Posted on 07/11/2011 11:45:12 AM PDT by lbryce
Glenn Beck was given a unique opportunity on Monday while visiting Israel: he delivered a rousing speech before the Jewish version of congress, called the Knesset.
“Where you go, I shall go, Your people is my people, your God is my God,” Beck said, quoting the book of Ruth while addressing the Knesset Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs Committee.
“As a man who also worships the one God, in the times that we live in, it is clear that what is going on is God’s work. If we are silent, evil will win. But if we stand up and take charge, God will do the rest,” he added, according to the Jerusalem Post.
He also encouraged members to reach out to those of other faiths:
“If you go to a synagogue, reach out to a church. If you go to a church, reach out to a JCC. Say, will you watch this with me? After that we’ll talk and eat and get to know one another.”
(Excerpt) Read more at theblaze.com ...
Loved your story! Will get back to more serious issues as time permits.
God bless you.
Not a problem FRiend. That was a lot of material to digest...
righteous!!!
Hitler was not Christian and neither were many of his top lieutenants. They believed in old Nordic paganism and other ideas. But of course many top Nazis in Germany, Austria, Hungary, Croatia and all of Europe were Christian and married to Christian wives who took their children to Christian churches
“Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” Isaiah 7:14
“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counseller, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” Isaiah 9:6
God was prophesied to come as God in flesh(or to have human “form”) at some date. To deny that truth is to deny being Jewish for Jews and to deny being a Christian for Christians.
The point of debate between Christians and Jews is whether or not God has already come in the flesh or if God is still yet to do so in the future. If Christ was (and is) God in Flesh, he would have been correct to say “Before Abraham was, I AM”. If God has yet to reveal himself as God in Flesh, he will still be correct in referring to himself as “I AM” in the same manner.
Immanuel means “God with us”.
Who do you think the Psalmist was referring to when he quotes God the Father as saying”Thou art my beloved Son, this day have I Begotten thee!”?
So even OT scripture proves that God at some date takes on a “form” as a real man; the debate between Christians and Jews is really about when this occurred or when it shall occur!
No, they weren't. The Nazis opposed Catholic church leadership and sent problem priests to the camps as well.
“Just because we are created in the image of God does not mean that we have to reverse engineer God into human form.”
Check out Isaiah 9:6 and 7:14. Isaiah prophesied that God would indeed take human form or are you prepared to call Isaiah a heretic and a liar? God proposes thru-out scripture to “reverse engineer” man into Godly form!
The incident of Abraham and Isaac on Mount Moriah was the start of the conversation between unregenerated man and God. As Abraham would not withold his hand in sacrificing Isaac to God;(God providing instead a ram as suitable sacrifice) God was promising that he too would not withold his own Son as the ultimate sacrifice for our sins.
To the extent that the totality of the Godhood could ever have died for the sins of man, he died there on the cross that day. There are no other sacrifices, religions, doctrines or believe systems that can promise what God has promised thru Jesus Christ! In dying as God in Flesh, Jesus took death captive and was resurrected victorious over death so that all who believe can have eternal life and to live forever in the presence of God’s shekinah glory!
The problem with your explanation is that Isaiah 7 and 9 do not refer to G-d taking human form.
Isaiah 7, has already been fulfilled long ago and if you read ALL of Isaiah 7 and 8, in context, it becomes clear.
King Ahaz was looking for a sign. It was 732 BCE and he had been faced with two armies trying to destroy him. King Pekah and King Rezin. G-d tells Isaiah to go tell Ahaz to chill out, dont worry...why?
Isa 7:3. And the Lord said to Isaiah, "Now go out toward Ahaz, you and Shear-Yashuv your son, to the edge of the conduit of the upper pool, to the road of the washer's field.
4. And you shall say to him, "Feel secure and calm yourself, do not fear, and let your heart not be faint because of these two smoking stubs of firebrands, because of the raging anger of Rezin and Aram and the son of Remaliah.
