On the beach

If you went down to the beach today, you might have seen Orthodox Jews at the water’s edge throwing bread in the water. You would have seen the same thing on the banks of some rivers. In New York, the Brooklyn Bridge would have been crowded with Hasidic Jews casting bread into the Hudson River below. They will not be feeding the ducks but instead will be taking part in the solemn ritual of Tashlich, which in Hebrew means “casting off”. As well as casting bread into the water, some will deposit fluff and other bits of debris from their pockets, while reciting Micah 7:18,19:

Who is a God like You, pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgression of the remnant of His heritage? He does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in mercy. He will again have compassion on us, and will subdue our iniquities. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if sin and guilt could be cast away so easily; if transgressions could be carried away or cast into the sea? The great tragedy of Rosh Hashanah is that the Jewish people could literally know their sins to be cast away and buried, never to be remembered again. That is why CWI exists; to tell Jewish people that they can know the reality of that which Micah foresaw 700 years before Messiah was born.

A Question of Balance

Tonight at sunset, something awesome will happen. According to the Jewish Lubavitch Chabad sect, God will “recode the Universe”.

In less esoteric terms, the Jewish New Year of 5771 will commences when the sun sets this evening. According to the Jewish calendar, God created the world 5770 years ago. The Talmud says that the world is to last for 6,000 years. The first 2,000 years were years of desolation after which the Torah flourished for 2,000 years after the Law was transmitted to Israel at Sinai. The last two millennia of world history were to be the Messianic Age. According to the Jewish system of calculation, Messiah should have appeared 1,771 years ago!

But coming back to this evening, as we stand on the threshold of the new year, all the deeds you have committed in the last year will be weighed in the balances of heaven. According to Rabbi Ahron Lopianski on Aish.com, “Rosh Hashana is a day of judgment on who will enter this most exclusive club of eternity along with which deeds, and what is to be discarded.”

If you are judged by God to be perfectly righteous you will be inscribed in the “Book of Life” thus being admitted to Rabbi Lopianski’s “exclusive club”; if you did nothing good in the last twelve months but only evil, you will be inscribed for death. The good news, if you are one of the “intermediate” class, having done a fair amount of both god and bad in the last year, you have ten days till Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement to tip the celestial balances in your favour. This can be done through acts of tzedaka, or righteousness, such as giving to charity. You should also seek to make amends with anyone you have wronged and give attention to study of the holy books.

Ten days to tip the balances of heaven in my favour? I would need a whole lot longer than that. The tragedy of Judaism is that it has become like the religions of the nations; it is a religion of personal merit. God forgives if we prove worthy of his forgiveness.

Shock Horror! A balanced Israel documentary on the Beeb

When the BBC's flagship documentary programme Panorama last broadcast a documentary Israel in January, the result was a one-sided and biased distortion of Jewish history and Jewish rights to Jerusalem.

When Panorama announced it was airing "Death in the Med", an examination of events that took place on board the Turkish “aid” ship Mavi Marmara and the Gaza flotilla in May, I expected more of the same.

Instead, the BBC presented a balanced and comprehensive examination of the incident.
If you didn’t see the programme you can see it at Honest Reporting’s website, where there is other useful information about the Gaza flotilla.

Allah's uneven playing field

Although President Obama has backpeddled on his support for the building of a massive Islamic Cultural Centre/Mosque just yards from Ground Zero, the project still enjoys the support of New York’s Jewish mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Mayor Bloomberg and other supporters of the proposal are motivated by a sense of fair play, tolerance and American values but they need to remember that for centuries Muslims have built mosques on the sites of their great military victories to celebrate the triumph of their religion over their enemies. That's why the Dome of the Rock was built on the site of the Temple in Jerusalem. That is why the Cordoba Mosque (for which this project is named) was built in Spain. The Ground Zero Mosque will be a clear signal to radical Islamists the world over that America is a soft target and ripe for another attack. And to add further insult to the injury, the proposers of the project want to dedicate the building on the tenth anniversary of 9/11!

Although the developers of the mosque are not revealing where the $100 million for the project is coming from, it is more than likely that Saudi Arabia – which has funded the building of nearly 2,000 mosques around the world – is the source of funding. While Hamas demands that Muslims be allowed to worship where they wish, not a single church or synagogue has been constructed in Saudi Arabia.
Fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, where they were indoctrinated with hatred of Israel and America.

