Shalom,
Many have condemned "Reflections on a Covenant and Mission" from the National Council of Synagogues and the Bishop's Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs (August 12, 2002), however we ourselves question whether they are wrong as many have claimed or if they may have been misunderstood. Upon reviewing the many arguments, we began to see the plausibility of each side, so we turned to prayer and asked our L-rd and Savior to "remove that log from our eye to see clearly" our misunderstanding so that we could help "remove the twig from our brethren's eyes", whomever they might be.
Soon after this prayer we found ourselves involved in what seemed to be an unrelated topic where we were defending our Church against an attack. Unlike past scenarios, we actually found that our posts were not deleted and the conversation continued until we were apparently hacked. Yet in this particular thread, we were blessed not to have been debating the Web Administrator, which allowed us to pursue a more extended conversation. However in the process of this conversation we believe our L-rd allowed us to "step into Judah's shoes" and "walk in them" for a few weeks. So what did we learn from this exercise and why do we think we might better understand our brothers in Jacob?
To explain we should establish that all good standing Catholics have salvation by faith in the Son of our G-d Most High. Even according to our Catechism, our Protestant brothers have salvation. Yet to some, we Catholics "do not have salvation". In their eyes we are G-dless infidels that need to "come out of her my people" and be saved. Through one particular debate (as mentioned above) we believe we may have stumbled across a major root to those claims against Catholics. It seems much of their stance relies upon their misunderstanding of infant baptism.
Put simply, most if not all of those who were raised Catholic since birth have not answered the "choir call", nor were they "slain by the Spirit" nor do they even "remember the day and hour in which they were 'saved' by first 'accepting Jesus into thier life' ". This isn't to imply Catholics are not saved, rather we had our parents' promise on our behalf to live a Catholic life (which we get to confirm this promise on our Confirmation). Sure we were too young to even care about Baptism and Grace, but this does not dismiss the fulfillment of HaShem's promise to us that if we "raise" our children up "in the Way" then "they shall not depart from it when they are old". Yet all this doesn't seem to impact those who are calling us to get "out of Babylon", because in their eyes we must:
One particular person whom we debated wrote to us, "Can a baby REPENT?????? NO!" Therefore by his (and others) undestanding of baptism our testimony of faith, our actions, our love, our patience and our teachings don't mean a thing because we failed to accomplish the first step. Yet by his words this doesn't mean that he doesn't "love" us; in fact he "made this clear" in several of his closings from which this sentence was drawn from:
I pray sincerely that you may II Tim 2:26 "recover yourselves from the snare of the devil" concerning these "doctrines" of the same, that you so easily believe, having forsaken the truth, but rather choose to "teach for doctrines the commandments of men".
We are saved by faith not by work of the laws UNLESS of course those are "Roman Catholic works", then our Faith somehow no longer cover our "many sins". Yet the "work" involved in accepting and taking part in an immersion Baptism in running water is a "work" they do allow (actually demand). Not only this but also:
To any "brethren", that is any child of God, in the Catholic church, they need to recognize the "error of his/her way" in following "doctrines of devils" and "taking as doctrine the commandments of men" and they will stop grieving the Holy Spirit and they will "know the truth" and be set free from the bondage of "works" and false "doctrines of devils" and stop sinning. Each "child of God" is responsible for reading the word of God and should know what it says. The RCC does not promote and encourage this. How can it, when it is the blind leading the blind?
And in many ways we believe that this same attitudes is thrusted upon Judah as this response from another thread shows:
Judaism is keeping the Jews in darkness, that is the ability to see spiritually.
We are told to Bless Israel, and to love Israel (the Jews). But, this does not include Judaism...
They deny the Trinity, and this in effect shuts the Holy Spirit out of their lives.
Or from another poster from another thread:
You don't go to hell because of your sins, which had been PAID for by YOUR God. Hell is now reserves for those who disbelieve in HIS SON, Jesus of Nezareth, borne of a Virgin Birth.
Thus like our own opposition above that we call "J", Judah doesn't accept our Moshiach and that's enough to condemn them even if in Rom.11 says He hardened them. A remark from another forum gives some insight to some popular beliefs on this hardening of hearts:
I'm sorry. See..., do you think that the Pharaoh in Moses times was saved? God also hardened his heart. To have the heart hardened is a way the Bible uses to tell us that the person remained stubborn and didn't repent and were not lead to salvation.
