Israeli sailors are a favorite target of missionaries , whose aim is to lead the erring Jews back in the arms of the Lord by accepting Christ. The parsons and priests of the seamen’s’ clubs in the US, never bother anyone with this and all they want, is to give the sailors a home away from home, offering them entertainment, free books, movies, a store, a restaurant, transport to the city and more. If one requests a church service, he will get it and if an Israeli asks to be taken to a synagogue, they’ll gladly oblige, sometimes introducing him to their good friend the local rabbi. But that is not really important to them. All of them have become good friends of the Israeli sailors, who enjoy visiting their clubs, where in some of them they even may meet girls (of the good kind only, but who often don’t mind…). The seamen often welcome the priests and parsons on board and sometimes they are invited to the captain’s table. The lay missionaries are something else: It’s them who try to convert the Jews, thinking they need just a little explanation to see the light, going about it very clumsily, giving citations verses from the bible and using expressions members of other religions or atheists couldn’t understand. Thus once such a fellow appeared in the officers’ duty mess declaring “you have got to drink the blood of the lamb!” (in case you Atheists don’t know the meaning of this expression: The lamb is innocent Jesus, whose blood was shed to purify the world of its sins). The officers made faces and asked the good man “do you have to talk about such disgusting things while we are eating?” More intelligent ones hope to involve an erring Jew in a discussion full of citations from the bible, where they are sure they are smarter, as they can come up with lots of citations, which disprove the claims of their victim, which – they are sure – in the end will have to give up and accept Jesus. Several times I have encountered such fellows, who mostly started by asking me questions about the Old testament and how I saw G-d and after discovering, that I knew a bit about it, started their attack, by asking why we Jews did not accept Jesus Christ. As they, of course, expected me to reply with wise citations, they were not prepared to how I was going to go about it: While talking about Jewish religion and taking some contents from the Old Testament, I never did use any citations , but stuck on known facts. The more fundamentalist ones after some time got quite annoyed and said “ but that is blasphemy, don’t talk like that, consider your soul.” I replied that that was the way I would continue if they would wanted to continue the discussion, else they should stop trying. Mostly those types were quite stubborn and didn’t want to let up, warning me about the terrible suffering I would have to expect etc. I answered in the end silly things, such as ‘I enjoy heat’. I am sure after they left, they started praying for my soul. If I met anyone of them again, it happened that they asked me , whether I had reconsidered, and I just replied sadly “seems I am a lost soul!”, after which they assured me, that a soul is never lost, etc. Anyway, my reply – if it came to that - was: The Jews had been very happy with their religion and the fact that they had been chosen by the Lord to suffer more than all the other, and relied on the good Lord to soon send a messiah to free them from those constant oppressions. Messiah in Hebrew ‘Meshiakh’ stems from mshokh, meaning to pull them out from all the BS. Suddenly, some three centuries after the supposed happening they were informed, that there had been a Messiah, whom they had betrayed and who therefore, after having had only a small following among the Jews, had turned to the Gentiles. They couldn’t have known much about it before that, because after their dispersion in 70 CE those who came to Rome, where Christianity started in earnest only under Konstantin I in the fourth century, suffered far less than the Christians, who at the time were the main victims of Roman persecution and couldn’t practice their religion openly, far less preach it to the uninterested. So some of the Jews might have had a rough idea about that sect, but couldn’t have really cared. The Jews were and are in fact the most tolerant of all, who never claim to possess the only true religion, but believed that any gentile, who obeyed the seven ‘noahide’ laws, which any law-abiding person anyway does, would be regarded a righteous person by the Lord. For sure, the Jews had never learned that the son of God, who in the confusing Christian teachings, was also God himself, had appeared some three hundred years ago to save them, but had been rejected. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noahide_laws Now, at the 4th century they were suddenly expected to repent and accept Christ or be forever considered his murderers. How had the Christian religion become so powerful after having been persecuted for centuries? Mixing known historic facts with my own ideas, I can only see it thus: The Christian teachings had appealed mostly to the poor and the slaves, as it was the only religion that promised a better life for the downtrodden in the next world. (Zoroastrianism, who made no distinction between rich and poor, was unsure about the afterlife, thus was less appealing) Rich people held slaves to do their writing and in time entrusted them with more responsibilities, thus by and by they became clerks for everything, including in the government, most of them becoming freedmen and quite powerful, while almost all stemmed from Christians. Some emperors started persecution of Christians again – though not as cruel as Nero, simply forbidding its practice so they had to lay low, hiding their religion. It had been the custom for centuries that children followed the footsteps of their fathers and for sure the fathers wanted all the best for their children, thus the official positions were mostly taken by Christians. And after these speculations I return to known history: When Constantine the Great became Roman emperor near the start of the 4th century, he willingly listened to the advice of his officials, thus these had a strong influence on him. When Constantine fought the emperor of Eastern Rome, to include it into his empire, he had his famous dream, which changed the world: He saw the sign of the cross in front of the sun (the Sun God still being his God), which told him that with this sign he would win. So he ordered his knights to put a cross on their shields and he actually won. (The fact that once before, on another occasion, he had had a similar vision, that time by the Sun God, is seldom mentioned). After that he accepted the Christian religion as one of the official religions and his soldiers were ordered to become Christians. He himself continued to pray to Sol, and only converted to Christianity on his death bed, a smart move, as at the moment of baptizing one is cleansed of all his sins and has to start all over again. Being on the death bed, one has no chance to soil himself again, thus his soul passes right away to heaven, thus avoiding the introductory purgatory. After all that: Why did the Jews refuse to accept Christ? The Jews had been expecting a warrior hero, who would lead them to victory over their oppressors. So who was this mild man, they were being told about, who told them to present the one who slapped him on the cheek, the other cheek and who told them to obey Caesar – there had been some emperors who had put their image in the temple to be praised there, instead of YHVH? For Jews life on earth was what counted, as God had put them here for some reason. They had a hazy idea about afterlife but didn’t break their heads about it. Concerning death Jews were free choose to whatever the preferred, be it the next world, rebirth, Nirvana, total oblivion or whatever. It was not what counted, while for Christians life on earth was just something passing, to be followed by the real life . Among the Jew the Lord would reward a righteous man with wealth and happiness here on earth, while among the Christians wealth itself was considered a sin. Jesus had declared that sooner a camel would pass through the eye of a needle than would a rich man enter heaven. This was aimed at the poor people, of course, while the church was becoming increasingly richer and in time was more and more supported by the upper classes. Jesus had suffered and died on the cross, thus taking all the sins of the world on himself, including the original sin, committed by Adam and Eve, wherefore they had been chased out of paradise. This was the most confusing part of all: According to Jewish tradition with the expulsion from paradise, this chapter was closed and from there on man had to toil on earth to sustain himself. Which probably had been the intention of the Lord anyway, as he wanted people to develop their brains, which they never could have done, by just stretching out their hands for food and being sheltered in any way. Thus after the bible had been canonized it has been open for discussion ever since and any Jew is invited to interpret any chapter the way he sees it, which greatly improves one’s mind, which in the end made the Jews smart enough to be hated by everyone, while the adherers of Christendom had to accept the rigid dogma the church imposed on them, which finally lead to the dark ages, from which Europe only emerged after the church had lost its absolute power. So why should the Jews accept a religion, whose sole aim was to increase its power steadily, eliminating enemies and persecuting even those among them that dared to deviate even slightly from the church’s dogma, such as about the trinity, which claimed that God, his son and the holy spirit were all the same in one, while the Arians were keeping each of them separate, for which they, being the minority, were being persecuted and expulsed. And why was it necessary for God to let his son, who was actually He himself, suffer to release mankind from all it’s sin. Was God responsible to a higher power? Obviously not, so being omnipotent he could have pardoned all of them without all that trouble. Was it possible that G-d was no different from human beings and would change His mind completely? While the teachings of Christ were probably the most benevolent to humanity ever, the church was not. Many popes were downright criminals, ordering murders all over – a historical fact – and like any other ideology, once it has achieved power, Christianity attracted those searching for power, who pushed the idealists, who were not as unscrupulous as they and thus could not stand up to them them. Among the rich families it was custom that the first son became the heir, the second made a carrier in the army, usually starting at the top and the third