Who Has a Jewish Soul?

The Zohar opens with the image of the Jewish soul likened to a beloved rose among the thorns of materialism. The thorns wither the soul's sensitivity to G-dliness. Prune away the thorns, and the soul flourishes in G-d's shining light.

From Pictures with a Purpose
Chabad.org

In Judaism, "Jewish souls" awakening from among the gentiles is something that happens. All converts are such people. Perhaps, now that we're nearing toward the geula, HaShem is harvesting some lost souls throughout the world. I don't agree that their current state is where they are going to stay, if they're actually going to become truly part of Israel. But I'm sure that anyone who seeks out the urge and desire that they have for Israel and Tora, they will eventually end up in the right place. And may HaShem help them.

Aaron ("Jewzilla") in a comment on
Kineti L' Tziyon

I suppose I'll have to publish a little more of the transaction between Aaron and me for this to make sense:

James: Funny, that's more or less what my wife said to me once. Of all the Jews I can discuss matters of faith with, she's the only one who doesn't seem to be offended by who I am and what I believe. Of course, she loves me, which probably makes a difference.

Aaron ("Jewzilla"): James,

Follow up the passion with the fullest extent of action. ^_^

I'm not sure if Aaron was encouraging me to convert to Judaism (and if he was, I'll take that as a compliment) but what he said and the way he said it made me stop and think.

The various different manifestations of "Messianic Judaism" have been struggling especially hard recently to try and make sense of the non-Jewish presence in a "Jewish movement". Of course, Christianity is not thought of as a "Jewish movement" but the related worship of the same Messiah and the same God must be seen as some sort of connection between the Church and Messianic Jews. In the demilitarized zone between the two groups, you have populations of people characterized by the labels "One Law" and "Two House" who seem to be, at the same time, related and unrelated to both religious entities.

But who are we?

That's the Sixty-four thousand dollar question since "identity" is at the very core of the conflict between Jews and non-Jews in the Messianic and Christian communities (I use the plural since any real connection between Messianic Jews and the Christian church is largely theoretical at this point).

We are all here in the same "virtual" room, though we are using pieces of chalk to mark our various territories in that room and putting up signs at these chalk-drawn borders saying "No such-and-thus is allowed beyond this point".

I hope I'm exaggerating, but I fear I'm not...at least not by much.

I've got so much I could say about the conversations that have taken place in the "Messianic blogosphere" during the past week, I hardly know where to begin. I've tried to inject a little reason into what I see as an unreasonable set of situations in my blog posts What I Won't Miss and Imagining Ourselves, but reason seems to be the last thing that most people want at the moment.

I recently read a blog article called Torah and Non-Jews at Christian for Moses, which appears to be an extension of the previous blog post Orthodox Rabbi's View of Torah and the Gentiles (and I highly recommend reading both, along with related article Prayer and Non-Jews).

I'm beginning to see a building amount of evidence for allowing non-Jews to access areas of Jewish life that heretofore were considered "forbidden" or "exclusively owned by Jews". Lines of distinction have become blurred and we are all stumbling about, bumping into each other, saying "beg your pardon", and trying to regain our balance.

But who are we?

According to Aaron's comments, it is possible for a non-Jewish person to have a "Jewish soul" (and I'm very uneducated about how this would work) and it is believed that all Gentiles who convert to Judaism are such Jewish souls.

But isn't that a form of supersessionism (the hot topic of last week)? Isn't that a form of diluting the body of "real" Jews?

I suppose it depends on how you look at it. I've read Lydia Kukoff's Choosing Judaism, Anita Diamant's Choosing a Jewish Life and am in the process of reading Rabbi Kerry M Olitzky's and Joan Peterson Littman's book Making a Successful Jewish Interfaith Marriage. They all address this issue in one way or the other and confirm the general belief in Judaism that Gentile converts to Judaism are seen as having "Jewish Souls".

The authors of these books are rather liberal and take a stance that accepting converts and intermarried couples (more after the fact than before) actually strengthens Judaism rather than watering it down.

Interestingly enough, I see a sort of parallel between Gentiles being attributed to having "Jewish Souls" and the Two-House movement, which says that any non-Jew who is attracted to the Torah and Judaism must be a member of the lost ten tribes (as if no non-Jew in his or her own right could possibly be attracted to the beauty of the Torah for its own sake or for God's).

