Posted on 09/26/2006 6:26:26 AM PDT by NYer
You can believe what you'd like - it is unlikely that I'd persuade you in any event. However, you are at least as unlikely to persuade me. The simple fact is that Jesus isn't the Moshiach/Messiah prophecied about in the Hebrew Bible and the writings of the Prophets, and therefore I cannot and do not believe that he was anything but a man and won't worship him. You can get a good summary of why I believe this from the following sites, provided that you are open-minded enough to read them and investigate the claims made in them:
http://www.jewsforjudaism.org/web/handbook/s_messiah.html
http://www.jewsforjudaism.org/web/handbook/s_refuting.html
You did not answer my questions of why has God not spoken to His people in over 2000 years?
"You did not answer my questions of why has God not spoken to His people in over 2000 years?"
Your question (which relates back to your post #119) has a 2-part answer. The first part relates to your allegation that G-d doesn't speak to Jews today (and hasn't for quite some time). What you seem to be speaking of is prophecy - i.e., why are there no more prophets?
Here is why there is no prophecy in Judaism today:
"Prophecy is a difficult state to obtain because, in addition to the demands it makes on the individual, it also requires a very high state of holiness in the general environment. When the Jewish people lived in the land of Israel and the Aron HaKodesh (Holy Ark) was kept in the Beis HaMikdash (The Holy Temple), this state of holiness existed in the land of Israel. Since the time of the destruction of the first Beis HaMikdash (over 2400 years ago), prophecy and other forms of Divine Inspiration have become progressively more difficult to obtain. Today, for all purposes, true prophecy does not exist. It will return to the Jewish people in the time of Moshiach."
That quote is from a site authored by Rabbi Lazer Brody - I cannot rightfully claim credit for the words or the thoughts.
The 2nd part of my answer has to do with the language and, more importantly, the tone of your comments, specifically:
"OK where is your God today?"
"Why has He not spoken to you?"
"Is your God dead?"
"Does He have no ears no eyes no mouth to speak with?"
"Where are the prophets of today speaking out for God like Isaiah, Jeremiah, speaking of the condition of Israel crying out for repentance?"
"Seems like your God has not spoken for over 2000 years."
OK, so you seem to have a lot of contempt for the religion that the G-d of the Jews (in Whom your Jesus devoutly believed, if the Gospels are to be taken at their words) gave to His chosen people. That's your problem (and not with me, with Someone Else).
But, to answer your ill-mannered questions, which essentially boil down to "since you Jews have suffered so much, how can you claim that your G-d, your 'Protector,' exists?" I say: OK, fair question...with a very simple answer: Look at the world - you might have seen and heard something about a people that comprises all of 1/5 of 1% of all of humanity, a miniscule piece of despised humanity that has been disbursed to the 4 winds twice - not once, mind you, but TWICE, a people persecuted, enslaved and butchered because of their faith for over 2,000 years by the Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Mohammedans, Spanish and various Europeans, including 200 years of bloody Crusades that murdered Jews on the way to butcher Moslems in order to win Jerusalem for the "Prince of Peace," the Inquisition and its horrible tortures, the massacres of Bogdan Chmelnicki, the blood libels, the expulsions, the state-sponsored theft of wealth, the fearsome pressure to convert (often at sword-point) to other religions and, of course, the Shoah/Holocaust. You see these people, who by every law of history should have ceased to exist after the destruction of the First Temple 2,700 years ago, let alone the bloody massacres at the destruction of the 2nd and the Bar Kochba rebellion only 2 generations later, who have not only survived, but thrived. These "forsaken" people have won approximately 22% of all Nobel Prizes ever awarded. The same language which co-existed with Egyptian hieroglyphics and Babylonian cuneiform is now printed in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv newspapers every day. The "weak" Jews, "abandoned" by G-d, emerged from the ashes in Europe to win and maintain the independence of a nation over the violent opposition of the entire Arab world and many other hostile nations allied with the Arabs (e.g. the Soviet Union), and today are reported to have several hundred thermonuclear bombs and warheads.
G-d promised us that He'd protect us, that even if we as a people strayed from Him he'd save a remnant, and that Israel would rise again as a prelude to the coming of the Moshiach. To date, all of this prophecy is true. The fact that no one over the last 2,400 or so years could legitimately say that G-d spoke to them is of little import - G-d's actions give credence to the words in His Bible, which He gave to Moses at Mt. Sinai.
That would have been a neat trick, owing to the fact that he died 2 years earlier.
I said: "Jesus, based on the Christian Bible, advocated not obeying certain aspects of the Law."
You responded: "Where do you get that idea? Jesus said that not one jot or tittle of the law shall pass until all things have been accomplished."
