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Torture And The Patriotic American Christian

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When I see photos and video of innocent people being beheaded I understand what Evil is, and the Marine in me wants to bring all guns to bear to destroy it with extreme prejudice, using whatever means necessary; going all Jack Bauer if need be in order to protect innocent life. The Christian in me says I must temper my righteous anger so that my actions reflect the Judeo-Christian values I hold and endorse.

“Vengeance is Mine, saith the Lord.”

So I’ve been torn on the subject of “torture,” particularly when innocent lives are at stake. I remember watching an episode of “24,” where Jack Bauer had a man with critical information tied to a chair. This man was a hardened jihadi, time was running out, and Jack set up a video feed that showed the terrorist’s family also tied to chairs – with guns to their heads. The man’s child was among them.

The man still refused to talk, so Jack ordered his partner to execute the terrorist’s wife. A shot rang out and the wife fell back in her chair, out of frame. Jack made it plain that the boy was next to die if the terrorist didn’t talk.

He talked and millions of people were saved.

After he spilled the beans though, it was revealed that the wife had not been hurt at all, that her “execution” was a bluff, thereby preserving Jack’s status with the audience as a Patriotic hero rather than as an amoral merc.

Was that “torture?” A similar scenario in the recently released report on Enhanced Interrogations says that it is, and that the technique was actually used on a detainee. I don’t think that it was torture, nor do I think that the force-feeding of a hunger-striking Kahlid Sheik Mohammed via peanut butter enema was torture.
 

Some of the EI techniques however, like waterboarding, are torture, having been recognized and implemented as such since the Inquisition.

Having given it some thought and prayer, I have come to the decision that we as a People are better than that, that Christ wouldn’t be very happy with us were we to use some of the techniques used by the CIA; techniques that broke down not just the victim, but even those who were implementing them.

We must also consider two other aspects:

1. The fate of our soldiers captured by hostile forces.

2. The fate of Christians who, according to the latest DHS Intelligence Estimate, pose a greater threat to the US than that posed by Islamic terrorists.

Read the rest, watch supporting video, and remember to share: http://bobpowell.blogspot.com/2014/12/torture-and-patriotic-american-christian.html 

We MUST wake up our friends and families to what is about to go down, and folks we are running out of time. Their lives are, literally, in your hands; at your very fingertips. So please, even if you have done it before, take two seconds, and share this knowledge.

God bless & Semper Fi,
Bobby



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    • onlythetruth

      Well I know for a fact Those CHOSEN Ones The Jewdows ASKENAZI’s Who all Christians Support You Know The SYNAGOGUE Have FEMA CAMPS AWAITING THE WHITE CHRISTIANS. As all the RABBIS Look at The WHITE GOYIM as Cattle needing To Be SLAUGHTERED OFF. They Want a Brown or Dark-skinned World left that these RAPHIM the Fallen-Ones OFFSPRING Can CONTROL.. The White Race always Fought Them The DEVILS Who Look HUMAN but are Not but are Their FATHERS OFF-SPRING!! I also Believe they Wrote what they wanted in the bible AS CONSTANTINE was their man to do it! All For Control of The SHEEP Who Are all Asleep.. To What is about to take place very soon. not my words its their WORDS….

    • truthlovingsoul

      torture is wrong, especially when we are in some situation where we are starting to justify it’s merits. these are the times to keep the taboos alive, not kill them. if something is immoral and unjust and cruel, it is ALWAYS so. not sometimes it’s ok, sometimes it’s not. that is called cognitive dissonance.

    • KOYOTE

      i hope you remember that you have to OBEY THE GOSPEL…………………… KJV AUTHORIZED VERSION:

      2Th 1:7 And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels,
      2Th 1:8 In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that OBEY not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ:
      2Th 1:9 Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power; CAPS MINE

      FORGIVE YOUR ENEMIES
      THE LORD SAID
      Mat 6:14 For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you:
      Mat 6:15 But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

      “judeo-christianity” is a lie from hell and does not exist

      Zionism Verses The Bible

      by Pastor Thomas Williamson

      Much of our Christian emphasis on foreign policy in the Middle East today is based on the promise that God made to Abraham in Genesis 12:3, “And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.”

      The first half of this verse is a promise that God made to just one person, Abraham. The original Hebrew is in the second person singular, meaning that God is speaking only to Abraham. The King James Version correctly reflects this grammatical construction, since “thee” is singular, referring only to one person, whereas “ye” would refer to multiple persons.

      Matthew Henry’s commentary states of Genesis 12:3a that “This made it a kind of league, offensive and defensive, between God and Abram.”

      Of the second half of the verse, Matthew Henry says, This was the promise that crowned all the rest; for it points to the Messiah, in whom ‘all the promises are yea and amen.’ Note, (1), Jesus Christ is the great blessing of the world, the greatest that ever the world blessed with.”

      Recently Genesis 12:3 has been spiritualized by Christian Zionist preachers, who say that this verse applies not just to Abraham, but also to Abraham’s descendants, specifically to the modern state of Israel founded in 1948. Supposedly, it means that evangelical Christians as individuals, and America as a nation, are bound to provide unquestioning support, financial and otherwise, to the state of Israel. It is said that if America fails to back up Israel in every way possible, financially, militarily and otherwise, then God will be through with America and will have us nuked.

      When it is pointed out that the various Arabs nations, including Palestine, are also descended from Abraham, the Christian Zionists say that the promise of Genesis 12:3 applies only to the descendants of Isaac (Of course, there is no mention of Isaac in Genesis 12:3. They often misquote the verse, saying it refers to “blessing Israel,” but Israel is not mentioned in the verse either).

