Jews and Jesus

 

Jews and Jesus

 

“Seeing the Gentiles abusing little by little their grace, God will recall a second time the Jews”. (St John Chrysostom, c. 344 - 407. Homily on Romans chapter 11).

 

“The Gentiles would be the believers whose faith has grown cold, or even that the totality, deceived by the Antichrist, fall and are restored to the pristine fervour by the admission of the Jews”. (Aquinas, 1226 – 1274 commentary on Romans 11:15)

 

Since there are many Jewish groups e.g. Orthodox, Ultra Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, Zionist, Karaites, Neturi Karta et cetera, which Jews did these two saints possibly have in mind? I suspect it is the two latter groups known as Scriptural Judaism especially the Karaites who have remained faithful to God’s Word in spite of dungeons, fire and sword. The other groups are under the criticism of Isaiah the Prophet when he says “the doctrines they teach are only human traditions” (Isaiah 29:13)

 

DIVINE & HUMAN TRADITIONS: The greatest Jew who ever liv,ed Jesus the Messiah, reiterated this criticism of Isaiah when he said to the Scribes and Pharisees: “you put aside the commandments of God to cling to human traditions… in this way you make God’s word null and void for the sake of your tradition”. (St Mark 7:8-13)

 

I would like to show in this essay that Judaism has been distancing itself from Jesus Christ in particular and Biblical Judaism in general, in favour of man-made traditions like the Talmud and the Kabbalah.

 

H. Chaim Schimmel, the orthodox writer of The Oral Law writes: “The Jewish people are frequently called the ‘People of the Book’… The Jewish people do not now follow the literal word of the Written Law, nor have they ever done so. They have been fashioned and ruled by the verbal interpretation of the written word”.

 

For Christians this seems a strange admission. Yes Catholics also have a rich tradition but make it quite clear in the old expression that “no ecclesiastical law can dispense from divine law” or as Vatican Ⅱ states the “teaching office is not above the Word of God” (D. V. 10)

 

ON CONSULTING GOD FIRST: Making the Old Testament subservient to the man-made traditions I believe has been detrimental for the Jewish people. Deuteronomy makes it very clear that ignoring the “words of the Law” leads to endless misfortunes and curses. (Deuteronomy 27f)

 

The Old Covenant was ignored. God did not turn from His people but they turned from Him. “O that my people would heed me, that Israel would walk in my ways. At once I would subdue their foes, turn my hand against their enemies. But my people did not heed my voice and Israel would not obey, so I left them to their stubbornness of heart to follow their own designs”. (Psalm 80(81). The promise of a New Covenant prophesied by Jeremiah was buried (Jeremiah 31:31–34). This crucially important text was expurgated from the Jewish Synagogues’ Haftarah readings for centuries, all over the world. It is obviously an embarrassment. But there are other such texts that have been cold-shouldered. Here is a list compiled by Messianic Jews.

 

The Missing Prophecies in the Haftarah

 

Although it is obvious from the New Covenant that Messianic prophecies in the Nevi´im [Prophets] were at one time read and known, for many, many centuries, have not been read publicly.

 

Sadly, Isaiah 61:1–2, which Yeshua (Jesus) read in the Nazareth synagogue, is one that has been omitted from the Haftarah readings.

 

So have the following prophecies concerning the Messiah: The Suffering Servant (Isaiah 52:13-53:12) “Just as there were many who were appalled at Him – His appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being and His form marred beyond human likeness”. (Isaiah 52:14)

 

The Virgin Birth (Isaiah 7:14)

“The Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call Him Immanuel [God with us]”.

 

The Messiah Is to Be Born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2)

“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for Me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times”.

 

Messiah Rides into Jerusalem on a Donkey (Zechariah 9:9)

“Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey”.

 

Betrayed for 30 Pieces of Silver (Zechariah 11:13)

“The LORD said to me, ‘Throw it to the potter’ – the handsome price at which they valued Me! So I took the 30 pieces of silver and threw them to the potter at the house of the LORD”.

 

The New Covenant (Jeremiah 31:31–34

“The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah… I will put My law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be My people… I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more”.

 

The Arrival of Messiah (Malachi 3:1)

“I will send My messenger, who will prepare the way before Me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to His temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the LORD Almighty.

