In this and the next three chapters the spiritual aspects of Israel will be examined and discussed. Once again, it should become self-evident who best fulfills these marks of Israel.
"Blessed are you, O Israel; who is like you, a people saved by YHWH. (Deuteronomy 33:29)
... thus says YHWH your creator, O Jacob, and He who formed you, O Israel: "Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are Mine! When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they will not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched, nor will the flame burn you. For I am YHWH your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior...." (Isaiah 43:1-3)
Israel has been saved by YHWH with an everlasting salvation; you will not be put to shame or humiliated to all eternity. (Isaiah 45:17)
Surely says YHWH, "...I will save your [Israel's] sons. And I will feed your oppressors with their own flesh, and they will become drunk with their own blood as with sweet wine; and all flesh [mankind] will know that I, YHWH, am your Savior, and your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob." (Isaiah 49:25-26)
"...a Redeemer [Yeshua the Christ] will come to Zion and to those who turn from transgression in Jacob [Israel]," declares YHWH. (Isaiah 59:20)
... thus says YHWH, "Sing aloud with gladness for Jacob, and shout among the chiefs of the nations; proclaim, give praise, and say, 'O YHWH, save Thy people, the remnant of Israel."' (Jeremiah 31:7)
"...days are coming," declares YHWH, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah .... But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days," declares YHWH, "I will put My law within them, and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. And they shall not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, 'Know YHWH,' for they shall all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them," declares YHWH, "for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more." Thus says YHWH, Who gives the sun for light by day, and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, Who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar.... "If this fixed order departs from before me," ... "Then the offspring Of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before Me forever." Thus says YHWH, "If the heavens above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out below, then I will also cast off all the offspring of Israel for all [the iniquities] that they have done...." (Jeremiah 31:31-37)
"In those days and at that time," declares YHWH, "search will be made for the iniquity of Israel, but there will be none; and for the sins of Judah, but they will not be found; for I shall pardon those whom I leave as a remnant." (Jeremiah 50:20)
... thus says YHWH God, "Behold, I Myself will search for My sheep [when used in the Bible to describe people, "sheep" always refers to Israel] and seek them out. As a shepherd cares for his herd in the day when he is among his scattered sheep, so I will care for My sheep and will deliver them from all the places to which they were scattered on a cloudy and gloomy day. And I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries and bring them to their own land.... I will feed My flock and, I will lead them to rest," declares YHWH God. "I will seek the lost [Matt. 10:5-7; 15:241, bring back the scattered [Deut. 30:1-3; Jn. 11:52], bind up the broken, and strengthen the sick...." (Ezekiel 34:11-16)
"...I [YHWH] will make a covenant of peace with them [the Israelites]; it will be an everlasting covenant [the New Covenant] with them. And I will place them and multiply them, and will set My sanctuary [Yeshua] in their midst forever. My dwelling place also will be with them; and I will be their God, and they will be My people. And the [heathen non-Israelite] nations will know that I am YHWH who sanctifies Israel, when My sanctuary is in their midst forever." (Ezekiel 37:26-28)
Shepherd Thy people [Israel] with Thy scepter, the flock of Thy possession which dwells by itself in the woodland, in the midst of a fruitful field.... Who is a God like Thee, who pardons iniquity and passes over the rebellious act of the remnant of His possession? He does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in unchanging love. He will again have compassion on us; He [YHWH] will tread our iniquities underfoot. Yes, Thou wilt cast all their sins into the depth of the sea. Thou wilt give truth to Jacob and unchanging love to Abraham [and their descendants], which Thou didst swear to our forefathers from the days of old. (Micah 7:14-20)
... she will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for it is He who will save His people [Israel] from their sins. (Matthew 1:12)
... you, Bethlehem, land of Judah; are by no means least among the leaders of Judah; for out of you shall come forth a Ruler [Yeshua], who will shepherd My people Israel. (Matthew 2:6)
These twelve [apostles] Jesus sent out after instructing them, saying, "Do not go in the way [lifestyle - Acts 9:21] of the [pagan] Gentiles, and do not enter any city of the Samaritans; but rather go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And as you go, preach, saying, 'The kingdom of heaven is at hand."' (Matthew 10:5-7)
... He [Yeshua] answered and said, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." (Matthew 15:24)
Blessed be [YHWH] the Lord God of Israel, for He [Yeshua -YHWH in the flesh] has visited us and accomplished redemption for His people [Israel].... To give to His people the knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins.... (Luke 1:68, 77)
He [Yeshua] is the one whom God exalted to His right hand as a Prince and a Savior, to grant repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.... (Acts 5:31)
From the offspring of this man [David] according to promise God has brought to Israel a Savior, Jesus, after John had proclaimed before His coming a baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel. (Acts 13:23-24)
... who are Israelites, to whom belongs the adoption as sons and the glory and the covenants [Abrahamic, Mosaic and Christian] and the giving of the Law and the temple service and the promises.... (Romans 9:4)
... Isaiah cries out concerning Israel, "Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, it is the remnant [of Israel] that will be saved...." (Romans 9:27)
... all Israel [a remnant from both houses] will be saved; just as it is written; "The Deliverer will come from Zion, He [Yeshua] will remove ungodliness from Jacob." (Romans 11:26)
... if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion sought for a second. For finding fault with them, He says, "Behold, days are coming, says YHWH, when I will effect a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah; like the covenant which I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt...." (Hebrews 8:7-9)
Jews
Both Jeremiah 31 and Hebrews 8 declare that the New Covenant has been made "with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah," or in other words, with physical Israelites. This has not been accomplished with the modern-day Jews who have viciously rejected the New Covenant religion of Christianity. They deny Christ, they hate Christianity, and they are not receptive to the tenets of the New Covenant in any manner whatsoever.
In defining the Greek word Ioudaios translated "Jew(s)" in the New Testament, Pastor Joseph Henry Thayer stated:
The apostle John ... looked upon the Jews [Judahites practicing Judaism or Judaized Edomite converts] as a body of men hostile to Christianity, with whom he had come to see that both he and all true Christians had nothing in common as respects religious matters ....1
There is no better place to discover Jewish thinking on any particular subject than the Talmud, since it is the primary source for all that the Jews believe. This is made clear by the following statements made by leading Jewish and non-Jewish authorities alike who desired to expose the Talmud for what it really is. Bernard Lazare wrote:
...this book of enormous authority ... this Talmud which to the Jew has been a code, an expression of their nationality, which has been their soul....2
... the Talmudic practices ... contributed to forming their [the Jews'] spirit. The Talmud had formed the Jewish nation after its dispersion; thanks to it, individuals of diverse [racial] origin had constituted a [the Jewish] people; it [the Talmud] had been the mould of the Jewish soul, the creator [rather than God] of the [Jewish] race....3
In This is My God: The Jewish Way of Life Herman Wouk, a Jew, portrayed the Talmud as the lifeblood and law of the Jews:
The Talmud ... is to this day the circulating heart's blood of the Jewish religion [Judaism]. Whatever laws, customs, or ceremonies we observe - whether we are orthodox, Conservative, Reform, or merely spasmodic sentimentalists - we follow The Talmud. It [the Talmud] is our common law.4
Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz declared the following in his book The Essential Talmud:
... the Talmud is the central pillar, soaring up from the foundations and supporting the entire spiritual and intellectual edifice. In many ways the Talmud is the most important book in Jewish culture, the backbone of creativity and of national life. No other work has had a comparable influence on the theory and practice of Jewish life, shaping spiritual content and serving as a guide to conduct. The Jewish people have always been keenly aware that their continued survival and development depend on study of the Talmud.5
...the Talmud [rather than the Bible] is, to this day, the primary source of Jewish law....6
After detailing a ban put on all Talmuds in 1592 by Pope Clement VIII, Mr. Steinsaltz warned his fellow Jews that their very existence depended upon the Talmud:
... the Anti-Talmud decree had a decisive impact on the cultural life of the Italian Jewry, which never regained its former splendor. This was a vivid historical illustration of the fact that a Jewish community which did not study the Talmud was condemned to attrition.*7
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*For additional quotations regarding the Talmud, see Appendix 1.
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What does the Talmud have to say about this New Covenant religion of Christianity?
SHABBATH TOSEPH 116a: Rabbi Meir calls [the New Covenant Scriptures] heretical ... Aaven Gilaion (volumes of iniquity) because they [Christians] call them Gospels [infallible truth, the Word of God].
