In Christianity, all sins are grievous and are an affront to G-d. Still, one might ask: are there not some sins that are worse than others and certain transgressions more damnable? Should not things like blaspheming G-d or murdering a person be at the top of the list? The answer is no, and a committed Christian is unlikely to commit either of the sins anyway. The most ultimate of sins, in the Christian worldview, is for a person to willfully reject Jesus, thereby “refusing the gift God freely offers us of salvation in Jesus Christ”. Such a sin is an unforgivable offense.
It might come as a surprise, therefore, that there’s one terrible sin that a person, and specifically a Christian may commit, a sin that’s probably more grievous in G-d’s eyes than any other and one that carries most terrible eternal repercussions, both for the transgressor and for his victims. What is this horrible offence? This sin is an act of tempting and leading a Jewish person into idolatry, the worship of a human being, a dead man Jesus, as god – the so called “Jewish evangelism” that turns a Jew into a a Christian or a “Messianic Jew”. Let me explain.
Sacrificing a Jew on the altar of the Jesus god
No doubt, many Christians view Jewish evangelism as an expression of love for the condemned sinner or, at the very least, as obedience to Jesus’ command to “preach the gospel”, as enjoined to them in the New Testament. Their goal – saving a Jew from eternal damnation that they believe comes with rejecting Jesus, “first for the Jew”, to quote Paul. The terrible irony, however, is that once they finally achieve their goal, the actual result is the complete opposite of their good intentions – they have spiritually murdered a Jewish person. They pushed a Jew, usually a Jewishly ignorant one, to betray the G-d of Israel by bowing down to a man. They sacrificed that Jew to their god, no doubt with complete sincerity and belief that their actions are justified for the “greater good”, even as they wreak havoc in a Jewish person’s own life and in the life of the Jewish people as a whole. And actually, things are far worse than even that.
The Torah warns about the act of even tempting a Jew into worshiping anything other the the G-d of Israel with deadly seriousness:
Should even your brother the son of your mother, your son, your daughter, or your beloved wife, or your dearest friend, try to seduce you secretly, trying to convince you to go and worship the gods of others, that your ancestors did not know, gods of the nations around you, whether near or far, from one end of the earth to the other;
Do not like this person, and do not listen to him, do not have mercy upon him to save him, do not give him the benefit of the doubt, and do not cover up for him.
You must utterly kill him, your hand should be the first to kill him, and the hand of all the nation should follow you. You must pelt him with stones until he dies, because he tried to push you away from Hashem your G-d, Who took you out of Egypt, from the house of slavery.
And all of Israel will hear and fear, and they will not continue to do this terrible thing amongst you.
— Deuteronomy 13:7-12
When a Christian succeeded in evangelizing a Jew, convincing him or her to stray into accepting and worshiping Jesus as god, that missionary, be he a paid professional, a lay stranger, coworker or a dear friend, has facilitated an act of forever, barring G-d’s intervention, cutting off a Jew from both his people and his G-d. Any person throughout history who has ever tempted and brought a Jew into idolatry, either of ancient gods or of the Jesus deity, has caused incalculable spiritual and physical destruction. Why also physical? Because by cutting off a Jew from his people, the proselytizer has also caused a Jew to forever cease from having Jewish progeny, either his own or that of his children and grandchildren, who will intermarry with their new non-Jewish coreligionists and cease to identify as Jews in any sense in a generation or two.
Our rabbis teach that when Cain murdered Abel, Abel’s “bloods” (damim, plural in Hebrew) were crying out to G-d. Why “bloods”? Because by murdering Abel, Cain not only destroyed one life, but also obliterated all of the potential future generations of the righteous Abel. As a result, evil multiplied greatly as godliness was driven away from this world for many generations. Likewise, an evangelist to the Jews has, in effect, by converting even one single Jewish person to Christianity and toward the worship of a dead man, participated in the destruction of potentially thousands of future Jewish souls. The missionary to the Jews has diverted G-d’s will for the Jewish people and for the world by separating untold numbers of Jews from their birthright and their purpose. Instead hastening the redemption of the world, his actions have hampered and delayed it by actively dimming G-d’s chosen source of light – the people of Israel.
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