How perplexing are Israel and the Jews to the world! No one, Jews especially, knows how to solve the problem of contention with, and hatred of, the Jew. There are those, like Hitler and Muhammad, who think extermination is the answer. They are wrong. God, the Savior of Israel, has the true answer, and He has given it to us to give to you. While this letter is addressed to the Jews and the nation of Israel, it is meant for everyone to read and, whosoever will, to share with Jewish friends and acquaintances, and with whoever professes a love for the God of Israel.
Not perplexing at all. And i do, indeed, know how to solve the problem of contention with and hatred of the Jew. The solution is quite simply, the missionizing of the world to Judaism, the religion Gd Himself founded, and the only true faith on Gd’s green earth. All other faiths, especially those based on the pagan dying/saving man/gods, are false and UnBiblical.
Stuart,
You are right; there is only one true faith from God, but what makes you think your version of Judaism is the right one? It is not those who testify of themselves, but those of whom God testifies, that are true Jews. Is God testifying of your works?
By your criteria of missionizing the world to your form of Judaism, how well are you doing? What proof is there that God is leading your work? How many Muslims are converting to your religion? How many Catholics, and other religious? How many Jews, for that matter?
Is your form of Judaism stemming the tide of anti-Semitism and giving Jews hope of better things to come? What Word of God do you presently bring to the Jews? What is God speaking through you to Israel and to the world, the message that will turn all to your religion and save them? And by doing what? Sponsoring an Oneg Shabbat?
God is not speaking through you, is He? In fact, you never hear from Him. Why is that? Why is He silent towards you? He used to speak to Israel through the prophets. When is the last time you can say you heard anything? Twenty five hundred years ago? Did you listen then? If so, how is it you haven’t heard anything since?
What earthly father would not communicate with his children? What boss would not supply his workers with what they need to get the job done? So how come you don’t hear from God and don’t have the wherewith to accomplish His will?
Isn’t the onus on the other party here, that is, on you, and not on God? In other words, it isn’t that God Almighty can’t make Himself heard, or doesn’t want to be heard, but that you are incapable of connecting with Him:
Isaiah 59:1-3 JPS
(1) Behold, the LORD’S hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, neither His ear heavy, that it cannot hear;
(2) But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid His face from you, that He will not hear.
(3) For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue mutters wickedness.
Yes, and the blood on your hands is His.
Will you, then, continue to fault Him for your deadness and deafness? Will you continue to portray the Almighty as mute, uncaring, or unable to communicate? What an impotent and useless god you have presented as the God of Israel! You bring shame, not glory, to His Name.
Let’s examine your list of “What Jews Believe” and I will tell you what true Jews believe as opposed to your personal ideas and the opinions of those in darkness who do not know God.
But first let’s establish who is a Jew according to the faith of God. Jews at large believe many things, and hardly any agree with one another on matters of faith. Obviously you are not talking about these, the physical Jews, because they believe many different and contradictory things. What you mean by “What Jews Believe” is that these are your beliefs, as the self-appointed spokesperson for all Jews, who presumes to speak for the God of Israel. That you do not. I will prove it.
Only the spiritual descendants of Abraham, those who actually hear the voice of the God of Israel and follow Him, keeping His commandments, know Him and can speak with the authority you presume to have. I, Paul Cohen, am such a Jew.
The fact that I am a physical Jew has nothing to do with the fact that I am a spiritual descendant of Abraham, because all flesh is alike to God. Until He called me by name and trained me in His ways, I had no knowledge of Him or qualification to speak on His behalf. He sent a Gentile in the flesh, but Jew in the Spirit, to minister to me in Israel. He calls and chooses whomsoever He will.
Your proclamations, in the order they appear on your website:
“Jews believe that one person cannot die for the sins of another person.”
That is true, “as the LORD commanded, saying: ‘The fathers shall not die for the children, neither shall the children die for the fathers; but every man shall die for his own sin” (2 Chronicles 25:4 JPS).
