Cut the Jewish Roots, Kill the Christian Tree!

 Cut the Jewish Roots, Kill the Christian Tree! by Olivier Melnick.

I am reposting this blog from Olivier Melnick from his blog New Antisemitism.  I believe his blog is especially appropriate in light of the fact that a Hamas-affiliated organization held a UN endorsed "informal parallel meeting" promoting the destruction of the Jewish state.

According to the Jerusalem Post the event was advertised on the UN website and listed on an official UN document headlined “Human Rights Council, twentieth session, 18 June – 06 July 2012."

One of the speakers at this event was Sameh Habeed, head of the media department at the "Palestinian Return Center." In the course of the speech, Habeed said at a UN-provided microphone, at a UN-advertised event associated with the UN’s top human rights body:

“In 1947, 1948 and 1949 the Palestinian refugees were ethnically cleansed by the Israeli gangs.... Some Arab armies came to Palestine to fight the Zionist project, which came from all over Europe to take over Palestine and to make it as a national home for the Jews, although it was always the national home for the Palestinians for thousands and thousands of years.

Notice the words concerning the land of Israel, "although it was always the national home of the Palestinians for thousands and thousands of years." For my readers who are familiar with biblical history and post-biblical history, it is clear this is an outright lie meant to kick off a campaign of propaganda concerning Israel.  In light of this UN endorsed meeting, I thought Olivier's blog was appropriate.

Cut the Jewish Roots, Kill the Christian Tree!

Just Published! Jesus or Yeshua: Exploring the Jewish Roots of Christianity

Today ScriptureSolutions  published a new booklet written by Louis Lapides. This brief  book can be found for Kindle at Amazon.

Jesus or Yeshua: Exploring the Jewish Roots of Christianity by Louis Lapides

It came to no surprise to me that when I first became a Jewish follower of Yeshua, I was going to have a cultural crisis trying to fit into a Gentile Church.  I lasted a few months before I started asking inevitable questions, "I'm Jewish. Jesus is Jewish. His first followers were Jewish. The New Testament was written by Jews and a lot of the concepts they discussed have a powerful Hebraic background.  Then why is Christianity so "not-Jewish"?

Jesus or Yeshua: Exploring the Jewish Roots of Christianity provides the reader with some of the findings I came upon as searched for answers to my questions. For me a lot of the issues were resolved when I studied the origin of most of the terminology used by Christians when describing their beliefs and practices.  When I was growing up attending Hebrew school in preparation for my Bar Mitzvah I never expected that Rabbi Printz would tell me that the mass practiced by the Catholic Church across the street from our temple was actually based in the Jewish Passover.  Nor was I told that baptism has it's origins in the Jewish practice of immersion or mikveh used when Gentiles would turn from their paganism and convert to Judaism.

Attending a church for me at age 23 was a shocker as I describe in my opening chapter.  Here is a sample section from that chapter that will give you an idea of what Jesus or Yeshua: Exploring the Jewish Roots of Christianity is all about.

Here’s a shocker . . . Jewish people don’t feel at ease in a Christian church. The first time I attended a Protestant congregation, a Southern Baptist one, I couldn’t avert my eyes from the 10-foot tall stained glass mosaic of Jesus looming behind the pastor. I imagined for a few moments the man from Galilee was about to step out of the window, float over to my pew and ask whether I noticed the “Jews Not Welcome” sign at the church’s front door. “Of course,” I would respond, “But Jesus, aren’t you . . . .?”

