Foreword by Rev. William G. Most, Ph.D.

At the start of Romans 11, St. Paul exclaims: “God has not rejected His People, has He?” Of course not. Hence in 11:29 He adds: “The graces and call of God are without repentance,” He has not withdrawn His call to them to be His people.

St. Paul is sad that not all have accepted God’s call. Hence in the middle of that same chapter 11 He paints a picture of two olive trees, the tame tree, the wild tree. The tame tree is the original People of God. The wild tree stands for the gentiles. Many branches fell off the tame tree – many of His people have rejected His call by rejecting His Messiah, whom He promised for so many centuries, in so many prophecies. Just when they might have had the splendid fulfillment of the Jewish call, they did not respond.

But those who do respond do not cease to be Jews, do not cease to be His people. And further, the gentiles, who are engrafted into that tame tree, become with the faithful Jews part of the people of God. St. Paul explains in Ephesians 2:6 the grand mystery God planned from ancient times, and only then revealed: that Jews and gentiles are to form one People of God.

So a Jew in accepting the long promised Messiah does not at all cease to be a Jew. Rather, he is a completed, a fulfilled Jew. He is more a Jew than his former associates who reject the Messiah. And the gentiles who join him in the People of God in a sense become Jews, for all, both groups, become one People of God.
Marty Barrack has had the joy of becoming most fully a Jew by accepting the Messiah in the Church that the Messiah founded. It is only in a way a New Covenant – Jeremiah 31:31 had foretold a New Covenant. Yet, as St. Paul makes clear, the new is really the extension, the long promised completion of the old, and only in that sense is it new.

With admirable zeal, skill in presentation, and remarkable knowledge of his faith, Marty Barrack has written this book in the hope that it may help other Jews to become completed, as he now is. May the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, and His Messiah most richly bless this splendid undertaking.