Answering Jewish Misconceptions of Yeshua and Christianity

[cgpb]

The following thread can also be viewed at the following link:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UcqFf7nVFY&feature=youtu.be

Jewish Misconceptions of Yeshua and / or the Christian faith!

Lets first look at what preconceived misconceptions are:

Preconceived Misconceptions are quick judgments based on lack of knowledge due to mindsets that have been molded by the environment a person has been subjected to. Misconceptions result when a person blindly follows what they have been taught, have been influenced by and fail to use right reasoning to make a difference between what is truth and what is error.

The first Misconception we shall look at is:

“Jesus cannot be the Messiah because more Jewish blood has been shed in his name than in any other name.”

This objection is rooted in church history because Jews suffered terrible things at the hands of the so called “Christian church”.

Now in resolving such a misconception, one must ask the following questions:

a. Who were these so called professing Christians who shed Jewish blood?
b. Why did they do it?

People know that there are both genuine and fake items sold on the market, (e.g there are genuine Chanel perfumes and there are fake ones ), likewise the same reasoning should be applied and understood that there are both genuine and fake people in religion. The enlightened versus the deluded and the genuine versus those that use religion to achieve their own ends rooted in selfishness, ambition, greed, ignorance or whatever. Any person who is deluded or misled and is placed in a position of power or authority is dangerous! - and it is wrong to accuse a faith on the basis of some people who in their delusion and wickedness abused their authority in the wrong way.

So how does one make a right distinction?

i. By firstly knowing what the scriptures of a faith teach.
ii. If a person lives up to those scriptures.

The Christian gospels teach to love your enemies, to do good to those that persecute you, to turn the other cheek and to repay evil with good. So the so called church that shed Jewish blood during history in the likes of the crusades, the inquisition, the holocaust etc…, could not have been the genuine God fearing church because their actions were a complete denial of what Yeshua taught. Just like the small group of self righteous Jewish religious leaders that were responsible for coercing Pilate to kill Yeshua don’t represent the entire Jewish people, likewise the so called Christians involved in these atrocities do not represent all Christians.

Understand also that:
a) Just because a person is born or raised in a certain country , this does not make that person a genuine adherent of that country’s faith. There are people in all faiths who go to church, synagogues, temples, and follow traditions, but their speech and actions reflect the contrary.

b) People’s disobedience to God does not nullify who God is and what He requires from people. Wicked so called “christians” don’t nullify Yeshua and His Words anymore than the wicked kings of ancient Israel and Judah nullify The and the Prophets.

The Medieval times was also a time of great ignorance and the Bible was not available to common people during this time. Many of those involved in the atrocities against Jews had not even read the Bible and had no connection whatsoever to the teachings of Yeshua.

Jews have to understand that genuine Christians love the Jewish people and are for them as they acknowledge that the blessings they have are from the Jewish people. It is the genuine Christians that are the friends of Israel and history is filled with Christians who risked their lives to save the Jewish people from such atrocities. Before we continue

Here is a list of a few examples of Christians that risked their lives for Jews:

Corrie Ten Boom - Dutch Christian who along with her father and other family members, helped many Jews escape the Nazi Holocaust during World War II and was imprisoned for it.

Metropolitan Chrysostomos - of the island of Zante in Greece who when ordered by the Germans to submit a list of all Jews on the island, submitted a document bearing just two names: his own and the Mayor's. The island's population hid every member of the Jewish community and all Jews on Zante were saved.

Archbishop Damaskinos -  of Athens formally protested the deportation of Jews and quietly ordered churches under his jurisdiction to issue fake Christian baptismal certificates to Jews fleeing the Nazis. In this way thousands of Greek Jews were saved.

Omelyan Kovch - Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest was deported to Treblinka camp for helping thousands of Jews.

André and Magda Trocmé - French Reformed pastor and his wife who led a movement that saved 3,000-5,000 Jews.

Archbishop Stefan of Sofia Bulgaria , actively supported Dimitar Peshev's pressure against the Bulgarian government to cancel the deportation of the 48,000 Bulgarian Jews.


If Christianity were a violent religion against Jews, then why don’t you see Christians going around killing Jews today, especially since Christianity has grown on a worldwide scale? The fact of the matter is , that it is always the followers of Yeshua who are being persecuted.

