control. And therefore my Jewish guide, a Messianic believer living there just west of Jerusalem, is not allowed to go to Bethlehem.”

And they say, “Why?” I say, “Because if a Jew sets foot in Bethlehem, his life is at risk.” They are verboten, as the Germans would say. The only apartheid part of the entire Middle East relative to the Jewish territory is what has been designated as Palestinian Authority territory. They practice apartheid and will murder Jews in their midst and so even when the wise men, the Magi who had studied the writings of Daniel, obviously he was in exile in Babylon, when they came to Judea and showed up in Jerusalem and were asking, “Where is the Messiah?”

The rabbis, the scribes, the chief priest of that day and age knew the prophetic Word. “Well, the Messiah will be born in Bethlehem.” James, you can’t have a Messiah born a Jew in Bethlehem when Jews are not allowed to be in Bethlehem. So there can be no Jewish Messiah born in Bethlehem today. He was indeed born just over 2000 years ago.

James Hugg: That’s right. In Israel, you will see pictures of a man that some in a cult claim is the Messiah. He was born in Brooklyn and never stepped foot in the Middle East, so he can’t be a Messiah.

Tim Moore: And not the one prophesied in Scripture for sure. Well James, we’ve been talking about your book, Rabbi Yeshua: Founder of Christianity, and as you say, even in the subtitle vet, Documented by Eyewitness Accounts. But I think one of the things that would be a blessing to our viewers is actually hearing and we’ll have you to read and so they’ll be able to see and hear and we’ll have some other graphics. But would you share with us a few selections from the wonderful book in the context of the Jewishness that you weave in to describing Rabbi Yeshua?

James Hugg: Okay, reading from page VII:

“This book organizes eyewitness accounts to tell the life story of the most famous Jew in world history: Rabbi Yeshua Immanuel ben Yosef. Rabbi means teacher, and we call Him Jesus.

This book presents the life of Rabbi Yeshua in a unique way:

1. The book includes only the eyewitness portion of the New Covenant text and is based on the Complete Jewish Bible translation of the late Dr. David Stern, a Messianic Jew living in Jerusalem who, in the 1990s, restored the original Jewish character of the New Covenant text;

2. I have organized the eyewitness accounts in chronological order;

3. Where multiple eyewitnesses reported the same event, I have harmonized their testimonies to consistently include all of the eyewitness viewpoints.

4. I have quoted the numerous citations from the Tanakh (that’s the name for the Hebrew Scriptures), especially fulfilled prophecies at the point of their reference in the eyewitness accounts; and

5. I have written extensive editorial comments and essays to enhance your understanding of the Jewish aspects and context of Yeshua’s story.

Rabbi Yeshua’s life is presented in this Jewish context, chronological, harmonized, prophetic, eyewitness story with comments so that you can better appreciate the Jewish roots of the Gentile Christian religion which began almost 2000 years ago as a Messianic Jewish sect. Rabbi Yeshua’s life thoroughly and profoundly changed world history.

Yeshua would have been far less famous if only half a million First Century Jews had become followers of His Messianic Jewish sect called ‘The Way.’ However, those original Jewish followers included many Pharisee rabbis and other talmidim, (which means students or disciples) who took seriously God’s declaration that the Jews were to be a ‘light unto the nations.'” (Isaiah 49:6). They heeded Rabbi Yeshua’s command, (that we call the “Great Commission”) to “go and make talmidim, (disciples) of all nations.”

The sacrificial death and bodily resurrection of Yeshua comprise the pivotal event in the history of the world. Believers celebrate annually the resurrection of Messiah, or Christ. Now even ‘CEO’ believers,” that is Christmas and Easter only, “recognize the central importance of Resurrection Day.

Tim Moore: James, we’ll have to leave it to the readers to dive further into your essay which explores the various days of the week that have been presented, including the traditional Friday for Jesus’ death and burial and I think they would be very enlightened to explore deeper through your writing.