 

Several more Messianic prophecies that clearly point to Yeshua have been intentionally omitted from the weekly synagogue Haftarah readings without public knowledge or the consent of most Jewish people.

 

Some scholars say that the omission was never intentional, explaining that these prophecies just don’t serve the purpose of the Haftarah.

 

Yet Yeshua found great purpose in them. As He walked alongside two disciples on the road to Emmaus, “starting with Moses and all the prophets, He explained to them the things that can be found throughout the Tanakh [Jewish Bible] concerning Himself”. (Luke 24:27)

 

This purging of the above texts from the Haftarah seems to have been successful. Messianic Jews interviewing Jews in Israeli cities found almost complete ignorance of the above texts by those interviewed.

 

SCHOFIELD STUDY BIBLE: The purging and removal of texts was supplemented later by the adding of texts or rather textual notes in one very influential Bible: the Schofield Study Bible compiled by an ex-American lawyer Cyrus Scofield (1843 – 1921) and published by Oxford University Press owned by the de Rothschilds. Schofield was once charged with forgery and served time in prison. With great chutzpah a wealthy Zionist, Samuel Untermeyer, approached Schofield to add textual notes to the Bible emphasising the restoration of Israeli and other Zionist goals. This was financed by Untermeyer and fellow Zionists. Their Messiah was to be a powerful military and political figure who would rule the world eventually by force not by love as Jesus exemplified.

 

In 1984 promoters of the Scofield Bible produced a new edition with obvious new interpolations to fool the gullible American Evangelicals e.g. “for a nation to commit the sin of anti-Semitism brings inevitable judgement”. This began to make people suspicious: barring a very selective resurrection [of Schofield] it is impossible for a man who died in 1921 to edit a book in 1967”. ⁽¹⁾

 

Schofield was a dispensationalist follower of John Nelson Darby who has been credited with originating the pre-tribulation rapture theory and the father of dispensationalism. The Protestant theologian, C. H. Spurgeon, said of the latter: “It is a mercy that these absurdities are revealed one at a time in order that we may be able to endure their stupidity without dying of amazement”. ⁽²⁾ However this ‘stupidity’ has had a profound influence on Evangelicals and Christian Zionism especially in the USA. Catholics are not permitted to produce Bibles without the imprimatur of Catholic Bishops to avoid such confusion.

 

This above article helps to show the increasing divisions between Jews and Christians. But it was not always so. The early Christian community in Jerusalem went “as a body to the Temple every day and met in their homes for the breaking of the bread” (Acts of the Apostles 2:46) They were like a sect of Judaism. But this was not to last because at Yavneh (Jamnia) circa 80 A.D. Christians were no longer welcome in synagogues.

 

GREEK NOT HEBREW: as Greek became the official language of Christian writings like the Gospels, not Hebrew, so the Greek version of the Bible – the Septuagint (LXX) became suspect. Also what Christians called Deuterocanonicals became suspect too as not being of Hebrew origin and were removed by Jewish authorities e.g. Tobit, Judith, Ben Sirach (or Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, Letter of Jeremiah, Wisdom of Solomon and additions to Esther.

 

But with the amazing discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) 1947 – 1956, Hebrew texts related to nearly all the Deuterocanonical books were found. This confirmed their Jewish origin, their presence in the Jewish scripture collections and challenges the Protestant reformers’ rejection of these books.

 

“In the first century A.D. Christians were effectively using the Septuagint Old Testament translation to prove that Jesus Christ was the promised Davidic Messiah who fulfilled the covenant God made with King David in the 10^th century BC; a promise repeated ever since that time in the books of the holy prophets. For this reason the Septuagint Greek translation became an anathema to the Jews who rejected Jesus as the Messiah”.

 

“To this day, the Septuagint is the official text of the Catholic Church’s Old Testament, and when the Septuagint is compared with other Old Testament translations against the Old Testament Hebrew manuscripts discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest of which dates to circa 250 BC, when the Septuagint translation was believed to have been produced, it is amazing to discover that the Septuagint is more faithful to those ancient Hebrew Old Testament texts found among the Dead Sea Scrolls than any other translations including the Protestant translations and the modern Jewish Old Testament translation, the Tanach”. ⁽³⁾

 

DEUTEROCANONICALS: For the early Christians the Deuterocanonical books were treasured, especially Ben Sirach (or Ecclesiasticus, meaning the Book of the Church, as it was very dear to them). Also the delightful Book of Tobit is the only Old Testament Book that contains the Golden Rule and information on incubus/succubus demons (Chapter 3). The Book of Wisdom of Solomon was written to prevent Jews being attracted to pagan philosophy or Hindu/Buddhist syncretism.