Of course it is Judaism's view that it is possible for some Gentiles to have "Jewish Souls" but it's a Gentile viewpoint that some non-Jews can really be "lost Jews" (and thereby hangs the difference). In both cases, the "belief" is the explanation for why a non-Jew could be attracted to Judaism enough to want to enter into some sort of "joining process". The former joining process (conversion or intermarriage) has always been seen with suspicion in Judaism and only accepted with difficulty (hence the necessity for books to educate potential converts, intermarrieds, their families, their Rabbis, and Jews and Christians in general). On the other hand, Messianic Judaism views Two-House as a rather odd form of "supersessionism" which is the act or attempt to replace or dilute Jews with non-Jews, and thus reducing or destroying Jewish identity.

What a mess.

This coming week, we will be reading and studying the Torah Portion Yitro, which features the remarkable act of millions of Jews and non-Jews standing at the foot of Mount Sinai and "as one man" accepting the Torah of God. The leader of this vast body of humanity is himself, an "intermarried" Jewish man who takes advice from his Gentile father-in-law.

Even at the level of the Mount Sinai event, there was a "mixing" of different people groups in relation to God and the Torah. Thousands of years later, Yeshua (Jesus) commits the ultimately confusing act of requiring his Jewish disciples to also make disciples of the peoples of the nations (Matthew 28:18-20) and Peter, the Messiah's "right hand man", actually witnesses Gentiles receiving the Holy Spirit of God before his very eyes and says that the Gentiles should not be restricted from baptism (Acts 10:44-48).

Yet, in the modern era, non-Jews who are attracted, not only to the Jewish Messiah but to the Jewishness of the Jewish Messiah, are having the most difficult time being allowed to make the actual social and religious connection to Messianic Judaism.

Are One Law and Two House members an abberation which damages Messianic Judaism and are their beliefs inexorably supersessionist? I'll try to address that in my next blog. The answer might not be what you think.

No matter how I answer the question, I'm sure to invoke yet another blood bath among the body parts of the Messiah who are all commanded to love each other (John 13:34).

We were so close, there was no room
We bled inside each other's wounds
We all had caught the same disease
And we all sang the songs of peace
Some came to sing, some came to pray
Some came to keep, the dark away

So raise the candles high, 'cause if you don't
We could stay black against the night
Oh raise them higher again and if you do
We could stay dry against the rain

From Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)
Melanie Safka (1970)

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark, ignoring the light of the world. Look for the lamp who lights your path or you may become lost in the dark forever.

"A Jew never gives up. We're here to bring Mashiach, we will settle for nothing less." -Harav Yitzchak Ginsburgh

Who Makes Disciples of All Nations?

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age. -Matthew 28:19-20

I've written a great deal on this scripture in my What Did Jesus Teach series (this link leads to a summary of my conclusions) but it's occurred to me that what we sometimes call "The Great Commission" has changed quite a bit since the day Yeshua uttered these words. Yeshua, at that point in time, was speaking to his Jewish disciples, charging them to take the Good News of the Messiah to all the Gentiles of the nations, and directing the current disciples to make new Messianic disciples of Gentiles. Certainly a daunting task, considering the fact that Israel was occupied by a Gentile conqueror right about then.

Nevertheless, as we see in the letters of Paul; as we see in Peter's encounter with Cornelius in Acts 10 and beyond, Jewish emissaries were sent out to the Gentile God-fearers in the synagogues and to the Gentile pagans in the then civilized world to "make disciples of all nations". But what about now?

A few weeks ago, I read something on Derek Leman's blog where he said that not each and every law or commandment in the Bible has an eternal and unchanging application (and I apologize for not citing the original source, but I can't recall exactly where on his blog he said this...if you can find it, I'll include the link). Leman cites the laws pertaining to Jews becoming slaves of other Jews (which I think of as the ancient Hebrew welfare system) as having a specific situational application, rather than being an eternal commandment from God that it's OK to keep slaves. Of course, that opens the door to people trying to decide which laws can be applied today and which ones can't, but that's an article for another time.

It did start me to thinking though, about Matthew 28:18-20 and it's current applicability. If Yeshua's Jewish disciples were to obey the words of the Master and make disciples of Gentiles in the 1st Century, are Messianic Jews in the 21st Century still bound to the same command?

I don't actually see a lot of Messianic Jews trying to make disciples of Gentiles and indeed, quite the opposite. If you have read Dr Mark Kinzer's book Postmissionary Messianic Judaism: Redefining Christian Engagement with the Jewish People, even the very title of his work seems to say that Jews in the Messianic "Postmissionary" movement are past the point of making "disciples of all nations". That job seems to have been re-assigned to the Christian church and the church has pursued that goal with all deliberate zeal, even to the point of coming under condemnation from some Jews for attempting to convert them to Christianity.