So, G-d is saying I have it under control...those two Kings are not going to take Judah....So, what is the sign? A virgin birth? NO! Read it carefully...it is the AGE of the child that is the sign.
7 :15. Cream and honey he shall eat when he knows to reject bad and choose good.
16. For, when the lad does not yet know to reject bad and choose good, the land whose two kings you dread, shall be abandoned."
The child will eat cream and honey (times are good) and BEFORE the child reaches the age of accountability the two Kings will be killed.
Two Biblical passages, 2 Kings 15:29-30 and 2 Kings 16:9, confirm that this prophecy was contemporaneously fulfilled when these two kings were assassinated.
SO, clearly in context (and in Hebrew alma doesn mean virgin)...the prophecy is the age of the child. A virgin birth of a Jewish child 700+ years into the future is NO SIGN to King Ahaz in the year 732 BCE.
And the name Immanuel is NO DIFFERENT then many Jewish names that contain the name of G-d and some atrribute about G-d. Plus, it says the mother will name him Immanuel. Mary did not name him Immanuel and it is of no value to say "oh but he was god with us", first that is false, second he HAS to be named Immanuel. He wasnt. No matter how you slice it...it doesnt not in any way mean G-d is taking human form.
It was not a conversation of unregenerate man.(Gen 26:5) ..it was the 10th and final test that G-d gave Abraham. What was the test about? To see if Abraham feared G-d.
Gen22:1 Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied.
12 “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”
Boom! Passed the test! And then G-d gave him an animal sacrfice. Why? Because human sacrifice is forbidden. G-d says he HATES human sacrifice...it is an abonination! ( Deut 12:30, Jer 19) So, G-d is not going to tell us he hates human sacrifice and then turn around and murder his own human son (himself) and then tell us to believe in it. G-d does NOT follow the ways of the Baal and Molech worshipers!
Again...no G-d in human form....
And it wasn't an Orthodox priest who organized the Ukrainian famine, led the Red's forces in the Russian Civil War, was the leader of Soviet Bavarian Republic, or the first Communist dictator of Hungary.
I don’t understand why anybody wants to judge God when He decides He became Incarnate by His Plan, but those who reject His Provision fail to abide in Him.
G-d didnt have that plan...ever. That is an invention of the Grecco-Roman church. It is a leftover from the teachings of gods coming to earth, having mortal wives and demi-god children. The church teaching of Jesus being 100%god and 100% man is an offshoot of this Grecco-Roman mythology.
Don’t tell me, tell it to God,..He is the one you have to convince.
What is clear...”in context” is that the way modern translators have divided the sections with chapters and numbers don’t necessarily correspond with the verses and subject matter. Prophecies in Isaiah over lap each other and can’t always be said to be in context with one another as opposed to reading Genesis or Kings. The style is much like that of reading Proverbs or Ecclesiastes where proverbial admonitions don’t flow necessarily in context with one another.
The prophetic style in Isaiah often resembles a pattern where a present problem is being addressed, followed by a near term prophecy entertwined with a much longer term prophecy .
When I read Isaiah 9:6, it juts right out of the context, abruptly changes the subject of the chapter and declares that a son is given who is called “Wonderful, Counscellor, THE MIGHTY GOD....”(a heretical view according to you) Indeed 9:6 redirects the context of the chapter to the wonderful thing God is going to do, despite the evils that had befallen Israel in the present.
Isaiah 7:14 is another context “redirector”...”a virgin bearing a son” which is prophetic in the near term as well as for a more distant time. As for your contention that the Hebrew term alma doesn’t mean ‘virgin’ many scholars including Jewish scholars better than you and me most certainly state that the term “alma” means “young woman of virginal state”. Some state while alma can certainly mean just ‘young woman’ you would almost always understand that when that term was used, the girl in question was almost certainly a virgin, not having had sex with a man. I expected that you would bring the term alma “controversy” up because your whole point of view goes up in flames should alma be understood as a virgin.
To whom was the psalmist referring when he wrote “The Lord said to my Lord, sit thou at my right hand” or when the Psalmist Quoting God as declaring”Thou art my beloved son, this day have I BEGOTTEN THEE!”?