      Zionists say, based on their non-literal, speculative, spiritualized interpretation of Genesis 12:3, that we are to give total, unquestioned support to some of Abraham’s children, while others of Abraham’s children are to be hated, persecuted, ethnically cleansed, bombed back into the Stone Age, maybe even nuked.

      But in Genesis 21:13, 17-18 God also bestows His blessing on Ishmael and his descendants, saying, “For I will make him a great nation.” According to the same principles of interpretation by which we have made Genesis 12:3 a command for political support of the modern nation of Israel, Genesis 21:18 must be taken as a command for political support of the modern Arab nations. (Anybody want to start up a “Christian Ishmaelist” movement to lobby for Arab national greatness?)

      Christian Zionists claim to have 70,000,000 followers in America, who insists that our politicians render unquestioning obedience to the military and political agenda of the Israeli Government.

      Does God really demand that we support all actions and activities of the Israeli Government, even if those actions violate God’s moral standards of righteousness?

      It should be pointed out that even in Old Testament times, when Israel was a nation specially chosen by, and ruled over by, Jehovah, He did not expect His people to support and endorse all actions of the government of Israel.

      When the Government of Israel committed human rights violations, the prophets openly condemned them, 2 Kings 6:21 –23, 2 Chronicles 28:9-11, Nehemiah 5:7-11, Jeremiah 34:11-17, Amos 2:6-7, etc. Nowadays, liberal Jewish groups still protest human rights violations in Israel. Nevertheless, most fundamentalists Christians would never dream of doing such a thing – it is against their religion. It is their duty to either deny that such violations take place, or else to endorse and commend such violations. We have been told that God will smite us if we disagree with anything that Israel does.

      The lawgiver Moses commanded the Hebrews that they should not oppress the strangers or non-Jews in their lands, Exodus 12:49, 22:21, 23:9, Leviticus 19:33-34, 25:35, Deuteronomy 10:18-19, 23:7, 24:17, 27:19. That message, of course, is not mentioned today – it is considered “politically incorrect.”

      When King Ahab and Queen Jezebel unjustly expropriated the vineyard of Naboth, the prophet Elijah publicly denounced the kind for this unjust action, 1 Kings 21:17-24, Jehu cited this official action of the government of Israel against Naboth as justification for overthrowing that government, 2 Kings 9:25-26.

      But nowadays, when the Israeli government expropriates the lands and properties of Palestinians without compensation, we look the other way and say nothing about it.

      In Jeremiah 27:1-5, the prophet Jeremiah picketed a public meeting of the government of Judah with representatives of Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre and Sidon. He was protesting the foreign policy of Judah. We would never do anything like that today – it would be considered a violation of the command to “bless Abraham.”

      In Jeremiah 27:6-17, the prophet advocated the surrender of Israel’s territory to the King of Babylon, in return for peace – today, we would call it “land for peace.” But today, our warmongering televangelists denounce “land for peace” as unthinkable for any reason whatsoever, and threaten God’s wrath against anyone who would support such a thing.

      Supposedly it is better for Jewish and Arab children of Abraham to keep on killing each other over the land (while these sanctimonious war profiteers collect the money from sales of their Armageddon videos. Could it be a conflict of interest to allow American foreign policy to be dictated by these mega-millionaire preachers, who stand to make a profit if there is a war in the Middle East?)

      We have seen that God’s inspired prophets did not meet the Christian Zionist standard of blind, unquestioning support for Israel. As it turns out, today’s Christian Zionists do not meet that standard, either.

      Whenever the modern Israeli government takes any action that does not fit in with the speculative doomsday scenarios of the Armageddon Theology, the Christian Zionists will loudly protest and insist that the Israelis are doing wrong.

      For instance, in 1994 Christian Zionist leaders, including Pat Robertson and Ralph Reed, publicly condemned the policies of the Israeli government under Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was seeking a peace settlement with the Palestinians. Robertson has also attacked the policies of Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres.

      It seems hypocritical for Christian Zionists to threaten the wrath of God against those who express disagreement with any policy of the Israeli government when they have done the same thing themselves.

      Modern-day Israelis and other Jews are well aware of the fact that the Christian Zionists believe, based on a mistaken interpretation of Zechariah 13:8, that there must be a devastating war in the Middle East in which two-thirds of all the Jews will be slaughtered. It is commonly understood that the Christian Zionists do not really care about what is best for the Jews, as evidenced by their constant lobbying efforts to stir up World War III in the Middle East. Million Jews may wind up dead, but it will be good for sales of the Armageddon videos that are peddled on the televangelists’ broadcasts and web-sites.

      This raises the question who is really “blessing Israel;” those who are working for peace in the Middle East, or those who are agitating for a war designed to get two-thirds of all Jews wiped out?

      Some gullible evangelical Christians may not understand these issues, but our Jewish friends understand what is at stake very well – they are being prepared to serve as cannon fodder for the next Holocaust.

      Gershom Gorenberg, in his book “The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount,” says, “I’ve listened to….American evangelical ministers who insist on their deep love for Israel and nevertheless eagerly await apocalyptic battles on Israel’s soil so terrible that the dry river bed will, they predict, fill with rivers of blood.”

      Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, has stated that “People who say there can be no peace are not really friends of Israel.”

      Robert O. Freedman, political science professor at Baltimore Hebrew University, says concerning Christian Zionists, “Once you get in bed with them, you are, to a certain extent, subscribing to their view of what America ought to be. And that, in my view, is not in the best interests of the Jewish people.”

      Former Shin Bet secret chief Carmi Gillon and former police commissioner Assaf Hefetz, commenting on the activities of Temple Mount extremists who are financially supported by fundamentalist Americans, warned that an attack on the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem “would lead to an all-out war and unleash destructive forces that would imperil Israel’s existence.”