Upon further reflection I figured out why I experienced the heebie-jeebies on my initial visit. As a Jewish seeker of truth, I was convinced I was cheating on the God of Israel. Why did worshipping in a Gentile Christian church make me feel like I was unfaithful? Was I cheating on my Bar Mitzvah? Was I betraying Abraham or Moses?
Was it the pastor’s perfectly pressed suit and tie graced by his Southern Baptist grin? It could have been the Sunday morning promise of that evening’s Lord’s Supper that did not turn out to be the smorgasbord I anticipated. I left the service feeling spiritually fulfilled; however, I was famished.
I slowly discovered my discomfort stemmed from the culturally alien environment of a Gentile church. I couldn’t blame them. It wasn’t their fault they were not Jewish. Yet it didn’t feel like I was at Temple Bnai Abraham, the house of worship I attended as a child in Newark, New Jersey.
Each time I entered a church building all I could see were crosses, wall-to-wall beaming Gentiles and hearing the words “Christ” and “Christian” sprinkled into every conversation. I later heard that such church-talk is labeled “Christianeze,” and all Christians learn the lingo quite quickly.
I did not fit. Church did not feel Jewish. The jargon was not Jewish. The terminology caused me to cringe, asking, “What have I gotten myself into?” When the pastor referred to me as a Baptist kid, I knew it was time to delve deeper into this Christian faith that was launched 2000 years ago by courageous Jewish followers of Jesus. I needed to know what happened to a messianic movement started in Israel that now feels more like it was birthed in Nashville, Tennessee (and I happen to love Nashville and its music).

I would love for my readers and friends of ScriptureSolutions to read  Jesus or Yeshua: Exploring the Jewish Roots of Christianity and gain from this book what I learned on my safari through Christianity not looking for the "lost ark of the covenant" but simply the "lost Jewish roots" of Christianity. Check out the book and please let me know if it was helpful.

Just Published! Jesus or Yeshua: Exploring the Jewish Roots of Christianity

Israeli Team Uses Software To Determine Bible Authorship

When I read the headline "An Israeli Algorithm Sheds Light on the Bible," I  throught I was having deja vu experience. Why? Despite the new software this team of Israeli scholars used to shed light on the scriptures, the conclusions they've reached are outdated and have already been disproven by conservative scholars.

To be fair, here is what the startling new discovery is all about: "The new software analyzes style and word choices to distinguish parts of a single text written by different authors, and when applied to the Bible its algorithm teased out distinct writerly voices in the holy book."

Matti Friedman, API writer for the article gives the gist of what new insights this sleuth software has uncovered:

For millions of Jews and Christians, it's a tenet of their faith that God is the author of the core text of the Hebrew Bible — the Torah, also known as the Pentateuch or the Five Books of Moses. But since the advent of modern biblical scholarship, academic researchers have believed the text was written by a number of different authors whose work could be identified by seemingly different ideological agendas and linguistic styles and the different names they used for God.

In light of running the biblical text through this advanced software we now know almost 3500 years after the biblical text was written, that Moses did not act on his own when he wrote the Torah - the Five Books of Moses. Unfortunately, this "new" viewpoint gained from digital research is as old as a long list of late nineteenth century biblical scholars who developed what is known as the Documentary Hypothesis (DH)

The Documentary Hypothesis states the Pentateuch was a compilation of selections from several different documents, composed at different places and times over a period of five centuries, long after Moses.  And they came to these conclusions without computers!

According to proponents of this theory, Moses did not write the Torah. The ramification of this claim by the modern team of Israeli researchers is less than flattering for Jewish and Christian believers in the authenticity of the biblical text.

We are now forced to question the text when it says in Exodus 17:14 that "the Lord said to Moses  . . . Write this for a memorial in a book." Other similar statements supporting Mosaic authorship can be found in Exodus 24:4, 34:27 and Numbers 33:1-2.  Did Moses write the Torah or did a collection of writers claim Moses wrote the Five Books? Weren't they compromising the integrity of Moses and the text he allegedly wrote when we find out he didn't write it all of it after all?

This means that the Bible - a book of truth - is built on a fabrication of false claims and statements.

Other books in the Torah state that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible. Joshua 8:31 claims, "as it is written in the book of the law of Moses . . " Now the  so-called deception has leaked beyond the Pentateuch and into the historical books of the Bible.

The New Testament also witnesses to the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch.  In John 7:19 Jesus asked, "Did not Moses give you the law . . ?  So even Jesus was implicated in this fraudulent claim that Moses himself wrote the first five books of the scriptures.

If we are going to determine the authorship of the Bible using computer software, we can't help but start with an assumption. It doesn't take a wiz to figure out computer research starts with assumptions that are already in alignment with what the researchers input into the computer.  The same assumptions that gave birth to the Documentary Hypothesis aka the Graf-Wellhausen Theory still hold true today.

First, most scholars who set out to improve on our knowledge of the compilation of the Bible start with the premise the Bible was not given by supernatural revelation. Starting with this premise, then the conclusion will always demonstrate that the Bible was not supernaturally revealed by God to humans.