In the 1st century it was the Jewish followers of Yeshua who were being persecuted by their fellow Jews. In Medieval times, the Christian pioneers who wanted to translate the Bible into English in the 14th, 15th and 16th Centuries were the ones being persecuted and even killed by the so called church of that day for wanting to put the Bible into the language of the people. Even today true Christians are persecuted worldwide , and in Israel it’s the ultra Orthodox Jews that persecute the Messianic Jews – and not the other way around.

It is important to very briefly look at how Anti-Semitism crept into church history.


After the Crucifixion of Yeshua, the death of the apostle James (in about 62 A.D) led to a dispersing of Jewish believers from Jerusalem and a weakening of the Jewish Christian community. The destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 A.D , with the consequent end of the Levitical priesthood and sacrificial system, brought a virtual close to the Jewish religion.

The slaughter of the Jews by the Romans under the leadership of Titus and Hadrian caused many Christians to flee Jerusalem and became dispersed, moving out more and more beyond Israel. Many gentile believers fled Jerusalem and went to Pella. (60 miles northeast of Jerusalem). This had started the physical separation of Gentile and Jewish followers of Yeshua. Instead of Jerusalem, The church's new leadership came from its other centers in Antioch, Alexandria and, eventually, Rome – which were Gentile cities.

Christians saw the disasters that hit Jerusalem and the Jewish people as God’s judgment upon their unbelieving response to God’s anointed – Jesus Christ reinforcing their claim that they had become the "new Israel."

So by the 2nd Century A.D, the evolving doctrine of replacement theology had started to infiltrate the thinking of the early church. This theology taught that God is completely done with Israel and that the Christian church is its complete replacement regarding the plan, purpose, and promises of God. This meant that many of the promises that God made to Israel had to be spiritualized to refer to the Church.


The Gentile church probably did not seek to understand the Jewish roots of the faith as it should have (either because the scriptures weren’t so readily available or because having now been accepted also into the Covenant, they may have felt they had need of nothing else). This together with the physical separation , and the rise in Hellenism , contributed to the infiltration of Greek philosophical ideas which were unbiblical.

So Hellenistic Christians who had fled Jerusalem were being influenced by the Greeks to blame – not Rome- but the Jewish people for the death of Yeshua by early church fathers , such as Chrysostom who labeled the Jews as “the Christ killers” .


Replacement theology and this thinking is completely unbiblical and in the book of Romans 11:25-26, Paul warned about this ignorance that would lead to the arrogance and conceit of the Gentiles. He says:

“I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in, 26 and in this way all Israel will be saved. As it is written:
“The deliverer will come from Zion;
he will turn godlessness away from Jacob.”

Scriptures like Mathew 19:28, and Romans 11:17-21, also refute this erroneous theology.

The permanent separation of Jew and Gentile believers occurred in one day when Constantine signed the Edict of Milan in A.D. 313, which officially recognized Christianity as the state religion in this way taking control away from God and enforcing "Christian" faith by earthly methods.

As the Gentile-dominated Church gained political power, it began to require Jews who accepted Yeshua as the Messiah to give up ties with Judaism.

Constantine’s influence sanctioned the moves away from the roots of Christianity. He called the Counsel of Nicea (325AD ) which fixed the dates of holy days by the secular / pagan calendar rather than the Jewish calendar. This detached the events in Jesus' ministry from their prophetic Jewish context, depriving the Church of deep insight into God and his designs.

The Roman catholic church grew in power until it ruled most of the known world and plunged the world into the Dark Ages . With this came the various and horrific persecution of Jews such as The Crusades which were military campaigns of the Roman Catholic church to gain control of Jerusalem from the Muslims and to punish the Jews as the alleged “Christ killers” on the road to and from Jerusalem.

Crusaders that were misguided were in it for their own ends and acting on their own prejudices by force of arms. They were thieves, robbers and murderers whose sins had been forgiven by the pope in advance of the Crusade. Any warrior who answered the pope’s call of the crusade could consider all his financial debts to any Jewish creditor cancelled, which reduced many Jewish communities to poverty.

The Spanish Inquisition (A.D 1478 – 1808) aimed at taking away the property of wealthy Jews and converts in Spain for the benefit of the royal court and the Roman Catholic Church.

