Re: My visit to a Messianic service yesterday
 

It all boils down to this...

I'm IRISH!!!

Why would I want to act Jewish???

Why would anyone want me to act Jewish???

Why would God want me to act Jewish???

Re: My visit to a Messianic service yesterday
 

Yes... so the lineage of the Israelites/Jews is quite muddied, apparently! No way at all to ever know who is a "true" Jew/Israelite!

Re: My visit to a Messianic service yesterday
 

Just get circumcised, according to the law of Moses, and keep the passover, and technically you could consider yourself a Jew! No matter if you are Irish, English, pagan or a Philistine... according to Moses in Exodus 12:48.... doing those two things would automatically qualify you as "one that is born in the land"....

Re: My visit to a Messianic service yesterday
 

Yeah, and it doesn't matter, anyway! From what Moses said, it doesn't matter. What matters is if one keeps Law or not. Period. So, really, a true Jew does not require lineage , anyway. After all, I think Moses would know better than anybody what a true Jew was. ;)

Re: My visit to a Messianic service yesterday
 

Indeed. I hope Lafon grasps this, and reconsiders his understanding. It is good to share ideas in a place like this, because many times you can think you have something all figured out, but when you open it up in a place of discussion like here, with iron sharpening iron, you can begin to see things in a different light than what you were looking at them with.

I appreciate Bro. Lafon's spirit, and hope that he will be able to look at Jews with an open heart after this discussion. After all in Christ, there is neither Jew, nor Greek!

Re: My visit to a Messianic service yesterday
 

Many times I thought I had it all figured out and then someone pointed out a passage that totally refuted my point that I never thought of. And I changed.

If Paul said there is neither Jew nor Greek, then that means Got is not conscious of ethnicity of Israelites to bar them out of anything, except for a tiny fraction of one generation which, even then, allowed for repentance. Generation must mean people alive at that day alone, or else none of the other scriptures unite together with that reference. It's the only way the bible flows with one great message,

Re: My visit to a Messianic service yesterday
 

Amen. Myself included. It is easy to surround yourself with scriptures that flow, until one pops out that doesn't "flow". Then what! You have to be willing to let all of the Word interpret the Word, and change accordingly.

Re: My visit to a Messianic service yesterday
 

can you expound upon "what Moses said" a little here? I have often suspected--and satan's nature practically demands--that the title "Jew" was surely almost immediately appropriated, in every way possible, by satan. Ty

The term Jew is only used in my speech in the way the bible speaks of it. I meant Moses told the people the law about Gentiles becoming Israelites (the better and more overspreading term) by males being circumcised and keeping law.

Exodus 12:48 And when a stranger shall sojourn with thee, and will keep the passover to the LORD, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near and keep it; and he shall be as one that is born in the land: for no uncircumcised person shall eat thereof.

Re: My visit to a Messianic service yesterday
 

KBTW, have you heard the expression "What goes around comes around"? Well, the Bible tells of a time to come when the same judgment of "gross spiritual blindness" that God imposed upon Israel, the descendants of the patriarchs, will also be imposed upon every unrepentant Gentile that has rejected Jesus Christ and the sacrifice He made to secure salvation for their souls. This impending judgment has often been called the "great falling away," and was first foretold twice by Job:

"He taketh the wise in their own craftiness: and the counsel of the froward is carried headlong. They meet with darkness in the daytime, and grope in the noonday as in the night" (Job 5:13-14).

"He taketh away the heart of the chierf of the people of the earth, and causeth them to wander in a winderness where there is no way. They grope in the dark without light, and he maketh them to stagger like a drunken man" (Job 12:24-25).

Christ Jesus warned of this impending judgment of gross spiritual blindness which would befall the majority of the earth inhabitants, when He said, "... the night cometh when no man csn work" (John 9:4).

It is written five times in the gospels wherein our Lord alluded to this forthcoming era when the minds of many would be rendered incapable of discerning between truth and error, so much so that whatever limited amount of knowledge those affected might have seemed to possess will be removed from their minds. Here is one such statement of the Lord which depicts this impending judgment: "For wehosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but whosoever hath not from him shall be taken away even that he hath" (Matthew 13:12; see also 25:29; Mark 4:25; Luke 8:18 & 19:26).

The reason WHY God MUST impose this judgment of gross spiritual blindness upon the minds of every unrepentant Gentile, is found in the fact that He is NOT a respecter of persons! He blinded the minds of the unrepentant Israelites and His "righteousness" demands that He do the SAME to every unrepentant Gentile!

We find this impending judgment to be imposed upon the wicked Gentiles in the words of Lamentations 1:21-22 as well as Obadiah 1:15 ...

The prophet Jeremiah, lamenting because of the judgment of spiritual blindness God has imposed upon his fellow Israelites, writes, saying, "They have heard that I sigh: THERE IS NONE TO COMFORT ME: all mine enemies have heard of my trouble; they are glad that thou hast done it: THOU WILT BRING THE DAY THAT THOU HAST CALLED, AND THEY SHALL BE LIKE UNTO ME. LET ALL THEIR WICKEDNESS COME BEFORE THEE; AND DO UNTO THEM, AS THOU HAST DONE UNTO ME FOR ALL MY TRANSGRESSIONS: ..."

"For the day of the LORD is near ypon all the heathen: as thou hast done, it shall be done unto thee: thy reward shall return upon thine own head."

This is why Paul, in his 2nd letter to Thessalonica, warned that before the great day of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ again to the earth, that there MUST come a "falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed ... and when that Wicked be revealed ... even him whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love for the truth, that they might be saved. AND FOR THIS CAUSE GOD SHALL SEND THEM STRONG DELUSION, THAT THEY SHOULD BELIEVE A LIE: that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but hsd pleasure in unrighteousness" (see II Thessalonians 2:3, 8-12).

THIS will be the "night that cometh when no man can work" to help his fellows to be saved! It will also be that time which is to come that Paul and Peter both described as the being whenever "the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in ther night" (see I Thessalonians 5:2 & II Peter 3:10). The phrase "day of the Lord," literally interpreted, refers to the opening day when the 1,000 year reign of Jesus Christ begins on this earth.

Lastly, I would be remiss should I neglect to remind you of the words penned by the prophet Amos concerning the spiritual "climate" (if I might use that term) of the society of man that will be resident upon the earth at the moment of our Lord's return for he issued this profound warning:

"Woe unto you that desire the day of the LORD! To what end is it for you? The day of the LORD is darkness, and not light. (That day will be) "As if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him; or went into the house, and leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him. Shall not the day of ther LORD be darkness, and not light, even very dark, and no brightness in it?" (Amos 5:18-20).

The word "light" implies the presence of knowledge of spiritual truths, whereas "darkness" represents the total absence thereof. By Amos' prophecy we are made to understand that at the moment of the Lord Jesus Christ's return to the earth, there will be a complete lack of knowledge concerning Him, therefore NO inhabitant of the earth will possess "faith" in Him, thus answering the Lord's question recorded in Luke 18:8, to wit, "Nevertheless when the Son of masn cometh, shasll he find faith on the earth?" The answer, as we have just discovered, MUST be a resounding NO!

There's much more to be said about these matters, but I hope that this will suffice to provide you with some "food for thought" as you continue to think of the devastation that has been inflicted upon "natural" Israel because of their repeated failure to heed God and His commandments.