SHABBATH TOSEPH 116a: The [New Testament] books of the heretics [Christians] are not to be saved from the flames.... Rabbi Jose however says, "On festival days the divine names should be torn out of the books of the Christians and hidden away; what remains must be given to the flames." But Rabbi Tarphon says: "...if those books should ever fall into my hands I would burn them together with the divine names contained therein...."*
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*"The Gospels must be burned - says Rabbi Tarphon - for paganism is not as dangerous to the Jewish faith [Judaism/Talmudism] as the Jewish [Israelite] Christian sects. I should rather seek refuge in a pagan temple than in an assembly of Jewish [Israelite] Christians---Originally, all Talmudical inhibitions contemplated the Jewish [Israelite] Christians alone. The Tannaim [authorities of the first two centuries A.D., from Rabbis Hillel and Shammai to Rabbi Vehuda ha-Nasi, whose views and traditions were preserved and are codified in the Mishnah] wanted to preserve the faithful [Jews] from Christian contamination; for this purpose the Gospels were likened to books on witchcraft. - Bernard Lazare, Antisemitism Its History and Causes (New York, NY: The International Library Publishing Company, 1903) pp. 48-49.
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The following quotations are from books highly esteemed by the Jews since they explain many obscure passages in the Talmud:
Iore Deah, Krakow Edition
IORE DEAH 151, 1, Hagah: It is not permitted to sell water to an Akum* [a Christian] if it is known that it will be made into Baptismal water.
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*"Akum ... the word Akum in Jewish books, especially in the Schulkhan Arukh, is applied to Christians. This is evident from numerous passages: In the Orach Chaiim (113,8) those who use a cross are called Akum...." Pastor Iustin Bonaventura Pranaitis, "The Names Given to Christians in the Talmud," The Talmud Unmasked: The Secret Rabbinical Teachings Concerning Christians (Saint Petersburg, Russia: Imperial Academy of Sciences Printing Office, 1892) p. 43.
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IORE DEAH 158, 1: The Akum [Christians] who are not enemies of ours must not be killed directly, nevertheless they must not be saved from danger of death. For example, if you see one of them fall into the sea, do not pull him out unless he promises to give you money.
IORE DEAH 158, 2: [Jewish] Renegades who turn to the pleasures of the Akum [Christians] ... are to be killed.
Hilkhoth (by Maimonides - Rabbi Moses ben Maimon])
HILKHOTH MAAKHALOTH 9: ... since Christians are idolators, it is not allowed even to use their wine to advantage.
HILKHOTH AKUM 10, 1: Do not have any pity for them.... Therefore, if you see an Akum [Christian] in difficulty or drowning, do not go to his help. And if he is in danger of death, do not save him from death.
Do not eat with idolaters, nor permit them to worship their idols [practice their religion].... Either turn them [Christians] away from their idols or kill them.
HILKHOTH AKUM 10, 2: ... [Jews] who lapse from their religion [Judaism] and become epicureans* [Christians], are to be killed, and we [Jews] must persecute them [the Christian converts] to the end. For they afflict and turn the [Jewish] people from God [actually from Judaism].
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*Rabbinical term for an unbeliever or skeptic.... The term, which occurs in the Mishnah, has come to be applied loosely to skeptics [mainly Christians] not adhering to Jewish religious belief and practice [Judaism/Talmudism]." "EPIKOROS, EPICLTRUS," The Standard Jewish Encyclopedia (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1966) p. 130.
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Zohar
ZOHAR 1, 25b: Those [Jews] who do good to the Akum [Christians] ... will not rise from the dead.
ZOHAR 1, 38b, 39a: In the places of the fourth heaven are ... all those [Jews] who destroyed idolatrous nations [Christians] ... and those [Jews] who killed off people who worship idols are clothed in purple garments so that they may be recognized and honored.8
Keeping these passages from the Talmud and related writings in mind, it is little wonder that The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia reports that at one time Christians confiscated and destroyed Talmuds:
During the Middle Ages, the Babylonian T. [Talmud] was stated, chiefly by Jewish apostates [from Judaism/Talmudism], to be blasphemous and inimical to Christianity, and this led to large numbers of copies being seized and burnt.9
I have once again chosen to be quite exhaustive in citing quotations by prominent Jews regarding their outlook on Christianity. My thoroughness is for the same reason as stated in Chapter 6.
Benjamin Disraeli, 1858
The people of God [Jews misnamed] cooperate with atheists; the most skillful accumulators of property ally themselves with communists; the peculiar and chosen race [Jews misnamed] touch the hand of all the scum and low castes of Europe! And all this because they [the Jews] wish to destroy that ungrateful Christendom ....10
Moses Hess, 1862
Christianity was essentially a revolt against the classic essence of Judaism and Paganism.11
The most dangerous enemy of the Jewish religion [Talmudism] was ... in the Middle Ages the religion of ... Christianity. The Jewish people ... preserved the purity of its religion from both of these perversions....12
Rabbi Reichhorn, 1869
Every hundred years, We, the Sages of Israel [Judaism], have been accustomed to meet in Sanhedrin in order to examine our progress towards the domination of the world which Jehovah has promised us, and our conquests over the enemy - Christianity....
For ages past the sons of Israel [Jews misidentified], despised and persecuted have been working to open up a path to power. They are hitting the mark. They [the Jews] control the economic life of the accursed Christians; their influence preponderates over politics and over manners [morality].
At the wished-for hour, fixed in advance, we [Jews] shall let loose the Revolution which by ruining all classes of Christianity will definitely enslave the Christians to Us. Thus will be accomplished the promise of God made to His People [this Rabbi was referring to the Jewish people; however, God made no such promise to the Jewish people].13
Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, 1897
It is indispensable for us [Jews] to undermine all faith, to tear out of the minds of the GOYIM the... [Christian] principle of Godhead, and the spirit....14When we [Jews] come into our kingdom it will be undesirable for us that there should exist any other religion than ours of the One God with whom our destiny is bound up by our position as the Chosen People [an illegitimate claim of the Jews] and through whom our same destiny is united with the destinies of the world. We must therefore sweep away all other forms of belief [besides Judaism]. If this gives birth to the atheists whom we see today, it will not, being a transitional stage, interfere with our views, but will serve as a warning for those generations which will hearken to our preaching of the religion of Moses,* that, by its stable and thoroughly elaborated [Talmudic] system has brought all the peoples of the world into subjection to us.15
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*The Jews preach "religion of
Moses" in name only. "The scribes and the Pharisees have seated
themselves in the chair [taken the place] of Moses." (Matthew 23:2)
We [Jews] have long past taken care to discredit the
[Christian] priesthood of the goyim, and thereby to ruin
their mission on earth which in these days might still be a great
hindrance to us. Day by day its [Christianity's] influence on the
peoples of the world is falling lower. Freedom of conscience has
been declared everywhere, so that now only years divide us from the
moment of the complete wrecking of that Christian religion....16
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Bernard Lazare, 1903
... they [the Jews] are the enemies of God and Jesus Christ; they call the apostles apostates; they scoff at the Bible of the Septuagint [Greek translation of the Old Testament]; in their daily prayers they curse the Saviour [Yeshua the Christ] under the name of the Nazarene; they build new synagogues as if to insult the Christian religion; they Judaize the believers.... In brief, "there is no wickedness in the world which the Jews are not guilty of, so that they seem to aim at nothing but the Christians' ruin.17
The Jews did not stop there .... Their activity was such as to give rise to ... the existence of a secret [Jewish] society sworn to the destruction of Christianity."18
... attacking all dogmas and forms of Christianity with a bitterness entirely Judaic, and with all the subtlety of those [supposedly] peerless casuists who created the Talmud.19
The Jew ... is not content merely to destroy Christianity, but he preaches the gospel of Judaism [Talmudism]; he not only assails the Catholic or the Protestant faith, but he incites to unbelief, and then imposes on those whose faith he has undermined with his own conception of the world, of morality and of life. He [the Jew] is engaged in his historic mission, the annihilation of the religion of Christ.20
Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise, 1910
I would have him [a Jew] prove his Jewishness not merely by rejection of the teachings of Christianity ... but by his affirmation in the life of all that is highest and holiest in the teachings of Israel [Judaism/Talmudism].21
Leo Pfeffer, 1910
To the Jewish child devoted to the religion of his fathers, the New Testament in its entirety is blasphemous for attributing divinity to a human being [Yeshua].22
The London Jewish World, 1923
Fundamentally, Judaism is anti-Christian!23
Abram Leon Sachar, 1930
No other literature [than the Talmud] was worthy of serious consideration. The works of Christians [the New Testament] and pagans were not only dangerous, but a stupid waste of time which could better be devoted to the sacred lore [the Talmud].24
Rabbi Louis Finkelstein, 1949
As Judaism [Talmudism] antedates the origin of both Christianity and Muhammadanism, its views regarding both faiths are simply negative; it has not accepted their teachings.25
Rabbi Joachim Prinz, 1953
The New Testament is in profound conflict with the basic principles of Judaism [Talmudism]. It is not accepted by the Jewish people as a sacred book .... The New Testament is not recognized as part of the Bible. The teachings of the New Testament are in complete and profound conflict with what Judaism teaches.26
Joseph Klausner, Ph.D., 1953
Had there not been in Jesus' teaching something contrary to the "world-outlook" of Israel [the Jews], there could never have arisen out of it a new teaching so irreconcilable with the spirit of Judaism: ex nihilo nihil fit [out of nothing, nothing comes]. Though Jesus' teaching may not have been deliberately directed against contemporary Judaism, it certainly had within it the germs from which there could and must develop in course of time a non-Jewish and even an anti-Jewish teaching.27
...Judaism differs and remains distinct from Christianity or Christianity from Judaism.28
...Jesus was in strong antagonism with the Pharisaic Judaism of the time.29
...Jesus was the antithesis of Judaism.*30
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*Mr. Klausner quoted Wilhelm Bousset: "The Gospel develops hidden tendencies of the Old Testament, but protests against prevailing ideas in Judaism." Joseph Klausner, Jesus of Nazareth: His Life, Times, and Teaching (New York, NY: The Macmillan Company, 1953) p. 94.