So when Martin Luther introduced the Reformation, he thought that the Jews would be delighted with his new version of Christianity and would join him in an assault on the Roman Catholic church. But when they didn’t follow him, he turned on them in a way that greatly appealed to the German people and it was his doctrines that provided Adolf Hitler with the religious justification for his "Final Solution".


Putting aside the horrific events of history, we also need to examine the other side of the coin and ask a fundamental question rooted in God’s integrity.

Proverbs 12:1 says:

“Whoever loves instruction loves knowledge,
But he who hates correction is stupid.”

Proverbs 15:32 says:

“He who disdains instruction despises his own soul,
But he who heeds rebuke gets understanding.”


The book of Deuteronomy chapter 28 lays down the Covenant Curses for disobedience to God.

So the Jew also needs to ask

If Israel had truly been obedient to God as a nation and observant through the centuries , then why did these atrocities occur to them and why didn’t Israel experience the divine protection of God as laid out in the Covenant blessings?  Because God Does not God lie!

Yes there is always a righteous remnant that suffers when the nation sins, but we are not talking about a remnant here but horrendous things on a national level .

Putting all the ignorance and foolishness of the church of the other centuries aside, If Jews were right in rejecting Yeshua in the 1st Century, then why was the temple destroyed, why was Jerusalem sacked, why were so many Jews killed and why were many scattered from Jerusalem into exile?









.

[Questor]

Mar 4, 2014 9:15:56 GMT -8 cgpb said:
The following thread can also be viewed at the following link:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UcqFf7nVFY&feature=youtu.be


Jewish Misconceptions of Yeshua and / or the Christian faith!

Lets first look at what preconceived misconceptions are:

Preconceived Misconceptions are quick judgments based on lack of knowledge due to mindsets that have been molded by the environment a person has been subjected to. Misconceptions result when a person blindly follows what they have been taught, have been influenced by and fail to use right reasoning to make a difference between what is truth and what is error.

Preconceived misconceptions are a viewpoint forced on those without education by those who have information and education that they believe to be true, whether it is true or not, that are required to be blindly followed to belong to a particular group. This is groupthink, whether it applies to Jews or Christians, and most people that are taught within a society or community are also taught never to question or investigate any of the information. This is why being a Berean is so valued amongst Believers...they trust only so much as they can verify on their own.

The first Misconception we shall look at is:

“Jesus cannot be the Messiah because more Jewish blood has been shed in his name than in any other name.”

Is this a common idea among Jews? I never heard of it before.

No matter who is persecuting who, persecution on the basis of religious viewpoint is an attempt at violently forcing individuals to adhere to the teachings of the group, or not be able to belong, or even exist. It is always done for conformity's sake and the preservation of power...i.e., You must believe what I believe...or I will kill you, banish you, or tax you more than others.

This objection is rooted in church history because Jews suffered terrible things at the hands of the so called “Christian church”.

Now in resolving such a misconception, one must ask the following questions:

a. Who were these so called professing Christians who shed Jewish blood? They were within the specific regional religion that was apply regional religious belief or statutes, or misrepresentation of same for the sake of power.

b. Why did they do it? For power.

People know that there are both genuine and fake items sold on the market, (e.g there are genuine Chanel perfumes and there are fake ones ), likewise the same reasoning should be applied and understood that there are both genuine and fake people in religion. The enlightened versus the deluded and the genuine versus those that use religion to achieve their own ends rooted in selfishness, ambition, greed, ignorance or whatever. Any person who is deluded or misled and is placed in a position of power or authority is dangerous! - and it is wrong to accuse a faith on the basis of some people who in their delusion and wickedness abused their authority in the wrong way.

So how does one make a right distinction?

i. By firstly knowing what the scriptures of a faith teach.
ii. If a person lives up to those scriptures.

Distinguishing between religious law, ritual, or the God being worshiped is irrelevant to the preservation of power. Those persecuting others may truly believe what they say, or they may not...the persecution is done for the sake of power, and maintaining that power.

