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To: jwalsh07
Jews traditionally have been suspicious of those who want to proselytise them and convert them to other faiths.

I believe that Israel's true friends in the Evangelical Christian community (of whom there are many) understand Israel's reluctance to empower those who want Jews to stop being Jews.

If anyone resents Israel for making it difficult for gentiles to convert Jews in Israel to Christianity, then I respectfully suggest that he re-examine the basis for his support for Israel.
77 posted on 02/25/2004 7:25:33 PM PST by Piranha
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To: Piranha
Well, I respectfully suggest that you take your attitude and government censorship somewhere else.
87 posted on 02/25/2004 7:28:44 PM PST by jwalsh07
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To: Piranha
Jews and Muslims believe, and say, that one human being can "convert" another person to a religion. Transitive verb.

Christians never use the word in that sense, EVER. A person may "convert" [oneSELF only; intransitive verb], but to any Christian believer that means that God or the Holy Spirit [Ruakh-ha-kodesh] has done the converting.

No wonder the two sides talk past each other. Sheesh.
95 posted on 02/25/2004 7:30:26 PM PST by Chris Talk (What Earth now is, Mars once was. What Mars now is, Earth will become.)
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To: Piranha
Re. Your percieved resistance of Jews to being "converted", I can both accept and respect that premise.

My understanding of the "Evangelical" Christian perspective, at least in regards to a large part of that theologically diverse Faith Community, however, is that there is not nor ever has there ever been any need for a Jew to "Convert" or renounce Judaisim at all in order to be "Saved".

It was to the Nation of Israel, after all, that Yeshua was sent, and it was G-d's (Not my usual way of invoking the Name of the Most Holy, BTW, but one which seems more acceptable to some) Chosen People to whom "The Arm of the Lord" (Is. 53) was extended.

Only by our mutual Creator's Grace are Gentiles offered the option of repentance of sin and deliverance through the redeeming blood of Christ, which was shed, if I read my Bible correctly, for all Humankind - but primarily for the seed of Israel.

It seems that among all who claim the Name of Christ, "Evangelicals" are perhaps the most aware of some Biblical precepts that other Followers might not have come to appreciate quite as clearly in the ecclesiastical fog of "tradition", dogma, and doctrine.

And one of those realities is that we, as Gentile believers, are "grafted" as it were, through no merit of our own, but by the Grace of G-d and the sacrificial Love of Yeshua, into the Spiritually aboriginal "Vine" of Israel's legacy and inheritance.

So when a Jew recognizes and accepts Yeshua as his or her Messhiah, as many in the days of his Earthly Ministry in fact did, he or she is not "converted", per se; they are "Completed"!

And although we don't hear much about it, a lot of them to this day are indeed doing just that.

If you have ever met someone brilliantly on fire for the Lord and His Kingdom, who radiates an aura of Holy Spirit "Dunamus" power that will about blow your sneakers off if you so much as get near them, and whose Love for G-d and compassion for others goes way beyond what most of us would consider "rational"...

Then perhaps you have met one of them.

As for all this bruhau in Israel; those guys don't seem to have learned much from the ADLs efforts here to squash the "Passion", as all of their angst and accusitions have only served to arouse the curiosity and interest of people who tend to be attracted to controversy - and I don't see Jews being any exception to that proclivity, really.
This howling of "anti-Semitism" may well initiate a desire to see for themselves what this is all about in folks who otherwise might not have the least bit of interest in the film.

And I would not be surprised (but would rejoice greatly) if many intelligent and Spiritually sensitive Jews who attend the "Passion" find themselves confronted not only by "our" Savior, but by their very own Messhiah, whom they may well come to recognize for the very first time.

Because as "Evangelical" Christians, one thing that we are pretty much on the same page about, is that they are indeed..

One and the Same.

And when the ancient schisims that have divided Jew and Christian, Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant for all these Centuries and Millennia are at last healed at the foot of that Old Rugged Cross...

The corner posts of the Earth will tremble, and all Hell will howl!

Amen?

Shalom!
393 posted on 02/26/2004 9:43:04 PM PST by Uncle Jaque ("O; Say; Can You See, By The Dawn's Early Light...")
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