 

An early Christian like St Patrick (c.389–461) for example, quotes the Deuterocanonicals many times in his Confessio and Epistola, especially Tobit, Wisdom, Sirach and Maccabees.

 

Incidentally the DSS Scroll of Isaiah housed in the magnificent Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem, the oldest copy in existence, contains texts once regarded as later Christian interpolations e.g. Isaiah 7:14 (Virgin Birth); Isaiah 9:6–7 (Messianic Titles); Isaiah 53 (Song no. 4 of the Suffering Servant et cetera) but obviously they are not later interpolations as this DSS predates Christianity.

 

RAMBAM: After the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. Temple Judaism was replaced by Rabbinic or Talmudic Judaism which is still the Jewish authority today. Unfortunately it seems to have nothing good to say about Christianity. Except for one outstanding Rabbi, the saintly Moses Maimonides, affectionately known as Rambam. In Haifa a distinguished hospital is called after this remarkable doctor who ministered to the great warrior Saladin’s son who became Sultan of Egypt in 1198. Rambam’s last wish was to be buried in Israel and so he was, as there is now a splendid tomb for him in Tiberias.

 

Rabbi Daniel Greer wrote of Rambam: “In the words of Isaiah ‘that the earth shall be suffused with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea’. (Isaiah 11:9). Maimonides, one of our greatest mediaeval sages teaches that the Christian faith powerfully advances this purpose”. ⁽⁴⁾

 

Dr Scott Hahn said of Rambam that he was “arguably the greatest Rabbi in Jewish history”. ⁽⁵⁾ Rambam once said: “Accept the truth from wherever it comes”. ⁽⁶⁾

 

JEWS FOR JESUS: not all Jews were opposed to Jesus e.g. one of the Pharisees called Nicodemus, ‘a leading Jew’ (Gospel of John 3:1); Joseph of Arimathea ‘a good and righteous man’. (Gospel of Luke 23:50). Josephus the historian, invaluable as a primary source for the events that took place in Palestine BC/A.D. “In the Testimonium of Josephus Jesus is portrayed as a ‘wise man’ and performer of ‘marvellous deeds’. Both epithets and especially the latter, fit so well into the historical context that the invention or interpolation into the account by a latter Christian forger is unlikely”. ⁽⁷⁾

 

Throughout history there have been hundreds of Orthodox Jewish Rabbis, even leaders of entire communities who have realised that Jesus is most definitely the Promised Messiah of Israel and the world. For their faith in Jesus, they were ostracised from their spiritual community and persecuted:

 

1.    JERUSALEM: RABBI CHIL SLOSTOWSKI (1801 – 1866)

 

       He was ordained at the age of only 17, became a Gadol (or great man) in Poland, leading congregations and serving in the rabbinic seminary in Lodz. He despised Christianity and Jesus because of all the terrible stories he had read about him in the Talmud. As a seminary professor, he passed on his hostility towards Christianity to be students. But he was in for a big surprise when the famous pre-State Israel’s Chief Rabbi Abraham Kook invited him to Israel and appointed him Secretary to the Chief Rabbinate of Jerusalem. It was Rabbi Kook who said “that every hateful or negative image of other traditions that’s in our own should now be seen as a mountain we have to climb over as we try to reach God. ⁽⁸⁾

 

One day on a trip to Jerusalem Slostowski was given a New Testament to read, was converted to Jesus and was eventually nearly stoned to death but never flinched even though he had to depart hastily for Beirut.

 

2.    UNITED STATES: RABBI SAM STERN (c. 1907 – 1990)

 

       He was born in Poland c. 1920 in a strict Orthodox Jewish rabbinic home and suffered persecution from childhood by Polish Gentiles. He survived the Nazi camps but none of his family did – all perished. So bereft of all family he decided to immigrate to the USA and worked as a Rabbi, constantly questioning why God allowed millions of Jews to perish in the Holocaust. One day by accident, or Providence, he walked into a Mission for the Jews office, who answered all his questions. The Isaiah 53 prophecy astonished him as he was totally ignorant of it. Finally became a follower of Jesus, Messiah.