One of the main movers and shakers behind plans for the Ground Zero Mosque is Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf who is frequently described in news reports as a “moderate” Muslim. in an interview with the US TV news programme 60 Minutes not long after the 9/11 attacks, Feisal Abdul Rauf declared that America was, "an accessory to the crime that happened" because the US has been an accessory to a lot of innocent lives dying in the world." He believes the United States should be governed by Islamic sharia law rather than the Constitution.

If you are as concerned as I am, Michael Evans has organised an online petition addressed to Mayor Bloomberg that you can sign. Click here.

What a difference a day made

US President Barak Obama has withdrwan his support for plans to build a mosque near Ground Zero (see The House Barak wants to build)after families who lost loved ones on 9/11 labelled him “insensitive and uncaring”.

On Friday, he said: “As a citizen and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right ... to build a place of worship and a community centre on private property in Lower Manhattan.”

On Saturday the President modified his comments: “I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making a decision to put a mosque [at Ground Zero]. I was commenting very specifically on the right that people have that dates back to [America’s] founding … my intention was simply to let people know what I thought. Which was that in this country we treat everybody equally and in accordance with the law, regardless of race, regardless of religion.”

Hamas co-founder leader its chief on the Gaza Strip, Mahmoud al-Zahar, speaking on Sunday on “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio” on WABC-AM in the US, said that Muslims “have to build everywhere so that followers can pray, just like Christians and Jews build their places of worship.”

Fair enough. But if Moslems must have freedom to build places of worship wherever they choose in the West, regardless of whether the places they choose to erect their mosques offends the sensitivities of bereft families, why don't Christians and Jews have the same freedoms accorded them in Islamic lands?

The house Barak wants to build

If you didn't know it, plans are afoot to construct an Islamic Cultural Centre cum mosque in the shadow of the site where almost 3,000 people died on 11 September 2000, after Muslim hijackers flew two airliners into the twin towers of the World Trade Centre.

Not only that, the plan has the support of New York’s mayor and President Obama. “As a citizen, and as president”, Obama says, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community centre on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable.”

The president made his remarks at a White House dinner to celebrate the beginning of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. In making his statement, he waded into a national controversy that has sparked passionate and angry debate.

Republicans were quick to jump on the president's remarks. Representative Peter King of New York said it was "insensitive and uncaring for the Muslim community to build a mosque in the shadow of ground zero."

While the Muslim community had the right to build the mosque, said King , "they are abusing that right by needlessly offending so many people who have suffered so much."

Top Republicans including former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and former House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich announced their opposition. So did the Jewish civil rights group, the Anti-Defamation League.

While insisting that the place where the twin towers once stood was "hallowed ground", President Obama said the proper way to honour it was to apply the "American values" of tolerance and respect to those who were different.

While his pronouncement wil find favour among Muslims of the world, the president's stance runs counter to the opinions of the majority of Americans, according to polls. A CNN/Opinion Research poll released this week found that almost 70 per cent of Americans opposed the mosque plan.

Some September 11 victims' relatives, see the prospect of a mosque so near the destroyed trade center as an insult to the memory of those killed by Islamic terrorists in the 9/11 attacks.

So what should America do? Should it apply the vallues of tolerance and respect to those who apparently don't share those values. Should America forgive and forget?

Well, try to imagine the response of the Jewish people and the western European nations if a Hitler Appreciation Society requested permission to build a Nazi Cultural Centre at Auschwitz.

Imagine what would happen if the Japanese proposed building a Japanese Cultural Centre at Pearl Harbour.

The seismic shock would register 10 on the Richter scale.

Foundation or Support?

My Roman Catholic proselytiser friend, whom I told you about yesterday, was quick to respond to my letter with a series of statements not from the Bible but from the Catechism. I won’t weary you with them all but if you think the the differences between the Church of Rome and biblical Christianity are marginal, the following will be helpful to you. Emphases are mine:

80 “Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture, then, are bound closely together, and communicate one with the other. For both of them, flowing out from the same divine well-spring, come together in some fashion to form one thing, and move towards the same goal.

“Each of them makes present and fruitful in the Church the mystery of Christ, who promised to remain with his own "always, to the close of the age”.

81 “Sacred Scripture is the speech of God as it is put down in writing under the breath of the Holy Spirit.”