joined the church, mostly as cardinal. Thus some popes had never been very religious in their former lives. The church became a loving proponent of torture, putting enough fright into the population to keep it in line. I once saw a picture of one of the great saints visiting a torture chamber, apparently showing great interest and the artist obviously had no criticism in mind, but wanted to show how deeply interested that future saint was in all concerning the church. The church developed the best brainwashing system ever. As such things as trinity and how Christ, by having come to the world by immaculate conception should have done anything to better it, while one couldn’t perceive any improvement at all, and much more remained a mystery to all. So it was declared quite logically, that anyone not believing it would roast in hell forever, thus making it possible to explain something difficult in an easily comprehendible way. To keep the believers in line still better, confession was introduced and woe to the one, who didn’t have anything to confess, he better made something up, because man is never free of sins. A generous donation to the church would greatly shorten the time one would have to spend in purgatory, the more donated, the shorter the time. In time one could even buy absolution for future misdeeds, a fact which finally contributed to the start of the reformation. For the Jews hell (she’ol) was a place of for them unknown components, but surely not the cruel place of punishment Christians made of it. myjewishlearning/beliefs/Theology/Afterlife_and_Messiah/Life_After_Death/Heaven_and_Hell.shtml After the success of the reformation in parts of Europe, relief from suffering seemed to be in sight for the Jews, but when they disappointed reformer Martin Luther by refusing to join his new, more palatable version of Christianity, he started the greatest hate tirades ever. He showed no compassion for the downtrodden either. At the time the peasants were revolting against their feudal overlords, who were oppressing them with harsh treatment and rules. Among other there was the right of the seigneur for the first night, which gave the “owners” of the peasants the right to be the first to spend the wedding night with any bride. Luther supported the dukes, as he was dependent on their support, with hate tirades of the worst kind against the peasants, who had imagined that he would support them. It was partly Luther’s fault, that the revolt failed and the peasants continued to remain at the whim of their masters. While one can understand that he didn’t want to lose the important support of the aristocracy, the least he could have done was to put in a word for the peasants with the dukes, trying to improve their lot. scrollpublishing/store/Luther-Peasants.html So what did such churches have to offer the Jews? In countries like Spain some Jews converted anyway, to save themselves, their families and their possessions, but from then on were under constant surveillance , as they were suspected of practicing their former religion in secret, and woe when irrefutable proof of it was found, such as changing ones shirts every Saturday, washing ones hands too much, which was typical for the Jews, or ordering chicken instead of pig meat. I could give quite a number of more reasons, why Jews had no interest in joining Christianity, but I’ll let it be at that. Now just between us: According to Jewish tradition Jews got YHVH as their God, because they were willing to take more BS than any other religion, having to obey 613 commandments, while for the Gentiles seven were enough. For this they hoped to be rewarded after some time, which somehow never materialized. Jews were all the time inventing tales about miracles in order to keep up their hopes and not to despair. The promise of the Messiah, who would lead them out of persecution was one of them. In fact, in ancient times, when the prophet made this promise, they expected it to happen in their life time, or at least in that of their children. Would it give you consolation to be promised that your descendents would be freed in 2000 years? In Russia any drunk could start a pogrom by uttering the dreaded phrase ‘hep’, which once said, could not be cancelled. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hep-Hep_riots In the 19th century a new generation of Eastern European Jews had finally had enough of of a religion which taught them that they had to suffer pogroms and all that because it was the will of the Lord, and founded Zionism, which finally and after much struggle led to the foundation of the state of Israel. I guess that this was what the Lord had had in mind all the time, as His intention always had been that mankind would be able to fight for itself. So nearest to become the Messiah I would nominate David Ben Gurion, who with his energy and will power led to the establishment of the Jewish state. While there had been quite a number of leading persons with initiative, Ben Gurion was the only one with enough strength and energy to carry it through. So perhaps it was the Lord who sent him just at the right time. With the church having lost absolute power, those that were in pursuit of it lost interest, and finally the idealists, who are willing to accept the Jews as fellowmen, could take over.
Posted on: Mon, 01 Dec 2014 06:06:22 +0000
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