Rabbinic Judaism, the religion practiced by millions of Jews worldwide for centuries is a dying faith.
Why? Because many Jews no longer see any relevance in a religion that presents a God who hasn't been heard from for 3,500 years.
For example, the Bible's Old Testament (called the Tanakh in Judaism) presents a portrait of a God who interacted frequently with the Jews in the ancient times and delivered them from the bondage of slavery in Egypt.
The Tanakh records several miracles performed by God through Moses and recounts the voice of the Lord speaking directly to the ancient Jews from Mt. Sinai where He gave them the 10 Commandments. (Exodus 20:1-17) And God also called the Jews His Chosen People out of all the nations on the earth. (Deuteronomy 7:6-8, 2 Samuel 7:23-24, 1 Kings 10:9, Psalm 105:8-15)
Many Jews who no longer believe in God reason that if they are truly God's chosen people, then why have they suffered so much persecution throughout the centuries? Did God choose them just so they could be forced to wander the earth and suffer so much scorn and humiliation?
How do you answer that question? If a person is close-minded--as many people are today--no answer will suffice. But if someone is open to reason, then you present the evidence.
And this is the evidence: The Jews have been persecuted terribly for centuries because they perverted God's laws and violated His covenant that He established with them through Moses. And despite the repeated warnings the Lord sent to the Jews through His prophets to implore them to repent, they ignored those warnings.
Finally, the Lord had enough. This is what He said through the prophet Jeremiah who lived about 2,600 years ago: "I will make them abhorrent and an offense to all the kingdoms of the earth, a reproach and a byword, an object of ridicule and cursing, wherever I banish them. I will send the sword, famine and plague against them until they are destroyed from the land I gave to them and their fathers." (Jeremiah 24:9-10)
Indeed, the Lord fulfilled His word. For centuries, the Jews have wandered the world and have been unwelcome wherever they've gone. From the Crusades to the Inquisitions to Hitler's Holocaust to the relentless terror attacks committed against them by Muslims to the resurgent anti-Semitism, the Jews are indeed considered abhorrent by much of the world.
And tragically, few Jews understand why. For example, in 1990, Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi Eliezer Schach claimed Hitler's Holocaust occurred because the Jews violated the Sabbath and ate pork.
And astonishingly, Shas spiritual leader, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, claimed the Jews who perished in the Holocaust were reincarnated to pay for sins they committed in past lives.
http://failedmessiah.typepad.com/failed_messiahcom/2009/07/rabbi-ovadia-yosef-holocaust-dead-sinned-in-past-lives-123.html
Reincarnation is a pagan religious concept taught in the Hindu Vedas. It can't be found anywhere in the Old or New Testaments. If people must pay for their own sins via reincarnation, then the ancient Temple sacrifices for sin and Christ's death on Calvary's Cross were absolutely meaningless and unnecessary.
The good news is that many Jews are beginning to recognize the truth: That their ancestors rebelled against God and brought a terrible curse on the nation of Israel and the Jews.
And many Jews are recognizing that the ancient curse is broken only through Jesus Christ. When they come to Christ by faith, they are delivered from eternal death unto eternal life. As the apostle Paul wrote: "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!" (2 Corinthians 5:17)
The Jews were chosen by God to teach His laws and commandments and to bring His Messiah Jesus Christ into the world to offer God's grace and mercy to a rebellious creation through the cross.
Many Jews now understand that. They weren't chosen to be a laughingstock or punching-bag for the world. They were chosen to be a priesthood for God's human creation. And through Christ, they are finally recognizing that.
Sadly, there are many Jews who either still can't or simply refuse to recognize that. They stubbornly remain loyal to a dying man-made religion that's going down like a doomed ship. And unless they wake up, that ship is going to take them to hell.
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