I suppose you could make an argument for the Matthew 28 directive being obsolete among the Messianic Jewish people, at least as it applies to making non-Jews into disciples. After all, is the commandment to be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 1:28) still in force? When God gave the original commandment, there probably weren't a lot of people on the planet. Now we've overcrowded the place, so perhaps the "be fruitful" commandment has gone into abeyance (though strict Catholics, Mormons, and Orthodox Jews don't believe it has been "suspended" or "expired").

The reason I bring this up is that periodically, I read about how Gentiles who choose to worship in a manner similar to Jews are "doing it wrong". Usually, I read that Gentiles have no business doing anything that even vaguely smacks of Jewish worship practice because such behavior misappropriates the things of Judaism, violates identity boundaries, and is just poor form. We are usually pointed back to the practices of the traditional Christian church as the only worship model Gentiles should be performing, but it makes me wonder.

Back in the day, when Peter and Paul were educating Gentiles in the proper worship of the Messiah and the appropriate devotion practices to the One God, what did they teach? I know sometimes we're lead to believe that Paul taught Gentile disciples an entirely different set of worship practices than those used by the Jewish disciples in order to make sure that Gentile believers didn't step on any ecclesiastic toes, but is that true? If not, then whatever practices the original Gentile Messianic disciples learned have been lost to history and it's a history of the "early church" that could give at least some of us a meaningful direction.

Since that time, and for most of the history of the church, Gentiles have been making disciples of other Gentiles and the separation of practices between Christians and Jews who, at least in theory, worship the same God, have gone spinning in wildly opposite directions. Is this what Yeshua meant when he said the following?

I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me - just as the Father knows me and I know the Father - and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. -John 10:14-16

Are Gentiles still considered part of the Messianic flock or has the passage of time and the ever growing division between the church and the synagogue resulted in permanent separation? If Matthew 28:19-20 has been converted to a commandment given by Yeshua only to the Gentiles and only for the Gentiles, then we are truly of a different flock than the Messiah's Jewish "sheep". I can only hope and pray when Yeshua returns to us, he will recognize all of his sheep and teach us what it means to belong to a single flock. I'm eager to hear the message. I'm not sure we got it right the first time around.

And One Flew West

So Abram said to Lot, "Let's not have any quarreling between you and me, or between your herdsmen and mine, for we are brothers. Is not the whole land before you? Let's part company. If you go to the left, I'll go to the right; if you go to the right, I'll go to the left." -Genesis 13:8-9

One flew east, One flew west,
One flew over the cuckoo's nest
Ken Kesey
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Next (1963)

The quote from Genesis 13 is part of a response I made to Dr. Michael Schiffman when he commented on a recent blog post I'd written for my congregation's blog.

I know what I said earlier. That I wasn't going to blog for awhile. But this has been bothering me. Before going on, read my blog post If You Love Me. It'll give you the context.

Studying Lekh L'kha this past week, I couldn't escape noticing the extraordinary efforts Abraham took to maintain the peace between Lot and him, even to the point of allowing Lot (though he didn't have to) to select the best piece of land in the region for his herds and his flocks. Abraham said, "...if you go north, I will go south; and if you go south, I will go north." In other words, "no matter which way you go, I'll go the other way." Keeping the peace was that important to him.

I first read Ken Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" decades ago, the first time I was an undergrad. What makes the poem and the quote interesting is that the cuckoo bird makes no nest of its own. Cuckoos always take nests that have been abandoned by other birds. You might say that a cuckoo bird steals what doesn't belong to it in order to use it. If you wanted to be particularly unkind, you could call the cuckoo bird a thief.

There have been times when I've felt like a cuckoo bird...usually just after I've been told by Jews in the Messianic movement that Gentiles who perform certain Jewish worship practices are misappropriating those practices...they're stealing.

That wasn't my intent, but certain voices in the Messianic movement make it seem otherwise. No, not all voices. Many have been extraordinarily kind and understanding. But there are still enough voices out there who say I'm in their nest and they want me out.

O-U-T spells out
Goose swoops down and plucks you out.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (poem)

I've just been searching for some common ground; some place in the universe where the circle of Messianic Jews and the circle of Messianic Gentiles overlaps. Something that we can share. I thought if I couldn't find the overlapping point, I could participate in building a bridge between the two worlds. I don't know anymore. I feel like I've made a few friends, or at least a few friendly acquaintances among the Jews in Messianism, but there seem to be just as many who find the Gentiles who stray outside of their (our) churches and into the Messianic realm an "inconvenient truth", to misuse Al Gore's famous line.

