Posted on 07/30/2002 12:02:19 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
I am no paragon of secular virtue – and I enjoy a good racist/sexist/agist/dietist/sexual-orientationist/handicapable-ist joke poking fun at the foibles, insecurities and inadequacies of people who are not like me every bit as much as the next guy. Let's face it, life as a straight white male from a well-to-do family is pretty much a target-rich environment – I used to park my Porsche in a handicapped spot every now and then just to see people flip out.
Lecture me all you want, it was still pretty funny. Try it sometime ... it's amazing how fast people who otherwise subscribe completely to a philosophy of moral relativism will do a complete 180 when faced with the Eighth Deadly Sin of someone parking in the blue space.
Growing up in the Midwest, in an area with approximately the same ethnic diversity as Heinrich Himmler's vision of Aryan paradise, I didn't know any Jews. What little I knew about Jewish culture and history was through Leon Uris and Chaim Potok, and it wasn't until attending college on the East Coast that I came into direct contact with any of the Chosen. I can't say that I noticed anything particularly different about the Jews on campus, except a lot of the girls going in for nose jobs sometime between matriculation and graduation.
As I delved into my studies of history, though, I was amazed to learn how much antipathy for the Jewish people was developed by so many different cultures. At this point in time, it's pretty much only the Chinese, Japanese and Eskimos who haven't harbored large numbers of Jew-haters in their midst, and you pretty much have to leave out the Japanese since they generally seem to hate everyone. (You can lecture me on the parking, but not this: Foreigner = gaijin = devil, wakarimasen-ka?)
I never understood why, from Haman to Hitler and Hamas, folks have had it in for the Jews in a very big way. Sure, it made sense for the average medieval king-in-debt to do away with his arrears by eliminating the lenders, but this hardly accounts for the murderous zeal of the common people. The Church ban on usury certainly must have created some envy of those who were not bound by such laws, but it's not as if the inability to legally run your own lottery often triggers the burning of Indian casinos today.
In fact, no explanation made much sense to me until later, when I became a Christian and began to twig to the spiritual element behind this human need to destroy. As with many things evil, it ultimately traces back to the fact that this world is ruled by a supernatural serial killer – who wishes destruction on everyone – but most of all upon those who belong to God. The problem is that whereas Christians have the benefit of what Paul describes in Ephesians as "the full armor of God" and are equipped to fight back against the super-psycho and his legions, Jews have little more than a promise that they will not be completely destroyed.
So, despite their differences on the Messiah's identity, Jews and Christians are on the same team. There is no great division between them, since God does not break His promises and He will keep those that He has made to both peoples. Any other division is man-made, and it is as stupidly nonsensical to blame Christians today for the wrongdoings of our medieval forebears as it was for those forebears to blame the Jews of their day for crucifying Jesus Christ. Who, by the way, was a Jew.
The New York Times may find it hard to understand why Southern Baptists in Texas and Evangelical Lutherans in Iowa firmly support Israeli Jews they've never met, don't know and with whom they have nothing in common, but I don't. Because when the fallen world in all its rage comes slavering after the chosen people of God, it is our job as Christians to stand in the gap and protect them. Corrie ten Boom understood this – so did Padre Ruffino Niccacci of Assissi, Rev. Dietrich Bonhoeffer and many others.
I still don't know many Jews. But I know that if the force which once inspired the Endeks, the Black Hundreds and the Waffen SS – and now inspires Hamas and the Islamic Jihad – ever comes for them here in the USA, it will have to get past me and millions of other like-minded evangelical Christians first.
If all Jesus was is a religious heretic, there were a zillion of them in Israel at the time, the Talmud says the Temple was not destroyed until 24 varieties of sectaries (ie heretics) were teaching their doctrines in it. Why was Jesus the only man to be executed for heresy, if that is what it was all about.
You and I know it wasn't-- the Romans sent AN ENTIRE COHORT-- 4000 men if at full strength-- out to arrest him. He may or may not have been TRYING to get political power, but the Romans were afraid he was about to get it whether he wanted it or not! They wasted little time after Palm Sunday.
If Caiaphas and other minions of the Judaean vassal-state turned him over to Rome, THAT IS ONLY WHAT THEIR DUTY WAS! THAT WAS THEIR JOB! If they did not turn over wanted Jews to Roman justice, Rome would replace them with someone who would!
So many threads gone nuts, so little time.
Whether or not that is true, Jesus was accepted publicly including by detractors (from his views) as a person to whom courtesy and even deference was due, and so far from his having to claim to be a descendant of David, Jesus had to shut up those making such allegations lest they result in his arrest or worse. BTW about 110-125 years after Jesus died, we have a record of how the Romans hauled in some descendants of David to see if they were possibly involved in a sedition, and found them to be such harmless and ignorant farmers that they themselves could not imagine them guilty.
That was hardly true of Jesus! Judea had collapsed in finance, intellect, education, and in every other way between those two events.
Come on now, don't be ridiculous. Jesus said and understand from day one that he had come to die on the cross, not "grab political power". Everything He said makes this explicitly clear. So why are you unsure ? Listening to one too many liberal theology school professor?
Probably Joseph the (putative, legal) father of Jesus, was a direct descendant of David.
Whether or not that is true, Jesus was accepted publicly including by detractors (from his views) as a person to whom courtesy and even deference was due, and so far from his having to claim to be a descendant of David, Jesus had to shut up those making such allegations lest they result in his arrest or worse. BTW about 110-125 years after Jesus died, we have a record of how the Romans hauled in some descendants of David to see if they were possibly involved in a sedition, and found them to be such harmless and ignorant farmers that they themselves could not imagine them guilty.
That was hardly true of Jesus! Judea had collapsed in finance, intellect, education, and in every other way between those two events.
Actually it was the political powers of the day
It was all of us who killed Jesus. Not one of us is innocent. We did it with our sin, for which He died to offer redemption to us all.
Believe in Jesus and His atoning death for your sins, repent and give yourself in service to Him, and receive His gift of salvation.
I dunno. What number were you trying to reach?
There are four types of capital punishment: stoning, burning, hanging and beheading. In order to hold a capital trial, a Great Sanhedrin has to be convened. In talmudic times, it was said that a Sanhedrin which passed a guilty verdict in a capital case once in 70 years was a "bloody court."
The Israeli legal system is modeled after British common law and not Biblical law. A Great Sanhedrin can not be convened until after the rebuilding of the Temple.
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