 

3.    ISRAEL: RABBI DANIEL ZION (1883 – 1979)

 

       Son of a Rabbi, he directed a Yeshiva School in Greece. He volunteered to move to Bulgaria and became the Chief Rabbi of Bulgaria. He became a judge in the Rabbinic Court of Jerusalem but was stripped of his title when it was learnt of his faith in Jesus, evident from four books he wrote.

Despite being disbarred by his faith in Jesus, the Bulgarian Jews loved this humble man and continued to honour him as their Rabbi! After his death in 1979 at the age of 96, the Bulgarian Jewish community in Israel gave him a burial with full military and state honours even tho’ he was a believer in Jesus as Messiah!

 

4.    ROME: RABBI ISRAEL ZOLLI (1881 – 1956)

 

       Foreseeing that the Nazis would eventually enter Rome, Rabbi Zolli, the chief rabbi of Rome, warned the Italian Jews to destroy their records and go underground. But his warnings went unheeded as the Jews were not worried eventually about Mussolini. But his regime collapsed in 1943 and the Nazis entered Rome. The senior German officer was a ruthless, greedy man who demanded 50 kg of gold from the Jews or have 300 prominent Jews arrested. Since the community could only muster 35 kg of gold, Rabbi Zolli was appointed to approach the Vatican Pope Pius XII for the rest. Zolli appealed to him with the words: “The New Testament cannot abandon the Old”. The Pope did meet the shortfall that day and later he also protected many Jews by making churches, convents and the Vatican places of sanctuary a refuge for the Jewish people.

 

Following the war in 1945 Rabbi Zolli confessed his faith in Jesus and admitted that Isaiah 53 played an important role. At his baptism he chose the baptismal name of the Pope which was Eugene. A forest was planted in the Negeb of 800,000 trees one for every Jewish life that the Pope helped save. Prime Minister Golda Meir praised Pius XII on his death in 1958 for his efforts, as did Albert Einstein and Chief Rabbi Isaac Herzog.

 

5.    HUNGARY: RABBI IGNATZ LICHTENSTEIN (1824 – 1908)

 

       The Rabbi was a Chassid Jew who served as the Chief Rabbi of Hungary North from 1857 – 1892. Later in life, when he came to the knowledge of Jesus as Messiah he wrote: TWO LETTERS: WHAT I REALLY WISH

 

       “I had thought the New Testament to be impure, a source of pride, of overweening selfishness, of hatred, of the worst kind of violence, but as I opened it, I felt myself peculiarly and wonderfully taken possession of. A sudden glory, a light, flashed through my soul”.

 

       “I looked for thorns and gathered roses; I discovered pearls instead of pebbles; instead of hatred, love; instead of vengeance, forgiveness; instead of bondage, freedom; instead of pride, humility; instead of enmity, conciliation; instead of death, life, salvation, resurrection, heavenly treasure”.

 

The accounts above of Rabbis who have come to faith in Jesus are but a few of the many.

 

ADMIRERS OF JESUS: In more recent times we had the great Austrian-Israeli philosopher Martin Buber who wrote: “All my life I have felt that Jesus was my elder brother. My own open brotherly relationship to him has become even stronger and purer, and today I can see him with surer and purer vision than before. I am more certain than ever that he merits a greater place in the history of Israel’s faith”. ⁽⁹⁾ In his book Jesus of Nazareth by Hebrew University Professor Joseph Klausner wrote of Jesus: “in his ethical code there is a sublimity, distinctiveness and originality in form unparalleled in any other Hebrew ethical code, neither is there any parallel to the remarkable art of his parables”.

 

Rabbi Shlomo Riskin (b. 1940) was one of Israel’s best loved Rabbis, called Jesus “a model Rabbi”. (Wikipedia)

 

With all this praise why the opprobrium from some quarters of Judaism to the most famous Jew who ever lived?