There's no denying that Gentiles are included in the Messiah's flock of sheep (John 10) but implementing the practice of a theoretical co-heir status between Gentiles and Jews (Ephesians 3:2-6) doesn't seem to be a desired goal, at least for some. I don't know how Yeshua (Jesus) expected us to pull it off...not when the greatest enemy to enacting a life of faith is the human race. Yes, I know...by faith. We're supposed to walk by faith. I understand that. But I'm only one voice, and I'm tired, and I didn't come here to fight.

Really, I have no desire to rip anyone off. If this is your nest, I'll move on. If you go left, I'll go right. If you go north, I'll go south. One flew east. One flew west. One flew...

I'll continue to follow the Messiah. If anyone wants to share the trip with me, I'm not hard to find. If you don't want to share the road with me, then I'll walk alone. Peace be with you on the path you take; north or south, east or west.

What Did Jesus Teach About Gentiles?

Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." -Matthew 28:18-20

January 30, 2011: The content of this blog post is now available as part of an audio teaching series called Discipleship and the Torah. Click the following link to listen to the MP3 discussion (approx 72 min).

The words of the Master which direct his Jewish disciples to "go and make disciples of all nations...teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you" have been the subject of much debate in the Messianic Jewish/One Law-One Torah/Two House world for many years in terms of the meaning and intent of Yeshua towards Gentile believers. Was the Jewish Messiah really telling his Jewish disciples to make new Messianic disciples of the Gentiles and to teach the Gentile disciples to literally obey everything that the Jewish Messiah taught the Jewish disciples?

In the One Law movement, the above quoted verse is usually married to the following scripture:

"Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. -Matthew 5:17-20

Putting this together with Yeshua's words in Matthew 28, you could interpret this teaching to mean that the Jewish disciples were to teach the Gentile disciples the whole of Torah, with the warning that anyone "who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven", meaning that the Jewish disciples were not only to teach Gentile disciples Torah, but they were not to teach them to break any of the Torah commandments.

Wow! That's starting a lot of trouble right there, isn't it? Is that what Yeshua meant? I can hear some of you shouting out a resounding "YES!" while others are screaming "NO!" How do we understand these teachings?

As I mentioned before, this subject has been a matter of intense debate for many years so I probably don't have much of a chance at solving it once and for all, but on the other hand, I don't want to sweep it under the rug either. I also certainly don't want to make one set of assumptions or the other about these teachings, if I can at all help it. What to do?

In my case, I went through the book of Matthew and tried to tease out just what Yeshua actually did teach. It's not easy. I don't want to write one really long blog post trying to figure this one out, so I'm creating a series of articles with this being the first one.

As it turns out, Yeshua taught many things, so I've had to compartmentalize the topics. I'll present them, one by one over the next few days or weeks (depending on how long this takes) and then see what conclusions we can draw at the end (and what comments people will make along the way). Keep in mind that a teaching can fall under more than one category and there's bound to be a bit of overlap, so don't get excited if I consider a teaching as being found in one "pigeon hole" and you would have put it in another. Sooner or later, it'll all get covered anyway. Oh yes, I'm using the book of Matthew as my foundation and I'm not unmindful that Matthew wrote his Gospel specifically for a Jewish audience. What better place to try and determine what the Jewish Messiah's message was to the Jewish disciples about the Gentiles?

Speaking of which, let's launch our first topic: The Gentiles.

When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking for help. "Lord," he said, "my servant lies at home paralyzed and in terrible suffering."

Jesus said to him, "I will go and heal him."

The centurion replied, "Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, 'Go,' and he goes; and that one, 'Come,' and he comes. I say to my servant, 'Do this,' and he does it."

When Jesus heard this, he was astonished and said to those following him, "I tell you the truth, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

Then Jesus said to the centurion, "Go! It will be done just as you believed it would." And his servant was healed at that very hour. -Matthew 8:5-13

We learn a couple of things here. The most immediate message is that Gentiles, as well as Jews, have access to the Messiah through faith and because of faith Gentiles can expect a response from Yeshua, in this case, in the form of healing. However, there's a more enduring message. Yeshua says that "many (Gentiles) will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." This seems to mean both that lots and lots of Gentiles will have access to the Messiah and to God through faith, and that even some Jewish people will not, presumably through lack of faith, attain that same access to "the feast". Faith appears to be the great leveler of playing fields in this teaching.

