My mom and dad both had their pilot licenses. One of things I learned from them was that when plotting your course, if you are off by one degree in your calculations, you will miss your destination by many, many miles. In the Bible, God talks about “perpetual statutes throughout your generations.” Perpetual…a vanishing point without end. Those instructions and ordinances (Law) God gave to Moses and the children of Israel at Mt. Sinai…hey…God’s not a liar…when He said perpetual statutes throughout your generations…He meant it…He didn’t suddenly change His mind. We MUST change our paradigm…the way we filter scripture. We must stop looking at the scriptures through 21st century eyes. We must learn how to read and understand the Bible as it was originally written and understand the culture and people it was actually written to.
God does look upon the motivations of our heart but how do we show God we love him? By obeying His commands…I obey because I want to not because I have to and I don’t get to pick and choose which of the commandments I want to obey…yes, the LETTER of the Law kills if you think that is the way of salvation. When Paul said in Galatians 5:14 “For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” He was doing what all Rabbis do…he was summing up all of Torah in one statement. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” is obeying all the ordinances and instructions of the Torah that pertain to you. You probably aren’t a Cohen (of the line of Aaron) and there is no temple standing in Jerusalem right now…so out of 613 or so instructions about 140 or so pertain to you as a man or a woman and we already keep about 120 or so anyway. God is not schizophrenic; He didn’t hand Moses a list of instructions that were impossible to keep! Why would anyone want to serve a God like that??? Again I’ll tell you that we must have a paradigm shift in our thinking.
Matthew 5:19
Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
I’m not proposing Judaism over Christianity. Paul tells us that there is now no Jew or Greek…BUT we are wild branches (Gentiles) grafted into a Jewish vine. That Jewish vine supports the branches not the other way around. Jesus was JEWISH…he was born Jewish, he lived Jewish and he died and rose again Jewish. The apostles were JEWISH even Luke and Timothy, though they were Greek, they lived as Jews…Paul was a Rabbi of Rabbi’s…they all went to synagogue… they all brought their offerings to the temple at the appropriate times, they all celebrated the commanded feasts in their seasons. I hear all the time “I want to be like Jesus.” Really? Jesus obeyed Torah…ALWAYS. Jesus never ate pork…EVER. Jesus worship and rested on Sabbath, not Sunday. When the gospels talk about Jesus “fulfilling” the Law it doesn’t mean He changed it, it means He showed us how to do it…to the best of our ability and always in love.
Back to my original statement…we’ve drifted far from the truth. The deviation point began about the year 240 CE (see below.) It was a deliberate and calculated move away from the ancient paths. Gradually, over the past two millennia, lie upon lie, tradition upon tradition, have built up to the point that unless we DIG we accept TRADITION as truth. Remember…packed sand can be hard like bedrock but packed sand can’t support a house.
Jeremiah 16:19 O LORD, my strength, and my fortress, and my refuge in the time of the affliction; Gentiles shall come unto thee from the ends of the earth and shall say, surely our fathers have inherited lies, vanity, and things in which there is no profit.
Most church fathers were horrible anti-Semites…here’s a few quotes:
Justin Martyr:
“We too, would observe your circumcision of the flesh, your Sabbath days, and in a word, all your festivals, if we were not aware of the reason why they were imposed upon you, namely, because of your sins and the hardness of heart. The custom of circumcising the flesh, handed down from Abraham, was given to you as a distinguishing mark, to set you off from other nations and from us Christians. The purpose of this was that you and only you might suffer the afflictions that are now justly yours; that only your land be desolated, and your cities ruined by fire, that the fruits of you land be eaten by strangers before your very eyes; that not one of you be permitted to enter your city of Jerusalem. Your circumcision of the flesh is the only mark by which you can certainly be distinguished from other men…as I stated before it was by reason of your sins and the sins of your fathers that, among other precepts, God imposed upon you the observance of the Sabbath as a mark.”
John Chrysostom:
The synagogue is worse than a brothel…it is the den of scoundrels and the repair of wild beasts…the temple of demons devoted to idolatrous cults…the refuge of brigands and debauchees, and the cavern of devils. It is a criminal assembly of Jews…a place of meeting for the assassins of Christ… a house worse than a drinking shop…a den of thieves, a house of ill fame, a dwelling of iniquity, the refuge of devils, a gulf and an abyss of perdition.”…”I would say the same things about their souls… As for me, I hate the synagogue…I hate the Jews for the same reason.
Augustine:
How hateful to me are the enemies of your Scripture! How I wish that you would slay them (the Jews) with your two-edged sword, so that there should be none to oppose your word! Gladly would I have them die to themselves and live to you!
John Calvin:
Their [the Jews] rotten and unbending stiffneckedness deserves that they be oppressed unendingly and without measure or end and that they die in their misery without the pity of anyone.