 

1.   Talmud:  The Talmud has a fair amount of baseless or gratuitous animosity (Sinat Chinam) towards Jesus e.g. he was a magician, a heretic, born out of wedlock, and his Jewish mother accused of adultery and worst of all he deserves to be boiled alive in excrement! Gentiles, include Christians. The Talmud states that ‘murdering Gentiles is like killing a wild animal’ ⁽¹⁰⁾ and, “even the best of the Gentiles should be killed”. ⁽¹¹⁾ Of course there are qualifications made as regards these two statements but they die the death of a thousand qualifications!

 

       The Talmud, or teaching “designates the authoritative body of post Biblical Jewish laws and traditions. It is a vast collection of various sayings of numerous Rabbis over a period of at least six centuries. From the orthodox Jewish viewpoint the oral law recorded in the Talmud is second only to the ‘written law’, the Sacred Scriptures.

 

       In theory it is considered almost on a par with the Scriptures but in practice it is,   in a certain sense, regarded as superior to it. ⁽¹²⁾

 

2.   Rejection of God: Perhaps the opposition to Jesus is due to the fact that opposition to the Creator, the God of the Bible and of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had been growing in Judaism via Gnosticism et cetera and so someone claiming to be the son of that God gains some of the animosity. Professor Gedaliahu Stroumsa said that “there can be no Gnosticism without a revolt against the Jewish God”. ⁽¹³⁾ In some cases Stroumsa says “a violent rejection of the Jewish God, all of Judaism seems to stand at the basis of these [newly published Gnostic Nag Hammadi] texts”. Rosemary Radford Reuther wrote that there is a diabolizing of the Jewish God in Jewish Gnosticism. ⁽¹⁴⁾ Roger Kamenetz author of the bestselling book The Jew in the Lotus writes that “Jewish Gnosticism is one acknowledged source for the later developments of the Kabbalah”. ⁽¹⁵⁾

 

KABBALAH: The Kabbalah (or Cabala) has been defined as “a system of occult theosophy based on a mystical interpretation of the Scriptures, common not only among the Jews of the Middle Ages but also with some influence on certain mediaeval Christians… the Cabala is basically a development of Jewish Gnosticism”. ⁽¹⁶⁾

 

The concept of God presented here [in the Kabbalah] is influenced both by the Neo-Platonic doctrine of emanations and by the Gnostic doctrine of aeons. The EN SOPH (Infinite One)… “is not the personal God of the Bible, the latter becomes manifest only through the sephiroth, to which the divine attributes correspond”. ⁽¹⁷⁾ Gnosticism nearly destroyed early Christianity and I believe that Gnostic Kabbalah, with its post Biblical deity EN SOPH is vitiating Judaism.

 

Maimonides expressed scepticism about certain mystical and esoteric traditions as potentially leading to superstition. Unfortunately he died before the leading book on Kabbalah, the Zohar was published. The Scriptural Judaism group the Karaites argued that Kabbalistic teachings were not grounded in the Hebrew Bible and as an esoteric tradition was inaccessible to most Jews.

 

The leading Jewish publisher in the United Kingdom, Weidenfeld and Nicholson published a bestselling book by Paul Johnson, entitled A History of the Jews, which is very critical of the Kabbalah. It “not only introduced Gnostic concepts which were totally alien to the ethical monotheism of the Bible, it was in a sense a completely different religion: pantheism”. The Zohar, Johnson maintains was a “summa of Kabbalistic lore… much of this Zohar is explicitly pantheist: it insists repeatedly that God ‘is everything’ and everything is united to Him, ‘as is known to the mystics’. But if God is in everything, and everything is in God, how can God be a single, specific being, non-created and absolutely separate from creation, as orthodox Judaism had always emphatically insisted? There is no answer to this question, except the plain one that Zohar-Kabbalah is heresy of the most pernicious kind”. ⁽¹⁸⁾

 

KARMA & REINCARNATION: in August 2000 the Chief Rabbi of Israel (Sephardic) Rabbi Ovadiah Yossef blamed the Holocaust on ‘bad karma’. Holocaust victims, he astonishingly claimed were reincarnations of people from earlier generations who had sinned and had come back to this world to suffer their just punishment. He was utilising the Kabbalistic concept of reincarnation, gilgul neshamot. ⁽¹⁹⁾

 

If Israel is regarded today as a profoundly New Age influenced state, I think it owes a lot to Kabbalah. This is brought out in MISHKAN: A FORUM ON THE GOSPEL AND THE JEWISH PEOPLE. Issue 38/2003 Jerusalem. It is entitled New Age Influence on Post Modern Judaism and is available free online.

