Would you agree the Bible in Hebrew-Aramaic-Greek is nothing to a person without understanding of those languages or translation by people who have (orally) transmitted the meaning of those languages?
I answered that video in place and you're quoting my quote of the transcript. (1) It's not a rabbi, it's a rando Orthodox who is open to the Messianic view, which is a positive encounter and should be upheld as such. This is exactly the type of supportive conversation Christians should have with the Orthodox. (2) The "Oral Torah" is not the Talmud because the Talmud is written; it's the living spirit behind written judgments. Stephen believed in it and called it the "living oracles". (3) For a few teachers, Messianics are 100% rejected, but most recognize Messianics must be dealt with more diplomatically; for instance the Israeli Supreme Court recognizes that Messianics have Jewish right of return if they have Rabbinical parents or grandparents. (4) You're getting added to the misquote pile, there's only one Talmudic passage about Yeshu and hell. There's only one clearly about Jesus of Nazareth and it's pretty historical, stating that he was executed as an inciter, that Ulla believed he deserved it, but that the majority ruling was that in any case his rights were upheld. The other dozen passages warn against two other men named Yeshu, or against a "Yeshu" character generically, and give mixed views about the nascent Messianic Jews. There are plenty of passages about idolatry and polytheism, but whether these apply to Christians is always left ambiguous.
It is their holy book, just not their holiest book. For a significant segment it may be the most consulted book, which is a travesty. I remember the Messianic Jew who was so proud of Judaism and his receipt of a big black Scripture for his bar mitzvah. He never looked at it until an adulthood crisis where he wanted the very words of God and then he regarded that the rabbis had lied to him, what he received was only a Siddur (almost entirely human liturgy)! When he looked elsewhere for God he found Jesus. The system does tend to cause people to forget that its foundation and constitution is the Torah (much as Americans forget their Constitution).
Now I could uncharitably adopt your view that all Jews believe hateful things about Jesus, based only on this and other circumstantial evidence. I find it unhelpful to, because I wouldn't judge any person based on circumstantial evidence without hearing him. I can judge demographic likelihood that a particular Jew is against Jesus, but if I hope to see them accept Jesus it's more helpful to that end for me to accept their testimony in their own words and not prejudge it. When you and others draw sweeping inferences from the texts, it shuts down this kind of evangelism by declining to hear what they actually say. To prejudge that a particular non-Christian is unopen to the truth is to say in advance they cannot be reached by God's power and light. Crossing over to the other discussion, God's light is capable of reflecting in any human soul and so I don't close that option out without firm objective reasons.
Well, Talmudic Semites uphold every letter of the OT, while Muslim "Semites" believe it was corrupted. But comparatively the two claims should always be kept in tension and perhaps when being diplomatic there is no need to compare them rashly.
To the degree that Talmudism rejects the Torah Judaism of Messianics (and Christians), it is rejected by the Father. When evangelizing Jews I find it helpful not to lay out what degree that is because while one upholds every letter of the OT there is hope that one will accept the truths there. There is no monolithic rejection of God (nor even of Jesus) across the board in Rabbinical Judaism, I've searched for it and haven't found it. They are still pre-Christian, unlike most other nations being evangelized.
Oh, I agree Muslims are children of Abraham, Semites, Hebrews, as to biology. But the Bible records that these terms narrowed in meaning over time, and also that one could be naturalized into the biology. The interlocutor here has a very rigid replacement view of two eras without any connection between them or any era before, so I'm speaking in that context; but you and I understand both meanings without confusion so that's not at issue.
Did you even read Ezekiel 36:24-26 and context?
Zoroastrianism: "Adherents exalt an uncreated, benevolent, and all-wise deity known as Ahura Mazda ..., who is hailed as the supreme being of the universe."
Druids [Julius Caesar]: "With regard to their actual course of studies, the main object of all education is, in their opinion, to imbue their scholars with a firm belief in the indestructibility of the human soul, which, according to their belief, merely passes at death from one tenement to another; for by such doctrine alone, they say, which robs death of all its terrors, can the highest form of human courage be developed."
Sounds compatible with the Divine Council ruled by a single supreme being. The only argument is as to the nature of this supreme being, to which both groups can be counted on to have contributed, and which we can continue today.