Every man does die for his own sin, and that is the problem. Not only can men not die for the sin of others, but they cannot even save themselves from their own sin and death. That is why God became our Savior:
Isaiah 45:21-23 JPS
(21) Declare you, and bring them near, yea, let them take counsel together: Who has announced this from ancient time, and declared it of old? Have not I the LORD? And there is no God else beside Me, a just God and a Savior; there is none beside Me.
(22) Look unto Me, and be you saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is none else.
(23) By Myself have I sworn, the word is gone forth from My mouth in righteousness, and shall not come back, that unto Me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear.
How did God become the Savior of the whole earth, so that His Name has been preached to all men? ANSWER: He laid down His life through the Son of God, the Passover Lamb Who fulfilled all the blood sacrifices of the Law of Moses that signified the cleansing to come of the inner man and the renewing of a right spirit and nature in man, so that he no longer sins or has further need of sacrifice.
That is salvation, which comes only through God, the God of Israel, Who came in the flesh through Jesus Christ.
Abraham, in his obedience to the commandment of God to offer up his only son, Isaac, foreshadowed the sacrifice God would make through Christ to redeem, not only His people, Israel, but the whole world. By our firsthand personal experience of that sacrifice, the words of Ezekiel are fulfilled:
Ezekiel 36:26-28 JPS
(26) A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh.
(27) And I will put My spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you shall keep My ordinances, and do them.
(28) And you shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; and you shall be My people, and I will be your God.
Stuart, let’s face it, rabbi or no rabbi, you still have your stony heart. Is that not true?
“Jews believe that we do not need a blood sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins.”
If we are talking about being made right with God, nothing could be further from the truth or the Hebrew Scriptures. Surely, as a teacher of Israel, you ought to know that atonement for our souls requires blood, according to the Law of God given by Moses:
“For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement by reason of the life” (Leviticus 17:11 JPS).
You should also know that animal sacrifices were not good enough to wholly and finally cleanse us from all sin and to redeem our souls, demonstrated by the fact that those sacrifices had to be made annually.
We now know that God has completed the sacrifices, because He removed the apparatus to make them. He removed the sacrifices because He Himself put away our sins once and for all through Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ has made us true Jews, born again as citizens of the Kingdom of God with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, forgiven and sanctified by His blood.
“Jews believe that Jesus was not the messiah.”
True Jews know that Jesus is the Messiah.
I know. I am a Jew who was dead until Jesus Christ made Himself known to me as the God of Israel.
There is only one God Who, according to His Word (as quoted), is our Savior or Messiah. There is no other Savior or God.
To accomplish His work as our Savior, God took on human form, according to the Scriptures. He did this to fulfill the Law in us, which we were unable to do for ourselves until we received His power of life over death. Now, by the power of God that we have in Him through Jesus Christ, Who was resurrected from the dead for our sakes, we establish the Law of God. I couldn’t do that before I received Christ. But now I can through Him.
That is how I know He is the Messiah.
“Jews believe that God hates human sacrifices. Who died on the cross? Was it Jesus-the-god, or was it Jesus-the-human? If it was Jesus-the-god, Jews don’t believe that God can die. If it was Jesus-the-human, then all Christians have in the death of Jesus was a human death, a human sacrifice. Jews believe that God hates the very idea of human sacrifice.”
Jesus didn’t perform a human sacrifice, which thing God does hate. You, serving as the high priest, made a sacrifice of Him through the execution of your murderous plot against Him. Here is what happened:
John 11:49-51 MKJV
(49) And one of them, Caiaphas, being the high priest of that year, said to them, You do not know anything at all,
(50) nor do you consider that it is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and not that the whole nation perish.
(51) And he did not speak this of himself, but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation.
As for God not being able to die, it is only true that death cannot hold God, which proves that Jesus Christ was God come in the flesh. For though men killed His body, Jesus Christ raised Himself from the dead, not being held in death as all men are:
Acts 2:24-27 EMTV
(24) Whom God raised, thus doing away with the labor pains of death, because it was not possible for Him to be held by it.