Here’s the timeline and for brevity’s sake, I’ve only run it through to year 600…here’s where the “church” began…the “church” didn’t start with Jesus and the apostles…it started some 200-300 years after they all died.
Emperor Constantine
Laws passed by the church Anti-Jewish Church laws
This order is intended to keep Jews and Christians apart.
It forbade Christians to eat with or marry Jewish people, and
it forbade Jewish people to observe the Sabbath. (Council of
Elvira, circa A.D. 306)
Synagogues are outlawed. (Edict of Milan, A.D. 313)
the law. (Roman edict, A.D. 315)
Jews are excluded from holding high office or having military
careers. (Various laws)
It is decreed that all businesses be closed on Sunday. (Constantine,
A.D. 321)
Jews are forbidden to live in Jerusalem. (Constantine, A.D. 325)
Sunday is declared to be the Sabbath day of rest. (Council of
Nicea, A.D. 325)
It was forbidden to associate the celebration of Easter
with the Jewish Passover. Easter was ordered to be celebrated
on the first Sunday after the full moon following the spring
equinox. (Canon I of the Synod of Antioch, A.D. 341)
It becomes illegal to feast with Jewish people. (Synod of
Laodicea, circa A.D. 343)
The legal rights of Jewish people become greatly restricted. (Code
of Canons of the African Church, A.D. 419)
Jewish people are forbidden the right to bring legal accusations,
apart from suits against other Jews. (Canon CXXIX, A.D. 419)
Christians are forbidden to give their children in marriage to
Jewish people. (Council of Chalcedon, A.D. 451)
240
Origen of Alexandria writes that the Jews “have committed the most abominable of crimes” in conspiring against Christ, and for that reason “the Jewish nation was driven from its country, and another people was called by God to the blessed election”
248
St. Cyprian writes that the Jews have fallen under the heavy wrath of God, because they have departed from the Lord, and have followed idols
306
The Council of Elvira decrees that Christians and Jews cannot intermarry, have sexual intercourse, or eat together
325
Conversation and fellowship with Jews is forbidden to the clergy by the Council of Nicaea
4th century
Christian emperors of Rome decree that Christians converting to Judaism, and Jews obstructing the conversion of other Jews to Christianity, will incur the death penalty; Jews cannot marry Christians, or hold public office, or own slaves
380
St. Gregory of Nyssa refers to the Jews as “murderers of the Lord, assassins of the prophets, rebels and detesters of God,… companions of the devil, race of vipers, informers, calumniators, darkeners of the mind, pharisaic leaven, Sanhedrin of demons, accursed, detested,… enemies of all that is beautiful”
380
St. Ambrose calls the synagogue “a place of unbelief, a home of impiety, a refuge of insanity, damned by God Himself”
388
A mob of Christians, at the instigation of their bishop, looted and burned the synagogue in Callinicum, a town on the Euphrates. The Emperor Theodosius wants those responsible punished and the synagogue rebuilt at the expense of the bishop, but St. Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, pressures him to relent and condone the action
400
St. Augustine writes: “the Church admits and avows the Jewish people to be cursed, because after killing Christ they continue to till the ground of an earthly circumcision, an earthly Sabbath, an earthly Passover, while the hidden strength or virtue of making known Christ, which this tilling contains, is not yielded to the Jews while they continue in impiety and unbelief, for it is revealed in the New Testament. While they will not turn to God, the veil which is on their minds in reading the Old Testament is not taken away… the Jewish people, like Cain, continue tilling the ground, in the carnal observance of the law, which does not yield to them its strength, because they do not perceive in it the grace of Christ”
400
Calling the synagogue “brothel and theater” and “a cave of pirates and the lair of wild beasts,” St. John Chrysostom writes that “the Jews behave no better than hogs and goats in their lewd grossness and the excesses of their gluttony”
413
A group of monks sweep through Palestine, destroying synagogues and massacring Jews at the Western Wall
414
St. Cyril of Alexandria expels Jews from his city
425
Jews are required by law to observe Christian feasts and fasts and to listen to sermons designed to persuade them to convert
442
The synagogue in Constantinople is turned into a church
529-553
The Code of the emperor Justinian decrees that in Christian Byzantine society Jews cannot read their sacred books in Hebrew in their synagogues, and the Mishnah and other rabbinic interpretations are banned
538
The Third Synod of Orléans decrees that Jews cannot show themselves in the streets during Passover Week
591
Pope St. Gregory the Great decrees that Jews are not to be forced into baptism “lest they return to their former superstition and die the worse for having been born again”
600
Pope St. Gregory the Great decrees that Jews should not have excessive freedom, but also “in no way should they suffer a violation of their rights”
and the list goes on through history to modern day anti-Semitism. A complete list can be found on Wikipedia: anti-Semitism timeline