Posted on 12/01/2010 2:24:01 PM PST by Amerisrael
In a seemingly unprecedented move, a group of Amish Christians from the US made widespread use of modern technology - including airplanes, tour buses and even iPhones - in order to come to Israel and apologize to the Jews.
The Amish are most notable to outsiders for their shunning of the technological conveniences that have made life so fast-paced for everyone else. But they did not shy away from using whatever means necessary to accomplish what they viewed as the vitally important task of making things right between their community and Israel.
The Amish, both in the US and Europe, have a long history of anti-Semitism and have traditionally been firm proponents of Replacement Theology, which claims that God cast aside the Jews for their widespread rejection of Jesus as their messiah. Many Amish once believed the Nazi Holocaust was God’s punishment for that rejection of Jesus, and actually applauded Hitler.
“We are here to say we are sorry,” group leader Ben Girod told Israel’s Channel 2 News as the group visited the Western Wall in Jerusalem. “God reminded me that this is not who He is. We no longer want to reject you or look at you as not being God’s people. You were God’s people long before we were.”
(Excerpt) Read more at israeltoday.co.il ...
Scripture may not be precisely clear to the nth detail degree about the matter.
However, SOME things ARE clear:
1. Salvation is through the Blood of Christ--the ultimate Sacrifice etc. etc. etc. etc. for every, any and all for all time.
2. HOW God manages that for the blood Children of Jacob alive in these END TIMES is not crystal clear.
3. THAT HE WILL is also crystal clear for those with eyes to see and ears to hear. Whether it's 'merely' the 144,000 prophesied about or those PLUS unnumbered others or whatever such is unclear . . .
4. Joel Rosenberg speaks of 7,000 or so Messianic Jewish Believers in Israel now . . . and likens it to the 7,000 prophets who had not bowed their knee to Baal when the major prophet was whining that he was alone faithful to God.
5. It IS clear that at a given point--evidently right after the Abomination of Desolation--when the AC sets up his image in the 3rd [currently still to be built] Jewish Temple--WHEN the Jews realize they've been hoodwinked by the supreme false messiah--THEN THEY WILL LOOK UPON HIM WHOM THEY HAVE PIERCED and recognize their true Messiah.
6. At least that's the most plausible scenario I can glean from Scripture. Certainly God is drawing many Jews to Himself even now as the growing body of Messianic Believers attest.
7. Certainly the EVERLASTING PROMISES to the children of Jacob ARE OPERANT--AS GOD HIMSELF DELCARED--as long as there are stars, sun, moon . . . THAT includes the LAND. And the boundaries of Israel have NEVER YET been as large as GOD PROMISED they would be.
8. To even imagine that THE GOD OF ISRAEL would not fulfill His promises to His Buddy Abraham to the nth degree shows gross ignorance about God Almighty. Such gross ignorance as to bring into question the quality of the relationship between the doubter of that and God.
WRONG.
Scripture says Christ was scheduled as the Sacrifice from the foundation of the world.
Your allegation is off the wall wrong beginning to end.
I don’t understand all God’s mysteries, for sure.
However, I know that ALL God does is perfect and always has been and always will be.
The incapacities of our finiteness to articulate wisely about such things is our problem, not God’s.
ABSOLUTELY INDEED:
Millions of bible-believing Christians will enjoy the fruits of raising a godly family heritage. You are free to look for some linguistic explanation for other professing Christians to raise worldlings, if you like. I find those linguistic manipulations a ploy, and a trick of the devil, to lure people away from God’s standards and to lower theeir estimation of the Bible.
Common sense is often useful in understanding Scripture.
It is not, per se,
definitive, encompassing, foundational
GOD’S SENSE, HOLY SPIRIT’S SENSE, is.
ANYtime “common sense” trashes the tinies power of God’s Word to manifest literally
trash common sense.
NOPE.
Not by a long shot.
BTW, Satan, the globalist oligarchy, the Chinese Communists etc.
all loathe Dispensationalism as the most threatening flavor of Christianity.
Not a good side to stand on.
True. true.
Thx.
Thank you very much. It wearies me as well.
The purpose of the various dispensations is not to set forth two or more "plans of salvation."
The purpose of the dispensations is to demonstrate that no matter what conditions and what rule fallen man is placed under by a benevolent and merciful God, without Jesus Christ, man is an UTTER FAILURE.