The Christian gospels teach to love your enemies, to do good to those that persecute you, to turn the other cheek and to repay evil with good. So the so called church that shed Jewish blood during history in the likes of the crusades, the inquisition, the holocaust etc…, could not have been the genuine God fearing church because their actions were a complete denial of what Yeshua taught. Just like the small group of self righteous Jewish religious leaders that were responsible for coercing Pilate to kill Yeshua don’t represent the entire Jewish people, likewise the so called Christians involved in these atrocities do not represent all Christians.

Messianics are termed Believers just because of this difficulty. In the fights to retain power, whether by Jerusalem, Rome, Spain, or Germany many people who thought themselves to be Righteous Christians in their faith Did As They Were Told To Do to remain within their specific religious grouping and rank, which accrued to them certain benefits of property and power.

As for Pilate, he was not a nice guy trying to save Yeshua from death. Pilate may have wished to stay out of the problem, and let Yeshua off the hook, so to speak, because he didn't like the Pharisee's, and would have wanted to slap them down, rather than kill Yeshua. It also would have made his marital life easier, as his wife was warning him not to get involved, as she was a believer, and had had a dream warning her of the problem Pilate would face.

Pilate was merely trying to secure his policy in ruling the Jews to retain his position of power and wealth, and to keep Jerusalem quiet, so that he would not get in trouble with the Emperor, and the local power groups, including the Pharisees, who genuinely thought Yeshua was a blasphemer, even though they did want him out of the way, so that their power and position was protected. King Herod was trying to stabilize his government between the power politics of the Pharisees and Pilate. Together, they accomplished what YHVH wanted them to do...provide a legal execution of Yeshua, and be able to blame each other.

After what Yeshua said to the Chief Rabbi at the time of his questioning of Yeshua, He was legally declared guilty, for in the Chief Priest's mind, Yeshua was not the Mashiach, the Son of the Living G-d, and by saying so, such a mere man as Yeshua appeared to be, was guilty of Blasphemy. The fact that Yeshua was the Mashiach is not what they believed. Under the , they were correct. Unfortunately they were wrong, but Yeshua had to be killed by someone. Manuevering Pilate into carrying out their sentence was entirely a power play, as was Pilate's decision to crucify Him.

Mark 14:60-64 (CJB)
60 The cohen hagadol stood up in the front and asked Yeshua, “Have you nothing to say to the accusations these men are making?”
61 But he remained silent and made no reply. Again the cohen hagadol questioned him: “Are you the Mashiach, Ben-HaM’vorakh?”
62“I AM,” answered Yeshua. “Moreover, you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of HaG’vurah and coming on the clouds of heaven.”
63 At this, the cohen hagadol tore his clothes and said, “Why do we still need witnesses?
64 You heard him blaspheme! What is your decision?” And they all declared him guilty and subject to the death penalty.

We must always be careful of the deception being used against those that have power, by the Adversary, to get the powerful to persecute...Jews against Christians, Christians against Jews...Islam and Communisim and Socialism against both, because they are YHVH's people, and therefore to be destroyed by the Destroyer. YHVH allows both Jews and Christians to be persecuted because of their dis-obedience in the past, and their rebelliousness.

The fact that the Jews missed their Mashiach's advent was as much YHVH blinding the Jews, as allowing the Adversary to manipulate the Pharisees, Herod, and Pilate against Yeshua.


Understand also that:
a) Just because a person is born or raised in a certain country , this does not make that person a genuine adherent of that country’s faith. There are people in all faiths who go to church, synagogues, temples, and follow traditions, but their speech and actions reflect the contrary.

b) People’s disobedience to God does not nullify who God is and what He requires from people. Wicked so called “christians” don’t nullify Yeshua and His Words anymore than the wicked kings of ancient Israel and Judah nullify The and the Prophets.

The Medieval times was also a time of great ignorance and the Bible was not available to common people during this time. Many of those involved in the atrocities against Jews had not even read the Bible and had no connection whatsoever to the teachings of Yeshua.

Alas that those involved through the ages that could read, and did read, led or ordered the persecutions for their own personal aims, not because of ignorance, but because of the lust for power.

Jews have to understand that genuine Christians love the Jewish people and are for them as they acknowledge that the blessings they have are from the Jewish people. It is the genuine Christians that are the friends of Israel and history is filled with Christians who risked their lives to save the Jewish people from such atrocities. Before we continue

Here is a list of a few examples of Christians that risked their lives for Jews:

Corrie Ten Boom - Dutch Christian who along with her father and other family members, helped many Jews escape the Nazi Holocaust during World War II and was imprisoned for it.

