David Baron and the early Hebrew Christian movement

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BARON, David (1855-1926)

 David Baron and his Hungarian friend C.A.Schonberger found the Hebrew Christian Testimony to Israel in London in 1893.Born from a Russian family in Poland, David studied the Talmud and was told that Jesus was a liar and charlatan, but after emigrating to England he read the New Testament for himself, became a missionary to his own people and also to British church leaders, whom he often finds to be ignorant of the Old Testament and thus presenting a shallow gospel. He edited the Scattered Nation, wrote The Visions and Prophecies of Zecharia , The Shepherd of Israel, The Servant of Jehovah, Anglo-Israelism Examined, and The History of Israel. When the Zionist Congress began in a rented casino in Basle, Switzerland, David attended. Timing his continental tours to include the annual conference in his itinerary each year, as a reporter David obtained a permit to sit in with the delegates. He personally knew Theodor Herzl, the visionary and chairman of the congress. At one conference, a delegate stood and began to vent his spleen on Christian Jewish missionaries. Herzl's response was to quietly leave the rostrum and come down and seat himself by the side of Mr. Baron and a few of his fellow missionaries.

 In 1911, he used the term 'Messianic movement' to describe a belief among Hebrew Christians that: "It is incumbent on Hebrew Christians, in order to keep up their "national continuity," not only to identify themselves with their unbelieving Jewish brethren, in their national aspirations—as expressed, for instance, in Zionism and other movements which aim at creating and fostering "the national idea" and regaining possession of Palestine—but to observe the "national" rites and customs of the Jews, such as the keeping of the Sabbath, circumcision, and other observances, some of which have not even their origin in the law of Moses, but are part of that unbearable yoke which was laid on the neck of our people by the Rabbis."

He disagreed with this "rather grand-sounding designation [which] does not describe any movement of Jews in the direction of recognizing our Lord Jesus Christ as the Messiah, but an agitation on the part of some Hebrew Christian brethren, who have evidently yet much to learn as to the true character of their high calling of God in Christ Jesus, supported by a few no doubt well-meaning excellent Gentile Christian friends, who...do not understand the real tendency of this 'movement'." Messianic congregations have multiplied throughout the earth, and his negative judgment may have been too hasty, but his warnings have merit in view of some heretic fringes of the Messianic movement which at times de-emphasize Yeshua's central role and Divine sonship. His life is at http://www.senac.com/nb/1627/bin/293.html and testimony at http://www.shalom.org.uk/Testimonies/David%20Baron.htm

http://www.israelinprophecy.org/ENGLISH ... _jews.html