Israel is Israel?

[Guest shiloh357]

In all honesty, I don't see this as a problem, except here at Worthy where this topic constantly causes strife and discord.

It may not be a problem for YOU, but it is a very big problem because it speaks to credibility of most if not all of the early church fathers.

The teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ command for his followers to love one another, and even our enemies and do not promote the murdering of any person or race, so obviously they were what the Bible calls wolves in sheep's clothing, and not Christians. No person born again of God having the Holy Spirit living inside of them could do such a thing.

Which is where the conundrum lies. Were the early church fathers Christians if they hated and promoted the persecution of the Jews?

Most Jewish people that I know understand this once it is explained to them and do not harbor such bitterness as I have seen here in thread after thread on this topic since I have been here.

With all due respect, The Jewish community at large harbors a lot of understandable animosity and suspicion toward the church. That issue cannot be approached in a vacuum.

It really serves no purpose and doesn't glorify God at all. We must put off our bitterness, and forgive others for offenses done against us and move forward in the love of Christ that He wants us have and share with others.

Which comes off as a long way of saying "I don't really care." That may not be your intent, but what you just posted above comes off to Jewish people as an attempt to just sweep 1,700 years of persecution under the rug.

Gentile Christians are tortured and persecuted every day around the world, and have to forgive their torturers the same as Messianic Jews do who have lost family members in the Holocaust.

This is not an issue of unforigivenes, but of intellectual honesty. I am not harboring unforgiveness. I am highlighting an issue that speaks to internal inconsisency in the church. We are saying one thing, but acting the opposite.

Repentance always precedes forgiveness. The Church just wants the Jews to drop the issue, and move on. The Church wants the Jews to forgive without the Church having to own its 1,700-year-long history of persecution and bloodshed. The Church does not want to have to go back and evaluate the teachings of its most prominent leaders throughout history and see if their teachings and beliefs actually demonsrate an authentic profession of faith.

[nikki1]

Blessings, Shiloh357

Were the early church fathers Christians if they hated and promoted the persecution of the Jews?

No, they were not Christian. God

[Smalcald]

The Church is the Body of Christ on this earth it brought us the Gospel, it brought us the bible, it spread the Word around the entire globe.

Now, do we know if individual people who call themselves Christians are saved? I don't think we can.

Were the vast majority Southern Baptist who supported slavery in the South saved? Can we say now that those men who fought in the Confederacy, who honestly believed that black people were not fully human, were most certainly NOT saved? How about all of those people who went to Christian Churches in the South who hated Martin Luther King who believed in both anti-Semitic, anti-black and anti-catholic beliefs and, who went out and protested and spit in his face and who burned Ole Miss, can we say for CERTAIN that they were not saved? For the same reason can we read some writings from men who lived 1700 years ago let alone 50 years ago; and now say oh because they said some things that sound anti Semitic to our ears today are not saved? Maybe they were not, maybe they were.

I do not believe that anti-Semitism can be laid at the feat of the Christian Church, it is simply to wide spread. There are more anti-Semites who are outside the Church than inside of the Church.

There is no way anybody can say that the early Church fathers were not Christian, God used them to give us the New Testament. Maybe some were not, we don't know for sure our faith is an individual faith not a corporal faith.

But there are many German soldiers who fought for Germany in WWII who died fighting for that evil regime who are in heaven. The fact is given the patriotism of most of us on this board for our homeland for our country, if we happened to have been born in Germany in 1939 and were 18 years old we would not desert but would have fought for our country.

But we must get at the roots of racism and anti-semitism in our churches, we must do that. To do that we must be honest but also we must understand what has really happened for good and for evil.

[nikki1]

Now, do we know if individual people who call themselves Christians are saved? I don't think we can.

I disagree. We can know. Jesus said Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Matthew 17:16

There is no way anybody can say that the early Church fathers were not Christian

See above. If anyone, I don

[Guest yod]

I will say what I believe is that the correction you speak of, who did God use to do that?

Christians

Secondly the books of the New Testament, which ones would be in the New Testament and which ones would not be in the New Testament, I don't know how that could have been done by what books that the Jew's considered Holy, in that those decisions were not made by the Jewish Church prior to the Church Fathers, but made indeed by the very Church Fathers.

Yes, but the books chosen had to be in harmony to the books considered holy by the jews. This is why the Apocrypha was rejected ultimately. It referenced writings which were present in jewish history at the time of the Septuagint but were not considered holy by the jews (though they may have had historical value)

God has always preserved a remnant and some of the church fathers were humble men. Polycarp, for example, though he was outnumbered still provided pure salt in the early days and I'm sure that there had to be sincere christians in every age, though the general state of the "church" (institution) has always been more religious (control) than righteous (faithful) in my opinion.

Some christians, even in this thread, are modern versions of Marcion's teachings, who believed that only Paul's letters should be considered holy because of the fact that they could be redefined through humanistic lenses as anti-jewish.

Polycarp actually studied under John unlike the rest of the church fathers. And Polycarp's church in Smyrna observed Sabbath and all the Feasts. He argued for keeping the Passover instead of the change to Easter. He was one of the first christian martyrs and his writings/opinions are worthy of consideration for the simple fact that he was a humble man in all of his ways.

[Smalcald]

I think that is very fascinating.

If we consider the continual balance between control and humility which has existed throughout the ages in our faith, from Abraham through the believers today we do see a consistent trend.

We are in agreement that God has preserved His Word and His people both inside traditional or system congregations and outside of those congregations and this is the rock which not matter how bad things may look, Hades cannot prevail against.

[Smalcald]

Now, do we know if individual people who call themselves Christians are saved? I don't think we can.

I disagree. We can know. Jesus said Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Matthew 17:16

There is no way anybody can say that the early Church fathers were not Christian

See above. If anyone, I don

[freeman455]

Now, do we know if individual people who call themselves Christians are saved? I don't think we can.

I disagree. We can know. Jesus said Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Matthew 17:16

There is no way anybody can say that the early Church fathers were not Christian

See above. If anyone, I don

[Smalcald]

Are you asking me?

Jews are a people not a faith.

So some are believers in Christ, some follow modern Judaism, some are atheist some are totally secular, some are Buddhists and so forth.

[nikki1]

God gave humanity Holy scripture. He used a variety of people to form that scripture; of course He used the Jews to give us the Torah and the Letters of the New Testament.

Like who? The Scriptures were written by the Jews. Holy men of God filled with the Holy Spirit. And your point is what? I was merely responding to your statement