(25) For David says concerning Him, “I foresaw the Lord always before Me, because He is at My right hand, that I may not be shaken.
(26) Therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced; moreover my flesh also will dwell in hope.
(27) Because You will not abandon my soul in Hades, nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption.”
Though He died as a man, Jesus proved He is very God by raising His body from the dead. This was the prophetic substance of the Book of Jonah, who was a figure of Christ. He allowed himself to be sacrificed for the sake of others, thereafter being in the tomb of the fish for three days and nights, and he emerged to save Nineveh, representative of the heathen world.
“Jews believe that one is born into the world with original purity, and not with original sin. Jews do not believe in original sin.”
The God of the Jews disagrees with any Jews who believe they were born pure:
Isaiah 48:2-8 JPS
(2) For they call themselves of the holy city, and stay themselves upon the God of Israel, the LORD of hosts is His Name.
(3) I have declared the former things from of old; yea, they went forth out of My mouth, and I announced them; suddenly I did them, and they came to pass.
(4) Because I knew that you are obstinate, and your neck is an iron sinew, and your brow brass;
(5) Therefore I have declared it to you from of old; before it came to pass I announced it to you; lest you should say: ‘Mine idol hath done them, and my graven image, and my molten image, has commanded them.’
(6) You have heard, see, all this; and you, will you not declare it? I have announced unto you new things from this time, even hidden things, which you have not known.
(7) They are created now, and not from of old, and before this day you heard them not; lest you should say: ‘Behold, I knew them.’
(8) Yea, you heard not; yea, you knew not; yea, from of old your ear was not opened; for I knew that thou would deal very treacherously, and was called a transgressor from the womb.
You were a sinner from before you were born. Isn’t that what David said of himself? “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Psalms 51:5).
If a godly man, one after God’s own heart, was born in sin, are not all men? Do we not come from Adam, whose fall came on all men? That is what David knew about himself and confessed; any Jew who disagrees is not a man after God’s heart.
The irrefutable evidence that all men are born as sinners is the fact that all men sin. According to practical experience and the testimony of the Scriptures, all men miss the mark and come way short of the glory of God:
Psalms 14:2-3 JPS
(2) The LORD looked forth from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there was any man of understanding, that did seek after God.
(3) They are all corrupt, they are together become impure; there is none that does good, no, not one.
As sin came by a man (Adam), only a sinless man could lead mankind out of sin. Only God could perform the role of a sinless man, because there is no man living on earth who has not sinned:
“And He saw that there was no man, and was astonished that there was no intercessor; therefore His own arm brought salvation unto Him; and His righteousness, it sustained Him” (Isaiah 59:16 JPS).
Jesus Christ is the arm of God, the only man who never sinned because He was God come in the flesh. That is why death had no power over Jesus Christ:
“The soul that sins, it shall die…” (Ezekiel 18:20 JPS).
“For You will not abandon my soul to the nether-world; neither will You suffer Your Godly One to see the pit” (Psalms 16:10 JPS).
“Jews believe that God is one and indivisible. Jews do not believe in a trinity.”
Amen! “HEAR, O ISRAEL: THE LORD OUR GOD, THE LORD IS ONE” (Deuteronomy 6:4 JPS).
The trinity is a heathen notion, having nothing to do with the God of Israel. It is an abomination. There is only one God, Whose incarnation as a man has been called the Son of God. He, Yeshua HaMashiach, is the God of Israel Who came as a man to bring salvation to mankind, as promised from the beginning.
Remember, God Himself is the Savior of Israel and the world, Who is not some ghoulish conglomeration of three gods.
“Jews believe in The Satan, but not in a devil. There is a difference between The Satan and the devil.”
If by this, one means that God has appointed Satan, the adversary, but there is no such thing as an independent devil who does whatever he wants in opposition to God, then by all means this is true.