See now you're taking your invention and reading it into the OT too. Your inability to see the text because of your blinder laid over it is the whole problem.
You define "child of Abraham" or "covenant" person as (1) biological Jews for a period and then (2) believers in Jesus for a later period. This allows you to cut history into two periods where (1) lineage gave promises and (2) it doesn't (with no reason for the change other than misreading Jesus's words). But you immediately also change the promises because Christians haven't controlled the Holy Land most of 2,000 years either. If you actually believed the land promise hadn't changed you'd accept the idea of Israel being run by majority Messianic Jews in the future because they would be Christian; but you don't speak like you do. So your position is wholly inconsistent and based on a proposition that isn't there, the idea that all national texts are spiritualized and the thousands of years where they were taken as literal promises have been broken by God.
Test questions: How did people get saved or in covenant before Abraham?
How did non-biological Jews get saved or in covenant, like Shuah's daughter, the mixed multitude of Egyptians, the Gibeonites, the Kenites, Ruth, the Samaritans, etc.?
How did those Jews who apostasized from God in the OT get handled, did they receive the covenant no matter how evil they were, or were they excluded by being recognized as not having the faith of Abraham?
Why do you say "biological Jews" to refer to "children of Abraham" when Jews are only descended from Judah the great-grandson of Abraham; do you mean "biological Israelites"?
Why were Ishmael, Midian, and grandson Esau not "children of Abraham" in your view if they had the same genes and, you say, had no less faith than their siblings; do you mean God chose Abraham and Isaac but not all their children?
But if God was free to choose from among the biological children of Abraham and Isaac, then why do you act like he was not free to chose from among the biological children of Israel or Judah but that the spiritual covenant was biological?
Are you racist when you imply biological Jews got the national and spiritual covenant for 1,800 years without reference to their lack of faith but only with reference to biology (sounds like a preference among races to me)?
Are you prepared to exposit every passage about biology to say that its meaning changed from what people always took it to mean literally and all such literal passages once were literally accurate but God changed their meaning secretly with a single proclamation of Jesus?
Why don't you exposit Ezekiel 36:24-26 that way and explain how Christians enter into a spiritual land before they are given a new heart?
You should be able to sticky your own top-level comment (not another's, and not a response to a comment). Try a new top-level comment and see if the option is there.
Prior to being forced into the worship of the god of Israel, who did the Arabs and whites worship?
Arabs are descended from Ishmael and Abraham so they worshiped the god of Abraham.
Whites are descended from Japheth and Noah so they worshiped the god of Noah.
The question is whether the god of Noah is one with the god of Abraham and/or Israel.
Well, I appreciate your listening. What's more important is that 7th-day resters stick together, which is what I've been able to do in congregations where this question remained unsettled.
The children of Abraham before Jesus were just biological descendants.
Not at all. "Children of Abraham" always had the dual meaning. If it hadn't, then Ishmaelites and Midianites would be children of Abraham in every sense, but they were not accounted as his children because they didn't have the faith of Abraham. If you don't do what your father does, everyone knew your father dismisses you as a child.
You have this wrong division to the word "anymore" like something changed. The spiritual covenant was always the same: believe on the Seed of the Woman to be revealed. Tribal and national covenants arose at many points in history and are easily separable. Because we're so far from the origin we made up other paradigms where we blur the two types of covenant, and that requires us to invent presto-changeo work on Jesus's behalf, but Jesus did not change one serif of the covenant.
You need to figure out what it is that's driving you so illogically. It appears to be some unstated objection that, if this is true, you'd have to do something crazy that may sound Jewish. I'm not proposing anything crazy or Jewish; I am proposing equal self-determination for all. Maybe you should come straight out and say what you think my position logically entails that you cannot accept, and then I can explain why the position doesn't logically entail it as you might mistakenly believe. (Or perhaps we can get to the real binary proposition separating us.)
Jesus said the Jews aren’t “children of Abraham” anymore.
You keep saying this, but it's you that are adding to the text and twisting the words. When he says they are children of the devil, you're using Grecian logic to assume they can't be children of anyone else, but that is not the intent. He didn't say you're not children, in fact he said you are seed and Abraham is your father.