There is so much scripture that shows the promises to Israel are still bound by G!D today. e has never swayed nor broken a promise yet, has never abandoned Jews ever, it's mans horrid belief systems I think from satan himself that have made many Jews the alleged scourge of the world yet I don't ask but beg my Christian friends to embrace at least in part the Jewish traditions and the feasts as they show so much; heavens, if we're "grafted in" than why have Christians killed Jews throughout history? It's because of arrogance, pride and folks just DON'T READ the scripture as the literal word of HASHEM!
Some do, a lot do but as you said, basically it's a mess. I steer clear of pre,post tribulation, steer clear of heaven and hell tpics, steer clear of what or how Messiah will rule this earth after the whole world battles against HIM. We see huge brush fires of this today and it will only get worse. So yes there will come a time when the days of the Goyiim, the Gentiles from the time of Babylon to this day, and Israel will take it's place once again and rightfully so. Jews have given and well preserved Hashem's word, but I'm repeating myself. This age shows for a fact all that has been written in HIS WORD is true and is coming true; by that i mean all prophecies as laid out in scripture have either been fulfilled or are on the verge of being fulfilled.>/P>
Again I don't delve into the "four and twenty elders" nor try to discern who sits upon those thrones, don't know if Hashem meant Jews will be as uncountable as the sands of the sea and if that's literal or a figure of speech that the seed of Abraham Isaac and Jacob will never cease from this world and in some future time will be ...eh, I'm speculating. This is what is so cool about TORAH studies, all around our table have ideas and look fro the Hebrew roots but we hit tangents and such and need to keep our eye upon our blessed King, not the fractured beliefs( including Darby) in which people take as Gospel truth only to run into say crusades, Hitleresque madness, cults, offshoots of scripture as evil as the day called the Qur'an and the strange pastors from "name it and claim it"filthy rich scumbags that rob lil old ladies of their SSI checks to the Obama church of racism, to Jimmy Jones like cults or those crazy replacement theologists, emergent church crazies that lead so many to death.
I made an error or three in my writing. One I wrote only two Gentiles wrote in the Bible but the book of Ruth is also written by a Gentile. There is a law, a rule right in the Torah and we see it all the way through the Bible as to how Gentiles and orphans are grafted into Judaism from Rahab in the fall of Jerico, to Ruth and Naomi, and others not named but of course there were bond servants that became Jews and Gentiles throughout history to this day have made their conversions to Judaism.
As for the grafting in, as a spiritual graft, yes, but again Christians are set apart from Israel. maybe there will be a place for Christians in Israel, for now most Jews want no part of Christianity as the scars of the past are too visual, too close and too hurtful to bear seeing many Christians in Eretz Israel. If I were more fully skilled in Hebrew, if I could afford to live in Israel I know I'd fight for them( a BIT old now), I would love and live amongst my daughter, and others of whom my own family was too cared to tell anyone of their Jewish roots for fear of death and persecution but I've visited and there may be a spiritual "graft' however there is a division, a barrier of the heart that must still soften on both sides and not many Christians nor Jews want to change tradition nor refute the poisonous readings from alleged masters of scripture that only , what's the word, only divide and destroy further that what should be a loving bond between Christian and Jew.
This may happen. It happens on small scales, but not as it should be. There is more prophecy ahead; maybe then, but G!D has HIS own plan, HIS own timing (dispensation)in which now we only see in part, as through a glass darkly, but soon, maybe in death or sometime in the future when evil again rears it's nasty head and envelopes the whole world in false peace, false treaties...eh, you can read those prophecies for yourself; I just don't want to draw pictures nor make dates as others have. Again, thanks for the back up. Your post was an enjoyable read.