As we were talking earlier and we talked about how from a Jewish perspective, Christianity may seem to be a Gentile religion. As someone who served as helping with the editing of your book, I know that’s exactly how you identified really some of the perspective of the Christian faith.

You read just a moment ago even from your introductory page VII where you said that one of your goals was to help readers better appreciate the Jewish roots of the Gentile Christian religion. But I think you and I would agree, and we’re brothers in Yeshua, brothers in the Messiah, that this is not merely a religion. It certainly is not a Gentile religion.

As a matter of fact, as Jude, a writer in the New Testament whose Hebrew name, whose Jewish name was Judas or Juda, you would probably pronounce it Yuda or Yudas, the brother of Christ, not the disciple who betrayed Yeshua, as he wrote in his letter, his epistle, he said that he was urging his readers to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down for the saints.

This is not the Christian faith; this is not the Gentile faith. This is the faith, faith in the person of Yeshua and as I refer to Him even in my foreword, “the Holy One of Israel.”

James Hugg: Well said, brother. I agree totally.

Tim Moore: Well brother, I know you and I do agree totally and that’s why the Lord has allowed us to His glory to co-labor together. James, what would you say to our viewers about the continuing mission of Lamb & Lion Ministries? Obviously we serve together here to proclaim the soon return of the Anointed One of Israel, Yeshua Hamashiach. What would you tell them about the mission of Lamb & Lion Ministries?

James Hugg: I’ve been a trustee since 1982 and have witnessed many signs of the times awaken as prophecies begin to be fulfilled. But never before have we seen such a convergence of all types of signs. I don’t know when Yeshua will return to Rapture His bride or when the Tribulation will begin but I do know we are in the season and I pray that any moment, He will call us upward to meet Him in the clouds.

You know it’s only five more years until we celebrate 2000 years since His resurrection. His return is sooner than ever before. Will He find faith on the Earth when the Son of Man returns? I think true faith certainly incorporates the Jewishness of our Savior Yeshua and understands the Jewish roots of our Christian faith.

Tim Moore: Amen. Well as two who share that faith in the one true and Living Son of the Living God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, those Jewish patriarchs, James, I just give Him praise even as I give you thanks for being faithful to share what He laid on your heart. I want to thank you for joining us today remotely through the miracle of modern technology and I’m glad that we were able to co-labor, to collaborate on this wonderful book, Rabbi Yeshua: Founder of Christianity.

James Hugg: Thank you for the opportunity to be on the program.

Tim Moore: Well James, as we say to all of our guests, Godspeed, my friend.

James Hugg: Thank you.

Closing

Tim Moore: Anyone who minimizes God’s promise to bless the Jewish people denies the Jewishness of Jesus. Tragically, there are many in our world today who mischaracterize Jesus as a Palestinian, a designation that is more political than historic and would have been meaningless to people living in Judea and Samaria when Jesus called His first disciples.

Nathan Jones: Similarly, many in the Church have been duped to think that Jesus rejected Israel. Most of Israel rejected Him 2000 years ago, yes, and most Jews are still rejecting Him today. But the Anointed One came to the Jew first, then to the Gentile. Even as He pronounced discipline on the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, God reiterated His love for the lost sheep of Israel.

Tim Moore: If any of you watching this program are Jewish, Rabbi Yeshua will help you understand the Jewishness of our Jewish Messiah. And if you are not a Jew, this book will help you convey the truth of the Gospel to your Jewish friends, even as it helps you nurture a Christlike love for the Jewish people.

Nathan Jones: If you’d like to get a copy of Rabbi Yeshua, then please contact us on the information below. Call our ministry office or visit our online store and we’ll be glad to send you a copy. And if you’d like to buy multiple copies to give away or share with your Jewish friends, call us and we’ll work out a special rate.

Tim Moore: We’ll be back next week with another episode of Christ in Prophecy. Until then, in the name of Yeshua, the Rabbi who is still calling men and women to “Follow Me!”… Godspeed!

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