HI. Welcome to my new discussion page. Here is my question. Why is it that God, to whom no physical characteristics can be attributed, moved over to share his reign with Jesus? In the O.T. (old testament) it states that God says that he will be the ruler of the jewish people “forever”. He goes on to say distinctly that if any self proclaimed prophet says that he is taking over God, then he should be put to death…
So…
Question1: How could God lie that he would be our sole ruler for eternity?
Question2: Assuming that he did, according to the Christians, one who fails to belive in Jesus is, and I quote, “GOING TO HELL!” Now that bothers me because God, according to everyone, came down and told the Jews that he is our God, and he never came back down to proclaim that he is changing the rules?! That is comparable to a guy hitting a homerun in a baseball game, and the ump tells him that he is out. When asked how that can be, the ump replies, oh we changed the rules… sorry we hadn’t told you yet… Why wouldn’t he have come down and told the Jewish people that he was giving over the reigns to the holy trinity? So tell me, sir Christian, how can you proclaim that jesus was a preacher of peace for all life forms while with the same breathe tell me that i am going to hell for even though i am a good person? I have really done nothing wrong, other than being Jewish, but yet you guys are willing to damnate me to hell. This doesn’t make any sense to me.
Question3: Doesn’t it seem odd to you that the only nation who proclaims a large core of witnesses is Judaism. Jews boast a core of more than 3 million people who saw God proclaim his power. Islam proclaims Muhammeds personal experiences, Christianity is based on the accounts of Paul and Peter, Mormanism is all based on the adulterer Joseph Smith, and so on. All but Judaism. To but a bow on all this, the thing that is most telling to me is the fact that Judaism is the only religion that is not allowed, according to their own laws, to go out and convert people into our religion. It is actually quite the contrary, we have to try to deter people from converting to Judaism. We do everything to convince a non-jew away from joining our religion.
Question4: Why don’t Christians keep any of the laws put forth by god? Why do they not HAVE to rest on the sabbath? God, according to you and me both, stated that "I rested on the 7th day, and so must you? Why does it seem that Christianity was just a manipulation of Judaism so that people could do as they please, without the difficult Jewish laws, while still feeling at peace with their consciences because they are following god.
By the way, many ancient Jewish books, with , of course, nothing to gain, state countless accounts of Rabbis at the time who opted to help with the writing of the New Testament so that the Jews who were not observant would have a place to turn, and so the Jews who were on the threshold of their beliefs, would not be swayed and influenced by these other people, since now they are from a whole new religion. It is far more difficult to be influenced by a religious Christian than by a non-religious Jew.
Question one: They have ways of explaining this. Petty argument.
Question two: fair enough.
Question three: the (supposed) presence of such a large number of people says nothing. as for conversion…xunzian addressed this well in another thread. I’d also say it’s hard to be a jew and we don’t want slackers.
Question four: these are called jews for jesus or messianic jews. you must know their arguments for these questions. still a fair point, but I’d at least get harder questions. try jewsforjudaism.com for a change.
Question 1: Of course they have an answer, if not they would have no religion; but all their answers are BOGUS, find me a GOOD answer, not just an answer!
Question 2: Shkoyach, I think so too.
Question 3: This one is actually the most telling and concrete question in my opinion. According to the account of the bible 600,000 males between the ages of 20 to 60 (times three for ages 0-20 and 60-120, times two for the women equals 3.6 million) saw the “essence” of God. Now say this was a fabrication, how could someone put a book that states such a mind boggling fact?! The entire civilization of people to whom this book would have gone ballistic!! “You mean to tell me that millions of our ancestors saw God, and not one of us had that information passed down to us???” That would be similar to me stating that a giraffe flew across the sky a hundred years ago and millions of people saw it. That would never make it into a history book because there would be an outcry of people who dispute this fact! If millions of people saw such a phenomenon, the story would have been known. And hereby lies the evidence of God at Sinai, the fact that the book made it all this time without being dismissed proves to me that it must not have been a shock to those who read it for the first time; ergo it must have happened.
Question 4: I don’t need hard questions, I need unanswerable ones.
Thank you for your very informative post. There are many interesting points of discussion there, but I will hold myself to giving direct answers to the 2 questions you pose.
Why would God go into retirement, and turn the reigns of the universe over to another?