You like to argue “context” but even the issues of context have their problems. You hold the view that God would never take on a form or be represented by one and yet we have the Ark of the Covenant in which the Shekina presence of God sat between the two Cherubim. This Ark was understood to represent the very presence of God among the people. Even barring that example, the notion of God remaining locked away and invisible except thru tablets of stone(that God forced Moses to rewrite by the way after Moses had broken the originals) could very well cause a person to view the OT with the closed contextuality that you view it. The temple veil to you will always close off the Holy of Holies from the common man and you would never dare enter it and your raison d’etre is defined by Mount Sinai’s gloom, smoke and flame.
The living Christ changes the way I see the contextuality of scriptures, admittedly coloring it just as your view of God colors your view of scripture. I view Christ and Holy Spirit and the Father as one God. The temple veil for me was ripped in twain when God in Flesh pour out his blood for me as a perfect Ram sacrifice for all sin for all men for all time. Having been cleansed by His blood I can now approach the Holy of Holies which now has been made approachable. Indeed God implores all men to do so...not to kill us but to give us life, a bit of that Shekinah glory that sat between the Cherubim on the Ark so that he might write his laws on our inward hearts; not merely on tablets of stone. God would make each of his children Living Arks who bear his name and his living presence.
Actually Genesis Chapter 3:15 foretold the virgin birth......”“Cursed are you above all livestock
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring[a] and hers;
he will crush[b] your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
The KJV calsl it “her seed”, the only time in the OT where a woman is referred to having “seed” without a man involved.
Moses himself prophesied of a “Star arising out of Jacob” meaning that despite the Laws and statutes God had revealed to Moses, Moses knew that an even greater revelation of God’s love was going to be revealed thru one of the future descendents of Jacob.
Respectfully, this is nonsensical. Once again the church butchers the meaning of a clear passage. Since the virgin birth is not articulated in the scriptures, the church has to resort to fanciful twisting of the text.
Offspring or decendants is a good plain meaning to the Hebrew word here, Zerah. Since women have no "seed" it clearly is not refering to pregnacy without a man. It simply means decendants, thats it. For the church to force the meaning to something else, violates the principals of hermeneutics. This is how the Mormons create doctrine also. By, twisting the meaning of otherwise clear passages.
Yes, the prophetic style in Isaiah is challenging but it doesnt give the church license to make up its own doctrine. The rendering of verses still have to be handeled according sound biblical principals.
Trying to make Isaiah 7:14 about a virgin birth is not sound doctrine. Betulah means virgin in Hebrew, not alma. 4 other times the word Virgin is found in Isaiah. All 4 are betulah. So, clearly, when Isaih wants to get across the point that a virgin is being discussed, he knows which word to use for virgin...Betulah. From the time of Isaiah until the church...The Jewish people NEVER rendered that word "virgin".
Second, If you insist on alma meaning virgin, that leaves you in a untenable position. That means that there have been two virgin births! Two sinless people born. Two begotten by god the HS. Two of everything implied by this virgin birth. So, apprently there is nothing too unique about this alleged vigin birth, it has happened before. Strange it was never reported in scripture or in any Jewish writings.
or when the Psalmist Quoting God as declaring”Thou art my beloved son, this day have I BEGOTTEN THEE!”?
Pslam 2 is David speaking of himself. Also there are other instances of Israel and Solomon.
Hosea 11:1 When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called My son out of Egypt.
Israel is G-d's first born son.
1 Chronicles 22:9 Behold, a son shall be born to thee, who shall be a man of rest; and I will give him rest from all his enemies round about: for his name shall be Solomon, and I will give peace and quietness unto Israel in his days. [10] He shall build a house for my name; and he shall be My son, and I [will be] his Father; and I will establish the throne of his kingdom over Israel for ever.
Solomon is also named as G-d's son.
You hold the view that God would never take on a form or be represented by one and yet we have the Ark of the Covenant in which the Shekina presence of God sat between the two Cherubim.