Metropolitan Chrysostomos - of the island of Zante in Greece who when ordered by the Germans to submit a list of all Jews on the island, submitted a document bearing just two names: his own and the Mayor's. The island's population hid every member of the Jewish community and all Jews on Zante were saved.

Archbishop Damaskinos - of Athens formally protested the deportation of Jews and quietly ordered churches under his jurisdiction to issue fake Christian baptismal certificates to Jews fleeing the Nazis. In this way thousands of Greek Jews were saved.

Omelyan Kovch - Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest was deported to Treblinka camp for helping thousands of Jews.

André and Magda Trocmé - French Reformed pastor and his wife who led a movement that saved 3,000-5,000 Jews.


Archbishop Stefan of Sofia Bulgaria , actively supported Dimitar Peshev's pressure against the Bulgarian government to cancel the deportation of the 48,000 Bulgarian Jews.

These people were wonderful, and I pray that there will be more of them in future. We will need them on both sides, and in the middle where Messianics meet.


If Christianity were a violent religion against Jews, then why don’t you see Christians going around killing Jews today, especially since Christianity has grown on a worldwide scale? The fact of the matter is , that it is always the followers of Yeshua who are being persecuted.

In the 1st century it was the Jewish followers of Yeshua who were being persecuted by their fellow Jews. In Medieval times, the Christian pioneers who wanted to translate the Bible into English in the 14th, 15th and 16th Centuries were the ones being persecuted and even killed by the so called church of that day for wanting to put the Bible into the language of the people. Even today true Christians are persecuted worldwide , and in Israel it’s the ultra Orthodox Jews that persecute the Messianic Jews – and not the other way around.


It is important to very briefly look at how Anti-Semitism crept into church history.


After the Crucifixion of Yeshua, the death of the apostle James (in about 62 A.D) led to a dispersing of Jewish believers from Jerusalem and a weakening of the Jewish Christian community. The destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 A.D , with the consequent end of the Levitical priesthood and sacrificial system, brought a virtual close to the Jewish religion.

The slaughter of the Jews by the Romans under the leadership of Titus and Hadrian caused many Christians to flee Jerusalem and became dispersed, moving out more and more beyond Israel. Many gentile believers fled Jerusalem and went to Pella. (60 miles northeast of Jerusalem). This had started the physical separation of Gentile and Jewish followers of Yeshua. Instead of Jerusalem, The church's new leadership came from its other centers in Antioch, Alexandria and, eventually, Rome – which were Gentile cities.

Christians saw the disasters that hit Jerusalem and the Jewish people as God’s judgment upon their unbelieving response to God’s anointed – Jesus Christ reinforcing their claim that they had become the "new Israel."

So by the 2nd Century A.D, the evolving doctrine of replacement theology had started to infiltrate the thinking of the early church. This theology taught that God is completely done with Israel and that the Christian church is its complete replacement regarding the plan, purpose, and promises of God. This meant that many of the promises that God made to Israel had to be spiritualized to refer to the Church.

You are over-simplifying the matter. It is true alas, that Jews persecuted Samaritans since the 2nd Temple's re-building was decreed in 536 BCE; then Samaritans and Messianic Jews in the first century; Rome under the Roman Empire persecuted both Jews and Christians, rather intermittently and often alternatively until 300 CE; then the Church Catholic against anyone who disagreed with them; then against the Protestants, the Greek Orthodox, and yes, the Jews...but Jews have not been in power in Judea from the time of Herod the Great, when Procurators were appointed in 6 BCE to the present, beginning May14th, 1948 ( which is why Pilate had to be manipulated on capital cases - death was only by the Romans.); some Protestants like Lutheran's in Germany have persecuted both Catholics and Jews; and of course, Islam against Jews and all Christians since Mohammed crammed a tiny portion of Judaic principles with his own ideas of how to run things, and blame it all on a moon god, Allah, but it was all for power over anyone who dis-agreed with his rapidly expanding band of brigands.