He would not. Christianity, like all the great monotheistic religions proclaims that God is One. Most Christian sects teach that God reveals himself as
the Eternal Unknowable (God as revealed to Abraham, who we call the Father).
the teacher who tells us what the Unknowable and Eternal means to us in our limited understanding (The God of Sinai, who we call the son). 3) our personal understanding of the Eternal and Unknowable (God’s influence which empowers faith, who we call the Holy Spirit).
You can see an analogous 3 ways in which you reveal yourself.
You have a conception of your individuality
You interact with your children in a way that expresses your individuality to them
you live in your children inasmuch as they have internalized your individuality.
As to your second question; I would hope that not too many Christians elevate themselves to the position of God in judging others. These folks need to review the story of the Biblical Job. Who can know the mind of God?
how bout judaism vs islam? or any other religion? claiming that ‘witnesses’ lend credibility to a religion is beside the point. people have ‘witnessed’ a great number of things, yet there is no credible source apart from the book itself that affirms the occurence of the ‘fantastic’ events that took place. You, nor anyone else of your sect for the past couple thousand years has ‘witnessed’ anything, and the credibility of the ‘witnesses’ is down to your belief and belief alone. Religion is in the end down to belief and to try and convince others of its virtue through rationalization is just absurd. You believe in judaism, you refuse to believe in any other religion because you think your book is more credible than any other. You’re exactly the same as a christian or muslim, only difference is how you justify your beliefs in relation to what suits your personality best and how you were raised.
Having lived much of my life in a religious society, conversion by rationalization is by far the most absurd thing I’ve encountered.
Women cooking? Obviously you haven’t been around orthodox families on their Sabbath day. Orthodox Jewish women go crazy from Thursday night until Friday sundown making sure that all the cooking is prepared and finished before the Sabbath. According to Jewish law, one is forbidden to cook on the Sabbath.
Changing diapers? Gimme a break.
Serving the food? That must be done in order to be able to eat, however, the table is always set & prepared before the Sabbath & everyone helps in the serving as much as possible to lessen the “burden” to any one individual.
Everybody helps clearing off the table, garbage remaining on the dishes is lightly pushed off into the garbage pail, dishes are only placed in the sink and water is briefly run on them. The dishes are not thoroughly washed until Saturday night.
Cleaning? No cleaning is ever done on the Sabbath.
“Question3: Doesn’t it seem odd to you that the only nation who proclaims a large core of witnesses is Judaism.”
In what sense do you mean witnesses? I am no scholar of Judiasm, but I thought that you did not believe in any corporeal manifestation of God? If you are speaking of the glory of God that surrounded Sinai or the Arc of the Covenant, I think every believer sees similar manifestations of God’s glory every day… God reveals himself in the beauty of His creation.
“Question4: Why don’t Christians keep any of the laws put forth by god?”
Every single Christian is a sinner. We break God’s laws, to our detriment, every hour of every day. We are weak. Our only hope is in God’s mercy. Talk about laws. I know you guys have a bunch, but we have more. Christians believe that God lives in them. This is what Christianity calls the “New Law”. Its not enough to have 6 million written commandments, because we can always do work-arounds. Recently I read of Islamic investors who get around the prohibition on interest by wrapping their investments in legal “Leases”. That way they get “rent” instead of “interest”. I do not considering that following a law. To follow the law is to follow the spirit of the law. Christians believe that every law of the old testament and every corollary to those laws developed over the centuries are all insufficient and incomplete. We can never know God perfectly and we can never know God’s will perfectly, unless he lives in us. Thats the Christian Holy Spirit…its God living in us telling us The Law each minute of each day. I believe that Judiasm teaches that one is made righteous by obeying the law. Christianity says we are too weak to obey the law, but that God never gives up on us.
You apparently misunderstood my point. It is not that we witnessed it, it is that we didnt argue when it said in the bible that we saw god’s manifestation, which means that it must have been true.
Boy, that is weak… How can you tell me that the laws have “developed and changed” over time, and that we are too weak to follow the laws… Number 1, apparently we are not too weak, because the jews do it. And number two, don’t you think that an all powerful God would realize if his laws were too difficult to handle, thereby bypassing the whole giving of the laws to begin with?