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Rabbi Julius Nodel, 1958
The New Testament is a work of malicious libel and the story of events leading to the trial and crucifixion, a dragon seed from which has come misery, bloodshed, and suspicion.31
Rabbi Moshe M. Maggal, 1961
... notice the great difference between the Jewish and Christian religions. But these are not all. We [Jews] consider the two religions so different that one excludes the other.
... we [Jews] emphasized that there is no such thing as a Judeo-Christian religion. ...there is not any similarity between the two concepts.32
Gus Hall (Gus Hallberg), 1962
I dream of the hour when the last [American] Congressman is strangled to death with the guts of the last preacher - and since the Christians seem to love to sing about blood, why not give them a little of it? Slit the throats of their children and drag them over the mourner's bench and the pulpit and allow them to drown in their own blood; and then see whether they enjoy singing these hymns.33
Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits, 1966
As to a dialogue in the purely theological sense, nothing could be more fruit(less) and pointless. Judaism is Judaism because it rejects Christianity, and Christianity is Christianity because it rejects Judaism. What is usually referred to as the Judeo-Christian tradition exists only in Christian or secularist fantasy. As far as the Jews are concerned, Judaism is fully sufficient. There is nothing in Christianity for them.34
'The New Testament Has Been the Most Dangerous Anti-Semitic Tract in History'According to Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits of Jerusalem, "In its effect upon the life of the Jewish people, Christianity's New Testament has been the most dangerous anti-Semitic [actually anti-Talmudic] tract in history." |
Rabbi Howard Singer, 1967
I think that interreligious dialogue between Christians and Jews is a farce....
... dialogues between Jews and Christians make no sense because there is neither common ground nor the possibility of important, unifying consequences....
I think it's high time somebody broke down and admitted that the phrase "Judeo-Christian tradition" is one of the most successful public-relations triumphs of the century. Our ancestors, both Christian and Jewish, would hardly have understood it.... As [philosophy] Professor Walter Kaufmann of Princeton [University] has pointed out, there is no more reason to talk about a Judeo-Christian tradition than there is to talk about a Judeo-Islamic or a Greco-Christian tradition....
...Jews are sharply conscious of their minority status, and their organizations understand the techniques of good public relations [the promotion of the so-called Judeo-Christian heritage and ethic]. 35
James Yaffe, 1968
Father Edward Flannery ... felt the enormity of the problem for the first time when a Jewish girl said to him, "The cross makes me shudder. It's like an evil presence to me." Most Jews have had a similar reaction, often in their school days, when they had to join in on hymns with the name of Jesus Christ in them. How many of us can remember mouthing those words or keeping our fingers crossed while we pronounced them, as if we were in danger of betraying our people to the enemy.36
U.S. Senator Howard Morton Metzenbaum (D-OH), 1986
Do not let the forces of evil [Christianity] take over to make this a Christian nation."37
The Israeli Supreme Court recently decided that Jews recognizing Yeshua (Jesus' given Hebrew name) as the Messiah are not considered "Jews" with regard to the Law of Return and can no longer immigrate to the State of Israel:
THE CHRISTIAN NEWSFEBRUARY 4, 1991, PAGE 22Messianic Jews Denied Right to Immigrate to IsraelFrom the Messianic Jewish Alliance of America, Box 417, Wynnewood, PA 19096 On December 25, 1989, the Supreame Court of Israel rejected the request of a Messianic Jewish couple, Gary and Shirley Beresford be allowed to make Aliyah (the right of any Jew to immigrate to Israel). Upon arrival, the new immigrant receives immediate citizenship and special benefits. The Messianic Jewish Alliance of America ( MJAA), the largest organization of its kind in the world, representing the intrests of the estimated 100,000 Jews in the United States who have come to believe in Yeshua (Jesus) as the Jewish Mesiah and continue to live a Jewish based life-style, in response to this desision began "Operation Joshua" in September 1990. Operation Joshua is an international campaign to acquire one million signatures of protest against the Israeli Supreme Court's decision denying Messianic Jews the right to return to Israel under that nation's Law of Return. |
Sir Winston Churchill understood that the Jews and their religion were the antithesis to Christianity:
The conflict between good and evil which proceeds unceasingly in the breast of man nowhere reaches such an intensity as in the Jewish race.... And it may well be that this same astounding race may at the present time be in the actual process of producing another system of morals and philosophy, as malevolent as Christianity was benevolent, which if not arrested, would shatter irretrievably all that Christianity has rendered possible. It would almost seem as if the gospel of Christ and the gospel of anti-Christ [Talmudic Judaism] were destined to originate among the same [Jewish] people, * and that this mystic and mysterious race had been chosen for the supreme manifestations, of both the divine and the diabolical...38
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*Although Mr. Churchill erroneously equated contemporary Jews with the Judahites of old, he was correct that both Judaism and Christianity originated with the Judahites.
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New Covenant Christianity is obviously not the religion of modern-day Jews. However, the Old Covenant is not Jewish either! Rabbi Ben Zion Bokser elucidated on this mistaken notion:
This is not an uncommon impression and one finds it sometimes among Jews as well as Christians - that Judaism is the religion of the Hebrew Bible. It is, of course, a fallacious impression....39
Judaism is not the religion of the Bible.40
So what is the religion of the Jews? It is definitely not new! It is as old as the Babylonian Captivity. Under the heading "Pharisees," The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia states:
PHARISEES ... The Jewish religion as it is today traces its descent, without a break, through all the centuries, from the Pharisees.
Their [the Jews'] leading ideas and methods found expression in a literature of enormous extent, of which a very great deal is still in existence. The Talmud is the largest and most important single member of that literature ... and the study of it is essential for any real understanding of Pharisaism.41
Concerning the Talmud, Chief Rabbi Joseph Herman Hertz wrote:
The beginnings of Talmudic literature date back to the time of the Babylonian exile in the sixth pre-Christian century ... a thousand years later, the Babylonian Talmud assumed final codified form in the year 500 after the Christian era ....42
When we [Jews] come to the Babylonian Gemara, we are dealing with what most people understand when they speak or write of the Talmud. Its birthplace, Babylonia, was an autonomous Jewish centre for a longer period than any other land; namely, from soon after 586 before the Christian era to the year 1040 after the Christian era - 1626 years; from the days of Cyrus [King of Babylon] down to the age of the Mongol conquerors!43
Notice that nothing was said about Mt. Sinai in Canaan, where authentic Hebrew Law, God's Law, was codified by Moses.
Under the heading "Judaism," The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible also reports on Judaism's place of origin:
JUDAISM ... Properly speaking Judaism ought to be regarded as beginning with the Babylonian exile.44
In the section titled "The Hebrew Peoples," Harmsworth History of the World stated the following:
... Judaism was not evolved in [the land of] Judah.... This much is, however, clear - it was in Babylonia that Judaism first became that which it was and still is....45"Judaism" was developed in Babylon...
