The first believers in Jesus were Jewish!
The first believers in
Jesus Christ were Jewish. They were called “Maaminim” and
comprised a spiritual movement within the scope of Judaism - The Maaminim
had their own synagogues - and preached the ‘Besorah’ (Good
News) of salvation.
Dr. H.H. Goldberg states,
“Besides the Perushim (Pharisees), Tzedukim (Sadducees)
and Essenes, the ‘Maaminim’ - were an integral part of the
Temple community and ‘Ha-aam Hayehudi’ (the Jewish people)”. For the
first eight years after the resurrection of Jesus, the ‘Maaminim’
ministered exclusively to Jews.
The deacon, Phillip, the
deacon broke tradition by preaching in Samaria, among that city’s
Jewish-extracted, mixed-race population. Cornelius’ household were the
first Romans to accept the gospel - two years later - when ‘Shimon
bar Yonah’ (St. Peter) preached to them.
Rabbi ‘Shaul of
Tarsus’, a fanatical Pharisee, crusading to exterminate the ‘Maaminim’,
met Jesus of Nazareth - in a bright light - on the Damascus Road and was
converted.
ST. PAUL
MOST EFFECTIVE
Among the evangelists, he
was the most effective in converting the heathen. Gentile believers became
known as Christians and their houses of worship, churches (hebrew
fem. of synagogue).
At the Jerusalem Council-A.D.
50, the ‘Maaminim’ accepted gentile believers into fellowship -
without embracing Jewish customs and disciples - except refraining from
idolatry.
The ‘Maaminim’ grew so
large that in A.D. 90, Gamaliel II called the ‘Yavneh Council’
of rabbis to stem the growth of the new Jewish movement. It was decreed
that a disparaging verse against the ‘Maaminim’ be included in the ‘Amidah’
(central prayer in synagogue service).
PERSECUTION
INCREASED ON THE JEWIS
H
PEOPLE
The persecution increased
when Rabbi Akiba declared ‘Shimon bar Kochba’ - who led an
insurrection against the Romans from A.D. 132 to 135 - the Messiah. The
‘Maaminim’ remonstrated saying, “There is no Mashiach - except
Yeshua”.
Shimon bar Kochba’s
“messiahship” was later repudiated by Jewish leaders, but the breach
with the ‘Maaminim’ remained. Whatever happened to the Jewish
believers? Why did the ‘Maaminim’ - who continued until the fifth
century - disappear?
THE HISTORICAL RECORD
EXPOSES ONE OF CHRISTIANITY’S MOST SHAMEFUL CHAPTERS. THE UNRIGHTEOUS
TREATMENT
OF
THE JEWS, THE JEWS WHO WHERE SOME OF THE FIRST FOLLOWERS
OF JESUS.
The Jews
who were God's chosen people. What was the point of persecuting the
Jews. What persecuting the Jewish failed to do was to destroy the 'maaminim'
- proud, biased and spiteful gentile Christians succeeded by their hate
and rejection.
JEWISH
PREACHERS HAD CONVERTED MANY PAGANS TO CHRIST - BUT GENTILE CHRISTIANS
BEGAN TO PERSECUTE THEIR JEWISH BRETHREN
Jewish preachers had
converted many pagans to Christ. But after the first century, gentile
Christians - who had become dominant - began to persecute their Jewish
brethren!
CHURCH FATHERS DEMANDED
JEWISH BELIEVERS RENOUNCE THEIR JEWISH PRACTICES
Church fathers and clergy
demanded that Jewish believers renounce their Jewish observances and
practices. They forgot that the ‘Maaminim’ in A.D. 50 embraced
them - on the basis of their belief in Jesus - without changing
the Jewish cultures.
Now they demanded that the
Jews change their customs - as the basis for salvation. (Romans 11)
Regarding the ‘Maaminim’,
Irenaeus wrote: “They circumcise their sons, observe their holidays and
customs of the Law and lead a life as Jews and love Jerusalem as if it
were the House of God”.
ANTI-SEMITISM
AGAINST THE JEWS BEGINS IN A.D. 325 BY NICEAN COUNCIL
The A.D. 325 Nicean
Council, with 318 bishops present - no Jews - changed the Resurrection Day
from the 14th day of Nisan to a perpetual Sunday. Hence the gap between
Passover (Pesach) and Easter. Note the anti-Semitism: “We ought not,
therefore, to have anything in common with the Jews...our worship follows
a...more convenient course...we desire dearest brethren, to separate
ourselves from the detestable company of the Jews...How, then, could we
follow these Jews, who are almost certainly blinded”.
-Eusebius, Vita. Const.
Further humiliations were decreed against the Jews at the Laodicean Synod
(A.D. 343-381): “It is not lawful to receive unleavened bread from the
Jews, nor to be partakers of their impiety” (Cannon XXXVIII).
A.D. 538 - JEWS MAY NOT
APPEAR IN COMPANY OF CHRISTIANS
The Third Synod of Orleans
(A.D. 538) ordered: “From the Thursday before Easter for four days, Jews
may not appear in the company of Christians” (Cannon XXX).
QUINISEXT COUNCIL A.D. 692
- No priestly order or layman may eat unleavened bread of Jews
The Quinisext Council
(A.D. 692) stated: “Let no one in the priestly order nor any layman eat
the unleavened bread of the Jews, nor have any familiar intercourse with
them, nor summon them in illness, nor receive medicines from them, nor
bathe with them; but if anyone shall take in hand to do so, if he is a
cleric, let him be deposed, but if a layman, let him be cut off”
(Cannon II).