      The eagerness of some televangelists, to get a war going in the Middle East (along with their vociferous Arab-bashing and Muslim-baiting), must be considered in context of their belief in the infamous Armageddon Theology, which insists that 2/3 of all the Jews must die.

      Grace Halsell, in her book “Prophecy and Politics” observed: “Convinced that a nuclear Armageddon is an inevitable event within the divine scheme of things, many evangelical dispensationalists have committed themselves to a course for Israel that, by their own admission, will lead directly to a holocaust indescribably more savage and widespread than could have generated in Adolf Hitler’s criminal mind.”

      American Christians who really want to be a blessing to all the children of Abraham (Jews and Arabs) need to realize that they do not have to render blind, knee-jerk support to the most extremist elements of Zionism, or to those who are actively trying to foment massive wars in the Middle East that would be contrary to the interests of the Israeli people. Not everyone is going to agree that stirring up a war to get 2/3 of all Jews killed is a good thing for the Jews.

      Nor should we forget that our Prime Directive as Christians is found in the Great Commission. Our mission is to evangelize, baptize and teach, not to try to hasten Christ’s coming by agitating war and violence in the Middle East.

      The Myth of a Judeo-Christian Tradition
      THE KORAN WAS TAKEN FROM THE MOST PART FROM THE JEWISH TALMUD. THE FIRST MUSLIM CALIPH WAS A JEWISH RABBI. KNOW WHO YOUR ENEMIES ARE.

      The following article from New Dawn Magazine No.23 Feb-March 1994.

      This is an age in which news has been superseded by propaganda, and education by brain-washing and indoctrination. From the advertising used to sell poor quality goods, to the classes in schools designed to make children into conditioned robots of the State, the art of persuasion has displaced the simple virtue of truth.

      Since the end of the Second World War we have been bombarded from all sides with references to the Western world’s “Judeo-Christian religion,” and “our Judeo-Christian heritage.” We are told by both church leaders and scholars that our society is based on a supposed “Judeo-Christian tradition”.

      The notion of “Judeo- Christian religion” is an unquestioned — almost sacrosanct — part of both secular and church thinking. American Christian leader Prof. Franklin H. Littel, a vocal supporter of the Zionist state, frankly declared that “to be Christian is to be Jewish,” and that consequently it was the duty of a Christian to put support for the “land of Israel” above all else. Pat Boon, the North American singer and evangelist, said there are two kinds of Judaism, one Orthodox and the other Christian.

      Yet such a decidedly Christian Zionist outlook is to say the least, wildly simplistic and profoundly ahistorical. As the astute Jewish writer, Joshua J. Adler, points out, “The differences between Christianity and Judaism are much more than merely believing in whether the messiah already appeared or is still expected, as some like to say.”

      The comments of Jewish author Mr. S. Levin may well explain the Christian’s need for the Judeo-Christian myth. Writing in the Israeli journal Biblical Polemics, Levin concludes: “‘After all, we worship the same God’, the Christian always says to the Jew and the Jew never to the Christian. The Jew knows that he does not worship the Christ-God but the Christian orphan needs to worship the God of Israel and so, his standard gambit rolls easily and thoughtlessly from his lips. It is a strictly unilateral affirmation, limited to making a claim on the God of Israel but never invoked with reference to other gods. A Christian never confronts a Moslem or a Hindu with ‘After all, we worship the same God’.”

      Back in 1992 both Newsweek magazine and the Israeli Jerusalem Post newspaper simultaneously printed extensive articles scrutinising the roots of the sacrosanct Judeo-Christian honeymoon!

      The statement heading the Newsweek article read: “Politicians appeal to a Judeo-Christian tradition, but religious scholars say it no longer exists.” The Jerusalem Post article’s pull quote announced: “Antisemitism is a direct result of the Church’s teachings, which Christians perhaps need to re-examine.”

      “For scholars of American religion,” Newsweek states, “the idea of a single Judeo-Christian tradition is a made-in-America myth that many of them no longer regard as valid.” It quotes eminent Talmudic scholar Jacob Neusner: “Theologically and historically, there is no such thing as the Judeo-Christian tradition. It’s a secular myth favoured by people who are not really believers themselves.”

      Newsweek cites authorities who indicate that “the idea of a common Judeo-Christian tradition first surfaced at the end of the 19th century but did not gain popular support until the 1940s, as part of an American reaction to Nazism . . ,” and concludes that, “Since then, both Jewish and Christian scholars have come to recognize that — geopolitics apart — Judaism and Christianity are different, even rival religions.”

      The Jerusalem Post accused the Christian Church of being responsible for the Holocaust. The French Jewish scholar Jules Isaac was quoted as saying: “Without centuries of Christian catechism, preaching, and vituperation, the Hitlerian teachings, propaganda and vituperation would not have been possible.”

      “The problem,” concludes the Jerusalem Post, “is not, as some assert, that certain Christian leaders deviated from Christian teachings and behaved in an un-Christian manner; it is the teachings themselves that are bent.”

      Joshua Jehouda, a prominent French Jewish leader, observed in the late 1950s: “The current expression ‘Judaeo-Christian’ is an error which has altered the course of universal history by the confusion it has sown in men’s minds, if by it one is meant to understand the Jewish origin of Christianity . . . If the term ‘Judaeo-Christian’ does point to a common origin, there is no doubt that it is a most dangerous idea. It is based on a ‘contradictio in abjecto’ which has set the path of history on the wrong track. It links in one breath two ideas which are completely irreconcileable, it seeks to demonstrate that there is no difference between day and night or hot and cold or black and white, and thus introduces a fatal element of confusion to a basis on which some, nevertheless, are endeavouring to construct a civilisation.” (l’Antisemitisme Miroir du Monde pp. 135-6).