... it was quite inevitable that Judaism should have adopted much of the Babylonian culture in the atmosphere of which it lived.... Our material still remains incomplete for ascertaining in any detail how far the sphere of Jewish religious thought had been influenced by that of Babylonia. Certain evidence that we do possess makes it very apparent that we cannot estimate this influence too highly; some day, probably, many of the institutions of Judaism which seem to be "Jewish" will be shown to be Babylonian....46
This was made exceedingly clear by Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise:
The return from Babylon, and the adoption of the Babylonian Talmud, marks the end of Hebrewism [the end of all ties to the Old Testament Scriptures], and the beginning of Judaism.47
This was verified in similar terms by Rabbi Elmer Berger:
The destruction of the two kingdoms, particularly the southern kingdom of Judah [by the Babylonians], presented the first great crisis in Judaism, which by then was no longer Israelitism or Jahwism [Hebrewism or Yahwehism] or however the primitive religion before the Prophets may be designated.48
In The Pharisees: The Sociological Background of Their Faith Rabbi Louis Finkelstein eliminated all doubt:
Pharisaism became Talmudism, Talmudism became Medieval Rabbinism, and Medieval Rabbinism became Modern Rabbinism. But throughout these changes of name ... the spirit of the ancient Pharisee survives unaltered. When the Jew ... studies the Talmud, he is actually repeating the arguments used in the Palestinian academies.
...from Babylonia to North Africa, Italy, Spain, France, and Germany; from these to Poland, Russia, and eastern Europe generally, ancient Pharisaism has wandered!49
Days came when Pharisaism was no longer a part of the Jewish people, but the whole of it....50
... rabbinic Judaism, the first-born child of Pharisaism, remains a unit until this day."51
The Talmud derives its authority from the position held by the ancient academies. The teachers of those academies, both of Babylonia and of Palestine, were considered the rightful successors of the older Sanhedrin....
At the present time, the Jewish people have no living central authority comparable in status to the ancient Sanhedrin or the later academies. Therefore, any decision regarding the Jewish religion must be based on the Talmud, as the final resume of the teachings of those authorities when they existed.*52
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*For additional quotations regarding the Talmud see Appendix 1.
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Rabbi Finkelstein's remarks, which equate ancient Pharisaism with modern Judaism, have been confirmed as recently as October 18, 1991. In the Kingston, New York, Daily Freeman in an article entitled "Population Study Spurs Jewish Mission," George W. Cornel, an AP religious writer, claimed:
...Jesus once observed in the first century, the Pharisees, progenitors of modern rabbinic Judaism, would "traverse sea and land to make a single proselyte."
Mr. Cornel did not finish quoting Matthew 23:15. Within its context, that verse reads:
....woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because you shut the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither enter yourselves, nor allow those who would enter to go in.... Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you traverse sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves. (Matthew 23:13-15 RSV)**53
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**The Jewish Encyclopedia also quotes Matthew 23:15, but only in part: "In pre-Christian times very determined efforts were made toward proselytizing the heathen... Ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte. "Conversion to Christianity," The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York and London: Funk and Wagnalls Company, 1903) vol. 4, p. 250.
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Consider this: If the first half of Matthew 23:15 is true regarding the Jews, then the second half of the verse is also true.
The evolution of Old Testament Pharisaism into modern-day Judaism is also confirmed in a tract entitled "Judaism," published by Beth HaShem in Odessa, Texas:
The Pharisees of that day [New Testament times] are the orthodox Jews of our days.
Talmudism, Judaism, and Pharisaism are essentially identical. What religious sect did Yeshua condemn with the most scathing denunciations? Anyone, who has read the four gospels of the New Testament, knows that it was the Pharisees. Yeshua identified them as hypocrites, blind guides, evil, adulterous, white-washed tombs, serpents, a brood of vipers, fools, and murderers.* Why did Yeshua so vehemently castigate the Pharisees? Because Pharisaism (today's Judaism) adamantly rejected Him and the New Covenant. There are certainly other non-Christian religions, but Judaism is vehemently anti-Christian and anti-Christ.
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*Yeshua denounced the Pharisees in the following passages: Matthew 12:34, 39; 15:1-9, 13-14; 16:1-12; 23:1-39; Mark 7:6-9; 8:15; Luke 11:39-44; 12:1; John 8:44.
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Celto-Saxons
In stark contrast, which people down through the last 2,000 years have been the most receptive and easily won to Yeshua and the New Covenant? Once again, take a globe and draw circles around the land masses in which Christianity has flourished. You will discover that your circles encompass those nations primarily comprised of Celto-Saxons. Pastor Josiah Strong testified to this:
The other great idea of which the Anglo-Saxon is the exponent [champion and advocate] is that of a pure spiritual Christianity. It was No Accident that the great reformation of the sixteenth century originated among a Teutonic [Celto-Saxon], rather than a Latin people....
That means that most of the spiritual Christianity in the world is found among Anglo-Saxons and their converts; for this is the great missionary race.54
Samuel Kneeland, Jr. put it this way:
Of the white [Celto-Saxon] race ... Western Asia [Palestine] may be called the cradle, both physically and morally; the dwelling place of the chosen people, from whom Christianity was to spread over the earth.
Europe "is the school where his youth was trained, where he waxed in strength and knowledge, and grew to a man." "America is the theatre of his activity during manhood; the land where he applies and practises all he has learned, and brings into action all the forces he has acquired."55
Even Billy Graham had no choice but to admit to the same historical fact in a May 27, 1969, column carried in The Phoenix Gazette, entitled "My Answer":
GOSPEL WENT EAST AS WELL AS WESTQUESTION:Why did all the early missionaries go in a westward direction? W.G. ANSWER: It is not entirely true that all of the missionaries went in a westward direction It is true that the most outstanding missionary, the Apostle Paul, came out of Asia Minor and completed his missionary activities in Europe. It is also true that in those [Caucasian ] countries, the Gospel was most enthusiastically received and they were the most aggressive people, thus making a marked impact for the Gospel upon all western cultures. It does not mean that European countries became completely Christian. But it does mean that they were so completely influenced by the Gospel that Christian standards and Christian ethics came to be recognized and became the basis for western culture and jurisprudence. But the Gospel did go eastward and good tradition tells us that it spread from southern India up through India and eastward. For some reason we cannot explain, the [non-Semitic, non-Caucasian] oriental peoples did not accept the Gospel with the same degree of enthusiasm as they did in the West. |
Mr. Graham's bewilderment is explained in Hebrews 8:8. The Oriental races are not Israelites; consequently, they are not as receptive as those people who are Israelites - the Celto-Saxons with whom the New Covenant was made.
Why did the gospel go West?* The Prophet Ezekiel provides a clue in the following passage:
I [YHWH] will make a covenant of peace [the New Covenant -Heb. 8:8-10] with them [the Israelites]; and it will be an everlasting covenant with them. And I will place them and multiply them, and will set My sanctuary [Yeshua] in their midst forever. My dwelling place also will be with them; and I will be their God, and they will be My people. And the [heathen non-Israelite] nations will know that I am YHWH who sanctifies Israel, when My sanctuary is in their midst forever. (Ezekiel 37:26-28)
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*As Christianity migrated westward so did civilization. In a footnote in The Moral and Intellectual Diversity of Races by Arthur de Gobineau, H. Hotz stated: "It is a familiar saying that civilization travels westward; if we believe ethnologists, the Arian [Aryan] races have always migrated in that direction ... Asia Minor, to Egypt, to Greece, to Western Europe, to the western coasts of the Atlantic, and the same impulse of migration is now carrying them to the Pacific." Count Joseph-Arthur de Gobineau, The Moral and Intellectual Diversity of Race (Philadelphia, Pk- J. B Lippincott & Company, 1856) p. 458.
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The Prophet Ezekiel pointed out that God's New Covenant relationship would follow and remain with the Israelites throughout their migrations. Consequently, one only needs to find the people who have most tenaciously embraced and held on to the New Covenant religion of Christianity since the death of Yeshua in order to locate ancient Israel's genetic descendants.
Which country was specifically settled with the intent of establishing a Christian nation? We know from our earliest founding documents that it was America. One example of these documents is found in the introduction to The Pulpit of the American Revolution, where John Wingate Thornton quoted several statements from early American pastors regarding their understanding of why this country was colonized:
[Pastor] John Norton, in the Election Sermon of 1661, said that they [the Christian Celto-Saxons] came "into this wilderness to live under the order of the gospel"; "that our polity [government] may be a gospel polity, and may be compleat according to the Scriptures, answering fully the Word of God: this is the work of our generation, and the very work we engaged for into this wilderness; this is the scope and end of it ... written upon the forehead of New England ... the compleat walking in the faith of the gospel, according to the order of the gospel."
The venerable [John] Higginson, of Salem, in his Election Sermon of 1663, stated the point with great fulness, as follows: "It concerneth New England always to remember that they are originally a plantation religious, not a plantation of trade.... Let merchants ... remember this:
that worldly gain was not the end and design of the people of New England, but [the Christian] religion...."