Some do, a lot do but as you said, basically it's a mess. I steer clear of pre,post tribulation, steer clear of heaven and hell tpics, steer clear of what or how Messiah will rule this earth after the whole world battles against HIM. We see huge brush fires of this today and it will only get worse. So yes there will come a time when the days of the Goyiim, the Gentiles from the time of Babylon to this day, and Israel will take it's place once again and rightfully so. Jews have given and well preserved Hashem's word, but I'm repeating myself. This age shows for a fact all that has been written in HIS WORD is true and is coming true; by that i mean all prophecies as laid out in scripture have either been fulfilled or are on the verge of being fulfilled.>/P>
Again I don't delve into the "four and twenty elders" nor try to discern who sits upon those thrones, don't know if Hashem meant Jews will be as uncountable as the sands of the sea and if that's literal or a figure of speech that the seed of Abraham Isaac and Jacob will never cease from this world and in some future time will be ...eh, I'm speculating. This is what is so cool about TORAH studies, all around our table have ideas and look fro the Hebrew roots but we hit tangents and such and need to keep our eye upon our blessed King, not the fractured beliefs( including Darby) in which people take as Gospel truth only to run into say crusades, Hitleresque madness, cults, offshoots of scripture as evil as the day called the Qur'an and the strange pastors from "name it and claim it"filthy rich scumbags that rob lil old ladies of their SSI checks to the Obama church of racism, to Jimmy Jones like cults or those crazy replacement theologists, emergent church crazies that lead so many to death.
I made an error or three in my writing. One I wrote only two Gentiles wrote in the Bible but the book of Ruth is also written by a Gentile. There is a law, a rule right in the Torah and we see it all the way through the Bible as to how Gentiles and orphans are grafted into Judaism from Rahab in the fall of Jerico, to Ruth and Naomi, and others not named but of course there were bond servants that became Jews and Gentiles throughout history to this day have made their conversions to Judaism.
As for the grafting in, as a spiritual graft, yes, but again Christians are set apart from Israel. maybe there will be a place for Christians in Israel, for now most Jews want no part of Christianity as the scars of the past are too visual, too close and too hurtful to bear seeing many Christians in Eretz Israel. If I were more fully skilled in Hebrew, if I could afford to live in Israel I know I'd fight for them( a BIT old now), I would love and live amongst my daughter, and others of whom my own family was too cared to tell anyone of their Jewish roots for fear of death and persecution but I've visited and there may be a spiritual "graft' however there is a division, a barrier of the heart that must still soften on both sides and not many Christians nor Jews want to change tradition nor refute the poisonous readings from alleged masters of scripture that only , what's the word, only divide and destroy further that what should be a loving bond between Christian and Jew.
This may happen. It happens on small scales, but not as it should be. There is more prophecy ahead; maybe then, but G!D has HIS own plan, HIS own timing (dispensation)in which now we only see in part, as through a glass darkly, but soon, maybe in death or sometime in the future when evil again rears it's nasty head and envelopes the whole world in false peace, false treaties...eh, you can read those prophecies for yourself; I just don't want to draw pictures nor make dates as others have. Again, thanks for the back up. Your post was an enjoyable read.
INDEED TO THE MAX.
THX.
Thanks for your kind reply.
Bless you and all those you love with intimacy with God.
Why not? I wasn't aware that there was a Gentile disease that requires eating pork three times a day, or mandates mixing meat and dairy together. Just as I'm capable of providing dairy-free meals for my lactose-intolerant friends or vegetarian meals for vegetarians, the early Gentile believers would have been fully capable of learning the basics of making kosher meals for communal purposes. Especially in the Diaspora, where the rules of kosher were generally more relaxed than in Judea.
So again: It is your assertion that the Mosaic Law, i.e., the Torah itself, makes it impossible for Jews and Gentiles to eat together without violating kosher. Cite chapter and verse.
At Cornelius' household, scripture explicitly describes Peter eating non-kosher food at the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and direction of an angel.
Chapter and verse, please. As I recall, Peter had a vision of being offered unkosher food, which he turned down three times only to be chastened from Heaven, "Do not call what God has made clean common." Peter himself interprets the vision for us in v. 28: "And he said to them, “You yourselves know how unlawful (note: the Greek word means 'against custom,' not 'against Torah') it is for a man who is a Jew to associate with a foreigner or to visit him; and yet God has shown me that I should not call any man unholy or unclean."
The issue was not kosher. Unless the Gentile is just bent on being offensive, that can be handled. The issue was eighteen measures that had been passed about a generation before that pretty much declared even God-fearing, Torah-observant Gentiles to be completely unclean and unholy. These eighteen measures, it should be noted, were passed under dubious circumstances and were revoked by the rabbis in the second century, but at the time of Acts, they were a very big deal--and the zealots were willing to enforce them by assasinating those who got too close to the Gentiles.