Herod Antipas could have risked Roman wrath by killing Yeshua, but legally, Kings and Tetrarchs had to prosecute capital crimes under Roman law after 6 BCE.

The Orthodox Jews persecute to a degree other Jews through political manueverings, but it against anyone who doesn't agree with them, and they maintain this power over the other Jews by guarding the Oracles...the Hebrew Texts against the future. But they can't kill anyone, and cannot yet arrange for Messianic Jews that were born in Israel to be deprived of their citizenship. They can only prevent Messianic Jews from moving there, and that too is political, because they don't want a larger voting population of Messianic Jews than they have already. Orthodox Jews will be kept blinded by YHVH and the Adversary until just before Yeshua returns...because He will not come back to Jerusalem until they are asking Mashiach to come, nationally, and individually, and are willing to bless any person who comes in the name of YHVH. That won't happen until Jerusalem is surrounded again by enemies. After that fight, in which all Believers in Yeshua partake in transformed bodies, the Remnant of the Jews that are living and survive, will go fight with Yeshua at Armegeddon.


The Gentile church probably did not seek to understand the Jewish roots of the faith as it should have (either because the scriptures weren’t so readily available or because having now been accepted also into the Covenant, they may have felt they had need of nothing else).

Unfortunately, the Greek Christians were those that seperated from the Nazarene Way of Judaism...a recognized sect of Judaism by Rome only until 135 CE, when Jews of all varieties were no longer allowed to circumcise their children, etc. The Greek Believers that wanted to continue practicing their religion, were seperated from the Jews at that time. By about 200 CE, the Christians made the divorce official, and the coup de gras of Constantine wasn't until 339 when converting to Judaism became a criminal offense.

This together with the physical separation , and the rise in Hellenism , contributed to the infiltration of Greek philosophical ideas which were unbiblical.

So Hellenistic Christians who had fled Jerusalem were being influenced by the Greeks to blame – not Rome- but the Jewish people for the death of Yeshua by early church fathers , such as Chrysostom who labeled the Jews as “the Christ killers” .

Unfortunate, but Jews and Nazarenes were fighting from the day Yeshua died. There were no Hellenic Christians yet...and Christians were not in large groups in the Roman Empire until AFTER Nero tortured and killed the Christians for the huge fire in Rome in 64 AD...probably after Sha'ul's execution, but since Nero really kicked up the persecution index by the time Sha'ul was killed...because Sha'ul had made a great impact from prison there...(it's amazing how many people want to become Christians when existing Christians refuse to deny their G-d to the death).


Replacement theology and this thinking is completely unbiblical and in the book of Romans 11:25-26, Paul warned about this ignorance that would lead to the arrogance and conceit of the Gentiles. He says:

“I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in, 26 and in this way all Israel will be saved. As it is written:
“The deliverer will come from Zion; he will turn godlessness away from Jacob.”

Scriptures like Mathew 19:28, and Romans 11:17-21, also refute this erroneous theology.

The permanent separation of Jew and Gentile believers occurred in one day when Constantine signed the Edict of Milan in A.D. 313, which officially recognized Christianity as the state religion in this way taking control away from God and enforcing "Christian" faith by earthly methods.

Good point...but not illegal for people to become Jews...which is the final point of not accepting that a religion is valid in your world.

As the Gentile-dominated Church gained political power, it began to require Jews who accepted Yeshua as the Messiah to give up ties with Judaism.

Constantine’s influence sanctioned the moves away from the roots of Christianity. He called the Counsel of Nicea (325AD ) which fixed the dates of holy days by the secular / pagan calendar rather than the Jewish calendar. This detached the events in Jesus' ministry from their prophetic Jewish context, depriving the Church of deep insight into God and his designs.

The Roman catholic church grew in power until it ruled most of the known world and plunged the world into the Dark Ages . With this came the various and horrific persecution of Jews such as The Crusades which were military campaigns of the Roman Catholic church to gain control of Jerusalem from the Muslims and to punish the Jews as the alleged “Christ killers” on the road to and from Jerusalem.

Crusaders that were misguided were in it for their own ends and acting on their own prejudices by force of arms. They were thieves, robbers and murderers whose sins had been forgiven by the pope in advance of the Crusade. Any warrior who answered the pope’s call of the crusade could consider all his financial debts to any Jewish creditor cancelled, which reduced many Jewish communities to poverty.