Yet another believer from this same site had given a harsher judgment upon Judah:
Want to know what curse is? Well Israel should take a good look in the mirror and they'll see CURSE. They are curse for more than 2000 over years now by the very Law they live by. By their rejection of their God their Messiah who is, who was, and is to come.
Thus to these three posters Judah also has failed their own form of "test number one" and there is supposedly nothing they can do but accept what we believe is true in order for them to receive salvation. So we see that both Jews and Catholics are condemned by their (and others) perspective, even though they claim to still "love" them:
As I've mentioned before here in this forum, Judaism is the curse of the Jews.
The traditions of the misguided and God-hating Rabbi's has brought about the blindness that cannot "see" the actions of God in His dealings with this world, and them.
This "blindness" and confused thinking can be plainly seen in the posts of H.
It is no accident that True Christians, the "conservative" ones, are the real supporters of Israel in her time of troubles.
God will provide for these stiff-necked and obstinate people whom He will eventually Redeem a remnant of!
This leads us back to our original thread because not all share these anti-Semitic views of Judah, as it also true that not all Protestants think Catholics are damned. The following post comes from someone we all we call Pastor "P" who graciously helped us continue to post even after we had been blocked earlier from this site.
The Catholic Religion is not much different than most other Religions in as much as it has "evolved", It has been led by groups of men who are nothing more than human and therefore as individuals they make mistakes (like we all do), If no individual can be perfect, how could a whole group or (any group) get it right?
Don't you think that there have/will be many Catholics saved because they have a true heart? Afterall all/any Religion is nothing more than our attempt to get back into the garden.
As we had mentioned, we knew of each other before hand and indeed there had been much dialogue among us all ahead of this one and we began to see some hope in our efforts when we received an e-mail from "P" in which he said:
In the mean time I will ask you the question off the forum. I have noticed that we outsiders of the R.C.C. see things that don't seem right and when explained by a learned member of the Church these things seem to make sense. Perhaps these things are wrong and some very clever men (with the help of that 'ol snake), have found ways to explain them away or they are as explained and therefore are valid. You believe they are valid and others believe they are just a cover-up for sin. So my question is, How can one tell what to believe?
I think the Holy Spirit should be the guide for such decisions but so would each side of this debate and it seems to me that both can not be right in this case.
We agree that that is a very good question for it is important to know who is right if each side states emphatically that they are hearing their words from the Ruach HaKadosh. Of course our knee-jerk reaction would have been to simply quote our Moshiach, " You shall know them by their fruit", yet we suspected the enemy had gotten there before us and already began to twist what we would have said. However, the L-rd has His own way of dealing with these things.
"ye shall know them by their fruit"
Homosexuality ! Adultry ! Fornication !
At one time Rome was called the "City of bastard children" from all of the adultery taking place between the clergy and the men and women of the church. Abominations!
Concerning "baptism", if this baptism that you practice is in truth, merely a dedication, then why do your "followers" believe that it takes away the sin of Adam? And also, where does it say that Hannah "baptized" her son Samuel?
and Most importantly, where is the "baptism" that is so clearly commanded in the New Testament? to be done AFTER a soul is redeemed?? This is exactly why you (the RCC) hunted down and killed the "anna" baptists in the early days of the church. Because they held to the true Biblical baptism, and went against the "mother" cult! Thus the killing and slaughtering of TRUE BELIEVERS! The same ones that were slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held that cry out in heaven to God, Rev. 6:10 " how long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?"
This is a Forum on a Jewish Site! The Jews need to know that the carnal RCC organization is NOT a representation of a TRUE Spirit Filled believer in Christ. The Papacy tried to exterminate the Jews out of Jerusalem! Read the History of the Church! YE SHALL KNOW THEM BY THEIR FRUITS! Would you have stood by and said "judge not lest ye be judged" while they were killing true Christians by the thousands? and taking their homes and possetions? WAKE UP PAUL#####You are defending satan's salvation by "works" ideology.
We tried to defend our Church from each of these type of attacks she was facing although we know we fell short sometimes. Yet "J" felt we were out of line due to our Church's past, as can be seen above, so once we saw this we took this issue on directly:
>>>The Catholic Church as done nothing but kill true bible believing Christians and Jews since day one. This is history and you can't deny it! >>>
Response:To deny the real facts of history would be foolish. We recognize there have been errors in the Church's history, but do you recognize the atrocities that Protestants also have committed upon Catholics and Jews throughout history? Beyond that point, what does one need to do to receive salvation? Is it not to recognize oneself as a sinner and also to confess that Yeshua (Jesus) is L-rd? Then why is this permissible for individuals but not the institution founded by our L-rd and Savior? The RCC had indeed apologized for her iniquities, both to the public as well as our L-rd. Therefore how do you have the right to judge her?