Regardless of the claim of the Bible that the text came through God speaking to men, this statement is rejected from the start by scholars who refuse to believe it.  This is commonly known as circular reasoning.  Of course the software used by the Israeli team will reach the conclusion God did not speak to one man, Moses, and give him the Torah.  This is the presupposition under which the Israeli team started with and inputted into the computer.

Second, the team ignores the references to Moses authorship found in later books of the Bible.  They would have to reject the later claims of Mosaic authorship in Joshua or in the New Testament and call them "later insertions," in order to hold to their position.

Third, the Israeli team starts with the belief that the writer of the Pentateuch was incapable of using more than one name for God and more than one style of writing regardless of the subject matter.

API writer Friedman substantiates this belief in his article:

Today, scholars generally split the text into two main strands. One is believed to have been written by a figure or group known as the "priestly" author, because of apparent connections to the temple priests in Jerusalem. The rest is "non-priestly." Scholars have meticulously gone over the text to ascertain which parts belong to which strand.

The priestly school is concocted by the appearance of the name Elohim for God and the non-priestly school is based on the appearance of the tetragrammaton (YHVH) in the biblical text. For some reason, to these students of the Scriptures, Moses was incapable of using both terms in one chapter and so there must be two different writers of the biblical text who may have been separated by hundreds of years.

in his excellent book, A Survey of Old Testament Introduction, Christian scholar Gleason Archer observes:

According to these theorists, a single author like Milton could not possible have written merry poems such as L'Allegro, lofty epic poetry such as Paradise Lost and scintillating prose essays such as Areopagitica. If he had been an ancient Hebrew, at least, he would have been speedily carved up into the ABC multiple-source hypothesis (pg. 97). 

The bottom line for these scholars is their desire to demonstrate that the Jewish faith was not revealed by God but evolved throughout many centuries of human editing of the biblical text.  Still we cannot be sure another computer software program will be used again in later years to disprove the Bible and merely prove the obvious - if you start with the premise the Scriptures are not the Word of God, you will reach that same conclusion whether you're living in the late nineteenth century or the year 2012.

Israeli Team Uses Software To Determine Bible Authorship

Dry Bibles, Wet Bibles or No Bibles

I'm a confessed church-hopper.  It's been that way for almost a year.  I keep asking myself, "Why?"  In one or two smaller churches I've met some wonderful, loving people and in other congregations, I met no one because they have an "invisible visitor" policy.  I've attended warm, inviting large sanctuaries and cold, indifferent smaller places of worship.  I've walked into churches that held business meetings on Sunday morning instead of conducting business with God. I've walked into congregations hurting in my heart to hear from God and walked out with a church budget spread sheet that I tossed in the nearest trash can. 

Actually, all of these obstacles can be overcome either through my own friendliness, or willingness to get involved in small groups to meet people on a more personal level, or just by having a church make a commitment to reserve Sunday morning for the teaching of the Word of God. It's all fixable. 

However, three problems keep cropping up in churches that I can't do a thing about.  This past Sunday I attended a large, modern church and after 20 minutes of listening to the sermon I had to leave. I've never done that in my life as a believer.  This church displayed one of the three problems I am about to discuss.   

Here they are in case you're curious,

First, some pastors preach out of a dry Bible.  These men stick to the word and like glue they adhered to the text so much they are unable to say anything practical or useful from the Word.  In my own experience teaching the Scriptures, I'd pray for the Lord to make the Word come alive to touch hearts of people in the congregation. I'd plead with the Lord to bring tears, laughter, joy and relief to the people hearing the Word.  

Yet some pastors have turned their teaching into an extended Bible commentary.  Great information.  Intellectually stimulating comments.  But dry and lifeless.  The pastor probably never leaves his study and interacts with real people with failing marriages, chronic illnesses and troubled teens.  These pastors cannot bring the Bible into the 21st century.  Perhaps a year away from the pulpit and working in a supermarket or a hospital might make them "real people" and not so plastic and rigid.  What a waste! I could've stayed home and read a good book.