      What is the Truth?

      Is there then any truth in this term, “Judeo-Christian”? Is Christianity derived from Judaism? Does Christianity have anything in common with Judaism?

      Reviewing the last two thousand years of Western Christian history there is really no evidence of a Judeo-Christian tradition and this has not escaped the attention of honest Christian and Jewish commentators.

      The Jewish scholar Dr. Joseph Klausner in his book Jesus of Nazareth expressed the Judaic viewpoint that “there was something contrary to the world outlook of Israel” in Christ’s teachings, “a new teaching so irreconcilable with the spirit of Judaism, ” containing “within it the germs from which there could and must develop in course of time a non-Jewish and even anti-Jewish teaching.”

      Dr. Klausner quotes the outstanding Christian theologian, Adolf Harnack, who in his last work rejected the hypothesis of the Jewish origin of Christ’s doctrine: “Virtually every word He taught is made to be of permanent and universal humanitarian interest. The Messianic features are abolished entirely, and virtually no importance is attached to Judaism in its capacity of Jesus’ environment.”

      Gershon Mamlak, an award- winning Jewish Zionist intellectual, recently claimed that the “Jesus tradition” is essentially the ultimate extension of ancient Greek Hellenism and is in direct conflict to Judaism’s “role as the Chosen people”.

      Dr. Mamlak, writing in the Theodor Herzl Foundation’s magazine of Jewish thought, Midstream, maintains that the prevailing theory that Christianity originated in the spiritual realm of Judaism “is anchored in a twofold misconception: 1) the uniqueness of Judaism is confined to its monotheistic God-concept; 2) the ‘parting of the ways’ between the Jesus coterie and Judaism is seen as the result of the former’s adaptation of the doctrines of Christology.”

      The first misconception means: “When the affinity of the Jesus coterie with Judaism is evaluated by common faith in the One, severed from the believer’s duty to execute the Law of the One and to acknowledge the Chosen Nation of Israel as His instrument-faith in the One becomes anti-Judaism par excellence!”

      In Gershon Mamlak’s view, “The conflict between Judaism and the Jesus tradition goes beyond the confines of theology. [The Jesus tradition] was the cosmopolitan renunciation of the national phenomenon in general and extreme hostility to Israel’s idea of a Chosen Nation as the divine instrument for the perfection of the world.”

      Evidently the concept of a common Judeo-Christian tradition has more to do with post 1945 politics and a certain amount of ‘public relations’ than it does with historical and Biblical reality. Never the less a number of modern Christian polemicists have managed to rest certain New Testament verses in the drive to give a Scriptural basis to their argument.

      Confusion over the origin of Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity is the root of the Judeo-Christian myth.

      Biblical scholars Robert and Mary Coote clearly show in their book Power, Politics and the Making of the Bible that neither is Christianity a patched up Judaism, nor is Rabbinic Judaism automatically synonymous with the religion of Moses and the old Hebrews.

      The Cootes’ illustrate the religious climate in Judea two millennia ago: “The cults, practices, and scriptures of both groups, rabbis and bishops, differed from those of the temple; thus we reserve the terms Jew, Jewish, and Judaism for the rabbis and those under their rule and use Judean, contrary to custom, for the common source of Judaism and Christianity….”

      “Despite the ostensible merging of Judean and Jew even in certain New Testament passages and by the rabbis who became rulers of Palestine in the third century and continued to use Hebrew and Aramaic more than Greek, the roots of Christianity were not Jewish. Christianity did not derive from the Judaism of the pharisees, but emerged like Judaism from the wider Judean milieu of the first century. Both Christians and Jews stemmed from pre-70 Judean-ism as heirs of groups that were to take on the role of primary guardians or interpreters of scripture as they developed on parallel tracks in relation to each other.” (Power, Politics, and the Making of the Bible).

      The few New Testament ‘proof texts’ utilised by Christian Zionists and secular proponents of the modern Judeo-Christian myth are the product of poor translation. Messianic Jewish writer Malcolm Lowe in his paper “Who Are the Ioudaioi?” concludes, like Robert and Mary Coote, that the Greek word “Ioudaioi” in the New Testament should be translated as “Judeans”, rather than the more usual “Jews”. The Israeli scholar David Stern also came to the same conclusion when translating the Jewish New Testament.

      Few Christians are aware that the translators of Scripture often mistranslated the word “Jew” from such words as “Ioudaioi” (meaning from, or being of: as a geographic area, Judean). The word Judean, mistranslated as “Jew” in the New Testament, never possessed a valid religious connotation, but was simply used to identify members of the native population of the geographic area known as Judea.

      Also it is important to understand that in the Scriptures, the terms “Israel”, “Judah” and “Jew” are not synonymous, nor is the House of Israel synonymous with the House of Judah. The course of history is widely divergent for the peoples properly classified under each of these titles. Accordingly, the authoritative 1980 Jewish Almanac says, “Strictly speaking it is incorrect to call an ancient Israelite a Jew or to call a contemporary Jew an Israelite or a Hebrew.”

      A writer for The Dearborn Independent, published in Michigan back in 1922, summarised the problem thus: “The pulpit has also the mission of liberating the Church from the error that Judah and Israel are synonymous. The reading of the Scriptures which confuse the tribe of Judah with Israel, and which interpret every mention of Israel as signifying the Jews, is at the root of more than one-half the confusion and division traceable in Christian doctrinal statements.”