Aware of this, Jesus withdrew from that place. Many followed him, and he healed all their sick, warning them not to tell who he was. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah:
"Here is my servant whom I have chosen,
the one I love, in whom I delight;
I will put my Spirit on him,
and he will proclaim justice to the nations.
He will not quarrel or cry out;
no one will hear his voice in the streets.
A bruised reed he will not break,
and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out,
till he leads justice to victory.
In his name the nations will put their hope." -Matthew 12:18-21

Quoting Isaiah 42:1-4, Matthew announces (among other things) that the Jewish Messiah will proclaim justice to the nations and that the Gentiles will put their hope in his (Yeshua's) name. Of course, we have to now try to understand what justice to the nations means. After all, it could just mean that God will toss all the Gentiles who ever existed into the lake of fire because of how they treated the Jews, but if you take it in the context of the scripture portion and in the larger context of what else the Bible says about Gentiles, we can reasonably believe that "justice" at least for some of us, will be provided in the same manner for Gentile believers who have suffered for the faith as it will be for the Jewish believers.

Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, "Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demon-possession."

Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, "Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us."

He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel."

The woman came and knelt before him. "Lord, help me!" she said.

He replied, "It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs."

"Yes, Lord," she said, "but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table."

Then Jesus answered, "Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted." And her daughter was healed from that very hour. -Matthew 15:21-28

Here we have another non-Jew approaching the Master and almost being turned away because he had "come for the lost sheep of Israel." We again see that it is her great faith and perseverance that results in the healing of her daughter and, as I mentioned before, faith seems to be the leveling factor in a person's relationship with the Jewish Messiah, as opposed to any other quality.

I feel constrained to point out the following scripture because of its relevancy:

Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces. -Matthew 7:6

Some folks out there might consider that Yeshua contradicted himself by saying these words and then responding favorably to the "Canaanite woman" since after all, he did call her a "dog". My own personal interpretation is that a "dog" in this context, is a person (maybe just a Gentile; maybe anyone, Jew or Gentile alike) who comes looking for favors from God without having faith and devotion and possessing only bad motives. If they get what they want, they don't value the gifts from God and may "tear to pieces" the emissaries of the Messiah. However, the Canaanite woman established she wasn't a "dog" by demonstrating her faith (there's that word again) and humbly accepting the "crumbs that fell from the table".

Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. -Matthew 24:12-14

Yeshua doesn't seem to be saying that the whole world will accept "the gospel of the kingdom", just that it will be preached to the whole world as a "testimony to all the nations" and then after that, "the end will come". I suppose, in context, the meaning of "testimony to all the nations" is a testimony of the Messiah himself and that the salvation he offers, he offers to everyone.

Conclusion: What did Yeshua tell his Jewish disciples to teach the Gentile disciples about Gentiles?

1. He taught them to tell the Gentiles that the Messiah is just as accessible to them as he is to the Jewish believers, both individually and as a people group.
2. He taught that many Gentiles will take their place at the feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, meaning many Gentiles will be there in the Messianic Age.
3. He taught that faith; great faith is the characteristic or factor a person must possess, Jew or Gentile, in order to approach the Messiah and be received with favor.
4. He taught that justice will come to the Gentiles and the Gentiles will put their hope in Yeshua as was foretold by the Prophet Isaiah.
5. He taught that the gospel will be taught to all the nations as a testimony to the Messiah and his salvation is accessible to everyone who accepts it by faith.
6. He taught that when Gentiles come to faith in Messiah, they stop being "dogs" (pagans, unbelievers) and that their faith gives them access to the Messiah and to God.

Of course, we have Matthew 28:18-20 which is Yeshua's final teaching about Gentiles in Matthew's gospel. In this case, Yeshua taught his Jewish disciples that the Gentiles are also to be taught that they can be disciples and to be taught to obey the same things Yeshua taught the Jewish disciples to obey.

Interestingly enough, when Yeshua taught about "justice to the nations" and "Gentiles putting their faith in Yeshua's name", quoting Isaiah, one of the things the Gentile disciples would have to do to make sense of this lesson was to read Isaiah. This means that the "Torah study" of the Gentile disciples was not to be limited to what we call the New Testament or more specifically, just to Acts 15 and Acts 21 (referencing the "Jerusalem letter"). In fact, we see this lived out in the example of the Ethiopian eunich reading Isaiah 53 during his encounter with Philip in Acts 8:26-40.

In a nutshell, for today's lesson, we learn that Yeshua taught that Gentiles have a place in the kingdom of heaven through faith and their place will be at the feast Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. What teachings are the Gentiles supposed to obey? The teachings of faith in Yeshua and perseverance in approaching the Throne.

Exciting news.