That is why Jesus, God in the form of a man, submitted Himself to the tests of the adversary, knowing it was right and necessary to acknowledge, in every way, the sovereign power of God over all things, as true Jews always do. Jesus Christ submitted Himself to being tested and, by doing so, overcame the adversary on behalf of Israel and all of mankind.
“Jews believe that God is God, and humans are humans. God does not become human nor do humans become God.”
True Jews know that only God is God, and that is why we do not reject Him when He appears in human form, just as our father Abraham did not:
Genesis 18:1-33 JPS
(1) And the LORD appeared unto [Abraham] by the terebinths of Mamre, as he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day;
(2) and he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood over against him; and when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed down to the earth,
(3) and said: ‘My lord, if now I have found favour in thy sight, pass not away, I pray you, from your servant…
(9) And they said unto him: ‘Where is Sarah your wife?’ And he said: ‘Behold, in the tent.’
(10) And He said: ‘I will certainly return unto you when the season comes round; and, lo, Sarah your wife shall have a son.’ And Sarah heard in the tent door, which was behind him. –
(11) Now Abraham and Sarah were old, and well stricken in age; it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. –
(12) And Sarah laughed within herself, saying: ‘After I am waxed old shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?’
(13) And the LORD said unto Abraham: ‘Wherefore did Sarah laugh, saying: Shall I of a surety bear a child, who am old?
(14) Is any thing too hard for the LORD. At the set time I will return unto you, when the season comes round, and Sarah shall have a son.’
(15) Then Sarah denied, saying: ‘I laughed not’; for she was afraid. And He said: ‘No; but you did laugh.’
(16) And the men rose up from thence, and looked out toward Sodom; and Abraham went with them to bring them on the way.
(17) And the LORD said: ‘Shall I hide from Abraham that which I am doing;
(18) seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him?…
(33) And the LORD went His way, as soon as He had left off speaking to Abraham; and Abraham returned unto his place.
There were three men, but only one spoke in the First Person as God, and He went His way, while the two other men (angels) went their way. No, we do not reject God appearing as a man or as the Angel of the Lord.
As for men becoming God, the children of men who are born of God inherit His nature and take on His likeness. What could be more natural than that? That is the destiny of the true Jew, the true descendant of Abraham.
“Jews believe that ‘Jews for Jesus,’ ‘Messianic Jews,’ and ‘Hebrew Christians’ are no longer Jews, even if they were once Jews.”
The only thing that matters to the spiritual Jew is knowing God and walking with Him in this world. Those who have this faith of His – which is not a religious formalism, as are all manmade forms of Christianity and Judaism, but a dynamic relationship with the living God – do not identify themselves by any names other than the One they proclaim, the Lord Jesus Christ/Yeshua HaMashiach.
“For we are the true circumcision, worshipping by the Spirit of God, rejoicing in Christ Jesus, and having no confidence in the flesh” (Philippians 3:3 EMTV).
“The ‘Jewish roots’ of Christianity?”
True Christianity is true Judaism, and true Judaism is true Christianity. It cannot be otherwise, because true Christianity is the worship and knowledge of God through Jesus Christ, the God of the Jews, Who gave the Law of God to Israel through Moses.
The problem for you, Stuart, is that you have a manmade, godless Judaism, which you compare with a manmade, godless Christianity. Both are missing the Substance, the former in complete denial of its Lord and Savior, and the latter substituting a manmade image of Christ for the Living God.
As for the Real Thing, Jesus Christ, He came to give us life, not religion:
“It has been told you, O man, what is good, and what the LORD does require of you: only to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8 JPS).
The Lord Almighty came to fulfill His Law within us. I was a lawless Jew, hedonistic and worldly, until God, the Lord Jesus Christ, personally intervened in my life beginning in 1978. He changed me, causing me to turn from my selfish, sinful ways, to love Him and all people in truth.
You don’t love all people. You are in fear and are defensive, making up a Judaism whose specific purpose is to deny your God and His appearing in the flesh as your Messiah. How can you but expect the many plagues and troubles that are on you, when you have such a stance and attitude?