      Jesus Christ and the Pharisees

      The New Testament Gospels reveal an intense conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees, one of the two principal Judean religious sects (see Matthew chapter 3, verse 7; Matthew chapter 5, verse 20; Matthew chapter 23, verses 13-15, 23-29; Mark chapter 8, verse 15; Luke chapter 11, verse 39). Much of this controversy was centred on what was later to become the foundation and highest authority of Judaism, the Talmud. In the time of Jesus Christ, this bore the name of “The Tradition of the Elders” (see Matthew chapter 15, verses 1-9).

      The Judean historian Josephus wrote: “What I would now explain is this, that the Pharisees have delivered to the people a great many observances by succession from their fathers, which are not written in the laws of Moses . . .”

      While the Pharisees recognized the laws of Moses, they also claimed that there was a great body of oral tradition which was of at least equal authority with the written Law – and many claimed that the Tradition was of greater authority. By their tradition, they undertook to explain and elaborate upon the Law. This was the “Tradition of the Elders”, to which the name of Talmud was later given. It had its beginning in Babylon, during the Babylon captivity of the people of Judah, where it developed in the form of the commentaries of various rabbis, undertaking to explain nd apply the Law. This was the foundation of Rabbinic Judaism.
      This Judaism was very different from the religion of the ancient Israelites. The late Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, who was the Chief Rabbi of the United States, expressed this conclusively when he said: “The return from Babylon, and the adoption of the Babylonian Talmud, marks the end of Hebrewism, and the beginning of Judaism.” The Jewish Encyclopedia tells us that the Talmud is actually “the product of the Palestinian and Babylonian schools” and is generally referred to as “the Babylonian Talmud”.

      Dr. Boaz Cohen in Everyman’s Talmud states the Talmud is the work of “numerous Jewish scholars over a period of some 700 years, roughly speaking, between 200 [B.C.] and 500 [A.D.].”

      Rabbi Louis Finkelstein in Volume 1 of The Pharisees, the Sociological Background of their Faith says, “Pharisaism became Talmudism, Talmudism became Medieval Rabbinism, and Medieval Rabbinism became Modern Rabbinism. But throughout these changes of name, inevitable adaption of custom, and adjustment of Law, the spirit of the ancient Pharisee survives unaltered.”

      According to The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. VIII, (1942) p.474 : “The Jewish religion as it is today traces its descent, without a break, through all the centuries, from the Pharisees. Their leading ideas and methods found expression in a literature of enormous extent, of which a very great deal is still in existence. The Talmud is the largest and most important single member of that literature.”

      Moshe Menuhim explains that the Babylonian Talmud embodied all the laws and legends, all the history and ‘science,’ all the theology and folklore, of all the past ages in Jewish life — a monumental work of consolidation. In the Talmud, Jewish scholarship and idealism found their exclusive outlet and preoccupation all through the ages, all the way up to the era of Enlightenment. It became the principal guide to life and object of study, and it gave Judaism unity, cohesion and resilience throughout the dark ages.

      The Talmud, more than any other literature, so defined Judaism that Rabbi Ben Zion Bokser admitted, “Judaism is not the religion of the Bible.” (Judaism and the Christian Predicament, 1966, p.159) It is the Talmud that guides the life and spirit of the Jewish people.

      “The Talmud is to this day the circulating heart’s blood of the Jewish religion. Whatever laws, customs, or ceremonies we [Jews] observe — whether we are Orthodox, Conservative, Reform or merely spasmodic sentimentalists — we follow the Talmud. It is our common law.” (A History of the Jews, Solomon Grayzel).

      Both Jewish and Christian scholars agree that it was Jesus Christ’s flagrant rejection of this “Tradition of the Elders” and his open confrontation with the powerful Pharisees that created the climate that led to his death. Historically, Christian thinkers argued that the Talmud was directly responsible for the rejection of Christ.

      In their view these “traditions” blinded the eyes of the people to a true understanding of the prophecies which related to the coming of the Messiah.

      Defining Christianity

      If, as we have seen, the Pharisees and the Talmud forever defined Judaism, then most certainly the writings of the post-Apostolic Christian church leaders help us in understanding the relationship of the early Christian faith to both paganism and Judaism.

      Justin Martyr (c100-165 A.D.) was indeed the earliest and most significant of these post- Apostolic church apologists. Following in the theological footsteps of Paul, who taught that the Gospel was the fulfilment of Moses and the Prophets, Justin argued that the Gospel was in the mind of God from the beginning and it was given to Abraham and the righteous Patriarches long before Judaism existed. This is in keeping with the Gospel teaching that the Hebrew Scriptures find their ‘flowering’ in the life, purpose, and accomplishments of Jesus the Christ.

      Hence, the Christian faithful have traditionally understood the Old Testament through the New Testament.

      In his Dialogue with Trypho Justin seeks to persuade a Jew of the truth of Christianity. Unlike the other apologists, he focuses mainly on the nature and meaning of Christ. Christ was the Logos who inspired the Greek philosophers and is present in all men as the Logos spermatikos (seminal reason or word). Through Him, the best of the philosophers were able to produce significant works of theology and philosophy. Their ideas could serve as beacons of truth just as much as could the inspired writings of the Old Testament Hebrews. Those who lived according to the Logos, even before Christ, were Christians. In the Old Testament it was the Logos who was revealed as God, because the transcendent Heavenly Father could not thus speak to man.

      Justin wrote in Apology:

      “We have been taught that Christ is the first-born of God, and we have declared above that He is the Word [or reason] of whom all mankind partakes. Those who lived reasonably [with the Word] are Christians, even though they have been called atheists. For example: among the Greeks, Socrates, Heraclitus and men like them; among the barbarians [non-Greeks], Abraham…and many others whose actions and names we now decline to recount, because we know it would be tedious.”