From Here: http://shamash.org/lists/scj-faq/HTML/faq/17-03.html
"Tradition teaches that the Messiah will lead the Jewish people to full Torah observance. Deut. 13:1-4 states that all mitzvahs remain binding forever, and anyone coming to change the Torah is immediately identified as a false prophet. Throughout the New Testament, Jesus contradicts the Torah and states its commandments are no longer applicable. (John 1:45 and 9:16, Acts 3:22 and 7:37)"
You are confused, or lack reading comprehension.
Jesus taught the law in the synogogue, even as a child.
Do believing Christians keep kosher as a matter of religious law/theology? Do they keep the Jewish Sabbath as a matter of religious law/theology? The clear answer is "no" to both questions. OK, fine - I'm not passing any value judgments, I'm just stating a fact. However, logically speaking, if I am correct about believing Christians not following the Torah on these two extremely important points as a matter of Christian theology, one of the following must be true: 1) either Jesus was in favor of obeying the Torah and most of his followers are ignoring his wishes, or 2) Christians are following his wishes and, as stated above, they are not following the Torah - so, which is it?
You can call me confused if you'd like, but you have to admit that the fact that Christians don't follow the Torah when the creator of their religion said to do so is, in fact, rather confusing.
FYI, Isaiah, 59:21 says: “And as for Me, this is My covenant with them, [the Jews-Ancesthntr] said G-d, My spirit which is upon you [the Jews] and My words that I have placed [past tense] in your mouth will not be withdrawn from your mouth, nor from the mouth of your offspring, nor from the mouth of your offspring’s offspring, said G-d, from this moment and forever.” In other words, the words of the Torah are forever.
Jesus taught the law in the synogogue, even as a child.
Even if Jesus taught the Torah in a synogogue as a child, this by itself doesn't mean that he didn't change his beliefs and practices at a later date. I'm not saying that he did, mind you, I'm just saying that your statement doesn't really prove the point.
Some do, some don't.
"Do they keep the Jewish Sabbath as a matter of religious law/theology?"
Some do, some don't.
"You can call me confused if you'd like, but you have to admit that the fact that Christians don't follow the Torah when the creator of their religion said to do so is, in fact, rather confusing."
No argument.
While that is strictly true, I think that it is more accurately a case of "some do, the vast majority do not." For instance, I think that the Seventh Day Adventists have a Saturday Sabbath, but Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Lutherans, Anglicans, and most of the other major (in terms of the number of adherents) Protestant churches have a Sunday Sabbath. This is similar to case of the laws of Kashrut (keeping kosher). As far as my experience goes, every Christian person that I've known has no religious restrictions on eating pork, mixing milk with meat, eating meat that was not slaughtered according to the very strict laws of Kashrut, and has no problem eating shellfish.
My own personal opinion is this (and it is just opinion, i.e. it may not be completely correct): Jesus saw a lot of corruption in the religious/Temple hierarchy and, being an idealist, was so morally outraged by what he saw that he began a movement to reform the system (i.e. really the people). [As an aside, by the time Jesus was born, the Romans had replaced the Temple and religious hierarchy, as well as the political hierarchy, with people naturally loyal to, or utterly dependent upon being loyal to, Rome - so the corruption was forced on Israel and the Jews]. After his death, Paul and later Church figures changed things quite a bit - they did change Judaism, so much so that they created a separate religion, one which (IMHO) Jesus himself wouldn't have recognized or tolerated. Later persecution of the Jews, especially after the revolt which resulted in the destruction of the Second Temple and the Bar Kochba rebellion circa 135 C.E., caused the leaders of the new religion to want to distance themselves even further from their mother religion, to avoid being caught up in the persecution and massacres. Again, all of this is my opinion, but it is based on lots of reading done over a couple of decades, including books on Jewish-Christian relations written by Christians, priests among them.
Thanks, BTW, for your open-mindedness and forthrightness. Others on this thread have, shall we say, not met your standards.
I was just pointing out a fact - no need for that.
Rome was conquered and looted more than once in the 5th century. One or more of those barbarian armies took your treasure, if it was even in Rome by then to be taken.
plus it is **according to this article** held in a monastery.
Read it again. It doesn't say it's "held in a monastery" but buried under a monastery. And the monastery in question is not Catholic, but Greek Orthodox.
long suspected of being hidden in the vaults of the Vatican >>>
as always it was suspected that sneaky catholic church was hiding their wealth.. now are all the reporters, collectors, academics, treasure hunters, etc. going to apologize and admit they were wrong?
British Historian Claims to Have Found the Temple Treasures
Arutz Sheva Israel Broadcasting Networ | Oct 08, ‘06 | Gil Zohar
Posted on 10/09/2006 12:29:32 AM PDT by M. Espinola
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1716127/posts
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