No, Stuart, yours is a false Judaism, one you have invented and borrowed from others who are equally in the dark. You are a Jew in DNA and name only. You do not reflect the ways of the God of Israel whatsoever. He is a stranger to you.
He was not a stranger to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who heard His Voice and walked with Him. Moses also knew Him and His ways, but you have never known Him or His ways. You are uncircumcised in heart, which is the only circumcision that matters to Him:
“Circumcise yourselves to the LORD, and take away the foreskins of your heart, you men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem; lest My fury go forth like fire, and burn that none can quench it, because of the evil of your doings” (Jeremiah 4:4 JPS).
“…but all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in the heart” (Jeremiah 9:26 JPS).
You don’t hear from God because you are uncircumcised. And how will you circumcise your heart? Why have you been waiting thousands of years to do it? What is the hold up?
Hear what the One you profess says about the matter:
Leviticus 26:40-42 KJV
(40) If they shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, with their trespass which they trespassed against Me, and that also they have walked contrary unto Me;
(41) And [that] I also have walked contrary unto them, and have brought them into the land of their enemies; if then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they then accept of the punishment of their iniquity:
(42) Then will I remember My covenant with Jacob, and also My covenant with Isaac, and also My covenant with Abraham will I remember; and I will remember the land.
You will become circumcised when you confess your great sin of rejecting and killing your Messiah, the King of the Jews. This is The Key for Israel and the Jew.
God sent Moses and Aaron to the children of Israel, because He had something to say to them. We also have a Message from Him to Israel, which you have just heard. But you have nothing from God, whether a message or understanding. All you have are your own thoughts and the teachings of those who have not known God, which are meant to discourage Israel and the Jews from hearing what He has to say to them.
You are the enemy of your own people, the Jews who are in unbelief. While you present yourself as an authority and teacher of God, your position is predicated on keeping Israel and the Jews from doing the one thing that separates them from their God. That makes you worse than Ahmadinejad.
Better to be a true enemy than a false friend who, to save his own skin, leads his people into destruction.
Paul, your email to me when put into a Word file is 13 pages in length. For me to respond to the errors, Biblical misquotes and misrepresentations and mistranslations and simple lies would take me a lot more time than i have and result in something twice as long. You may wish to believe that this is a cop-out, that your theology, your arrogance, your misunderstandings, your mistranslations and misrepresentations have no response, and you can believe what you wish.
You have not won an argument because you drown your opponent, the technique of the barren. I hope that Victor was impressed with your tome, for your sake. I was not.
i will continue to hold to what Gd revealed in His word, the TaNaCH, and in His faith of Judaism, as i explained on my web site, and much of what i wrote on the web site responds to what you wrote in your overly lengthy email.
One man’s theology is another man’s belly laugh. Your arrogance, name calling, misunderstandings, mistranslations, and your other errors gave me a laugh.
Throughout the past 2,000 years of Jewish history, Jews have greatly suffered as a people, having slain their (and the world’s) Messiah. While some Jews have managed to assimilate and be forgotten or lost as Jews, most have had to keep their identity whether they liked it or not, chose to do so or not. That is because God has determined so, and not man.
Those individual Jews who have done evil have often brought tragedy to their own people. If a Gentile does something criminal or socially unacceptable, it is recognized as rather ordinary, but when a Jew does something evil, as for examples, Bernie Madoff and Ivan Boesky, then Jews are often sure to catch hell. That is because, as His chosen, God won’t let them get away with it, as He would the Gentiles (though they are also judged, but generally not as severely). And He uses the Gentiles to judge the Jews, even as Habakkuk declares.
Your attitude and response to what we have to say, contemptuously ignoring it all, is highly unfortunate for you, Stuart. As Achan’s individual sin brought trouble on all Israel corporately, so your vile attitude brings disrepute and contempt upon other Jews.