      Christianity, seen through Justin Martyr’s writings, takes on a ‘cosmic’ breadth:

      “I both boast and strive with all my strength to be found a Christian…Whatever things were rightly said by any man, belong to us Christians. For next to God we worship and love the Word, who is from the unbegotten and ineffable God, since He also became man for our sakes, that by sharing in our sufferings He might also bring us healing. For all those writers were able to see reality darkly, through the seed of the implanted Word within them.” (2 Apology).

      Jesus Christ had come, argued Justin, to restore true religion and to denounce the hypocrisy of the religion of Judea. For that crime Jesus had been crucified. Consequently, Christianity is not a form of Judaism or simply Jewish prophecies fulfilled but ‘the true philosophy’.

      Justin’s Christianity was eventually reducible to three major principles: (1) worship of God, mostly through private prayer and communication of being; (2) belief in an after-life with rewards and punishments for one’s actions in this world; and (3) the importance of leading a virtuous life in imitation of Christ and in obedience to His commandments.

      The Romans killed Justin for his religion. He was ever known as Justin Martyr, and not as St. Justin. His works defined Christianity as a culminating religion and a “universal” faith incorporating the essential and perennial truth of the pre-Christian religious tradition. Christianity was the restatement of a very old doctrine encompassing the Old Testament and the grand verities of the ancients. Two centuries later Augustine again clarified the Christian faith in these terms when he wrote:

      “That which is now called the Christian religion existed among the ancients, and never did not exist from the planting of the human race until Christ came in the flesh, at which time the true religion which already existed began to be called Christianity.”

      Justin not only showed that Christ is the culmination and completion of all the partial knowledge of truth in Greek philosophy, He is also the culmination of the history of ancient Israel. According to Justin Jesus Christ is Israel and because of Him the church now bears the name of Israel.

      This is to say, therefore, that the central message of the Old Testament has been fulfilled in the New Testament. It must be understood that this was the position of Christendom for at least 1900 years. It was the position, not only of Justin Martyr, but of such Stalwart saints as Irenaeus and Hippolytus; a position embraced by Martin Luther and John Calvin, the two towering figures of the Protestant Reformation.

      Here we have not only a clear separation of Christianity and Judaism, but a direct challenge to Judaism’s core dogma of a Chosen Nation. A point which has not been lost by Jewish writers.

      We read in Zionist author Uri Zimmer’s Torah-Judaism and the State of Israel: “The Jewish people, Rabbi Judah Halevy (the famous medieval poet and philosopher) explains in his ‘Kuzari’, constitutes a separate entity, a species unique in Creation, differing from nations in the same manner as man differs from the beast or the beast from the plant…although Jews are physically similar to all other men, yet they are endowed with a ‘second soul’ that renders them a separate species.”

      Fraud

      Traditionally Jewish scholars, as we have shown, were highly critical of the Judeo-Christian myth. There are many others, under the influence of modernism and secular Zionism, who do see some advantage in it.

      Rabbi Martin Siegel, reflecting a Messianic zeal, was quoted in the 18 January 1972 edition of New York Magazine as declaring: “I am devoting my lecture in this seminar to a discussion of the possibility that we are now entering a Jewish century, a time when the spirit of the community, the non-ideological blend of the emotional and rational and the resistance to categories and forms will emerge through the forces of anti-nationalism to provide us with a new kind of society. I call this process the Judaization of Christianity because Christianity will be the vehicle through which this society becomes Jewish.”

      While historic Christianity has looked to the eventual triumph of the Kingdom of God throughout the earth, according to the Zionist leaders Talmudic Judaism is zealous in the “drive to perfect man’s earthly habitat” (Gershon Mamlak, Midstream, Jan., 1989, p.31).

      Dr. Mamlak admits that “many Jews have filled the ranks of the various revolutionary movements” (op. cit., p.32) in order to satisfy this urge. [But who can agree on the terms of the social contract? Were the Zionist Irgun and Stern gangs who terrorised and massacred the Palestinian Arabs in the campaign to establish the Israeli state, shining role models for young Jews? What about the immorality of "the end justifies the means"?]

      Rabbi Michael Higger, renowned Talmudic scholar, in his book The Jewish Utopia, discusses the reshaping of the world into a Jewish Eden. The victory of this Utopia is inexorably tied to the coming of the Jewish Messiah.

      “And the Messianic Age,” argues the eloquent Jewish Zionist author Leon Simon , “means for the Jew not merely the establishment of peace on earth and good will to men, but the universal recognition of the Jew and his God. . . For Judaism has no message of salvation for the individual soul, as Christianity has; all its ideas are bound up with the existence of the Jewish nation.” (Studies in Jewish Nationalism).

      Driven by political agendas compromising Jews and compromising Christians began, only in this century, to disseminate the theretofore unheard of doctrine that Christianity originated from Judaism and that the two share a common worldview.

      Dr. Gordon Ginn, an American Christian scholar, made a very valid point when he noted: “It is most interesting, indeed, that rabbis as well as Jewish scholars such as Mamlak and White agree with orthodox, historical Christianity that ‘Judeo-Christian’ is a contradiction in terms, even though that truth is yet to be discovered by contemporary evangelical and fundamentalist Christians” (Smyrna, August, 1993).

      Christianity and Judaism are two distinct religious inheritances, despite all the superficial attempts by modern scholars to manufacture a naive “Judeo-Christianity.” The very term “Judeo-Christian” is a mischievous misnomer without historical or Scriptural validity.

      The religions of the world are the product of progressive revelation to a diverse humanity, separately expressing as they do the great metaphysical realities of life. Attempts to distort or eliminate these unique, ancient and divinely ordained patterns, through non-divine syncretism and politically- motivated concoctions, is both anti-traditional and truly diabolical.