Now, I don't blame you for not knowing about the Eighteen Measures. Most Jews don't even know about them and I only learned about them a year or so ago. However, I do hold you responsible for not actually reading the Torah for yourself and factoring it into your understanding of the New Testament.
If you had done so, you would have noticed that the Torah forbids despising the alien, but rather to love him (Deu. 10:19) and that the foreigner who wished to offer a sacrifice to Hashem was to be allowed to do so under the same laws as an Israelite (Num. 15:14-16). That means that declaring all Gentiles to be intrinsically unclean and creating a "middle wall of partition" (per Eph. 2) to separate a court for the Gentiles from the court of the Israelites was illegal according to the Torah. These were man-made traditions that opposed the true Torah, and just as He did in His earthly ministry, Yeshua now did in a vision to Peter: He removed the errant tradition so that the true Torah could be seen. Gentile believers in the God of Israel who had renounced idolatry were no longer to be considered unclean or unholy.
It is you who accuse Paul. I do not see anything wrong with him reasserting his status as Pharisee or going to the Temple.
But do you agree that Paul was a Pharisee--which is the equivalent today of an Orthodox Jew--and that he continued in the practices of the Pharisees? If he did, then that means that the Apostle not only kept kosher, but kept the stricter kashrut, the stricter standards of ritual purity, and other aspects of Jewish law? If he did, then on what basis can you claim the authority to tell Jews today not to do the same? If you think he didn't, then you accuse him of being a hypocrates, a pretender to the title of Pharisee. You know, the very thing Yeshua condemned in Matthew 23.
I accuse Paul of nothing because I don't assume that he changed his practices based on convenience or audience. I think he was a Pharisee through-and-through. I think he changed his terminology and his teaching methods to best reach the maximum number of people.
They did deemphasize the law, and not only for Gentiles.
If so, you have yet to produce a valid example. If you want to take another stab at it, save us both some time and go look up the actual commandment and the actual example of the supposed violation.
Bishops that pass along what they receive were not corrupt.
No matter how much simony and immorality surrounds them.
How would the imperfect animal sacrifices continue to please God after the perfect sacrifice has been made?
If Abraham was saved by faith (Rom. 4), why did he offer up sacrifices? Why did the Apostles?
You are accusing either me, Christian Tradition, or the Apostles.
I'm accusing you and your tradition of not following the Apostles and of persecuting those who have.
Mosaic law was not permanent but provisional until the coming of Christ . . . Galatians 3:19
The Torah itself declares that no one, not even a miracle-working prophet, can change its commandments (Deu. 12:32-13:5). So either Paul is a false prophet and you are a heretic for following him, or you have misunderstood Paul. I'm betting on the latter.
So what is Paul's point, taken in context? Simply this: The promise to Abraham and his seed (which Paul midrashically renders as singular instead of the collective to point to Yeshua, but explaining that gets into the Hebrew) came 430 years before Moses was given the Torah on Mt. Sinai. Ergo, the unilateral promise that Abraham's seed would inherit the physical land of Israel and be a blessing to the whole world is not and has never been contingent on Israel's obedience. There is literally nothing Israel can ever do to to annul that Covenant. Our disobedience may put the blessings on hold and result in punishment, but God has assured us over and over again through the prophets that He will bring us to that place of blessing in the end.
And that is what makes replacement theology a heresy: You claim that because Israel disobeyed, the promises were taken from the natural seed and given to another. You annul not only the Torah, but the very Apostle that you depend on to attack the Torah!
Paul then answers the question: "So why have a Law at all, if it isn't relevant to the promise and only incites the will of man to sin the more?" The answer, more literally rendered: "It was gathered together because of transgressions, ordained by messengers by the means of a mediator"--referring to Moses--"until the Seed would come to whom the promise had been made"--referring to Messiah.
Now here, and in many other places in Paul's writings, I'm not convinced that "Law" means the written Torah only. The Torah of Moses, in the Jewish mind, was never "gathered together," but was given to Moses on Mt. Sinai. Rather, being a Pharisee, Paul was used to thinking of Law as meaning not only the written Torah, but the corpus of Jewish law that had grown out of it. Here, the "gathering together" of what became known as the Mishnah may be in view, especially since the verbs are in the aorist, rather than the past, tense.