In the [Harvard University] Election Sermon of 1677 ... [Doctor] Increase Mather uttered these words: "It was love to God and to Jesus Christ which brought our [Celto-Saxon] fathers into this [American] wilderness.... There never was a generation that did so perfectly shake off the dust of Babylon, both as to ecclesiastical and civil constitutions, as the first generation of Christians that came into this land for the gospel's sake."
[Pastor] William Hubbard, the historian, in a Fast-day sermon, preached June 24, 1682, declared that the [Celto-Saxon] fathers "came not hither [to America] for the world, or for land, or for traffic; but for [the Christian] religion, and for liberty of conscience in the worship of God, which was their only design."
The historical fact was stated by President [Ezra] Stiles, of Yale College, in 1783: "It is certain that civil dominion was but the second motive, religion [Christianity] the primary one, with our [Celto-Saxon] ancestors, in coming hither [to America] and settling this land. It was not so much their design to establish religion for the benefit of the state, as civil government for the benefit of [the Christian] religion, and as subservient, and even necessary, towards the peaceable enjoyment and unmolested exercise of religion - of that religion [Christianity] for which they fled to these ends of the earth." 56
In Magnalia, Christi Americana, Cotton Mather, one of the early ministers of the Church in Boston, proclaimed the following:
I WRITE the WONDERS of the CHRISTIAN RELIGION [Pastor Mather's emphasis], flying from the [religious] depravations of Europe, to the American Strand; and, assisted by [YHWH] the Holy Author of that Religion, I do with all conscience of Truth, required therein by Him, who is the Truth itself, report the wonderful displays of His infinite Power, Wisdom, Goodness, and Faithfulness, wherewith His Divine Providence hath irradiated [spiritually enlightened] an Indian Wilderness.57
The [Celto-Saxon] people in the fleet that arrived at New-England, in the year 1630, left the fleet almost, as the family of Noah did the ark, having a whole world before them to be peopled ... but where-ever they sat down, they were so mindful of their errand into the wilderness, that still one of their first works was to gather a [Christian] church into the covenant [of YHWH] and order of the gospel [of Yeshua the Christ].58
... the God of Heaven so smiled upon the [New England] Plantation, while under an easie and equal government, the designs of Christianity in well-formed churches have been carried on, that no history can parallel it.59
In the year 1643, after divers essays made in some former years, the several colonies of New-England became in fact, as well as name, UNITED COLONIES [Pastor Mather's emphasis]. And an instrument was formed, wherein having declared, "That we all came into these parts of America with the same end and aim -namely, to advance the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, and enjoy the liberties of the [Christian] gospel with purity and peace...."60
... New-England having been in some sort an ecclesiastical [Christian] country above any in this world....61
The ministers and Christians by whom New-England was first planted, were a chosen company of men; picked out of, perhaps, all the counties in England, and this by no human contrivance, but by a strange work of God upon the spirits of men that were, no ways, acquainted with one another, inspiring them, as one man, to secede into a wilderness ... a reasonable expression once used by that eminent ... lieutenant-governor of New-England ... "God sifted three nations [England, Scotland,and Ireland], that he might bring choice grain into this wilderness."
The design of these [Celto-Saxon religious] refugees, thus carried into the [North American] wilderness, was, that they might there "sacrifice unto the Lord their God:" it was, that they might maintain the power of godliness and practice the evangelical worship of our Lord Jesus Christ, in all the parts of it ....62
In "An Attestation to This Church-History of New-England," the foreword to Magnalia, Christi Americana, John Higginson wrote:
It hath been deservedly esteemed one of the great and wonderful works of God in this last age, that the Lord stirred up the spirits of so many thousands of his [Christian Celto-Saxon] servants, to leave the pleasant land of England, the land of their nativity, and to transport themselves, and families, over the ocean sea, into a desert land in America ... and this, merely on the account of pure and undefiled Religion [Christianity] ... seeking first the kingdom of God, and the righteousness thereof... Surely of this work, and of this time, it shall be said, what hath God wrought? And, this is the Lord's doings, it is marvellous in our eyes! Even so (O Lord) didst thou lead thy people [Israel], to make thyself a glorious name [Isa. 63:141].63
... a true history of the wonderful works of God in the late plantation of this part of America: which was indeed planted, not on the account of any worldly interest, but on a design of enjoying and advancing the true reformed [Christian] religion in a practical way....64
The 1879 McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader quoted Pastor Lyman Beecher, an American clergyman:
... while most nations trace their origin to barbarians, the foundations of our [American] nation were laid by civilized men, by Christians.65
On December 22, 1820, Daniel Webster quoted the Puritans' intent upon landing at Plymouth Rock, and in so doing, reminded his audience of this nation's Christian character and origin:
...if God prosper us, we shall here begin a work which shall last for ages; we shall plant here a new society, in the principles of the fullest liberty and the purest religion; we shall subdue this wilderness which is before us; we [Christian Celto-Saxons] shall fill this region of the great [North American] continent, which stretches almost from pole to pole, with civilization and Christianity; the temples of the true God [YHWH] shall rise, where now ascends the smoke of idolatrous [heathen] sacrifice ....66
A government and a country [America] were to commence, with the very first foundations laid under the light of the Christian religion.67
Finally, let us [Americans] not forget the religious character of our origin. Our [Celto-Saxon] fathers were brought hither by their high veneration for the Christian religion. They journeyed by its light, and labored in its hope. They sought to incorporate its principles with the elements of their society, and to diffuse its influence through all their institutions, civil, political, or literary. Let us cherish these sentiments, and extend this influence still more widely; in the full conviction, that that is the happiest society which partakes in the highest degree of the mild and peaceful spirit of Christianity.68
Earlier in the same year, Mr. Webster had made the following remark before a Convention of Delegates concerning the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The same statement could have been made about any American state in existence at the time:
... in this [Massachusetts] Commonwealth ninety-nine out of every hundred of the inhabitants profess to believe in the Christian religion.69
America's Christian foundations could not be affirmed any more emphatically than they were by Patrick Henry:
It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great [American] nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ.70
U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice David Josiah Brewer provided additional evidence that America began as a Christian nation:
We classify nations in various ways, as, for instance, by their form of government. One is a kingdom, another an empire, and still another a republic. Also by race. Great Britain is an Anglo-Saxon nation, France a Gaelic, Germany a Teutonic, Russia a Slav. And still again by religion. One is a Mohammedan nation, others are heathen, and still others are Christian nations....
This [American] Republic is classified among the Christian nations of the world. It was so formally declared by the Supreme Court of the United States. In the case of HOLY TRINITY CHURCH vs. UNITED STATES, 143 U.S. 471, that Court ... added, "these and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this [America] is a Christian nation...."*
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*Two other U.S. Supreme Court decisions declare the same truth: Zorach vs. Clausen, 343 U.S. 307 at 313 (1952), and McGowan vs. Maryland, 366 U.S. 420 at 561 (1961).
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In several colonies and States a profession of the Christian faith was made an indispensable condition to holding office. In the frame of government for Pennsylvania, prepared by William Penn, in 1683, it was provided that "all treasurers, judges, and other officers, and all members elected to serve in provincial council and general assembly, and all that have right to elect such members, shall be such as profess faith in Jesus Christ." And in the charter of privileges for that colony, given in 1701 by William Penn and approved by the colonial assembly, it was provided "that all persons who also profess to believe in Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world, shall be capable to serve this government in any capacity, both legislatively and executively."**
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**Similar requirements can also be found in the Delaware Constitution of 1776; the New Hampshire Constitutions of 1704 and 1792; the Fundamental Constitutions of the Carolinas; the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780; the Fundamental Order of Connecticut for its Governor; the Vermont Constitution of 1777; the Maryland Constitution of 1776; the current Maryland Bill of Rights, Article 37; the Mississippi Constitution of 1817; and the Arkansas Constitution of 1874 with 1963 supplements - most of which are listed in Justice Brewer's speech.
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...Of still more significance ... there are no contrary declarations. In no [state] charter or constitution is there anything to even suggest that any [religion] other than the Christian is the religion of this country....There is no [state] charter or constitution [in America] that is either infidel, agnostic or anti-Christian....