      Appeals to a nonexistent historical unity and calls for a banal, modernist theology do nothing for religious understanding and mutual respect. “Judeo-Christianity” should be seen for what it is – another secular twentieth century fraud, manufactured for narrow political ends, that is supremely disrespectful to all true believers.

      Any fundamental unity that does exist between world religions cannot be appreciated by ignorant and secular scholarship, but only through knowledge of the great primordial and universal truths.

      As Luc Benoist aptly wrote, “Our age is seeking a universal understanding which men of vision can already foresee and which is the longing of all great souls. There is ample evidence that the world’s economic problems can be solved without the different religions having to abandon their unique spiritual insights; after all, brotherly agreement does not prevent the individual growth of each member of the family, bodily separate, but united in heart and mind.” (The Esoteric Path).

      Who are the Jews?

      “Edom is in modern Jewry” (The Jewish Encyclopedia, 1925 edition, Vol. 5, Page 41).
      “The Edomites were conquered by John Hyrcanus who forcibly converted them to Judaism, and from then on they constituted a part of the Jewish people, Herod being one of their descendants” (The Standard Jewish Encyclopedia, Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1966, p. 594; Also The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia, Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1977, p. 589).
      “From this time the Idumeans became an inseparable part of the Jewish people,” Encyclopedia Judaica Jerusalem, in Volume 8, p. 1147).
      “When, years before, John Hyrcanus had forced Judaism on the Idumeans he evidently conjectured that the new, though unwilling, converts could learn to identify their own destiny with that of his people,” (The Jews, their History, Culture, and Religion, p. 121).
      “Jews began in the 19th century to call themselves Hebrews and Israelites in 1860″ (Encyclopedia Judaica, 1971 Vol 10:23).
      “. . . this would mean that their ancestors came not from the Jordan but from the Volga; not from Canaan but from the Caucasus, once believed to be the cradle of the Aryan race; and that GENETICALLY THEY ARE MORE RELATED TO THE HUN, UIGUR, AND MAGYAR TRIBES THAN TO THE SEED OF ABRAHAM, ISAAC, AND JACOB. . . ” (Arthur Koestler, The Thirteenth Tribe, (Random House, 1976, p. 17). judeochr.htm

      http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/

      ne, John 4:21, Galatians 4:24-28, Hebrews 12:18-24. We are told in Hebrews 11:13-16 that even Abraham has no further interest in a restored Jewish state on earth, because he is in a much better place in heaven.

      Christian Zionism is a movement that claims to be based on the Bible, but as we have seen, it is actually contrary to what the Bible teaches. All Christians should repudiate Zionism and should work for a peace settlement in the Middle East that will be of mutual benefit to Abraham’s Jewish and Arab children in Palestine.

    • KOYOTE

      GOOD ARTICLE BOBBY. THANKS.WILL YOU PLEASE POST MY LAST COMMENT?

    • bafa

      “Was that “torture?” (episode of “24,”)
      No, it was a tv show.
      In real life, people that have the ability to torture must be sociopaths.
      Forcing enemas is also torture.
      Don’t believe me? Then drop your pants and receive an enema against your will pal. Why would the sociopaths want to “feed” their prisoners? To keep them alive so that they can continue to be tortured!

      Torture is wrong and I’m not even a religious man. It’s amoral and an indicator of the downfall of the “governments” that embrace it.

    • KOYOTE

      The Bible is not a Jewish Book

      by Bertrand L. Comparet

      The statement is commonly made, even by those who should know better, that we Christians owe a debt to the Jews, for we got our Bible and our religion from them. While many people have been deceived into believing this, it is completely false. Part of the mistake comes from the complete confusion in the minds of nearly all people as to just what they mean by Jew. Are they referring to people of a certain race, or referring to a people of a certain religion, for the two are not the same. There are in Africa today, some pure blooded negroes who are Jews by religion; in India today there are some pure blooded Indians who are Jews, and there are in China today, some pure blooded Mongolians who are Jews by religion. Likewise, there are some people today who are racially of the stock we know as Jews, but who have been converted to other religions.

      First let’s consider the claim we got our Bible and our religion from the Jews, as meaning Jews by religion. It is certain we didn’t get the New Testament from them, for it condemns the Jewish religion throughout all the New Testament. But did we get the Old Testament from them? No, for several reasons: in the first place, no Jew by religion existed before the return from the Babylonian captivity, shortly after 536 B.C. Their great historian Josephus writes, “So the Jews prepared the work. Jew is the name they are called by from the day that they came up from Babylon.” The only books of the Old Testament that were written after the return from Babylon are, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah (all of them historical, rather than doctrinal) Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi. In none of these do the Jews receive anything but rebuke for their wickedness, for their apostasy from the religion of the Old Testament. The late Rabbi Stephen F. Wise, formerly the Chief Rabbi of the United States said, “The return from Babylon and the introduction of the Babylonian Talmud mark the end of Hebrewism and the beginning of Judaism.”

      The learned Rabbi was correct in distinguishing the true religion of the Old Testament as Hebrewism for it was the religion of the real Hebrews, who were not Jews at all. Judaism, the religion of the Jews, is as the learned Rabbi says, based upon the Babylonian Talmud, which contains the supposed oral law. It was never reduced to writing as part of the Bible. This oral law gradually gained greater force among the Jews than the written law in the Bible, with which it often conflicted in Jesus’ day, the Babylonian Talmud was known as the Tradition of the Elders.

      This is why Jesus told the Jews:
      “Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoreth Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me. Howbeit, in vain do they worship Me, teaching for doctrines the Commandments of men. For laying aside the commandments of God that ye may keep your own tradition, ye make the Word of God of none effect through your tradition which ye have delivered” (Mark 7:6-13). “Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God” (Matthew 22:29).

