Rose;
>
> I get mail from Eddie's ng, but I'm a rabbi. When I saw him beating up on you,
> I sent him a reply which he has not printed. You may be able to use this.
> Here it is.
>
> Eddie, I would humbly suggest that your exhuberance for the message you wish to
> put forth has put you in the same position as other Christian fundamental
> evangelicals. That position is to repeatedly and in an oversimplistic way
> quote from Paul without an in-depth understanding of what his overall context
> was, and patently ignoring the Gospel truths on salvation. Christian
> fundamentalist evangelicals also seem to routinely fail to see that Paul, taken
> at face value, does indeed contradict the Gospel teaching of Yeshua on
> salvation. Considering these contradictions, either Paul must be understood
> differently than at face value, or he is the first Christian heretic, and in
> that case all his work should be considered rubbish. It was no accident that
> the Ebionites, the Jewish Christian community of Jerusalem after James's
> execution, totally rejected Paul. Let me share with you some relevant
> salvatory scriptures.
>
> 1. First, there are three major salvatory covenants; they are the Noachide
> Covenant, the Avrahamic Covenant, and the New Covenant. Christians recognize
> the last two, but don't recognize the first one. Genesis 9 tells us that this
> covenant was between God and every living thing on earth through Noah and that
> this covenant is "everlasting", which means it still exists today, which means
> that it is still a relevant salvatory vehicle for those persons under it today.
>
> Who are those persons who are under the Noachide Covenant? Gentiles who are
> not "under the Law" (the Avrahamic/New Covenants, both of which are Jewish).
> As Paul says in Romans 2:12-16, Gentiles who are not under the Law are saved on
> the great day of Judgment not by acknowledging Yeshua but by a conscience that
> "defends" them as opposed to a conscience that "accuses" them.
>
> 2. Second, the Gospel makes eminently clear that Yeshua came ONLY for the lost
> sheep of the House of Israel -- not for the whole world. See Matt 10:6 and
> 15:24. And this truth is consistent with the first mention of the New Covenant
> -- which he is the Mediator of -- in the Tanak. There, in Jeremiah 31:31-34,
> it is also very clear that this covenant is made not between God and the world
> but between God and Jews. Therefore, once again, non-Jews are not saved by
> accepting Yeshua as their savior, let alone their Messiah, which wasn't even a
> Gentile concept. They are saved by a conscience at peace under the Noachide
> Covenant. And Jews who are yet under the Avrahamic Covenant are not saved by
> faith in Yeshua because the scriptures are repeatedly clear that the Avrahamic
> Covenant is a viable, relevant covenant for Jews even today. Only those Jews
> who are called to New Covenant service, or Gentiles who convert with a
> ministry/mission to make the Old Covenant Jews jealous, are saved under the New
> Covenant. Even Paul says of the cross in one of his "meat" statements that
> Yeshua didn't die for the world's sins, but for the sins under the Avrahamic,
> or, "first" (Jewish) Covenant (Hebrews 9:15).
>
> 3. Paul says of himself in 1 Corinthians 3:1-3 that he speak sometimes
> figuratively or loosely and at other times very factually and accurately,
> depending upon his audience. Peter says of him in 2 Peter 3:16 that the
> "unlearned" tend to distort what Paul says to their own destruction. What
> consists of being "learned"? A knowledge of Jewish theology, that's what.
> This is something that Gentile Christians repeatedly do not know, and so they
> repeatedly misinterpret Paul by simply taking him at face value where he should
> not be so taken. The plain truth about Paul, if he was indeed not in heresy
> and in disagreement with the clear statements of his Master, is that when he
> used personal pronouns in a salvatory context, he was speaking of Jews unless
> he specifically mentioned Gentiles also. That is how Jews of that time wrote.
> They specifically spoke of their own people, even when mentioning the "world"
> because they were scattered all over the then known world, when they wrote
> unless they specifically mentioned Gentiles. I was taught this 35 years ago in
> seminary, and I know for a fact that seminaries generally don't even get close
> to teaching this anymore.
>
> 4. Then, there is always the well-known, but poorly received or even ignored
> (by fundamentalists) fact that the Roman Church did indeed tamper with the
> scriptures. The New Testament generally is not verbatim-reliable. Each and
> every passage must be compared with Jewish theology as recorded in Tanak, and
> if there is a disagreement, the New Testament passage cannot stand, and the Old
> Testament passage must be deferred to. The entire canonical Bible in our hands
> today is a Jewish work, written by Jews for Jews. Even when speaking of
> Gentiles, this information must primarily be considered to be for the
> informational benefit of Jewish readers. Paul would be the big exception here,
> but one must still remember that he, too, was a Jew and wrote as a Jew. And
> though his interest was in Gentile believers, he must be considered to have
> written as a Jew, following Jewish rules and Jewish theology -- even where he
> spoke loosely -- or his entire work must be deemed suspect and of no salvatory
> value.
>
> The New Covenant way of salvation, through Yeshua, is properly understood as
> being for those Jews or converts to Judaism that have been called to New
> Covenant service.
>
> Respectfully,
>
> Rav Avraham ben Ya'akov
>
> If I can do anything else for you, please let me know.
>
> Shalom, Abe
=-=-=
.”Our beliefs must be large enough to included all the facts, open enought to be tested, flexible enough to change when error is found.
Blessing Roy