... I could go on indefinitely, pointing out further illustrations both official and unofficial, public and private .... But I have said enough to show that Christianity came to this country with the first [Celto-Saxon] colonists; has been powerfully identified with its rapid development, colonial and national, and today exists as a mighty factor in the life of the Republic. This is a Christian nation, and we can all rejoice....71
For stating: "Jesus Christ was a bastard and his mother was a whore," the Jewish defendant was convicted of the common-law crime of blasphemy in the 1811 New York case People vs. Ruggles. The following is part of Chancellor James Kent's opinion:
The people of this State [New York] in common with the people of this country, profess the general doctrines of Christianity ... to scandalize the author [Yeshua the Christ] of these doctrines is not only in a religious point of view, extremely impious, but even in respect of the obligations due to society, in gross violation of decency and good order....
The free, equal and undisturbed enjoyment of religious opinion, whatever it may be, and free and decent discussion on any religious subject, is granted and secured; but to revile with malicious and blasphemous contempt the [Christian] religion professed by almost the whole community, is an abuse of that right. Nor are we bound, by any expressions in the constitution, as some have strangely supposed, either not to punish at all, or to punish indiscriminately the like attacks upon the religion of Mahomet or of the Grand Lama, and for this plain reason, that the case assumes that we [Americans] are a Christian people, and the morality of the country is deeply ingrafted upon Christianity and not upon the doctrines or worship of those [Jewish, Muslim and other] imposters.72
In a nearly identical case regarding blasphemy, the 1837 decision handed down by Chief Justice John Middleton Clayton in The State [of Delaware] vs. Thomas Jefferson Chandler declared:
The christian religion is and has ever been the prevailing religion among the people of this state [Delaware], and the malicious blasphemy of the popular religion [Christianity] or its founder [Yeshua], has a direct tendency to produce breaches of the peace."73
The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in Updegraph vs. The Commonwealth (11 Serg. & Rawle, 400-1) ... have declared that, "from the time of [Henry del] Bracton, Christianity was part of the common law of England.74
In England Christianity ... has been the prevailing religion of its [Celto-Saxon] people for a time beyond that of legal memory....75
... since the settlement of Delaware of the Swedes and Fins, which was one of the earliest settlements on this continent, down to the present day, Christianity has been that religion which the people as a body have constantly professed and preferred. The Swedes who were ever zealous Christians, were succeeded by the Dutch, who equally professed and practised the same religious faith; and the English, who afterwards took possession of the province, also professed the same belief in Jesus Christ ....76
... by this [Pennsylvania] charter, liberty of conscience was thus far secured to all who professed to believe in a God, none but those who professed to believe in Jesus Christ ... could serve the government under this charter of William Penn, in any official capacity whatever.
Seventy-five years after the date of this charter, on the 11th September, 1776, the "declaration of rights and fundamental rules of the Delaware State, (1 De. Laws. App. 79) was adopted, the second and third sections of which are in these words: ... See. 3. That all persons professing the Christian religion ought forever to enjoy equal rights and privileges in this state ...... "
Thus we see that at the breaking out of that struggle for civil and religious liberty ... equality of religious rights and privileges was still expressly restricted to persons professing the christian religion.
On the 20th September, 1776, the first constitution of the Delaware State was adopted, the 22d article of which provided, that "every person who shall be chosen a member of either house, or appointed to any office or place of trust, before taking his seat or entering upon the execution of his office, shall take the following oath ... to wit: I ... do profess of faith in God, the father, and Jesus Christ his only son, and in the Holy Ghost, on God blessed for evermore; and I do acknowledge the holy scriptures of the old and new testaments to be given by divine inspiration.77
... in the year 1824, by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania also, in the case of Updegraph vs. The Commonwealth.... Judge [Thomas] Duncan, delivering the opinion of the court in that case said, "even if Christianity was no part of the [civil] law of the land, it is the popular religion of the country [America and her Celto-Saxon people]."78
More recently, Federal Judge Frank J. McGarr of the U. S. District Court for Northern Illinois reaffirmed this in his ruling in the case of the American Jewish Congress, et. al. vs. City of Chicago, et. al, (No. 86-3021, United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh, Circuit, 827 F.2d 120; 1987 U.S. App. Lexis 11151).
The American Jewish Congress made reference to this decision in one of their recent newsletters:
AMERICAN JEWISH CONGRESS"...our founding fathers intended and achieved full religious freedom for all within the context of a Christian nation..." Dear Friend, From the Reverend Pat Robertson, I might expect to hear such a statement. Or from Senator Jesse Helms - or the Reverend Jerry Falwell. But the words at the top of this page were not spoken by a television evangelist or written by a Right Wing politician. They are the words of Federal Judge Frank J. McGarr of the U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois - written in the case of the American Jewish Congress et.al. vs. City of Chicago et.al. In that decision, Judge McGarr dismissed a suit brought by the American Jewish Congress and others seeking to prohibit the government-sanctioned display in Chicago's City Hall of a religious tableau depicting the birth of Jesus. But for Judge McGarr, it was not enough simply to dismiss the suit. "Daily," Judge McGarr wrote, "we ask God to '...save this Honorable Court ... ;' we observe the birthday of Christ as a national holiday, and no one is in doubt on Thanksgiving as to whom it is we thank." "The truth is," wrote McGarr, "that America's origins are Christian with the result that some of our fondest traditions are Christian...." I don't know how you feel. but I am appalled - and greatly alarmed - by this decision. Something must be done.
STEPHEN WISE CONGRESS HOUSE-1 6 EAST 84th STREET-NEW YORK, N.Y. 10028-(212) 879-4500 |
An examination of early state constitutions, charters and documents leaves no doubt that the intent of our Celto-Saxon founding fathers was to establish a Christian nation and not a pluralistic society regardless of what some people would have us believe today. Consider just a few unmistakable proofs:
1609 - Second Virginia Charter states as a part of its purpose: "to live in fear and true worship of Almighty God, Christian peace, and civil quietness."
1630 - Settlement of Massachusetts published under the subtitle of "Wonder-Working Providence of Zion's Saviour."
1636 - Harvard, which was the first college in America, whose name-sake and benefactor* stated in his provision for a fund to build a college: "Let every student be plainly instructed, and earnestly pressed to consider well, the main end of his life and studies is, to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life, John 17:3, and therefore to lay Christ in the bottom as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning."79
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John Harvard (1607-1638) was the namesake and benefactor of Harvard University, founded in 1636 and still operating undera 1650 charter.
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1639 - Fundamental Orders of Connecticut states as a part of its purpose: "to maintain and preserve the liberty and purity of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus which we now profess....80
Listen once again to statements made by Pastor Ezra Stiles in his election sermon at Yale University:
It may have been of the Lord that Christianity is to be found in such greater purity in this church exiled into the wildernesses of America....81
Any possible ambiguity in Pastor Stiles' sermon is cleared in the following declaration by Pastor W. B. Record:
LOOKING WESTWARD...
Standing on the western shores of Europe 500 years ago, you could not see nor visualize a great continent that lay to the west; only what seemed to be an endless stretch of the Atlantic Ocean. Yet there was a great continent out there to the west.
Now may I ask you, "Did Jesus Christ know of this North American Continent?" Your only answer could be, "Yes, of course He did."
Let me ask another question, "Did Jesus Christ know that a great nation would be established here?" Of course He did!
Still another question, please -"Did Jesus Christ know this great nation (yet to be born) would be Christian from its beginning?" Of course He knew that, for He Himself is the source and Author of the faith we call "Christian."
Now one more question, "Is it possible that this great nation, known to Jesus, was never mentioned, indicated, or foretold in the Bible?"
Consider this, "I [YHWH] will make of thee [Israel] a great nation" (Gen. 12:2). "The kingdom of God shall be given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof" (Matt. 21:43). Where is this great nation, which is bringing forth the fruits of the kingdom of God? The answer is quite obvious: you are living in it. See to it that you [Celto-Saxon Americans] make your calling and election sure.82
In The Beginnings of New England, American historian and philosopher John Fiske wrote:
The men who undertook this work were not at all free from self consciousness. They believed that they were doing a wonderful thing. They [Christian Celto-Saxons] felt themselves to be instruments in accomplishing a kind of "manifest destiny." Their exodus was that of a chosen people who were at length to lay the everlasting foundations of God's kingdom upon earth. Such opinions ... took a strong colour from their assiduous study of the Old Testament.... In every propitious event they saw a special providence, an act of divine intervention.... This steadfast faith in an unseen ruler and guide was to them a "pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night.83
America's early documents unanimously testify that she was founded as a Christian nation. Following his visit to America in 1831, Alexis de Toequeville, as a Frenchman, testified to this same fact:
...almost all the sects of the United States are comprised within the great unit of Christianity, and Christian morality is everywhere the same.