DOCTRINE INVENTED SAYS
CHRISTIANS ARE T
RUE ISRAEL
Justin (died ca. A.D.
165), invented the doctrine that Christians are the true Israel and that
the Church must reject its Jewish past, His ‘Dialogue with Tryphon’
was riddled with falseness against the Jews.
JEWS
CALLED CAINS, MURDERERS & NOT CHOSEN PEOPLE OF GOD
Tertullian (A.D. 150-225)
stated that the Jews were the Cains, the murderers, and “were rejected
as the Chosen People of God”. - ‘Adversus Judaeos’.
Origen (A.D. 184-253)
declared the Jews dangerous enemies of Christians, and stirred up the
pagans against them.
Jerome (A.D. 342-420)
wrote that the Law was God’s deliberate trick to destroy the Jews.
And Bishop Epiphanius
(died ca. A.D. 403), declared Jewish believers - heretics - because they
observed Jewish holy days. St. Chrysostom (A.D. 345-407) called the
synagogue “a brothel, home of vice, refuge of the devil, citadel of
Satan”. He stated “God hates the Jews and has always done
so”.
How these false statements
about the Jews contradict the Holy Scriptures that remind us of God’s
great love for Israel and His Chosen People, the Jews!
OFFICIALS DEMAND
CONFISCATE & BURN ALL JEWISH BOOKS
In A.D. 1236, Pope Gregory
commanded all church officials in France, England, Spain and Portugal to confiscate
Jewish books on the first Saturday of Lent. Subsequent to the decree
of A.D. 1242, thousands of volumes - filling 24 wagons - were publicly
burned in Paris.
In A.D. 1259, a synod of
the archdiocese in Mainz ordered Jews to wear yellow badges. In
A.D. 1434, Jewish men in Augsburg had to sew yellow buttons to their
clothes. Across Europe, Jews were forced to wear a long undergarment, an
overcoat with a yellow patch, bells and tall pointed yellow hats with a
large button on them.
MARTIN LUTHER - TERRIBLE
TREATMENT OF THE JEWS
Martin Luther - the great
reformer - was no better than the popes, in his treatment of the Jews!
In A.D. 1543, Martin
Luther wrote in ‘On the Jews and Their Lies’: “What shall we
do with this rejected, damned Jewish people? I will give my true counsel.
First that their synagogues and schools should be set on fire..
Second, that also their houses be demolished and destroyed. Third
that their prayer books and Talmuds be confiscated... Fourth, that,
under penalty of death, their rabbis be forbidden to teach...that their
freedom to travel be restricted...and all their money and valuable in gold
and silver be taken”.
HITLER
,
THE JEWS AND THE HOLOCAUST
HITLER’S HOLOCAUST WAS A
CULMINATION OF 1800 YEARS OF ANTI-SEMITISM BY EARLY CHURCH BISHOPS,
MEDIEVAL POPES AND PROTESTANT REFORMERS!
May God forgive the Church
fo
r the horrid
treatment of the Jewish. May God forgive the Church for all the hatred, bias and erroneous teaching that has fueled the
perverse anti-Semitic prejudices for so long.
The Council of the
Evangelical Church met in Stuttgart, Germany - October, 1945. Lutheran
clergymen went on record as saying: “We are bound to our (German)
people not only in a community of suffering but also in a solidarity of
guilt. With heavy pain we say: Through us, unending misfortune was brought
to many”.
And the German Bishops’
Conference - June 11, 1961 - ordered that a special prayer for forgiveness
concerning the murdered Jews, should be offered in all Catholic churches
in Germany for “the immeasurable guilt which cannot be blotted out by
human penance”.
POPE JOHN XXII PRAYS
PRAYER OF FORGIVENESS FOR TREATMENT OF JEWS
Pope John XXIII prayed the
following prayer of repentance, shortly before his death June 3, 1961: “We
now recognize that many, many centuries of blindness have covered our eyes
so that we no longer see the beauty of Your Chosen People and in their
face no longer recognize the features of our first-born brother.
“We realize that the
sign of Cain is marked on our forehead. For centuries, Abel was lying in
blood and tears because we forgot Your love. Forgive us the damnation we
pronounced unjustly upon the name of the Jews.
“Forgive us for having
crucified You a second time in their flesh. For we knew not what we were
doing.”
It is most unfortunate,
that after all the sufferings the Jews have experienced - much of it at
the hands of the Roman Church - that it took the Vatican so long to
finally recognize Israel as a nation.
No doubt the very recent “turn
around” resulted in the Pope’s proposed journey to Jerusalem!
POPE JOHN PAUL II - BEING
THE CONSUMMATE POLITICIAN THAT HE IS - REALIZED THE NEED TO DO SO IN ORDER
TO BE INVITED TO ISRAEL BEFORE HIS DEATH. IN ANY EVENT, THE VATICAN WAS
FORCED TO FINALLY CHANGE THEIR BIGOTED AND PREJUDICED ATTITUDE TOWARD
ISRAEL!
With the rebirth of the
Jewish State however, there is also a re-emergence of the ‘Maaminim’,
in Israel.
And since hundreds of
thousands of Jews have returned to Israel during this past decade (some of
them born again, spirit-filled Christians from South America & Eastern
Europe) the Evangelical Christian Church is growing rapidly in Israel.
Praise God!
Dr. H.H. Goldberg,
spirit-filled rabbi of a Los Angeles Maaminim congregation says, “A
true Jew is committed to God, to the land of Israel and to the Jewish
people. And many Jews today believe in Jesus as their Mashiach”.