Second, the wet Bible is used by the pastor who will get up before the congregation and say, "As I was preparing this message last night . . . "  Those words tell me this man is not prepared.  He has not studied or poured over the word during the week.  His presentation is superficial and predictable.  I heard a pastor this week give a watered down message. He would read a passage of the text and then say, "Isn't this crazy . . . that God would dwell with His people?"  I thought to myself, "Crazy?"  What a strange way to describe God's presence. This pastor used this term about 6 or 7 times.  I had to leave. He said very little about the text.  I would have found more respect for the Koran in a mosque than I found in this church for the Holy Bible. I felt ashamed to be a Christian where such little respect was shown for the Word of God. He might as well been preaching out of a Marvel comic. 

The watered down sermons are the ones where you hear tips and principles and 7 how to's on finding peace or fixing your family or re-roofing your house.  Most mega churches are based on this kind of preaching where the pastor thinks he's "one of us" because he wears sandals in the pulpit and a Hawaiian shirt and no tie. The pastor is not one of us; the pastor is held to a higher standard. He livs in a fish bowl where people watch his every move.  If he says the word "shit," that'll be the topic of the week in the small groups,  If his kids screw up in school, the uproar is much greater than if Joe Blow in the back row has 4 teens who are all smoking dope.  In the same way,  in trying to be "one of us," the pastor does not study the word "like one of us."  Who is he trying to kid?  

Finally, there's the no-Bible pastor. No Bible!   He's not even looked at his Bible. His message is about nothing. Ideas. Concepts. A book he's read. His identity as a Jewish person or a black person.  Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor, is a no Bible pastor.  He's got fire, but it's not the fire of the Holy Spirit.  It's the fire of his politics or hatred of whites.  It's not the fire of the Holy Word.  If the word of God is not taught in the pulpit, it's time to go home and watch Sunday afternoon football and pop open a few beers.  The pastor is wasting your time.  If he's afraid to teach the Scriptures because people might leave because they're seeking a purpose-driven way to wash their car or have the greenest lawn on the block, then he needs to seek a new profession.   If the pastor is just catering to all the people who want their own "personal Jesus," he does a disservice to the bigger picture of the God we worship as our King not my personal divine servant.  I wonder if some Christians are confusing Jesus with Tinkerbell or Jiminy Cricket? 

Some pastors even hold the Bible when they speak but the words they speak do not come from the Bible. They tell stories and anecdotes and get people laughing.  They're entertainers.  They want to build their church on being a funny pastor or erect a mega-congregation on telling people how to get rich or healed or be successful.   They are no-Bible pastors. They give their people the "Show of  Shows" as they prance back and forth across the stage like a Vegas night club act. if they're gong to go that far, then bring out the Vegas dancing girls along with the Viva Las Vegas pastor. 

So which pastor is the one you ought to be looking for?  It's simple. You'll know the moment he opens his mouth.  He's the man who has humbled himself before the Word of God, prayed over it and meditated on the text and read the commentaries, studied the original languages and prayed over and over, "Lord, what do you want to say to your people through this passage of holy text?"  But if every week you're hearing a man of God teaching the same thing over and over - the same prophetic message, the same cry for more giving, the same focus on the importance of Israel, the same favorite passages, the same promises that God will heal all diseases, the same focus on faith . . . . this man has not been in the Word of God.  He preaches out of his own mind . . . an un-submitted mind to the Spirit of God.  He's got his mind all made up what he's going to say and he's going to bend the Scriptures like Gumby to make God's word adapt to his pre-conceived ideas.   

So what if every church is not a mega church?  Big deal!  But every church deserves a pastor faithful to God's word whether that church grows to 17,000 or stays at 170 in its membership.  The goal for the pastor is not to be purpose-driven but to be driven by the Spirit of God through the words God has inspired and placed in the pages of a book that begins in Genesis and ends in Revelation. 

Football games this Sunday or Church . . what will it be?  If your pastor can't take you line by line through the Scriptures, then those seats on the 40 yard line might be the better choice.  

You can always find a good self-improvement book at Barnes and Noble; but when the word of God is taught no book in Barnes and Noble or you can find on Amazon.com can compare to the empowerment of self-improvement God can accomplish in your life through His word. 

