Book Club Announcement: Go here to learn the title of the February MIP Book Club Selection!

Good morning, Book Lovers! It’s a beautiful cool morning in central Texas and such mornings are definitely “my cup of tea” in January. I hope you are warm, comfortable and that your life is filled with “Sonshine” even if the sun is not shining where you are. And the “Son” and his ever-spreading “shine” is what I want to discuss today.

When I select books for the MIP Book Club, I try to do as much research as I can on the book before I select it. I thought this book was intriguing and would be good fodder for the Book Club, but as I started reading, I had a dreadful thought, “Maybe this book was a HUGE mistake for the MIP Book Club.” I seriously thought about selecting another book, but I decided to hang in there with The Rabbi Who Found Messiah and now, I’m glad I did.

Yitzhak Kaduri was a Jewish rabbi in Israel who lived to the ripe old age of 108 and was greatly revered among those who studied and worshiped with him. His trade was bookbinding and even well into his 100s, Kaduri was known to take long periods of time to bind books, because he memorized the entire book before returning it to its owner and could recite not only the entire book, but show you what page a quotation was on!

Because he was considered a great teacher and so well-read, his students believed him when he said he had had a vision of the Messiah. He said he would reveal more about this vision one year after his death. Shortly after that, he died! And sure enough, he left behind a letter that was to be opened upon the first anniversary of his death.

When the letter was opened, the letter revealed, according to Jewish customs concerning such prophecies, that the name of the Messiah was Yeshua. Even more disconcerting to Orthodox Jews were the “doodles” of crosses all over some of Kaduri’s writings, a sacrilege among this sect of the Jewish faith! Yeshua is a Hebrew form of Joshua, so in and of itself, Yeshua could be anyone these days! The name Jesus is because the first version of the New Testament was written in Greek and then translated several times until we arrived at the Jesus version (from the original Hebrew Yeshua or Yehoshua). But, the fact that Kaduri also added crosses to his writings suggests that Kaduri had the Christians’ savior, Jesus, in mind.

Because this was tantamount to pronouncing himself God, this letter is being vehemently discredited in Jewish circles. And yet, because it was written by Kaduri, many of his students are beginning to believe in Jesus as the Messiah. As famed Left Behind author Tim LaHaye is quoted in this book by Carl Gallups, “For the Jews accept many prophecies of the over 109 of the Messiah that Jesus fulfilled in His first coming. I have made a careful list of them and find that no other man has fulfilled more than eight or ten such qualifications, from being born in Bethlehem against unbelievable odds, to the many in Isaiah 53 and to even being crucified between two thieves and being buried in a rich man’s tomb. Yet Jesus fulfilled all 109 prophecies, several made seven and eight hundred years before His birth!”

There is much more to this story than what I’m disclosing here. And some of it, quite honestly, makes me cringe. But Carl Gallups wrote this book like a reporter and a historian and chooses, for most of the book, to be as objective about the information as humanly possible. Only if you read the epilogue (which I highly encourage!) will you discover Mr. Gallup’s faith beliefs.

So, what’s the bottom line? I think, in the years to come, this seemingly obscure book is going to be very significant. Thus, it is worth your time, your faith, and your effort to read it and to conclude what you like from it. In fact you may, like me, want to read it twice. It’s an astonishing book and will leave you scratching and shaking your head. And I don’t say that very often.

Monday’s Post: What’s your guess for deracinate?

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