You are a stupid and wicked man. It is amazing how those with such small, arrogant, childish minds are often the ones who glorify themselves with such titles as “rabbi.”
The God of Israel has spoken to you by us, and you have scorned not us, but Him. Now, according to the TaNaCH, you will continue to receive your due and more besides, even as Moses and the prophets so often and emphatically declared.
A Jew by circumcision of the heart through faith with father Abraham,
Victor Hafichuk
Stuart, you say that my letter has “Biblical misquotes and misrepresentations and mistranslations.” Didn’t you recognize that I was quoting from a Jewish translation? Are you unaware that JPS stands for Jewish Publication Society, or do you believe they have mistranslated the Bible?
I had no argument with the translation for the verses I presented you with in my letter, but there are other verses from the JPS that have been blatantly twisted. As with your perverse Bible interpretation, this has been done in order to deny the appearing of the God of Israel through Jesus Christ.
For example, Psalm 45, taken from the original Hebrew and literally translated (Young’s Literal Translation), says:
Psalms 45:6-7 YLT
(6) Thy throne, O God, is age-during, and for ever, A sceptre of uprightness is the sceptre of Thy kingdom.
(7) Thou hast loved righteousness and hatest wickedness, Therefore God, Thy God, hath anointed Thee, Oil of joy above Thy companions.
Whereas the Jewish Publication Society has tampered with the wording in order to deny that God is the Anointed One (or Christ) Who came to inaugurate His Kingdom:
Psalms 45:6-7 JPS
(6) (45:7) Thy throne given of God is for ever and ever; a sceptre of equity is the sceptre of thy kingdom.
(7) (45:8) Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated wickedness; therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.
You can say you have an explanation for this flagrant mistranslation of the Scriptures, but whether you give one or not doesn’t matter (as with the rest of your presumed answers), because we have already answered your objections here and in Israel and the Jew.
The words of the Psalmist that precede this heist by the Jewish translators confirm that it was God Himself Who is being addressed in these verses, even according to their own translation:
Psalms 45:2-5 JPS
(2) (45:3) Thou art fairer than the children of men; grace is poured upon thy lips; therefore God hath blessed thee for ever.
(3) (45:4) Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O mighty one, thy glory and thy majesty.
(4) (45:5) And in thy majesty prosper, ride on, in behalf of truth and meekness and righteousness; and let thy right hand teach thee tremendous things.
(5) (45:6) Thine arrows are sharp – the peoples fall under thee – they sink into the heart of the king’s enemies.
Who is fairer than the children of men other than the Mighty One Who appeared as a man, Who is blessed forever and under Whom the people fall? This can be none other than the Holy One of Israel, the Savior of the world.
Another verse where the JPS tries to circumvent an obvious reference to the Messiah, Jesus Christ:
Psalms 2:11-12 KJV
(11) Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling.
(12) Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and ye perish from the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him.
The Jewish Publication Society flagrantly removes the reference to the Son:
Psalms 2:11-12 JPS
(11) Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling.
(12) Do homage in purity, lest He be angry, and ye perish in the way, when suddenly His wrath is kindled. Happy are all they that take refuge in Him.
The word “Son” in the original text no longer appears, but the rest of the text in the JPS confirms that it refers to God – to Whom all honor (homage) is due, and by Whom all power is exercised. “Happy are all they that take refuge in Him.” We say, “Amen.”
But you find these things funny, do you? They give you a “belly laugh.” You are either a liar or a damned fool, though certainly both, whether you lie intentionally or not.
Only a cynical, hardened fool finds it amusing to be exposed as a jackass. But it is not a humorous thing at all to see people like you perishing in their sins. How despicable is your behavior!
Do you also tell the professing Christians who provide the services, goods, and country for you to live in, that you get a belly laugh out of their belief in your King? Whether you do or not, you can be sure that you and your vile attitude do not escape notice or the wrath of God.
and you call me arrogant??
but you two are truly the best that Christianity can create.
True on both counts, Stuart, and you will know it.