This was his response for our call for mercy:
Dear C & C
If you want to know the TRUTH about the Catholic Cult, go to the below address. Instead of making excuses for them, you should "come out of them my people" and "touch not the un-clean thing"!
The RCC has committed worse acts upon mankind than ANY OTHER ORGANIZATION in the world. And they did it KNOWING THE SCRIPTURES! Thou shalt not kill! How hard is that one to figure out.
We assume his answers to our questions were: NO! YES! CERTAINLY NOT OURS! BECAUSE...? Judah met a similar wall about a century ago:
The most hideous of all crime on earth would have to be the one committed by the JEW. They wiped the skin of their God to shreads, they spit on Him, They pulled his hair, they nailed their God, their Messiah on the tree. They rejected their God who had provided them, feed them, blessed them, protected them, brought them out of bondage etc..They hanged Him on the tree and said Thanks, but no thanks. They said, "His Blood be on us and on our children".
And thanks to themselves, that came to past. But they blamed the world on their Holocaust and their current situations. They blamed ALL but themselves.
There was a certain amount of irony, as well as agony and painful frustration about this above anti-Semitic post, that is after these posts were posted on this Jewish Message Board, we were knocked off this board for the first time and could no longer post. So we watched helplessly as these charges against Judah went unanswered. No one else brought up Rom.10-11. No one even considered drawing out the deeper meaning of Jer.31.33 or Jer.30. However, our ability to provide arguments in defense of Judah we suspect may have been why we were blocked as they support our own church and faith by implication as well. So instead of finding some support from someone else for Judah's defense we only saw that the one posting this gain a few happy supporters and then this thread faded away into oblivion, which is why we cannot provide this thread along with the one on Catholicism (we have provided this in full at the end of this essay).
We were still able to read the board (but not post), which made our being blocked all the harder. After a while we discovered that we could e-mail people on the site, which we did. In this way we came to know Pastor "P" who also in time felt our censoring was wrong, even though he himself didn't share our faith as we said already above. So he posted our answers on-line for us and this is how we came back into the previous conversation. Through much of this it seemed that our friendly Pastor became quite interested in our responses and also he began to defend us more. By doing so, "P" now started to face a persecution similar to our own (and Church's). Shortly thereafter our ability to read this particular site and try to respond was abruptly truncated, thus making any further posting impossible.
Initially we were upset, as we had been before, yet in time we realized HaShem may have been illustrating to us how it was about one hundred years ago with Judah when the Nazi venom began to ferment and grow as we tried to illustrate above. We suspect that righteous Jews tried to get their Christian neighbors to see their real faith, however some like "J" refused to see and only repeated the passages of Matt.27.25, Jn.3.16-21, 14.6, and probably other passages for their rhetoric, like the ones we quoted above. Yet, those like the Pastor who tried to support Judah were unable to succeed just as our own attempts to defending our Church have been frustrated. Then came Kristall Nautch, the Night of Broken Glass, and darkness fell. We know from history that these Pastors (which include the leaders of our Church) went one of two ways; they either they took Yeshua at His word and took up their crosses and followed Him, or they cowered against a mighty and fearful earthly threat.
However we believe the greatest lesson from this conversation we experienced is that the greatest poison Judah faced then, as well as today, is the implication that they are missing "something" that keeps them from salvation. Then others grasp upon this observation and draw Scriptures out of context, thus leading the situation to spin out of control.
It is an experience to view from another's perspective and we come to learn to appreciate this. Therefore we have come to believe that the Bishop's Committee was actually more correct than wrong, yet what do we need as a people in Christ and a body in His Church to hear Judah's plea? Must all His Church be placed in Judah's shoes and walk in them to understand? If we perceive prophecy correctly then some day rhetoric like what we experienced may very well bring forth its venomous fruit against our Church (this is also suggested in her Catechism, 677). Yet this Pesach, as we believe Zech.5 makes clear, is a curse upon THEM and not us; just as the Shoah (Holocaust) was a curse upon our faith to both those who aided the Nazis through their actions, and even those who abetted them through their inactions.
If you are interested, you can find the entire thread (with minimal editing) at Reflections.