The Spanish Inquisition (A.D 1478 – 1808) aimed at taking away the property of wealthy Jews and converts in Spain for the benefit of the royal court and the Roman Catholic Church.

So when Martin Luther introduced the Reformation, he thought that the Jews would be delighted with his new version of Christianity and would join him in an assault on the Roman Catholic church. But when they didn’t follow him, he turned on them in a way that greatly appealed to the German people and it was his doctrines that provided Adolf Hitler with the religious justification for his "Final Solution".

Martin Luther had the ability to persecute, expel, and eventually kill anyone who disagreed with him.  Hitler used the same religious stance to persecute fist the Jews, then Catholics, and then anybody he didn't like.  These are all power moves, no matter the excuse.  Religion is not a valid excuse for hurting people, or compelling them to do anything against their conscience.  Hitler hated the Jews, certainly, and used the campaign against them, along with his racial purity ideas to make everyone who was not acting like a true Christian to go along with him.

Putting aside the horrific events of history, we also need to examine the other side of the coin and ask a fundamental question rooted in God’s integrity.

Proverbs 12:1 says:

“Whoever loves instruction loves knowledge,
But he who hates correction is stupid.”

Proverbs 15:32 says:

“He who disdains instruction despises his own soul,
But he who heeds rebuke gets understanding.”

These verses epitomize politicians of all varieties, religious or secular.

The book of Deuteronomy chapter 28 lays down the Covenant Curses for disobedience to God.

If Israel had truly been obedient to God as a nation and observant through the centuries , then why did these atrocities occur to them and why didn’t Israel experience the divine protection of God as laid out in the Covenant blessings? Because God Does not lie!

Yes there is always a righteous remnant that suffers when the nation sins, but we are not talking about a remnant here but horrendous things on a national level.

Putting all the ignorance and foolishness of the church of the other centuries aside, If Jews were right in rejecting Yeshua in the 1st Century, then why was the temple destroyed, why was Jerusalem sacked, why were so many Jews killed and why were many scattered from Jerusalem into exile?



It was necessary to YHVH to continue the carrying out of His overall plan of educating we poor humans in the knowledge of YHVH, but if the Jews had not disobeyed the , they would have accepted Yeshua, because they would have considered his claim to be valid. They would not have sought their own power, but gratefully handed it over to Him as they will do when He returns.

YHVH knew that the Jews were not ready yet as a people, anymore than the world was ready for what came after Yeshua's advent, but YHVH, as best can be seen from Genesis 4 onwards, had already seen what choices people would make under what circumstances. YHVH knew what the people understood, and what they needed to be taught, and still need to be taught, for the Kingdom to come in.

 The Temple was destroyed in AD 70 because the Messianic Assembly was created on the day that Yeshua died in AD 30, and the Temple, although greatly to be desired as a place of worship, was no longer a place of blood sacrifice in YHVH's eyes. As for all the disaster that have come upon Jews and Christians both, it has happened under the attack of the Adversary when their sins as individuals and countries create an opening for the Adversary to attack.

Obedience in all matters is necessary to the extent that you can perform them, being Human, and fallible, and then with the Grace of YHVH though Yeshua to cover your inabilities, you can be protected by your faith alone, and the hedge of protection that YHVH provides. But your choices, on where you live, and who you know, and what you do, along with what all the other people do in their lives, even if not against or the Brit Chadashah, affect your circumstances in this broken world, and in your broken body, while the Adversary is working in everyone's life, stirring up trouble, for that is his purpose...to kill, steal, and destroy.

His favorite weapons are pride, emotion, and the laws that exist everywhere... and only the Adversary can truly laugh at the irony of the way he accomplishes much of his damage...through the making of laws.
 
No matter what the Jews have done in their history, the only reason that they have seen so much pain is because they disobeyed G-d despite being His chosen people, and because the was designed so that it could not be kept perfectly without atonement.  Many of the Jews have been purposely blinded against Yeshua, the final, complete, enduring atonement because of their general disobedience through the years...but nearly all of the Believing Jews and Gentiles also have suffered, because our faith is weak, our obedience is poor, we live in a broken world, and the devil is afoot.