Rabbi warns: Some Christians are attempting to convert Jews

PJ Star.Com (Journal Star) ^ | April 1, 2003 | Sarah Okeson

[ComtedeMaistre]

Rabbi warns: Some Christians are attempting to convert Jews

Speaker says congregations should watch out for Southern Baptists, Assemblies of God

April 1, 2003

By SARAH OKESON of the Journal Star

PEORIA - Jews believing in Jesus as savior, says Rabbi Michael Cook, makes about as much sense as an International Society of Vegetarians for Meat.

"How can you eat meat and still be a vegetarian?" Cook asked.

Cook, perhaps the only rabbi in the United States with a Ph.D. in the New Testament, talked to about 60 people Monday at the synagogue shared by the two Jewish congregations in Peoria.

Cook, a professor at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, said some Christian denominations have stepped up their efforts to convert Jews in the belief it will help bring about the second coming of Christ.

"They believe the only way that glorious end of the world can happen is if enough Jews move to Israel first or accept Jesus," Cook said.

He predicted Jews have about three more decades of strenuous conversion efforts to suffer through because the last time this happened - after the first millennium - efforts to convert Jews didn’t die out until 1035.

"We have 32 years of missionary fervor to get through," Cook said.

In the meantime, Cook ran through a list of believers to watch out for including Southern Baptists, Assemblies of God, Jews for Jesus and Messianic Jews.

He said Southern Baptist and Assemblies of God are sometimes misleading in their efforts to convert Jews and that Jews for Jesus was founded by a Baptist minister.

"Their big desire is to convert Jews without Jews knowing they are leaving the Jewish fold," Cook said of Jews for Jesus.

The rabbi said Catholics and liberal Protestants stopped trying to convert Jews after the Holocaust and said Jews had a convenant with God and didn’t need to worry about being saved.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Hebrew Union College is Reform Judaism. By biblical standards a lot of them aren't even plausibly Jews.

[Quix]

QUITE SO.

Though I don't know that I'd insist 100% in all cases that FEELING LIKE, WANTING to sleep with a woman you loved but hadn't yet married was 100% evil. I'd be more concerned if you were about to marry a woman and didn't feel like sleeping with her.

AND

SATAN CAN

trick one through "REASONING" as much as through emotions.

You seem to have a bias that emotions are more hazardous, vulnerable to satan and his manipulations than reason.

I think that's a dangerous and simplistic fallacy.

BOTH REASON AND EMOTIONS ARE IN AND OF THEMSELVES FROM MAN'S ADAMIC, SOULISH, FLESHLY NATURE.

ALL must come under The Blood of Jesus and be trained, in subjection to Holy Spirit and often also further refined in a number of fiery furnaces to come out gold.

. . . . to come out mostly reliable.

[Quix]

OH DEAR!

RIGHT YOU ARE!

THOUGH HE IS LIBERAL WITH HIS LOVE AND MERCY, GRACE, GIFTS TO THOSE WHO LOVE HIM.

[wardaddy]

Liberal Jews don't like conservatives....especially the Christian variety. The feeling is sort of mutual...lol

[Bella_Bru]

I'm a monthly Donor .. You can be one too!!

Yes, I will concur it was quite simple to become a monthly. :-)

[Campion]

I think until Vatican II, it was an article of Catholic faith that "the Jews killed Christ."

Wrong. Something that's an "article of faith" can't just be changed like that, in any case.

Vatican II did specifically deny that contemporary Jews, or the Jewish people as a whole, were particularly to blame.

Maybe you should restrict your discussion to your own Baptist beliefs, and not make speculative comments about what you think Catholics believe, or used to believe. I think you'll find Catholics more than willing to grant you the same courtesy.

[Auntie Dem]

I think that explains Mormonism quite well.

No, actually, that explains you quite well. That you rely upon, and quote with apparent glee, old, hackneyed, and long disproven (some over 150 years ago) anti-Mormon tirades, says more about your intelligence, sincerity and open-mindedness than it does about the Mormons.

For starters, how about you dig up a copy of just one of the so-called court actions against Joseph Smith? (the trumped up treason charges of ~1840 don't count--they have to be prior to 1830)

And don't misdirect us with the usual response of "...everybody knows it is true..."

[ApesForEvolution]

JimRob informed me that someone mashed the abuse button because I offended them by stating that a relationship with the one, living Lord God Almighty, Christ Himself, trumps *any* 'dead' 'religion'. I.e., trying to please God through law and works versus actually knowing and serving Him, through His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

Of course, they couldn't come straight to me, but, FWIW:

I humbly apologize for stating the truth as I understand it, based on my own experiences and the Holy Scriptures, and that anyone is offended by it.

That's the only way I know to post - the truth as I understand it.

[Campion]

Quite frankly, if NOT for a bunch of Protestants from England -- NOT Catholics, Muslims, NOR Jews -- the system of liberty we ALL enjoy today would not have come to fruition in the first place.

Actually, the first community to practice religious tolerance in North America was founded by Catholics ... English Catholic recusants ... St. Mary's Towne, in what is today Maryland.

It lasted only a few months before the king's soldiers stopped by to defend truth, justice, and the Anglican way, and torched the place. The proto-Baptist Roger Williams founded the first permanently tolerant settlement, Rhode Island, about a year or two later.

