31 January 2023
Would it surprise you that yesterday's post got a strong reaction from at least one person? It wasn't even a regular reader. Rather, someone stumbled across that post and sent a copy to someone else, and that third party was upset. Turns out that third person was a Lutheran who is trying to evangelize Jews. This person regarded my post as slander against "God's Chosen People".
Think about that for a moment. If Jews are still God's Chosen, Christ died for nothing. Why would the New Testament talk about a New Israel, if the Old Israel was still somehow God's favorites? The so-called Christian Zionist movement is the proof that the Judaizers who plagued Paul have won, and the Ethiopian Eunuch should never have been baptized. If the rules by which God accepts people into His Presence still rest on, not just Moses, but Talmudic Law as well, then Jesus accomplished nothing on the Cross.
The whole thing logically falls apart when you recognize what Jesus was saying to His nation: Judaism was not Moses. The Jewish traditions were a radical departure from the revelation of God. It was so bad that God Himself ended the Covenant of Moses; the Temple veil was torn in two and the way to God no longer meant passing through the ritual laws. The Israeli identity was no longer the path to God; the perverted Jewish identity never was. The Jewish leadership had so completely perverted everything that God Himself didn't recognize it. The whole dispute with Stephen was his contention that Moses had served its purpose and was finished, and the whole ritual law and the Temple were no longer needed.
I know Lutherans. I know their history, their several branches of denominational orthodoxy, and how they are simply one small step away from being Catholics. The difference is just an internal quarrel that is not yet settled officially. There are quite a few Lutherans who still venerate Mary. Lutherans are still deeply pickled in pagan Germanic culture, and still believe in the notion of Christendom.
Worse, Lutherans have generally rejected the core truths of their namesake, Martin Luther. Luther regarded his book, Bondage of the Will his best work, but Lutherans reject it as heresy. And finally, they reflect nothing of Luther's known attitude toward Jews and Jewish cultural and moral intransigence, and how they threatened social stability. Luther is rolling over in his grave at the current evangelism methods for Jews.
Did anyone read somewhere a fake piece attributed to me wherein I promised to be nice to people? Being nice and diplomatic is for winning friends and allies, but whose lives and commitments remain unchanged. I'm not looking for allies. I'm not looking for a following. I went into this expecting to make enemies. Why else would I have invested so much effort in hardening this blog against censorship?
I want you to stand firm in your own convictions. I want to comfort those whose convictions have driven them out into the social wilderness. The Covenant of Christ has boundaries, folks, and those boundaries tend to exclude the majority of the human race. People keeping trying to drag Jesus outside the Covenant so they don't have to renounce sin to be around Him.
Anyone who retains a Jewish identity is going to Hell. They have to renounce Judaism and their Jewish ethnic identity to come to the Messiah. Hiding that from them will not help them cross over the chasm that separates them from God. They are under a curse and it requires a divine miracle to save them. It's the same for all of us, but from where we stand in this mortal existence, it certainly appears they have a lot more to overcome than us Gentiles. So once they do make that crossing, I would gladly give them the respect they deserve. But as long as they reject their own Messiah, the curse on them is wholly justified.
If you embrace the Covenant of Christ, you are already at home in the things they have rejected. This isn't pride; this is our humble celebration and gratitude that Jesus opened the door to us and made us into divine treasures. I never cease to be amazed at the unspeakable gift. But I'll be damned if I cheapen it for some arrogant fools who dare to make demands on God, as if they were His equal. That's the position Jews take as Jews. If you don't nail your fleshly self to the Cross, you don't belong.
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