Article - The Church in Israel

[scottmaciver]

Last year I posted a thread asking about the state of the Church in Israel (Here).

On the back of that, I have considered the subject over time and spoken to a believer on the ground. Eventually, I decided to put together a few thoughts in this article (Here).

 

[Sam Jer]

it appears that the vast majority of churches in Israel are Dispensational and Pentecostal. It would seem that faithful Reformed churches in Israel are few and far between.

While this is a mostly correct statement, it needs some nuance. Almost all (Hebrew speaking) Churches are dispensational. Many are charismatic, but not at the same rate. This also ignores the greatest problem of the Israeli Christians, being the errors and sometimes heresies of the Hebrew Roots movement. Many believe in keeping different laws, such as dietary restrictions, holidays, ext. Circumcision is even more common, which brings me to the last point, being that reformed churches are not few and far between, but rather non-existent. People with particular baptist sympathies may exist (I heard of one, named Baruch Maoz), but I suspect most of those are still dispensationalist to some extent. I don't think there are any particular Baptist churches. Even Maoz's congregation meets of the seventh day.

 

[scottmaciver]

Hi Sam, thanks for your response, I appreciate it. I suppose the reason I used the phrase, "few and far between," is that I did read of some reformed churches in existence in Israel. The difficulty I have is that I'm not in a position to confirm, one way or the other, if these are indeed reformed churches or not.

On that basis, I decided that it was best to be charitable, to avoid appearing dismissive of any reformed churches which may be in existence in Israel. I'm living a great distance away and without sufficient enough knowledge of the situation on ground, aside from having spoken to a reformed believer in Israel, in order to provide a definitive answer.