Dry Bibles, Wet Bibles or No Bibles

Obama's Pastor Anything But Wright

What's it going to take for Barak Obama to heed his moral conscience, exercise his judgment and make a bold step to leave his church, Trinity United Church of Christ? How many more outlandish, anti-white, anti-American statements do we need to hear from Barak's pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright? Where are the voices of evangelical black pastors condemning the skewed gospel of liberation theology and racist perspective of this Chicago pastor?

When asked about his pastor, Barak Obama has said, "we don't agree on everything . . . I've never had a thorough conversation with him on all aspects of politics." Well, the Senator from Illinois better sit his pastor down real quick before he throws a monkey wrench into Barak's campaign. On Townhall.com we discover, for the last 20 years Barak told reporters, he didn’t think there was 'anything particularly controversial' about Wright. Is Barak asleep concerning his radical spiritual mentor?

My prediction is either Barak and his wife Michelle distance themselves from Rev. Wright or the Senator's presidential campaign is going to go all wrong!

For one thing, Rev. Jeremiah Wright sees the United States of America through the lens of white racism. He is guilty of making scorching remarks on the government of the United States. During a sermonic rant Wright calls America, "the USA KKK." Is Obama's pastor making the American government equivalent to the Ku Klux Klan? Does he understand the white supremacy of this despicable Jew-hating, anti-black racist group? Sounds like Rev. Wright holds to some extreme conspiracy theories as well. If the KKK is controlling American, at least we know Wright disagrees with Louis Farrakhan that the Jews control the U.S. You can't have it both ways.

In a video of a recent sermon, the Rev. made disparaging, sarcastic remarks about the names of Colin Powell and Condoleezza (Condomleezza) Rice. How childish for an accomplished inner city pastor!

According to Rev. "Wrong" when a politically conservative black man or woman succeeds in entering government leadership, unless that person espouses the liberal black political gospel, that person is an "Uncle Tom" or a "house n-explitive" to the pastor. Are black intellects like Thomas Sowell or Shelby Steele allowed to think for themselves or must they follow the black group think of Rev. Wright's black caucus.

Where is Obama in this heyday where his pastor's sermons are being tossed around on the internet, radio and television like food samples at Costco? Does Obama have the guts to stand up to this "man of the cloth" and "rent his garments" like an Old Testament prophet disgusted with the corrupt leadership of his day? It appears Rev. Wright gets a pass from Obama simply because he is his pastor. If he cannot stand up to Rev. "Wrong", I have serious doubt about Obama's ability to make clear, moral judgments and follow through on his convictions. For Obama to admit after attending Trinity United Church of Christ for twenty years that he was not aware of "anything controversial" about his pastor calls into question Obama's ability to discern right from wrong and truth from error. Is he wearing ruby red slippers too?

From a 2007 NY Times piece, we learn that "in 1984, Rev. Wright traveled to Cuba to teach Christians about the value of nonviolent protest and to Libya to visit Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, along with the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan." Of course, the media was quick to point out that having Louis Farrakhan as Wright's companion no way is an endorsement of the leader of the Nation of Islam.

In Richard Cohen's Washington Post column reveals, "In 1982, the church [Trinity United Church of Christ] launched Trumpet Newsmagazine; Wright's daughters serve as publisher and executive editor. Every year, the magazine makes awards in various categories. Last year, it gave the Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award to a man it said "truly epitomized greatness." That man is Louis Farrakhan."

Rev. Wright turns out to be a admirer of Minister Wrong not just a travel companion to Libya. The spiritual advisor of potentially the next President of the U.S. is Rev. Wrong once again.

Oddly, the left is jumping all over John McCain for being endorsed by Pastor John Hagee, an anti-Catholic evangelical. According to radio/TV host Sean Hannity, McCain has not embraced Hagee's endorsement. John Hagee is a Christian universalist who denies the necessity of Jesus as the Messiah for the Jewish people. Regardless, John Hagee is NOT McCain's pastor. Furthermore, Hagee's denouncement of Catholics is over theology not race. Also, I have yet to see John Hagee endorsing David Duke or any other avowed white racist as a man who "epitomizes greatness."

How can Obama sit by when his pastor hangs accolades on a man who calls white people "blue-eyed devils"? Louis Farrakhan is no hero to the black people when it comes to racism. He is an anti-Semite and has made hateful remarks about the Jewish religion as a "gutter religion." Why has he gotten a free pass on his racist remarks?