The English Protestants you refer to, of course, were almost all non-conformists of one sort or another. Mainstream English Protestantism wasn't religiously tolerant at all; that's why some of the colonies were founded. Massachusetts for the Puritans, Rhode Island for the breakaway Puritans who are the ancestors of modern Baptists, Maryland for the Catholics, etc.

[power2]

"Do you believe a carrot is orange? Are you sure? If so, then that is a heartfelt belief and when someone tells you carrots are purple, you will say, at least to yourself, "No they aren't, they are orange." Is it therefore dangerous to have such a heartfelt belief? Is that belief, since it is heartfelt, based upon a feeling?

No, it's just that you live your life with an understanding that carrots are orange not purple. Not based upon emotion, but internalized completely.

It is not a "heartfelt belief" that makes the carrot orange. It is truth; it is fact. The carrot, regardless of what anyone says, is orange. Satan may convince someone it is purple, but the truth is, is that it is orange. "Feelings" cannot change that fact.

You have illustrated my point...."feelings" don't make things right. "Truth" makes things right. Truth is truth, forever. I'm assuming here that you and I are both Christians. If so, you and I would agree that killing a Jew because he/she is a Jew is wrong. That is a fact based on our belief, morals, and Biblical teaching.

When a Hitler comes along and says Jews should be killed because they are an abomination to the human race, and we've been screwed by a Jewish person, we may "feel" like the Jews should be killed. We may even be "heart-felt" in our belief because of growing up in an anti-Semitic house, with a father who may have been laid off by a Jewish owner in the depression, listening to anti-Semitic radio programs. However, the truth is that God did't say any such thing. "Truth" may coincide with "feelings", or it may not. That is why it is so important to us Humans to be able to discern "Truth", with the help of Scripture AND the Church. We should not trust "feelings".

[sheik yerbouty]

Don't you like good sects?

[Quix]

I think the Tanner's book has photocopies of same.

You skipped some primary document stuff I reported on as well.

But that's OK.

I don't really care to get into the whole get go on it.

Was reared around Mormons. They and Baptist girls were mostly the only "nice" girls available.

My Chairman was a Bishop, BTW.

Go ahead and keep a death grip on your Mormon beliefs. I think it's eternally hazardous and I wish you wouldn't. But hey, help yourself.

No, I won't look up the ref for the Tanner's book. I don't know where my copy is and I don't care to do the net search.

BTW, My Best Man's Dad is quite a reliable person.

[F16Fighter]

"The English Protestants you refer to, of course, were almost all non-conformists of one sort or another. Mainstream English Protestantism wasn't religiously tolerant at all; that's why some of the colonies were founded. Massachusetts for the Puritans, Rhode Island for the breakaway Puritans who are the ancestors of modern Baptists, Maryland for the Catholics, etc."

I will defer to your expertise in the historical dynamics of colonial America; However, Washington, Adams, Madison, and the authors and signers of both the Declaration of Independence, and Bill of Rights, were obviously religiously tolerant.

[Quix]

People with inadequate umph to bear their own defenses can be very overly prone to hitting the abuse buttons.

I think one and all would do well to take such people with a few grains of salt and go on down the thread enjoying themselves.

[Anitius Severinus Boethius]

I think you are missing the point. When he used the term "heartfelt" he was not referring to any form of emotionalism. None. Not at all. He was referring to the internalization of belief, that a "heartfelt" belief was one you really "believed" rather than one you merely ascribed to. Not an emotional belief. Not a belief based upon emotion. Just a belief that you, well, believed.

When you say that carrots are orange due to the fact they are orange, what you are stating is a belief. Yes, we can judge your belief for ourselves with observation, but there is no way for us to judge how strongly you hold that belief internally without devising a test to determine your belief level.

The fact that you strongly hold the belief has nothing to do with your emotional attachment to the facts, nor with any emotionally feeling you might have for carrots in general. But we could probably determine that you in fact do "believe" this belief and live your life with no question in your mind that you are right. This does not make your belief an emotional one, but many might refer to it as "heartfelt".

[Quix]

GIVEN CERTAIN

CONTINGENCIES

EMOTION

AND/OR

REASON

COULD BE

*MANIPULATED*

TO CONFUSE YOU ABOUT WHETHER THE CARROTS WERE INDEED ORANGE OR NOT

--PARTICULARLY--if your heart-felt convictions about same were weak enough.

[Quix]

Historically and Biblically,

the "heart"

has been considered to be the center of the self--one's identity; will; center; essence etc.

And Heart-felt has come to mean a conviction/belief/focus/feeling

WHICH INVOLVED MOST OF OR MORE OR LESS ALL OF ONE'S CENTER, ONE'S ESSENCE, ONE'S ALL.

I don't think much of someone's Christianity which isn't heart-felt.

Are you allergic to emotions?

Emotions make terrible slave masters but tolerable to wonderful servants.

[Quix]

PING

[ApesForEvolution]

I have no problem with that. Others do though.

[jeremiah]

The house of Israel was chosen, the tribe of Judah especially to bring forth the Messiah, the deed is done. They are no longer special other than the promises given that have to be fulfilled. Gentiles were grafted onto the same branch, so Christians are now the chosen ones along with the "Jews".