 

ZOHAr: Rabbi Yihya Kafah lamented: “Woe unto us! Because of this deceptive book the Zohar, we have become like the pagan nations, the Hindus, Persians and other pagan faiths”. ⁽²⁰⁾

 

Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz of Hebrew University was scathing in his critique of the Kabbalah which has spread throughout a large part of the Orthodox Jewish world. He said that “Kabbalah, in its entirety is a collection of pagan superstitions which have penetrated into the world of Jewish faith, and which cannot be reconciled with the Lord our God, the Lord is One” and “Zohar is definitely a pagan work”. Kabbalistic customs he dismissed as ‘rubbish’. ⁽²¹⁾

 

Rabbi David Guttmann in his blog states: “I consider Kabbalah dangerous theologically… how insidiously this superstition has penetrated our praxis”. He believes that it would be a great service to Judaism if someone “would have the courage to uncover these infestations and expunge them allowing us to return to the pure worship of our pre-Kabbalah forebears”. ⁽²²⁾ Responding to Guttmann’s ‘Jewishskeptic’ says of R. C. Vital, the greatest pupil of Isaac Luria, the Kabbalist of Sefat, “that he and Kabbalah are so popular with the New Age movement. They love his mumbo-jumbo”. ⁽²³⁾

 

A book review of The Wisdom of Rabbi Schneerson (an Ultra Orthodox Rabbi) asks if “the wisdom so lucidly expressed here could not have come from the pen of any other inspired selfless spiritual leader – Sufi, Christian, Tibetan Buddhist”? The reviewer, speaking subjectively of course, says that the language of the rabbi is “New Age, even hip”. (Jerusalem Post Magazine 22/9/1995).

 

The Talmud rightly warns of the dangers of occultism and mystical practices as leading to ‘madness and death’. Occult forces can be very powerful as we see in Exodus 7:10f where Pharaoh’s magicians reproduce and duplicate the extraordinary miracles God worked through Moses. Encyclopaedia Judaica says that the Bible accepts miracles but “not such as are performed with the aid of occult science”. ⁽²⁴⁾

 

OCCULT FORCES: Occult forces seem to be anti life and harbingers of death in contrast with the Bible’s emphasis on ‘Choose life’ (Deuteronomy 30:19). The perennial Jewish toast was to life L’chaim not to ‘madness and death’. Eli Wiesel’s Night refers to ‘the perilous world’ of Kabbalah mysticism as Hindus talk of the perilous world of Kundalini et cetera. See also ‘why Kabbalah is Considered Dangerous: the Potential for Misuse and Mental Trauma. ⁽²⁵⁾ What a contrast with Biblical spirituality! The Psalmist addresses a loving God with the words “your love is better than life” or “your loving kindness is better than life”. (Psalm 63:3)

 

Israeli journalist Avigail Sperber warns that “Israelis must choose between the alliance of death or an alliance of life”. ⁽²⁶⁾ Similar sentiments were uttered by Pope John Paul II when we were asked to choose between a culture of life or a culture of death.

 

The above definition of Kabbalah states that it is a system of ‘occult theosophy’. Theosophy is an ancient term originally referring to a kind of mysticism. But it was given a new emphasis by the Theosophical Society founded by Helena Blavatsky, an occultist of Freemason background and an anti-Semite which “derives from the unfortunate position of Judaism in the origins of Christianity”! ⁽²⁷⁾ According to Theosophy Lucifer is the true ruler of humanity and they consecrate themselves to him. They were originally called the Lucifer trust but now go under the title of Lucis Trust and run the meditation room at the United Nations in New York.

 

MARX & THEOSOPHY: Karl Marx’s family moved in Theosophical and Masonic circles and his favourite daughter was married off to the leading English Theosophist Edward Aveling. Later Rosa Luxemburg and other Marxists were attracted to Theosophy. It is not surprising that Marx was attracted to these Luciferians as nearly all his associates were involved in the occult. ⁽²⁸⁾

 

While at high school his father warned him not to get involved in the demonic. Fellow pupils called him the Destroyer (Lucifer’s name in the Apocalypse 9:11) he spoke of mankind as ‘human trash’ and his favourite line from Faust: “Everything created is worthy of destruction”.