Okey Dokey…here we go!! Mild reproof here regarding “developed and changed”. If you are going to quote me out of context, please use the exact words I said. God’s Law never changes, human understanding of God’s law develops over time (corollaries).
Now regarding your # 1 in the quote above, do all Jews follow every law all of the time? Do all Jews know how to interpret all the laws in every situation? What was the meaning of the sacrificial offerings in the temple? What was the meaning of the scapegoat? What is the meaning of Yom Kippur? I can not be understanding you properly. Please let me know what is different about the way Jews follow the law from the way Christians follow the law.
Now regarding your #2 in the quote above. If God is good, then he would have to demand that we should be as righteous as He is. What of our imperfections should He be satisfied with? Certainly not a single one! But who can be as righteous as God? Isn’t is blasphemous to say that we are just as good as God? So, yes, God set us up to fail because even God can not make another god.
I hope you read my answers to your first two questions. They are in an earlier post. I think that our give and take here is very good for us both. To me it is sort of like prayer. Refreshing the old teachings in my mind. But there is much more to discuss. Eventually I would like to talk about our need to believe. Our religions are part of the story, but I think our needs underly our religion. I think human need is the touchstone where man interacts with God. I have read all your posts here and all of your father’s. Why not read my posts…I’m sorta new here too and there aren’t that many. May God make you strong in defense of your religion.
Question1: How could God lie that he would be our sole ruler for eternity?
Answer1: God is the Heavenly Father. Jesus is the Son of God…a co-equal with God.
Question2: Assuming that he did, according to the Christians, one who fails to belive in Jesus Answer2: John 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
John 14:7 If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him.
John 14: 8 Philip saith unto him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us.
John 14:9 Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou [then], Shew us the Father?
John 14:10 Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.
The verses continue on through John. In my opinion if a Jew who is orthodox in their belief and follow the 10 Commandments and the Old Testament, God will take them to Heaven. Although I am curious why the Jewish faith doesn’t continue with offerings and sacrifices to God.
Question3: Doesn’t it seem odd to you that the only nation who proclaims a large core of witnesses is Judaism.
Answer3: I have never heard of that. I couldn’t comment on it.
Question4: Why don’t Christians keep any of the laws put forth by god?
Answer4: Where it would show honor to God to follow the 10 Commandments to the letter, He realized due to our nature we will sin. Then I suppose with the advent of Jesus being on earth knowing the temptations and trials people suffer through, He became the ultimate sacrifice for us while admonishing to love God and one another since man is predisposed to sin.
It seems that the archduke believes that some Jewish witnesses are more reliable than are other Jewish witnesses, for no particular reason other than that the former supports what he wants to believe is true and the latter do not.
He ignores the reality of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, according to Christian tradition, merely because it is convenient for him to do so to support his particular group of unjustified beliefs.
So only Orthodox Jewish folks are right? I have been in Jewish homes on a Sabbath. It is not like what you describe. work is work no matter if it is light, don’t reckon God made the distinction real clear. But, there are differing views on what is work and what is day today survival. Orthodox jewish or Christians claim they are the only correct ones because they cling to the old. How is that good?
Being born from a Jewish parent does not necessarily mean that one is observant. Apparently you have been in non-observant Jewish homes on the Sabbath, whereas I AM an observant Jew & have been observing observant Jews ALL of my life (over 50 years). No offense, but I think my statement is just a tad more believable than yours.
First of all, you cannot use the word “they”.
Judaism is a religion created by God to define man.
Christianity is a religion created by man to define God.
Judaism & Christianity are both religions. Unfortunately for one of them, they cannot both be correct.
One of them MUST have been mislead way back in the beginning of the religion by someone or a relatively small group of conspirators. He or they must have had a good reason for starting it. Money, power, fame, &/or self-righteousness may have been the original reason/s.
Secondly, whoever the “correct” one is, is not correct merely because they cling to the old, which by the way, IS a “good” thing to do (with limitations). Clinging to the old (once again, with limitations), as you put it, is just one of many things that help to make a people “correct”.
Lastly, just to make a clarification here; another difference between Judaism & Christianity is that Judaism (Orthodox Judaism only) is the only one that “clings to the old”. Christianity has gone new. That’s why it’s called The “Old” Testament & The “New” Testament.