... In the United States the sovereign authority is religious ... there is no country in the whole world in which the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America; and there can be no greater proof of its utility [usefulness] and of its conformity to human nature, than that its [Christianity's] influence is most powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation of the earth.84
In the United States religion [Christianity] ... directs the manners of the community, and by regulating domestic life it regulates the State [civil government]....
In the United States the influence of religion is not confined to the manners, but it extends to the intelligence of the people. Amongst the Anglo-Americans ... Christianity, therefore, reigns without any obstacle, by universal consent.85
Religion in America ... must nevertheless be regarded as the foremost of the political institutions of that country.... I do not know whether all the Americans have a sincere faith in their religion, for who can search the human heart? But I am certain that they hold it [Christianity] to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions. This opinion is not peculiar to a class of citizens or to a party, but it belongs to the whole nation, and to every rank of society.86
The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other; and with them this conviction does not spring from that barren traditionary faith which seems to vegetate in the soul rather than to live.87
Upon my arrival in the United States, the religious [Christian] aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention; and the longer I stayed there the more did I perceive the great political consequences resulting from this state of things ....88
Christianity has therefore retained a strong hold on the public mind in America; and, I would more particularly remark, that its sway is not only that of a philosophical doctrine which has been adopted upon inquiry, but of a religion which is believed without discussion. In the United States Christian sects are infinitely diversified and perpetually modified; but Christianity itself is a fact so irresistibly established, that no one undertakes either to attack or to defend it.89
Even Karl Marx recognized America as the world's greatest representation of Christianity. In his book On the Jewish Question written in 1844, Karl Marx wrote:
... North America is pre-eminently the country of religiosity [Christianity], as Beaumont, the Frenchman, Alexis del Tocqueville and the Englishman, Hamilton, assure us in unison.90
Aaron Zelman, a Jew, admitted to America's uniquely Christian heritage as well:
Christians are the bedrock of America. This nation and all its goodness exists because Christians have, from its earliest beginnings, sacrificed their lives, their fortunes, and even their children to horrible wars, to forge this wonderful and free country.91
In 1776 there were approximately 2.5 million people in America. Less than one percent of the population was, represented by 20,000 Catholics, 3,000 Jews,* and a few Deists; more than ninety-nine percent were Celto-Saxon Christian Protestants! In this light, it is an illuminating fact that as more non-Caucasian immigrants are allowed to come into this country, the less Christian this nation becomes. Our tolerance of other religions (and immorality) is destroying us. America has not only become multicultural and pluralistic, but heathen as well.
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*"Up to the [American] Revolution there were scarcely twenty-five hundred Jews in the whole country...." Abram Leon Sachar, A History of the Jews (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968) p. 302. 213
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In an article entitled "Most Americans Claim Religious Affiliation" in American Demographics Magazine, Cheryl Russell confirmed this paganizing of America:
Immigration will slowly change the nation's [America's predominately Christian] religious affiliation.92
Only the dishonest and those with designs to destroy America's Christian heritage would dare challenge the following fact: God and these original Celto-Saxon Puritans intended to plant and build a Christian nation on these shores.93 God warned Israel in ages past that foreigners allowed to settle in her land would become:
... as pricks in your eyes and as thorns in your sides, and they [heathen foreigners] shall trouble you [Israel] in the land in which you live. (Numbers 33:55)
Joshua also issued a similar warning to Israel which is as pertinent now as it was then:
... take diligent heed to yourselves to love YHWH your God. For if you [Israel] ever go back and cling to the rest of these [heathen non-Israelite] nations ... which remain among you, and intermarry with them, so that you associate with them and they with you, know with certainty that YHWH your God will not continue to drive these nations out from before you ... they shall be a snare and a trap to you, and a whip on your sides and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from off this good land which YHWH your God has given you. (Joshua 23:11-13)
Israel was to suffer this curse as a result of not heeding God's warnings about integrating with ungodly heathen peoples. Moses Hess revealed that the "thorns" in Joshua's warning are today primarily fulfilled by the Jewish people:
The Christian nations, you believe, would have perhaps less objection against the restoration of the Jewish State, since they would hope through this to be rid of an alien [Jewish] population which was always a thorn in their side.94
Unfortunately, the 1948 establishment of the State of Israel did not rid America of her Jewish "thorn," and because of Celto-Saxon blindness to our Israelite identity, America continues to prick herself with this "thorn." Many Jews still live among us, and the spurious State of Israel has snared and trapped many well-meaning but nonetheless naive Americans into supporting her with foreign aid. We must completely free ourselves from the Jews before we perish off this good land that God so graciously gave to us.
Samuel Roth agreed that Christianity's "thorns" are today's Jews:
Judaism [Talmudism] is today the only bar between the Jews and the world they love and would like to share with their neighbors. Every synagogue we Jews build in Christian countries is a finger of scorn we point at our hosts, a sore finger we stick into their eyes, like the leering of a senile old woman who does all sorts of foul mischief before you, and feels safe in the knowledge that you will not lay hands on her to remove her, for fear of contamination.95
By their own admission, the Jews have not embraced the New Covenant religion of Christianity. Instead, with their Talmudic religion of Judaism, the Jews have been and continue to be the "thorns" in the sides and eyes of true Israel. On the other hand, no one would dare debate the fact that Christianity, in fulfillment of the promises made by God concerning Israel, has been and continues to be the primary religion of the Celto-Saxon peoples. This one identifying mark alone proves beyond question the true identity of the Israelites today.
1. Pastor Joseph Henry Thayer, D.D., The New Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1979) p. 306.
2. Bernard Lazare, Antisemitism: Its History and Causes (New York, NY: The International Library Publishing Company, 1903) p. 264.
4. Herman Wouk, This Is My God: The Jewish Way of Life (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1959) p. 200.
5. Adin Steinstaltz, Chaya Gala, trans., The Essential Talmud (New York, NY: Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, 1976) p. 3.
8. Pastor Iustin Bonaventura Pranaitis, The Talmud Unmasked: The Secret Rabbinical Teaching Concerning Christians (St. Petersburg, Russia: Imperial Academy of Sciences Printing office, 1892) pp. 68, 83.
9. "Talmud," The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1977) p. 1830.
10. Benjamin Disraeli, Lord George Bentinck: A Political Biography (London, UK: Archibald Constable and Company Limited, 1905) p. 324.
11. Moses Hess, Rome and Jerusalem, 1862 ed., reprint. (New York, NY: Philosophical Library, Inc., 1958) p. 35.
13. Rabbi Reichhorn, "Funeral Oration for Grand Rabbi Simeon-ben-Ihuda," Law Vielle France, 10 March 1921, Libre Parole, 27 November 1933, quoted in The Liberty Bell, 29 March 1983, p. 29.
14. Victor Emile Marsden, trans., Protocol 4, Article 3, Sentence 3, Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion (Boring, OR: CPA Books, 1905) p. 21.
15. Protocol 14, Article 1, Sentences 1-3, pp. 40-41.
16. Protocol 17, Article 2, Sentences 1-3, p. 50.
17. Bernard Lazare, Antisemitism: Its History and Causes (New York, NY: The International Library Publishing Company, 1903) vol. 2, pp. 164-165.
21. Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise, Free Synagogue Pulpit: Sermons and Addresses (New York, NY: Bloch Publishing Company, 1910) vol. 2, p. 166.
22. Leo Pfeffer, Church State and Freedom (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1953) p. 447.
23. The London Jewish World, 15 March 1923, quoted in Dr. Edward R. Fields, "'Judaism' Is Fundamentally Anti-Christian," The Truth at Last, Issue 337, p. 5.
24. Abram Leon Sachar, A History of the Jews (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968) p. 152.
25. Rabbi Louis Finklestein, The Jews: Their History, Culture, and Religion (Philadelphia, PA: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1949) vol. 4, p. 1347.
26. Rabbi Joachim Prinz, testimony before the New Jersey Supreme Court, "Tudor vs. Board of Ecucation of Rutherford, 14 N.J. 31 (1953) certiorari denied 348 U.S. 816 (1954)," quoted by Leo Pfeffer in Church State and Freedom (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1953) pp. 458-459.
27. Joseph Klausner, Ph.D., Herbert Danby, D.D., trans., Jesus of Nazareth: His Life, Times, and Teaching (New York, NY: The Macmillian Company, 1953) p. 9.
31. Rabbi Julius Nodel, quoted in The Point, October 1958, p. 18.
32. Rabbi Moshe M. Maggal, letter on 21 August 1961. Rabbi Maggal was the President of the National Jewish Information Service.