 

After high school he began writing his devilish autobiographical poems and in one he writes: “I wish to avenge myself against the one who rules above”. Marx was no atheist as his many poems make plain. His hatred of God and love of destruction were his ruling passions and of his followers e.g. Lenin talked of the need to smash eggs to make an omelette (i.e. a Communist society). The Marxist Stalin said: “death is the answer to all problems: no man, no problem”. The Marxist Frankfurt school made ghoulish statements like using sexual instinct as an instrument of destruction (George Lukacs) ‘make Western civilisation stink’ (Willie Münzenberg). They can’t have been taken seriously as Jews in the West have made Western civilisation shine in the arts and sciences et cetera. Klaus Schwab of the world Economic Forum, displaying a bust of Lenin on his desk, talks of a Communist ‘great reset’ obviously implying a great destruction first and then reset and ‘you will own nothing and be happy’. Marxism has been the greatest culler of human beings in world history.

 

DESTRUCTION: Everything touched by Marxist socialism seems demonic and leading to destruction. No wonder the Jewish author Ludwig von Mises wrote in his book on Socialism: “Socialism is not the pioneer of a better and finer world but the spoiler of what thousands of years of civilisation has created, it does not build, it destroys for deconstruction is the essence of it. It produces nothing, it only consumes what the social order has created. Each step leading towards socialism must exhaust itself in the destruction of what already exists”. ⁽²⁹⁾

 

ABORTION: India, Israel and the United Kingdom tried Marxism and then rejected it. But secularist agendas were introduced. Many Jews who kept the faith tenaciously in the Diaspora, on making aliya to Israel quietly ditched it. As in all Soviet Socialist countries destructive abortion and sex education were introduced in Israel. Maloch was cranked up again to devour human babies in abortion when Holy Scripture says “you knit me together in my mother’s womb, I praise you for the wonder of my being”. (Psalm 139:13-14)

 

NEW AGE: On October 19, 1994 a suicide bomb exploded on a Tel Aviv bus killing 22 people. Avi Mizrachi of the Messianic Centre, in a New Age shopping centre said that the area of the explosion is filled with dark powers of Hare Krishna, Scientology, pornography, fortune-telling, crystal balls, teachings on spiritism and yoga”. ⁽³⁰⁾ On a street nearby the Messianic Centre a medical centre dealt in abortion.

 

When we push aside Gods’ Word for man-made ideas and traditions there can be anarchy and we are all adrift in a sea of relativity. Genesis 1:26 states that “God made man in his image and likeness”. The Guardian journalist, Jonathan Freedland, in 2020 bemoaned the fact that the religious notion that all life was equally sacred was under attack. ⁽³¹⁾ For some, Jews have two souls and Gentiles have only one soul – that of an animal, and as animals are not human they can be liquidated on whim. Are Gentiles everywhere at risk? “No war can be conducted in a humane way against those who aren’t human… only after the cleansing can something new emerge”. (Lothar von Trotha, German commander in Namibia who presided over the horrific genocide there.

 

I believe Jesus is the greatest person who ever lived. According to the National Geographic Magazine of December 2015 his mother Mary the Jewess, is “the most powerful woman in the world”!

 

The great division in human history is the birth of Jesus: Anno Domini (A. D.) and before Christ (B. C.) even if the Common Era is preferred – C. E. or before the Common Era (BCE) the division is still the birth of Jesus.

 

Even the Shroud in which Jesus was buried “is the most studied object in the history of mankind” according to Professor Avinoam  Danin of Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He is an expert on the image and pollen grains of Holy Land plants on the Shroud. And the most popular website on the Shroud is maintained by an Orthodox Jew Barrie Schwortz: Shroud.com

 

Jesus broke down the barrier between Jew and Gentile and made them one body (Ephesians 2:14). He is the answer I believe to the endless wars between the blood brothers, the Jews and the Arabs, both Semites, that threatens the future of the whole world. Yes Christians have been very violent at times but they never got this from the Gospels of Jesus. Jesus never advocated violence. Jews and Moslems can point to their Holy Books – the Talmud or the Koran/Hadith for them condoning and advocating violence of the extreme kind. What Jesus said about the road to life being narrow and the road to Hell wide and the majority take it, applies also to Christians.