Of course Christians will inhabit Canaan for all eternity, but that's because most Jews will become Christians as Romans 11 says. That's part of how the land promise comes about and is explicitly indicated in Ezek. 36:24-26. This promise is not for Christians, who already have the new heart and later receive the spiritual kingdom: it's for Jews who receive the land first (1948) and then receive the new heart.
But if you don't see these things and continue the illogic of denying the quotes that Jesus said and inserting quotes he didn't say, that's on you. I can only show you.
Did Jesus say "Ye are Abraham's seed"? Yes.
Did Jesus say "Your father Abraham rejoiced"? Yes.
Did Jesus say "Ye are not children of Abraham"? No. He left it to the mixed crowd to determine if they would live out the destiny of children of Abraham.
I can't say I've had that exact experience.
Start with what quickly became the locus classicus, Imagine Heaven by John Burke, which I'm currently rereading. This covers all kinds of near death experiences. Most are reported upon return, which gives context for visions that do not generally qualify as "near death"; however, it can be categorized as NDE if it's an out-of-body experience (OBE) or an open vision (some of which are reported in process even though the person dies and does not return).
The sentient characters met are of two kinds, those identifiable as humans who lived on earth, and those identifiable as intelligences who appear in service to humans ("angels"). (We should probably include visions of symbols that represent collectives of humans because they act sentient, but these are generally recognized as symbolic and not individual.) Note that there is capacity for deception in this realm, but the fact is that when something tries another tack it can be removed as an outlier. This includes appearances of humans that don't act like they did on earth (deepfakes), appearances of intelligences that don't act like they are there to serve (adversaries), and appearances of sentient cryptids whether or not the cryptid species exists on earth (beasts).
The general rule is that the observer has an intuitive feeling what entity is being dealt with, what is true and what is deceptive, based on the whole experience. That indicates direction but can be trumped by recognition of contradiction later. There are specific exceptions, but reporters generally know by human intuition what they're really dealing with; if they are following a deception they have a consciousness of the contradiction but then face the choice to admit or deny it.
So the "ghost" subset includes both the humans that continue to act as they did and counterfeits that seek to "slide" the human's identity. As pointed out there, the "spirit" subset includes those not clearly identified as earthly humans, and it's common for some light or dark spirits to be seen as a death approaches (here called "reapers" though that is a bit less accurate for their roles of accompaniment and influence). There is evidence that dark spirits can be thwarted in their goals, though I haven't seen evidence that light spirits have been successfully thwarted as they follow natural flow ("letting things happen"). But the spirits as here defined can be distinguished from the ghosts.
The Bible says that the witch of Endor saw the ghost of Samuel and implies that she was shocked because she intended to see a counterfeit instead (a "familiar"). It also says that Stephen saw Jesus as he was dying (though this is a special exception to being a ghost, because Jesus had the body as he said so himself). Christians and skeptics alike experience that the name of Jesus is an unparalleled guide for managing and directing the behavior and communications of all such entities. Therefore the ghost story proper, which categorizes as open vision, can be safely navigated with trust in God to be greater than any ghost; and the allied phenomena give much evidentiary reflection upon the ghost story.
Why don't you cast them out in Jesus's name?
Pepe, do you want me to review this one? I've stated that you're doing much better with keeping things in line but the OP goes over the line and I'm concerned that if I started dialoging with you again we'd be in the same circle as before.
The promised land covenant doesn’t apply to the biological jews anymore, but to the “children of Abraham”. The people who accept Christ regardless of their genealogy.
See, there you fall into a natural consequence of your refusal to allow any other definitions but your own. If this were true, why don't the Christians run the Levant? The standard answer is, oh, we must also spiritualize away the meaning of "promised land". When Abraham's family was told over and over that the land was promised to them without condition, you'd believe that there was really a time condition and the real and only permanent meaning is that believers are promised a spiritual kingdom. The fact that the spiritual kingdom is true doesn't negate that the land promises referring to particular geography are unconditional. Reading literally, they will be fulfilled again, and, since belief is a necessary part of remaining in the land (even though Ezekiel prophesies, as happened in the 20th century, that Israel will return to the land in unbelief), evangelists to Jews have great hope. But cutting Jews out of their own beliefs when they need not be cut out (because they don't contradict the gospel) is not seriously giving good news to them and thereby belies the great commission to the Jew first.
