Posted on 11/24/2004 7:19:53 AM PST by DTaggart
Very soon, this passage will be interpreted to mean 'we, your goverment will take your money and give it to the poor'. Liberals assume that they are the enforcers of the very words they hate the most...
What we believe, because Yeshua Himself said it, is that the Messiah is the only way to God. Anyone, Jew or Gentile, who thinks that in and of themselves they are righteous enough to stand before the Lord's judgment is going to be sadly mistaken. God doesn't change; He didn't become a big softie sometime between Mt. Sinai and now. Since no one does (or can) keep Torah perfectly, He provided for substitutionary sacrifice to atone for sin. As Christians, we believe that the Messiah was the perfect sacrifice whose blood, unlike those of lambs and goats, atones for our sins for all time.
Ultimately, we believe that only by trusting in the perfect Lamb of God and the atonement He achieved on the Cross can we stand before the Lord in the day of judgment.
That's exclusive, yes, but it's not anti-Jew.
Having said that, I do not believe what many Christians have falsely taught for most of the last era, that Jews must be Gentilized to become believers in Yeshua. On the contrary, Yeshua Himself was a Torah-keeping Jew and affirmed that the Torah and the Prophets would never pass away. So did Paul (not that you'd know it the way his writings are interpreted) and the Twelve. What the early Church did was to allow Gentiles to be a part of their community and be believers in Yeshua as Messiah without forcing them to convert to Judaism, keep kosher, etc. About the second century, this got twisted around to mean that Christians mustn't be Jewish in their culture, in keeping the Torah, and so on. This got worse after the fourth century, when so many pagans were forced into the Church by the State and brought their own traditions with them (which is where we got Christmas and Easter instead of Sukkot and Passover).
What we've seen in the last couple of centuries, in spurts and starts, is a slow awakening to the role of Israel in God's plans. Indeed, without that awareness and growing respect for the Jewish people, Israel would not have been reborn, Holocaust or no, and many Christians are more enthusiastic supporters of the state of Israel in the midst of her enemies than many Jews.
I myself keep Torah (including the kosher) simply because my Lord did. I worship in a congrgation of Messianic Jews and Gentiles who do the same. I consider it one of the great tragedies of the Church that we stopped keeping the Jewish feastdays in favor of co-opting pagan ones. When I can find them, I enjoy reading rabbinical works--not because I always agree with them (any more than I always agree with my Christian brothers' commentaries), but because they do have some marvelous insights into the Tanakh that come out of speaking the language and living the culture and keeping their traditions.
I would however argue that the reflexive hostility towards all things Christian does color the writings of the rabbis, and that they are not always correct. I would also argue that it's wrong to say automatically treat Christians as interlopers who "hijacked" aspects of Judaism from the outside, since the earliest Christians who wrote the New Testament were Jews, including lay teachers and ordained rabbis, largely from the Pharisee party. I think they knew their own culture and language at least as well as any Jew knows it today, and they continued worshipping at the Temple and synogogues (at least in cities where they weren't put out) for most of the first century.
None of this is meant to "win" a conversion here. I just want to take down some of the wall of hostility between our two faiths and keep the conversations and debates cordial.
That seems to be contradicted by numerous passages in the Bible. I'd quote a couple of them if I had a Bible in front of me.
It's like saying an engine is all you need to run a car. You need the fuel, too. The fuel is "works". Otherwise, the motor is useless.
truth hurts alert.
"That would be equating works with righteousness instead of faith alone being sufficient for righteousness. The simple answer is they don't believe that works increase their chances of getting into heaven. Faith is all that's needed."
So just sitting around with your millions while people starve is A-OK, just as long as you have faith?
Im sure this belief pleases God immensely, as God is certainly a deity who enjoys inflicting suffering on people. By telling his followers to "only need faith", He insures that those damn poor people STAY poor, downtrodden, and starving, praise God!
What a great religion that rewards sloth over action!
"That seems to be contradicted by numerous passages in the Bible."
Really? Your Bible doesn't have Jesus acquiring wealth and then sitting on his ass, rather than helping people, because Jesus 'had faith and that was enough'?
Yeah - mine doesn't either.
I'm not a big fan of a religion that rewards sloth over action.
I believe in the teachings of Christ. I believe that is sufficient answer.
I don't think its sufficient as you are easy to criticize yet not state what you think. If you believe in the teachings of Christ, then you believe in the Second Coming.
I wasn't aware I offered any criticism. I thought I only offered a statement of affirmative agreement with another statement. And if saying you believe in the teachings of Christ isn't enough, I don't know what is. Do I believe in the second coming? Yes. Do I believe in some mortal man's interpretation hundreds of years after Christ's crucifixion of when that will take place or what form it will take? Of course not. Otherwise, I'd still believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Bogeyman and all that other stuff.
I think we have no disagreement.
I must deal with a better quality of atheist than you do..
No matter.. Only the arrogant can say there is no God.. or the same on the other side.. that there is one.. it takes faith to believe either way.. Hell, it takes faith to believe your car will make it to the Mall(and back again).. Who knows what could happen along the way.?. Having faith is very common on this planet.. depends on what you have faith in, is the rub...
ummmmm, let's see.
We have a couple guys who write books speculating on how their theology will play out; they're not, as far as I know, telling readers that they should kill non-believers to fulfill prophesy.
On the other hand, we have a group of religious extremists actively working toward fulfilling the tenets of their beliefs.
Once again we can see how these people demonize Christianity while excusing the current facts regarding muslims.
From the sarcastic tone of this piece, this smug little prick thinks he's just too clever for having exposed Christianity for the hypocrisy he imagines it to be.
Repeat after me: There is no liberal media. There is no liberal media. There is no liberal media.
you didn't get that one? It's out already, i'm waiting for the one that depicts life after the second coming...I'm hoping the series goes onto the release of the dragon and the final war. ;^)
I'm not into the specifics of the "Left Behind" series; I don't think it necessarily represents accurate Biblical scholarship.
I don't think it's supposed to, it's just one depiction of many possiblities of how it could happen.
Should read "Nazareth."
Rushing to make a point causes one to mis-spell.
Agreed. I actually read the first one. Boy, what a stretch of fiction that was! To summarize, the anti-Christ Nicolae Carpathia comes to power in the UN and convinces all the world's military powers to give all their weaponry to him, via the UN.
Yeah, right. I can just see the Israelis blindly agreeing to given their billion-dollar military to the UN. And China, North Korea, the USA, etc.
Carpathia is a fictional character and the world giving specifically their weaponry a fictional idea.
...now on the other hand, if a small seemingly faithful man from a powerful and respected country, were to find himself in an unexpected global war without boundaries were to say convince (over a period of time), many countries to contribute military and civilian personel in an effort to promote peace...through war...who eventually earned the fear and distrust of other nations and started building country's and manipulating who would be in political power in certain unstable country's which would give him more political strength in a large relion of the world....
Hmmm,nah...that's just too far fetched to fit into it...and certainly there is nothing to indicate that such things are happening today...
"That would be equating works with righteousness instead of faith alone being sufficient for righteousness. The simple answer is they don't believe that works increase their chances of getting into heaven. Faith is all that's needed."
our faith is the most important thing, and we are supposed to do good works because that is the right thing to do...but the part where you are mistaken, is that even though we are supposed to help one another and lift each up other up in the name of god, it does not increase our chances of getting into heaven. what matters most is our faith, that we don't shame it, and the only increase that might possibly be given us might be the souls we cause to be saved.
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