      “Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, Hypocrites! for ye pay tithes of mint, anise and cumin and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith” (Matthew 23:23).

      This was the religion of the Jews. As the learned Rabbi Stephen F. Wise said, Judaism was distinguished from Hebrewism, the real religion of the Old Testament. Certainly Christianity took nothing from any Jewish religion for we have never taken any part of Christianity from the Talmud.

      Well then, can it be said we got our Bible or our religion of Christianity from men of the Jewish race? No, it cannot. I haven’t the time in the remainder of this lesson to give the Bible evidence in detail. I will have to reserve that for a later lesson. It can be clearly proven, both out of the historical books of the Bible and out of the only thorough history of the times written by one living when the facts were still well known. Josephus’ “Antiquities of the Jews,” tells that the Jews were a people distinct and separate from Yahweh’s people Israel, although living among them. The Jew were the Canaanite people who lived in Palestine, before Israel entered the promised land and who were not driven out. These Canaanite people, and the mixed offspring from intermarriage with the Israelites, were allowed to remain in the land while paying heavy tribute taxes.

      The prophets who wrote the books of the Old Testament, were all of pure Israelite stock, from one or another of the 12 tribes of Israel. Moses, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Habakkuk, Haggai and Zechariah were of the tribe of Levi. Joshua and Samuel were of the tribe of Ephraim. Isaiah, Daniel and Zephaniah were of the house of David, Jonah was of the tribe of Zebulun. Hosea was of the tribe of Issachar.

      When the Assyrians conquered and deported the people of the ten northern tribes, the Bible records that the Assyrians brought other people in from the Assyrian empire and settled them in Samaria, in place of the Israelites they had deported. Samaria is only the southern half of the territory occupied by these ten northern tribes. The northern half was Galilee and this was left vacant. When the kingdom of Judah was later deported to Babylon, for their seventy years captivity, their land was left with very little population. While they were gone, the Edomites who were descendants of Esau, mixed with Canaanite people, were forced out of their own land by pressure of invading Arab tribes, and moved westward into the vacant lands of Judah, occupying the southern half of the former kingdom of Judah.

      Therefore, when a portion of the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin returned from the Babylonian captivity, they were too few in numbers to drive out the warlike Edomites and had to try to squeeze into the very little territory they had left. It was too small for them, so what was left of the tribe of Judah took the little territory remaining around Jerusalem and Benjamin was pushed to the north. They could not move next door into Samaria, as this area was occupied by the peoples settled there by the Assyrians. Benjamin had to leapfrog over them into the vacant territory of Galilee.

      That the apostles and the majority of Christian converts came from the Benjaminites should not surprise us. When the kingdom was split in two upon the death of Solomon, God said He would leave Benjamin with Judah so that the house of David should have a light before them. In Jesus’ time the people of Benjamin were still the light bearers. In the New Testament all of the apostles were of the tribe of Benjamin except Judas Iscariot, the only Jew among them. Judas came from the village of Kerioth in southern Judea. Iscariot is a corruption of Ish Kerioth, man of Kerioth. Paul tells us that he was of the tribe of Benjamin and that the other apostles except Judas Iscariot were from Galilee where the tribe of Benjamin settled after the return from Babylon.

      This is confirmed by Jesus. In Matthew 15:24 He said, “I am not sent but unto the sheep of the house of Israel.” In John chapter 10 Jesus tells the Jews, “I am the good Shepherd and know My sheep and am known of Mine. But ye believe not because ye are not of My sheep, as I said unto you. My sheep hear My voice and I know them and they follow Me.” From the Savior’s own lips we have the proof that the Jews are not of the tribes of Israel. Note carefully that He does not say that their unbelief keeps them from being of His sheep. He says the exact opposite, that the reason why they do not believe is that they are not of His sheep, the house of Israel. Christianity and Judaism are completely and irreconcilably inconsistent. Whichever one is right, the other must be wrong for they mutually repudiate each other. A great part of Jesus’ reported Words are His denunciation of the Jews for their religion, which He tells them is not that of the Old Testament. In John 5:46 Jesus told them, “Had ye believed in Moses, ye would have believed Me: for he wrote of Me.” In Luke 16:31 Jesus said, “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded through one rose from the dead.” He was right, He did rise from the dead, but to this day they are not persuaded.

      It is therefore clear, we got neither our Bible nor our Christian religion, either in whole or in part from those who were Jews, either by religion or by race. We owe them no debt, for they gave us nothing.

      Supplementary Notes

      Rabbi Ben Zion Bokser wrote, “This is not an uncommon impression and one finds it sometimes among Jews as well as Christians – that Judaism is the religion of the Hebrew Bible. It is, of course, a fallacious impression. . . Judaism is not the religion of the Bible” (Judaism and the Christian Predicament, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967, p. 59).

      Rabbi Moshe M. Maggal, President, National Jewish Information Service wrote: “. . . you will notice the great difference between the Jewish and Christian religions. But these are not all. We consider the two religions so different that one excludes the other. . . we emphasized that there is no such thing as a Judeo-Christian religion. . . . There is not any similarity between the two concepts” (Letter of August 21, 1961).

      The London Jewish World of March 15, 1923 declared: “Fundamentally, Judaism is anti-Christian.”

      Rabbi Martin Siegel: “I am devoting my lecture in this seminar to a discussion of the possibility that we are now entering a Jewish century, a time when the spirit of the community, the non-idealogical blend of the emotional and rational and the resistance to categories and forms will emerge through the forces of anti-nationalism to provide us with a new kind of society. I call this process the Judaization of Christianity because Christianity will be the vehicle through which this society becomes Jewish” (New York Magazine, January 18, 1972, p. 32). word.htm

      ChangingLINKS

      http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/

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