Preston, was there such a historical person as Abisha the Hyksos, a Semite who negotiated business with the house of Sesostris during the same period that Abraham was testified as negotiating the same business?
Was there such a historical person as the leader of the Hyksos departure from Avaris (Ramses) in ca. 1539 BC (called Moses by Manetho) where hundreds of thousands of Semites left Egypt for Canaan and, after a pharaoh power vacuum, Ahmose testified that a great tempest and a great blackout occurred?
Hello newcomer who is asking the same questions as accounts banned as probable sockpuppets. The answer is that it's not contradictory for a post to stay active beyond when it says it will stay active for. Plus the OP has now changed and states the reason straightforwardly so that even a newcomer can understand it.
You seem to imply there is some injustice going on. As I've said, the fact that a vote is sparsely attended should be taken as indicating it's not a strong consensus, rather than that legalistic rules should be imposed by newcomers upon moderators entrusted by the community whom the community has found no consensus fault in.
When you include both the forum link and the post link, spell out the forum link with https as follows:
[c/Christianity](https://communities.win/c/Christianity)
which resolves as "c/Christianity". Then the post link c/Christianity/p/19AduSDIij/ doesn't go haywire.
Don't you understand that being chosen to inherit a land based on lineage is unrelated to salvation always being on an individual basis?
Do we Americans have a manifest destiny to our land or do aliens have the right to overpower us in our own land by force?
If we have a right to our land, so does every other nation by default unless it breaks the law of nations. Equal rights are explicitly upheld by the text:
Wilt not thou possess that which Chemosh thy god giveth thee to possess? So whomsoever the LORD our God shall drive out from before us, them will we possess (Judges 11:24).
Well, the Bible doesn't say "Egypt" it says "Mizraim"; modern Egypt calls itself "Misr". For "Assyria" it says "Asshur", which nowadays is called "Syria". It's talking about peoples who continue to this day (Egyptians and Assyrians) and who still have nations of the same name. What happens is that churchianity sidelines all this stuff into realms like eschatology when it makes more sense on its face value. All the peoples told they would continue to exist still exist, all the peoples told they would cease to exist have ceased to exist. I'm pretty confident that applies to all nations in the Bible.
You could allegorize away the whole passage and say Egypt, Israel, and Assyria only mean classes of covenant people who will have some kind of transference relationship among them; that would be silly but it's not like it's false. But the problem is that it makes people think the straightforward literal meaning isn't true. Egypt will have a special blessing in the future and will be called "my people" as a special unique nation. That's not putting words in God's mouth, it's quoting them.
You seem to misunderstand the two meanings (which TINAE spots immediately) even as you use them yourself. When he says they are seed you agree they are descended. Then you say that doesn't count as being children because you're acting like "children" and "father" can only have one meaning. But as with words for children, Jesus also uses "father" the same way, 8:56: "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day." So he admits Abraham is their father in one sense, but he says the devil is their father in another sense. And this is perfectly consistent with their attack on his fatherhood (adoptive via Joseph; 8:41 challenges his legitimacy) while he points out his greater Father is God. Everyone knew "father" had multiple meanings. But you don't.
So I'm not adding words at all when I say
The LORD of hosts shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people.
Then said Jesus to those Jews .... I know that ye are Abraham's seed .... Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day.
But you are adding words when you say "It can’t specifically be talking about the borders of nations because Assyria isn’t even a nation anymore", "Jesus clearly says they aren’t the 'children of Abraham'", "He specifically says Abraham is not their father", "Lineage doesn’t matter at all anymore".
You say I'm justifying Zionism, which is an argument here that I've realized for 5 years relies upon duckspeak. Nobody knows what they mean by accusing another of Zionism. I justify all peoples having equal rights of self-determination. If Zionism means such an equal right, fine, if it means some greater right than some other people, I don't follow it. I also uphold that all Biblical peoples have different rights spelled out by their national blessings and cursings, equally interpreted. If the Bible promises a blessing or a cursing, fine, but if someone interprets different promises differently, I don't follow that interpretation. Everyone here who acts like they know what Zionism is has never been able to define it in such way as to avoid the fact that these very simple rules are applied objectively the same across the board and with no respect to any meaning of Zionism. If you want to call out Zionism, criticize any person's or organization's statement or action and I'll be happy to agree or disagree with you. IMHO the Arabs got a questionable deal from Henry McMahon in 1915 but nobody goes there because Arabs haven't taken the high moral ground on it for 110 years since. The high ground would be to renegotiate from equal self-determination rights. When you hint that you don't like some national promises existing in the Bible you're acting like the Arabs, whose existence comes from a national promise to Ishmael in the Bible.