33. Gus Hall (Gus Hallberg, Ges Kholl), remarks at the funeral of Eugene Dennis (Francis Waldron — pseudonym) in February 1932, reprinted by Christian Educational Association, Inc. For many years Gus Hall was one of the top Jewish Communists in the American Communist Party.
34. Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits, Judaism in the Post-Christian Era (1966) p. 80. At one time Rabbi Berkovits was the Chairman of the Department of Jewish Philosophy at the Hebrew Theological College in Skokie, IL.
35. Rabbi Howard Singer, "Don't Try to Sell Me Your Religion," The Saturday Evening Post, 28 January 1967.
36. James Yaffe, The American Jews (New York, NY: Random House, 1988) pp. 59-60.
37. U.S. Senator Howard Morton Metzenbaum, quoted by Donald F. Wildmon, AFA Journal, November/December 1988, p. 24.
38. Sir Winston Churchill, quoted in Illustrated Sunday Herald (London, UK), 8 February 1920, p. 5, reproduced in part in "Some Indirect Compliments," B'nai B'rith News (Chicago, IL, May 1920).
39. Rabbi Ben Zion Bokser, Judaism and the Christian Predicament (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967) p. 59.
41. "PHARISEES," The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia (New York, NY: Ktar Publishing House, Inc., 1942) vol. 8, p. 474.
42. Chief Rabbi Joseph Herman Hertz, Forward to the 1st ed., The Babylonian Talmud (London, UK: The Soncino Press, 1935) p. xiii. Rabbi Hertz was also chosen by the Kehillas (Jewish communities) of the world in 1937 as one of 120 Jews who best represented a "lamp of Judaism" to the world.
44. "Judaism," The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: The Zondervan Corporation, 1975) vol. 3, p. 727.
45. Dr. Hugo Winckler and Leonard William King, "The Hebrew Peoples," Harmsworth History of the World, Arthur Mee, Sir John Alexander Hammerton, Arthur Donald Innes (London, UK: Carmelite House, 1908) vol. 3, p. 1781.
46. Winckler and King, vol. 3, pp. 1784-1785.
47. Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise, quoted by Bertrand L. Comparet in Can Anything Be "Judeo-Christian"?, p. 1. "Wise, Stephen Samuel (1874-1949): US rabbi and Zionist leader. In 1907, he established the Free Synagogue in New York.... In 1922 he founded the Jewish Institute of Religion to train rabbis in his own spirit of progressive Judaism, Zionism, and political liberalism. W.[ise] was founder and the first secretary of the Federation of American Zionists, which later became the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA).... As chairman of the Provisional Committee for Zionist Affairs 1916-19, and friend of President Wilson, he played a significant role at the time of the Balfour Declaration. W.[ise] energetically supported the domestic and foreign programs of President F.D. Roosevelt. He was founder of the American Jewish Congress and its President 1925-9 and 1935-49.... W.[ise] was one of the most influential American Jews of his time." The Standard Jewish Encyclopedia (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1966) pp. 1917-1918.
48. Rabbi Elmer Berger, A Partisan History of Judaism (New York, NY: The Devin-Adair Company, 1951) p. 80.
49. Rabbi Louis Finkelstein, Foreword to the 1st ed., The Pharisees: The Sociological Background of Their Faith (Philadelphia, PA: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1938) vol. 1, p. xxi.
50. Finkelstein, vol. 1, p. 79.
51. Finkelstein, vol. 2, p. 622.
52. Rabbi Louis Finkelstein, The Jews: Their History, Culture, and Religion (Philadelphia, PA: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1949) vol. 4, p. 1332.
53. Matthew 23:13-15, RSV. Bernard Lazare also quoted Matthew 23:15, but only in part: "The Jews were a propagandist nation par excellence, and from the construction of the Second Temple and particularly after the [Bablyonian] dispersion their zeal was considerable. They [the Jews] were exactly those whom the Gospel [of Matthew] says, that they ran over 'earth and sea to make a proselyte.'" Bernard Lazare, Antisemitism: Its History and Causes (New York, NY: The International Library Publishing Company, 1903) p. 242.
54. Pastor Josiah Strong, D.D., Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis (New York, NY: Baker & Taylor Company for the American Home Missionary Society, 1885) p. 965.
55. Samuel Kneeland, Jr., M.D., Introduction to Lt. Col. Charles Hamilton Smith, The Natural History of the Human Species (Boston, MA: Gould & Lincoln, 1851) p. 96.
56. John Wingate Thornton, The Pulpit of the American Revolution: Political Sermons of the Period of 1776, 1860 ed., reprint. (Boston, MA: Da Capo Press, 1970) pp. xviii-xix.
57. Pastor Cotton Mather, D.D., Magnalia Christi Americana: or, The Ecclesiastical History of New-England, 1702, subsequent ed. reprint. (New York, NY: Russell & Russell, 1967), vol. 1, p. 25.
58. Mather, vol. 1, pp. 78-89.
63. John Higginson, "An Attestation to This Church-History of New-England," Foreword to Pastor Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana: or, The Ecclesiastical History of New-England, 1702, subsequent ed. reprint. (New York, NY: Russell & Russell, 1967) vol. 1, p. 13.
65. Pastor Lyman Beecher, quoted in William Holmes McGuffey, McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader (New York, NY: American Book Company, 1879) p. 128.
66. Daniel Webster, discourse at Plymouth Rock, 2 December 1820, The Works of Daniel Webster (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and Company, 1858) vol. 1, p. 10.
68. Webster, vol. 1, pp. 48-49.
69. Daniel Webster, address before the Massachusetts Convention of Delegates, The Works of Daniel Webster (Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1858) vol. 2, pp. 5-6.
70. Patrick Henry, quoted in David Barton, The Myth of Separation (Aledo, TX: Wallbuilders Press, 1992) p. 117.
71. Associate Justice David Josiah Brewer, address at Harvard University in 1905.
72. Chancellor James Kent, "People vs. Ruggles, 8 Johns (NY) 290 (1811)," quoted in Leo Pfeffer, Church State and Freedom (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1953) p. 665.
73. Chief Justice John Middleton Clayton, "The State vs. Thomas Jefferson Chandler," quoted in Samuel Maxwell Harrington, Reports of Cases Argued and Adjudged in the Superior Court and Court of Errors and Appeals of the State of Delaware (Wilmington, DE: Mercantile Printing Company, Law Publishers, 1901) vol. 2, p. 553.
79. 1636 Harvard University document, quoted in John le Boutillier, Harvard Hates America: The Odyssey of a Born-again American (South Bend, IN: Gateway Editions, 1978), quoted in Walter S. Remmie, "This is a Christian Nation," Kingdom Digest (Irving, TX, July 1981) p. 29.
80. Walter S. Remmie, "This is a Christian Nation," Kingdom Digest (Irving, TX, July 1981) pp. 28-29. Additional documents, charters, constitutions, etc., are quoted in this same article.
81. Pastor Ezra Stiles, D.D., "The United States Elevated to Glory and Honor," election sermon in 1783, quoted in John Wingate Thornton, The Pulpit of the American Revolution: Political Sermons of the Period of 1776, 1860 ed., reprint., (Boston, MA: Da Capo Press, 1970) p. 472.
82. Pastor W.B. Record, Truth & Liberty Magazine, September 1964.
83. John Fiske (Edmund Fisk Green), The Beginnings of New England (Cambridge, MA: H.O. Houghton, Mifflin and Company, The Liberty Press, 1889) vol. 1, p. 308.
84. Alexis de Tocqueville, Henry Reeve, trans., Democracy in America (New York, NY: The Colonial Press, 1899) pp. 242-244.
85. de Tocqueville, vol. 1, p. 309.
86. de Tocqueville, vol. 1, p. 310.
87. de Tocqueville, vol. 1, p. 311.
88. de Tocqueville, vol. 1, p. 313.
89. de Tocqueville, vol. 2, p. 6-7.
90. Karl Marx, T.B. Bottomore, trans., ed., Karl Marx: Early Writings (New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1964) p. 9.
91. Aaron Zelman, "JPFO: In Defense of Firearms Ownership," American Survival Guide, November 1989, vol. 11, no. 11, p. 49.
92. Cheryl Russell, "Most Americans Claim Religious Affiliation," The Official Guide to the American Marketplace (Ithaca, NY: New Strategist Publications, Inc., 1995) p. 252.
93. For further evidence of America's Christian history refer to the book The Light and the Glory by Peter Marshall and David Manuel.
94. Moses Hess, Rome and Jerusalem (New York, NY: Philosophical Library, Inc., 1862) p. 77.
95. Samuel Roth, Jews Must Live (New York, NY: The Golden Hind Press, Inc., 1934) p. 129.