Does Rev. Wright preach the message of the New Testament or the liberal black liberation theology of the 70s? Again, the New York Times comments:

Mr. Wright preached black liberation theology, which interprets the Bible as the story of the struggles of black people, who by virtue of their oppression are better able to understand Scripture than those who have suffered less. That message can sound different to white audiences, said Dwight Hopkins, a professor at University of Chicago Divinity School and a Trinity member. “Some white people hear it as racism in reverse,” Dr. Hopkins said, while blacks hear, “Yes, we are somebody, we’re also made in God’s image.”

There is no black, white, Asian or Hispanic Gospel. No one people has claims on the New Testament message. The NT message was carried to Africa by Ethiopian man who came to know Christ through a Jewish follower of Christ. This took place during the first century according to the eighth chapter of the Book of Acts. Christianity is not the white man's religion. It is a faith that started among Jewish people to declare the liberation of redemption from sin and that message was sent out to all people regardless of race, color and ethnicity.

Obama has his hands full in light of the controversial video of his pastor that aired on Thursday March 13, 2008. His sermon focuses on how Hillary cannot relate to American black culture like Obama does. Listen to the Trinity United Church of Christ orator on Townhall.com: “Hillary ain’t never been called a [n-expletive]!” Wright fumes. I wonder if Obama, having a white mother, who has mysteriously disappeared in her son's presidential race, and an African father was called names by blacks for being half white? Let's not distance Barak too far from Hillary. We already know from Lynn Cheney that Barak Obama, on his Caucasian side is an eight cousin of Vice President Dick Cheney.

Then he accuses Hillary of fitting the mold of a rich white woman in contrast to Obama who "isn't privileged." Yet, in Obama's book Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, he bemoans the fact that he did not grow up in poverty like his black friends; he had a very good education and did not go through inner city schooling. He was not raised in a single parent home, as Wright explains, but Obama's mother remarried when Barak's father left, and she married a non-practicing Muslim man and they lived in Indonesia and Hawaii. That doesn't sound like Obama's from the 'hood to me. At least Hillary was raised in Chicago! You go, girl!

Rev. Wright makes up his own New Testament in his sermons: "Oh, I am so glad that I have a God who knows what it’s like to be a poor, black man in a country, in a culture that is controlled and run by rich, white people" Jesus grew up as a poor Jewish boy in a culture controlled by militant Romans who oppressed the Jewish people. If anything, God knows what anti-semitism feels like. In fact, if Rev. Wright knew the God of Israel, he wouldn't be hanging around the Jew-hater Louis Farrakhan.

Here's a part of his sermon he needs to direct to Minister Farrakhan, a man who "epitomizes greatness," "He taught me, Jesus did, how to love my enemies. Jesus taught me how to love the hell out of my enemies and not be reduced to their level of hatred, bigotry and small-mindedness. " How shortsighted Rev. Wright is.

The final curtain call on Rev. Wright's ministry comes in a sermon reported on today's ABC with Brian Ross. According to Ross, Wright delivered a speech in 2003 in which he said, “No, no, no, not ‘God Bless America” but “god damn America."

According to Ross, Wright said “The government gives them [African Americans] the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three strikes law and then wants us to sing 'God bless America,' No, no, no, not 'God bless America,' God damn America -- that's in the Bible, you're killing innocent people, God damn America for treating us citizens as less than human."

No where does Pastor Wright admit that black men are in prison because they committed crimes. In his view black are victims of the U.S. government's conspiratorial plans to destroy the black race. Face it, Barak Obama, a presidential hopeful, attends a church pastored by a minister who hates America and hates its government.

Rev. Wright is no pastor who is true to the biblical text. He is true to his black ideology and disdain of white people and the country his "spiritual son" is seeking to lead.

Rev. Jeremiah Wright is a man who can only see the world through the filter of racism and not through the lens of the love of Jesus for all people. Barak Obama needs to take a hard look at a man he considers his spiritual mentor and take the next step out the door of that church. He must see that Rev. Wright is all Wrong for him. If not, Rev. Wright will mentor Barak Obama into a landslide defeat to the Republican contender John McCain.

Obama's Pastor Anything But Wright