Actually, according to Is. 19:25 and context, God calls Egypt "my people" and promises they will be blessed in the end. If they were conquered and displaced they could indeed cite that promise and others to come back. If that promise were to fail God would be a liar. Arab peoples generally have tremendous promises in Ishmael, and these have been fulfilled, in fact their oil discoveries can be said to be a fulfillment of their becoming a giant family of nations.
The fact is that many nations in the Bible are given blessings and cursings and their destinies always align with the text. Nations prophesied for destruction always fall, nations prophesied for retention always return (despite displacements). The Jews may have no spiritual inheritance at large, but they retain the same rights of national self-determination as any nation, and they determine the same Biblical blessings as any other nation that explicitly has them. And the Jews IMHO get the best of the blessings and the worst of the cursings both at different times. People's inability to separate spiritual blessing for spiritual people from various national blessings for various national peoples is the whole problem.
You can't tell someone descended from Abraham that they're not descended from Abraham. You can tell them they're not doing what Abraham did (as Jesus said). But if Americans can tell Jews they're not Jews (as some do) then Jews can tell Americans they're not Americans (as some do).
You are literally arguing with Jesus here. There is no “children of Abraham” by descent anymore
No, as you quote, the text is "I know that ye are Abraham's seed" (John 8:37). The context indicates that this is one meaning of two.
Now, we could apply Greek logic to the passage when it's based on Near East nuance instead, but if we did we'd only arrive at the conclusion they are "seed" but are not "children". You don't even apply that conclusion from the plain words you quoted. But the actual text is more intended as, let's leave it ambiguous for now what you are out of respect for you, and let's challenge you that if you aspire to be children of Abraham you do what he did and you're not doing that yet. In any scenario we don't get to contradict verse 37.
I know it's a paradigm shift to get over, as it was when I got over it. But peoples have equal self-determination rights. Over 110 years Arabs and Jews have been working out their rights in the land more directly, and, funny thing, no system denying another people's rights has ever succeeded, only those that start from equal rights.
the privileges the biological Jews had with inheriting Canaan and being the “chosen” people no longer belong to them
The privileges Egypt has with retaining Egypt still belong to them, as per Isaiah 19, Zechariah 14, etc. It's true of any biological nation in Scripture.
The privileges the covenant people had were wholly different and always continued with the covenant people, which were largely undifferentiated, then largely Jewish, then largely Gentile (Romans 9-11).
"COA" as an abbreviation is your own invention, nobody uses it, it makes you look even sillier as you don't realize you're inventing it.
Naaman the Syrian. Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 4).
So you're agreeing with me that different races have different covenants. And Ishmael's land covenant seems to be alive and kicking, despite their rejection of Jesus (1-2 billion Muslims). I wonder why you don't think Israel's land covenant is. You somehow think that the blessings to Jacob were all one (spiritual and national) rather than divisible into ordinary biological and spiritual open to all (as the OT regularly shows).
You still haven't answered how the covenant worked before Abraham. Seems like before then the spiritual covenant was available to all too.
Only said to a handful of Jews by another Jew who had a million Jewish followers that century and another million Jewish followers right now who call themselves Messianic and worship Jesus. Sounds like you want to make a comment to a single crowd applicable as a national cursing to tens of millions of people indefinitely.
You finally drop your endgame. You believe Jewish Christians have no greater right to the Holy Land than Gentile Christians. Well, I don't argue eschatology, but it seems that in the end where all Christians are agreed then there would be no reason to forbid the Jewish Christians from carrying out their Hebrew culture in the Holy Land any more than we would forbid Chinese Christians from carrying out Chinese culture in China.
Work on that covenant prior to Abraham and see if you're not excluding people that God doesn't exclude.