 

We could probably call Jesus’ chief apostle Simon Peter, a dyed in the wool Jewish man. Because he refused to follow the great commission of Jesus to go baptise all nations (Mathew 28:19). He only baptised Jews for 13 years after Jesus ascended to heaven, never Gentiles.

 

It took a vision, not once but three times at Jaffa to convict him of his disobedience! A greatly chastened Peter declared, “you know it is forbidden for Jews to mix with people of another race and visit them but God has made it clear to me that I must not call anyone profane or unclean… The truth I have now come to realise is that God does not have any favourites, but that anyone of any nationality who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to him”. (Acts of the Apostles 10:28-35)

 

 

References

 

1.    www.chick.com. Samuel C.Gibb. The Answer Book

2.    Sermon. Jesus Christ Inimitable, Metro.Tabernacle Pulpit 1869

3.    The Most Original Bible Text, Bible Review, August 2000, pp. 28-49;

       The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls, James van der Kam & Peter Flint, Harper,

       San Francisco, 2002, pp. 100-101

4.    Toward Tradition, Winter, 1999, p.11

5.    Scott Hahn, A Father Who Keeps His Promises, Servant, 1998, p. 166

6.    Jerusalem Post 18/4/97, p.13

7.    Geza Vermes, Jesus the Jew, Fontana, 1976, p.79

8.    Roger Karmenetz, The Jew in the Lotus, Harper, 1994, p.111

9.    David Flusser, Jesus, Herder, New York, 1969

10.  Sanhedrin 59 A

11.  Abodah Zara 26 B

12.  New Catholic Encyclopaedia, V.13, p.922

13.  G.C. Stroumsa, Gnosis, in Paul Mendes-Flohr, Contemporary Jewish Thought p.289

14.  Rosemary R. Ruether, Faith and Fratricide

15.  Roger Kamenetz, op.cit.p.274

16.  Cabala, New Catholic Encyclopaedia, p.1031

17.  op.cit.p.1032

18.  Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews, p.199

19.  Jewish Chronicle (London) August 11, 2000, p.23

20.  Shlomo Mallin, Idol Worship is Still with Us.

21.  op.cit. p.

22.  Rabbi David Guttmann, Kabbalah from Whom? Blog, June 30, 2006

23.  op.cit. Jewishskeptic 7/One/2006

24   Encyclopaedia Judaica, V.11, p.704

25.  Why Kabbalah is Considered Dangerous by My Jewish Learning www

26.  Haaretz 9/9/2024

27.  Olav Hammer, Helena Blavatsky, Wikipedia

28.  Richard Wurmbrand, Marx, Prophet of Darkness. Free online

29.  Ludwig von Mises, Socialism 1922. Described as “the most thorough and devastating

       demolition of Socialism ever written”!

30.  Betsy Ramsay, Messianic Times, Winter 1995, p. 13

31.  Jonathan Freedland, Eugenics, The Guardian 17/2/2012, 1/5/2019

 

Appendix

 

From: The Sunday Times 19/11/2023

 

Our Jewish Faith Compels Us to Oppose Israel’s Actions in Gaza

 

Open letter signed by more than 600 South African Jews says the sanctity of life and the duty to preserve it are fundamental Jewish principles.

 

Extracts

 

“… we believe in the universal values of peace, justice and equality. These values are sacred to Judaism, as they are to many religions. Indeed the sanctity of life and the duty to preserve it are fundamental Jewish principles.

 

The Israeli military has struck civilians, refugee camps, mosques, churches and UN facilities, while basic services to Gaza such as electricity, food, water and medical supplies have been cut off.

 

The current conflict must be viewed in its historical context, against the background of an ongoing military occupation by Israel of Palestinian territories. We acknowledged that this cycle of violence is rooted in decades of dispossession…

 

One heinous crime does not permit another. Ultimately the signatories agree on the fundamental principle that all human life is of equal value.

 

No genocide in our name, and no genocide in the name of our ancestors.

 

It is “imperative to insist on a distinction between Zionism and Judaism”.