But even if it isn't, since the Greek word translated "until" does not necessarily connotate a stopping point, but is rather a conjunction indicating purpose or direction; e.g., "Brethren, I may confidently say to you regarding the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is [fn] with us unto this day." That doesn't mean the tomb of David suddenly vanished that morning. I know, because I've been there.
So what does it mean? Here is my paraphrase for you to judge: "Israel's transgressions of the Law could not annul an unconditional promise given 430 years before the Law was ever given on Mt. Sinai. So why have the Law at all? It has been, is being, and will be gathered together and added to because of our transgressions (trying to legislate morality, as it were), having been ordained by messengers--the prophets, the men of the Great Assembly, and the rabbis--who received it by the hand of our mediator, Moses, even unto the present time when the Seed has appeared to whom the promises were ultimately made and through whom they will be fulfilled."
So basically, we have two possible ways to read this verse. Your way takes it out of context and pits it against the rest of Scripture, not to mention the life of the person who penned it. My way takes into account the context, the life of the author, and the meaning of the original Greek and reconciles the verse to the rest of the Scriptures.
The Church is infallibly guided in her legislation by the Paraclete.
Baloney. But your belief that this is the case is why this discussion is ultimately a waste of time: We simply don't have a mutually-accepted source of authority. You accept that everything the Roman Catholic Church does and teaches is to be received uncritically. I believe that we are to test what we are taught even by an Apostle to see if what he says is true (Acts 17:11).
If the Church is false, then you should cut all ties and be done with her.
I think the Roman Catholic Church is false, but I don't think the true Ekklesia, the true Kingdom of Heaven, made up of both Jews and Gentiles by the work of the Spirit is. That Kingdom has many Catholics in it, but it is not to be confused with the Magisterium.
And no, the Bible does not teach unconditional, unthinking submission. It does teach us to honor the duly appointed authorities and to obey them in every way that does not directly contradict God's commandments. That is why I honor and obey the rabbis, the duly appointed authorities of my people. There are of course areas in which I must follow Yeshua instead of our traditions, but one of the nice things about Judaism is that no one is expected to blindly submit and there is always room for debate and variations in practice between different rabbis.
Shalom and an early Merry Christmas to you and yours.
The Judaizers are not likely to read the passages that way. They will insist that you are putting a gentile spin on the text. That good Jews see the dietary laws in inviolate, even in this age. So go so far as to insist that to be truly right with God gentiles should submit to the law of Moses in all things.
God’s grace demonstrates all that in every way without the need for constructs like dispensations. Dispensations are just a way that some find to compartmentalize the bible in order for it to make sense to them, but that doesnt mean the viewfinder is the object viewed
Dispensationalism can be viewed as an excuse for "dispensing with" parts of the Bible one disagrees with.
And back at you brother!
Shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
Am I on some ping list?
That line goes from Abraham to Christ, to Christ's people. the whole dna thing is so ridiculous as to be absurd to begin with. Abraham was a gentile, only God's Spirit made him any different to begin with.
then add to that all the descendents thru his other wives than Sarah, the concubines, etc, and you have a world full of people, the seeds and few of them are spiritual people, most today are probably Moslems.
and there's little "racial purity" in the line anyway. Joseph's wife was Egyptian, and here you have Ephraim inheriting a "double portion", and why? because he rec'd God's blessing, a spiritual blessing.
Ruth figures prominently in Christ's line, also a gentile. There are all sorts of wives from everywhere having children by the Israelites. by now, all of us in the world must be related somewhere by these people. then the whole world will have to be saved, if it's salvation by dna.
That is not what the bible teaches.
One more interesting bit of trivia. There is no year zero BC / AD. Dating goes directly from 1 BC to 1 AD. Roman numerals didn’t include the zero, you see!
Reprove not a scorner, lest he hate thee; rebuke a wise man and he will love thee. Proverbs 9:8
As much as I learn I realize I've learned only a little. Little in the wisdom and knowledge of God and wisdom and knowledge of this world. Heck, my very typing is so atrocious I've been rebuked in learning the keyboard before writing such massive displays of erroneous misspells, punctuation and horrid sentence structure! Makes me laugh, somewhere between my brain and the keyboard there's a riot going on wreaking havoc on so many frayed nerves the neurotransmitters seemingly take so many back roads to my finger tips they forget the intitial message! Take care and thanks again!
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