That literary censure issued from many church teachers and clergy against the Jews is most strange and grievous in the light of the debt which the church owes to Israel: every Jew, by his very existence is a sign post to God. The Jew is the subject of divine election, the recipient of God-given covenants, the law, the promises of God, the words of the prophets and all the heralds of the Messiah in the Torah. Their Messiah and the Christian’s Christ is the theme of their scriptures too,- either latent or patent throughout the sacred writings. The New Testament is built upon the Old, and completes it ; The church has among its foundations the prophets and the apostles who were Jewish, and Jesus , the chief cornerstone of the household of God, was born of the Jews. The debt which the church and the world owes is eternally obvious : every Jew is a living reminder that God lives, that He is the Creator and Sustainer of all life, that He orders the destinies of men and nations according to His purposes to bring glory to His name, that He is holy and gracious, that He is an ethical God who authorises standards of human behaviour, that He pronounces blessings and curses and fulfils both. History shows that a sovereign and superintending power, His power, has preserved the people of Israel over four thousand years,when other ancient people groups have passed into oblivion.…
It is some defence of these first Christian teachers and theologians, “ the fathers”,- that they were eager that the anathemas which Paul hurled at the young church in Galatia should not be forgotten. They were well aware of the bane which could infect the church through a reversion to legalism and ritualism. Judaism had these attractions as a refuge for those who were weak in faith and lacked assurance of full salvation through the grace of God. The Judaising of the faithful was seen as a constant threat.
Apart from the eternal benefits and status received by all who have faith in Jesus Christ as God and Saviour, even the sceptic and agnostic may admit to the immense gifts which the Jewish people have conferred upon mankind ,-far too many to list in this simple precis. How remarkable that the greatest number of Nobel prize winners are Jewish. Before the Holocaust had developed eleven out of thirty-eight winners were Jewish, and yet, as God had said in ancient times,-“you were the fewest of all peoples.”- Deut.ch.7,v.7.
But even so, the very presence of the Jew in society is an offence to those who reject the immanence of God in His world and His sovereign, transcendent rights in the lives of men and women. The Jew has received a God-given calling and destiny. He has also received a moral code from God; this troubles the guilty conscience of the unbeliever and those who jealously guard their independence of God. Such a self-reliant and Godless one has chosen to cling to gods of his own creating or his own traditions.
There are other unrecognised benefits which are transmitted to all posterity from the Old Testament and the religion of the Jews. The progressive revelation of God, concerning His being, nature, character and purposes for His created order and the life of mankind are found in no other faith,where the sole source of inspiration is a defective self-hood and corrupted imagination. The unfolding revelation of God in the whole of the Bible makes clear the validity of linear time, in total distinction from the cyclical theory of time common in Eastern and animist religions. Uncongenial as it is for modern man, all human history has a beginning in time, and it is moving in a linear motion towards a finite end, and “ in keeping with His promises ( every Christian is ) looking forward to a new heaven and new earth, the home of righteousness.”) –2 Peter,ch.3,v.13. This promise contrasts diametrically with the escapist longings and dreams of offered by Eastern mystical religions which propose an endless cycle of meaningless existences in which personal responsibility and human sinfulness is muted and discounted. Another uncomfortable goad in the conscience of modern man is that there will be a final accountability ,- it is written into all the scriptures. There is a future judgement which carries rewards and punishments; this accounting will be decreed in a spiritual, eternal dimension, outside of our present framework of time and space. It is only against this forbidding background that God’s amazing love and grace towards erring mankind becomes meaningful and highly relevant for all men and women, who desperately need God’s forgiveness and the eternal life offered to any who receive Jesus Christ, the only appointed Saviour and Friend of sinners. Without the new life offered to all who receive Him personally, men and women remain under condemnation, lost, spiritually dead and eternal orphans.
The presence of Judeo-Christianity raised uneasy questions in the minds of the secularists, humanists and rationalists who came to the fore in the Enlightenment of 18th. century Europe. Their natural successors were the amoral theorists who ushered in the Nazi ideology. For the latter, the ten commandments were anathema . The Jew became an unacceptable presence in Nazi theory because of his so-called “slave mentality “- the adherence to a moral code. “Conscience is a Jewish invention.”- Hitler speaking to Rauschning
The rejection of the Jews and the continuing antagonism against them which is welling-up from a dark abyss is not a purely human phenomenon, although mankind is fully implicated in the age-long sufferings of the Jews. Differing pretexts for this hostility have been offered throughout history, but there seems to be an underlying spiritual energy. The Jews have suffered from the period of the captivity in Egypt until the present day, and even now, in their homeland. Human agents have been used,- pagans,idolatrous tribes in Canaan, Christian and Islamic leaders, rationalists, agnostics, apostate Jews, uncontrollable mobs, tyrants, and peace-loving humanists. The malignant authors of yesterday have now been succeeded by the anti-Zionist Arab media.
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