Modern Western morality vs ancient Israelite morality
Modern Western morality vs ancient Israelite morality… it’s an interesting comparison. Some people think that we have progressed from our ancestors in our application of Torah. I, however, often wonder if we are really that superior to those who came before us. It’s almost easy to overlook that during the last century alone over 200,000,000 people died in wars. Ancients couldn’t hold a candle to modern brutality.
We look down on even the best of the ancient Israelites, who were, while in possession of G-d’s Law, supposedly more morally backwards in their understanding of what G-d requires to love our neighbor than us because they would indenture a thief who would live safely in his masters’ house to repay his debts and who would be released when mistreated. Torah says that in some cases the indentured servants loved their master, viewed them as their own family and freely chose to stay with them forever. It was nothing like the brutal, inhumane slavery we had in the United States not too long ago (and many of the slave owners are still considered Christians in good standing to this day), where Africans were kidnapped from countries of their birth and transported in crowded ships, with untold thousands of them dying. At the same time, we approve of a modern day crook being locked up for years on end in a tiny jail cell as justifiable and necessary for order in our society, even if said criminal suffers humiliation, beatings, rape, horrible food and work for token wages or even in chain-gangs (reintroduced in some jurisdictions) that modern prisons are famous for and often returned to society unfit to live in it. We moderns feel superior to the ancients. Continue reading this post
Confession of faith for Jewish converts to Christianity, from the Church of Constantinople
Throughout the last two thousands years, except for the first century when the faith in Jesus (Yeshua) as Messiah was still exercised by a Torah-zealous sect of Jews within Judaism, very few Jews ventured to embrace Jesus as the promised Messiah. Very few Jews chose to leave behind their cherished Torah, to walk away from their people, to abandon their way of life in order to embrace the Christ of Christendom. One can’t fault them for making this choice. In fact, I would say that they made the right choice in rejecting the “messiah” of their tormentors. The Jesus that was set before before, and as his followers’ own attitudes and behavior demonstrated, wanted nothing to do with Jews. In fact, such a “messiah’ abhorred their Judaism and required Jews to swear allegiance to the new, improved entity – the Christian Church. When given a choice between accepting such a “messiah” or dying, many devout Jews honored their G-d by choosing a torturous death instead. Continue reading this post
Antisemitic quote of the day
Problem with that is that modern day Israel is really backed, supported and mostly comprised of the lineage of Cain. The true Israel of the bible is to be found in Galatians 3:29: If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. As I understand it, that means the Christians. Since most of Israel hates Jesus and Christians, and promotes the mockery of Jesus and any local christian churches, then I think this leaves the zionist nation out of the promise, and are merely frauds…….pretending to be the true Israel. (Yahoo! News commenter on Israel’s recent war with Gaza terrorists)
How to be a trustworthy Messianic Jew
In his article You Have Not Obeyed Me in Proclaiming Liberty, Israeli Messianic theologian Tzvi Sadan gives some pointers on how to be a trustworthy Messianic Jew.
Do not preach to Jews the gospel of hate that rejects Judaism:
It goes without saying therefore that trustworthy Jews do not despise, ridicule, or hate their religion. “Love the Jews but reject their religion” should quickly turn into an intolerable misnomer. The gospel that publicly proclaims “the rabbis are our worst enemies”; “the Siddur is poison”, “tefillin, I spit on them,” is a gospel of hate… Instead, Messianic Jews must go out of their way to draw others nearer to a Jewish way of life by personal example and by making past traditions and beliefs more understandable and friendly to the disenchanted and the disconnected. The good news here is not that Jesus came to do away with Judaism but that he came to restore and rejuvenate it.
Work to strengthen the Jewish people, not to assimilate them: Continue reading this post
If you’ve been part of the Messianic Jewish movement or its many offshoots for any length of time you have no doubt come across two of the most popular theologies circulating among Gentile believers in the Movement One Law and Two House. The One Law Theology promotes that idea that Gentiles who have come to believe in Messiah become de-facto Israelites and are thus bound to the whole Torah in the exact same manner as the Jews. Its adherents fervently hold and propagate this belief among Christians disaffected by often watered down teachings in churches, imploring them to observe the Law of Moses, abstaining from eating “biblically unclean” foods like pork and shellfish, to rest on Shabbat, to celebrate Biblical feasts and in some cases, even undergo ceremonial circumcision. The Two-House theology, on the other hand, also teaches the same obedience to the Law of Moses, but approaches it from a very different angle. Instead of claiming that Gentiles who placed their faith in Jesus become Israelites, the non-Jewish believers are claimed to be flesh and blood Israelites already, the “Lost Tribes of Israel” who have “forgotten” their true identity as “Ephraim”. They come to believe that they have been awakened by G-d to finally reclaim their place in Israel along side the Jewish people (whom them call “Judah”, after one of the tribes).
Over the past few years I had a pleasure of meeting and getting to know many people who had held such beliefs in the past, but no longer. Continue reading this post
Jesus to Israel: “I am sending you prophets, sages and scribes”
Something that I came across today that I didn’t seem to have noticed before, even though I’ve read these verses countless times (funny how this works). Yeshua (Jesus) has promised to send not just prophets (or apostles), but also sages and scribes (Torah teachers) to Israel. This, naturally (at least for me), throws into question the claims of anti-Judaists that sages and scribes supposedly appointed themselves to leadership of Israel by stealing “biblical” authority from levites and the priests.
Therefore I am sending you prophets, sages and scribes. Some of them you will kill and crucify; others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. (Matthew 23:34-36)
The price of being a Jew (Issue 3)
The following is an eyewitness account by one of the Auschwitz death camp workers (and a survivor in his own right), a Polish writer and journalist Tadeusz Borowski. As a slave laborer who at one point was forced to work at the Auschwitz-Birkenau railway ramp, Borowski witnessed the inhumane conditions in which the condemned people were transported, sadism, torture and ghastly methodical extermination that became the fate of thousands of Jews sent to Nazi death camps during the WWII. After the war, he wrote down what he saw in his book This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen.
One of his accounts, which I present in this post, especially stood out for me. Indeed, it tore deep into my soul. Continue reading this post