Yes...the shekina is not G-d. The Shekina has no form.
the notion of God remaining locked away and invisible except thru tablets of stone(that God forced Moses to rewrite by the way after Moses had broken the originals) could very well cause a person to view the OT with the closed contextuality that you view it.
G-d Himself tells us what to believe. Why do you insist on making Him into something He is not?
Deut 4:10 Remember the day you stood before the LORD your God at Horeb, when he said to me, “Assemble the people before me to hear my words so that they may learn to revere me as long as they live in the land and may teach them to their children.” 11 You came near and stood at the foot of the mountain while it blazed with fire to the very heavens, with black clouds and deep darkness. 12 Then the LORD spoke to you out of the fire. You heard the sound of words but saw no form; there was only a voice.
15 You saw no form of any kind the day the LORD spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire. Therefore watch yourselves very carefully, 16 so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape, whether formed like a man or a woman,
You saw NO FORM OF ANY KIND. Do not become corrupt and make an image of ANY SHAPE...whether like a man...or anything created in heaven or on earth.
So, what does the church do? Gives G-d a form. NO FORM! what does the church do? Gives G-d a shape...of a man. G-d says DONT MAKE ANY SHAPE...any shape. The church needs to stop putting words in G-ds mouth and like the mormons, creating doctrine out of thin air. G-d says no form. Take Him at His word! The more you try to create doctrine the more you make G-d out to be a deceiver, a liar, duplicitous and untrustworthy. G-d forbid. G-ds NO FORM revelation was closed at Mt Sinai. He gave the law....and revealed his formless nature at the time...FOREVER. For the church to say 1500 years later....Here is a NEW testament. New salvation program New view of G-d...a messiah who is a god-man hybrid...100%man and 100%god...nowhere to be found in the Jewish scriptures...is wrong and no different than Joseph smiths claims of what Christianity "really" means. Do you like it when the Mormons tell you what your scriptures mean? Now you know how we Jews feel. (Not saying this with anger mind you)
Man has known of electricity for ages. We can find references to the "thunderer of the Nile" (electric eel) back to 2,750 BC. Yet it was little more than a curiosity until 1600, when an English scientist, William Gilbert, studied electricity along with magnetism. He was the first to distinguish magnetism from the cling of static electricity.
Our knowledge improved with Thomas Jefferson... through his famous kite and key experiment, he proved that lightning was electrical in nature. Not long later, an Italian published a discovery of bioelectricity whereby nerve cells pass electrical signals to muscles. Thomas Edison gave us the light bulb.
These discoveries about electricity were the known truths about it at the time. You can imagine how Nikola Tesla rocked their world. He challenged Edison's championing of DC current with his AC current and Marconi with radio transimission. He brought a whole new way to look at many electrical and mechanical understandings. He was celebrated by the masses... but vilified by many in the establishment. Thomas Edison conducted open experiments on stray animals to demonstrate the dangers of AC current (conveniently ignoring that DC was equally or even more dangerous). By the end of his life, although he had revolutionized the scientific world, Tesla was near penniless, living in a hotel in NY... and that is where he died.
How does this relate? Bringing new understanding to old truths doesn't invalidate the old truths. It actually illuminates what the earlier pioneers only guessed at. Just so, Christ illuminated the mysteries of the Old Testament... and He was also shunned by the status quo of His age.
Since we don't have the New Testament in common for our discussion and these truths are only hinted at in the Old, I thought this would at least offer a little perspective on how many of the great truth-tellers in history have been received by those who already believe themselves wise.
Beautiful!
“Christ illuminated the mysteries of the Old Testament...”
Yes, those steeped in Torah and the one God illuminate God’s written and oral Torah. God’s covenant with the Jewish people is eternal and unique. All are free to take inspiration from the texts and teachings of the Jews.
If a third of the Jewish people had not been murdered by their hate-filled, hate-mongering neighbors in every generation, the Jewish people would today be one of very largest populations on this planet.
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