“And [Holy] Tradition transmits in its entirety the Word of God which has been entrusted to the apostles by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit. It transmits it to the successors of the apostles so that, enlightened by the Spirit of truth, they may faithfully preserve, expound and spread it abroad by their preaching.”

82 As a result the Church, to whom the transmission and interpretation of Revelation is entrusted, “does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the holy Scriptures alone. Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honoured with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence.”

85 “The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church alone. Its authority in this matter is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ.”

This means that the task of interpretation has been entrusted to the bishops in communion with the successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome.

86 “Yet this Magisterium is not superior to the Word of God, but is its servant. It teaches only what has been handed on to it. At the divine command and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it listens to this devotedly, guards it with dedication and expounds it faithfully. All that it proposes for belief as being divinely revealed is drawn from this single deposit of faith.”

87 Mindful of Christ's words to his apostles: “He who hears you, hears me”, the faithful receive with docility the teachings and directives that their pastors give them in different forms.

To which I replied:

I’m grateful to you for copying and pasting what the Roman Catholic Church says about itself but you can’t really expect someone who believes in the principle of “Scripture alone” to be persuaded by the claims of an organisation that sees itself as being above Scripture.

The NIV translation of 1 Timothy 3:15 is, for the reasons I outlined, inaccurate. The Church is the support of truth, not the foundation.

This elicited the following response:

The church answers the very canard that you make of the Church being above Scripture. Read the extract.

86 “Yet this Magisterium is not superior to the Word of God, but is its servant. It teaches only what has been handed on to it. At the divine command and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it listens to this devotedly, guards it with dedication and expounds it faithfully. All that it proposes for belief as being divinely revealed is drawn from this single deposit of faith.”

87 Mindful of Christ's words to his apostles: "He who hears you, hears me", the faithful receive with docility the teachings and directives that their pastors give them in different forms.

Foundation is a legitimate translation and can be found in several Protestant versions.

Hedraioma: “a stay, prop, support”. Is not a foundation a support? This is semantics and prejudiced choice of words I fear.

I replied:

Although article 86 states the “Magisterium is not superior to the Word of God, but is its servant”, in practice it does not act as though it is the servant of the Word of God.

In the booklet you gave me, Joel Peters states categorically: “The Catholic Church readily acknowledges the inerrancy and authority of Scripture. But the Catholic doctrine is that the immediate rule of faith for the Christian is the teaching authority of the Church.” (Scripture Alone? p.19, my emphasis)

If that statement does not put the Church above Scripture, I don’t know what does!
In this respect, Roman Catholicism is remarkably like Judaism: Jacob Neusner: in Jews & Christians: The Myth of a Common Tradition says that Christianity is “the religion of the Bible”. Judaism is “the religion of the Talmud”. Likewise, Christianity is “the religion of the Bible”; Roman Catholicism is evidently “the religion of the Magisterium”.

The very fact that Peters (and you) see the Church as the “foundation” (ibid p.16) of the truth indicates that in his (and your) view, truth is built on the church, not vice-versa!

The foundation is the most important part of a building.

You accuse me of “semantics and prejudiced choice of words” when you ask the rhetorical question: “Is not a foundation a support?” Yes it is but the distinction between hedraioma and themelios is not mere semantics. As for “prejudiced choice of words”, that criticism is a two-edged sword that cuts both ways.

Of course a “foundation” is a “support” but it is a particular type of support, one on which the entire edifice rests. That is why Christ is the only “foundation” (themelios not hedraioma) on which we build (1 Cor 3:11).

You can see what a difference if would make if 1 Cor 3:11-14 read like this: “No other support (hedraioma) can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on this support (hedraioma) with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one’s work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one’s work, of what sort it is.”

Hedraioma is never used in the New Testament for a foundation. The Greek word for foundation is themelios.

When we first met many years ago I told you there was one overwhelming reason why I could never accept Roman Catholicism. When you were an evangelical, you would have spent all your energies trying to lead people to Jesus; now those energies are spent trying to lead people who follow Jesus to “the Church”. If you were truly a Christian all those years ago, I have no doubt that Jesus would have been everything to you; now “the Church” is everything. Put up all the reasons for that polar shift as you might, the fact remains that for you “the Church” is now more important to you than Jesus.