Actually, it merely shows that you and I disagree.

Let's.

Is that "eternal" in the long sense or "eternal" in the short sense?

I.e. is this "eternal" like the land of Israel being the homeland of the people of Israel or is this some other kind of eternal?

Grand.

I deny it.

Obviously it can be denied.

Judaism says nothing about Jesus, it merely predicted a person like him, as did Zoroastrianism. Whether that makes the two religions "forever linked" to "Christ" or any of the other Messiah candidates is subject to belief. I don't believe it.

 Too complicated...

If a Jew becomes a Catholic he remains a Jew, just like an Italian or German who becomes a Catholic remains an Italian or German. If a Jew becomes an atheist, he also remains a Jew.

If a Mohammedan becomes a Jew, he will seize to be a Mohammedan because becoming part of the Jewish people requires a ritual belief in the Jewish religion (or the Samaritan or Karaite religion as those conversions are also accepted). But if a born Jew (or the same converted Jew) becomes a Mohammedan, he will remain a Jew.

No, there is no such difference between a follower of Mohammed becoming a Jew and a follower of Moses becoming a Catholic.

And no, Catholic principles have nothing to do with Judaism.

And no, being a Jew does not mean living the Mosaic way of life (although it should).

If a follower of Moses, a religious Jew or gentile believing in the Torah, becomes a Catholic, his faith changes. He starts believing in a god who has walked the earth and a Messiah who has already arrived. Judaism does not believe in those things.

A follower of Mohammed can become a (religious) Jew by conversion to Judaism and a change in his beliefs. He will not believe that Mohammed and Jesus were prophets any more and he will not believe that Jesus was the Messiah. But the core belief in the one G-d will not change because Islam and Judaism have the same idea of what G-d is (i.e. one, no Trinity, no son etc.).

I believe Mel Brooks converted to Catholicism (although I am not sure), but he remained a Jew.

Woody Allen is an atheist but remains a Jew.

Many Zionists were and are atheists but they remain Jews.

One of my best friends in Israel is an avowed atheist who would deny the existence of G-d any day yet he is a proud Jew and wears a necklace with the Shield of David and he would never ever denounce his heritage or deny King David's legitimacy as the king of Israel in Biblical times.

You are talking about the modern concept of multi-ethnic religions, a concept that doesn't exist in bronze age religions like Judaism. That's why and I constantly misunderstand each other. I follow a bronze age tribal religion, you follow a modern multi-national religion.

There is nothing wrong with you following whatever religion you want. But it NEVER gives you the right to redefine what other religions are about or what a Jew is.

A Jew is, in the strictest sense, a member of the tribe of Judah, in the wider sense a descendant of the tribes of Judaea, and in the widest sense a member of the people of Israel (although this last usage is technically incorrect).

The definition does NOT include a belief in a god or gods or holy books or anything like that.

A Jew who has never heard of the Torah is still a Jew. Just like an German who has never read any German legends or believed in any German gods is still a German.

My teacher, Marv is a Jew.  He's also a Christian.  He loves to teach us his Jewish heritage.  He never stopped becoming a Jew when he became a Christian.  He's a Messianic Jew.  Plain and simple.  It's not complicated.   He travels all over the world and is very sought out especially for the Passover Seder every year as he puts those on to show us what each thing represented and how it all pointed to the Messiah and how the Jews had Christ right in their commeration the whole time. 

He goes to Israel twice-three times a year and has done so every single year for 39 years.  I'm hoping to go with him in September.  If anyone knows anything about the Jewish Faith and Israel it's Marv.   I'd love Leauki to hear his CD on "Israel Under Seige"  (you can get this from his site Leauki as well as a free year of  his magazine"Zion's Fire." )   Gary Cohen, a frequent writer in the magazine is probably the most intelligent speaker on Hebrew/Israel that I've ever heard of or met.  We get him as a substitute when Marv has a speaking engagment somewhere else.   He's a language guy, proficient in many languages.  Leauki you would love it.  On the CD Marv goes thru the whole history of Israel going all the way back to biblical times right up to the present. He spends alot of time during WWI and WWII.   The miraculous story behind the birth of the Nation Israel both then and now is more than fascinating and how it lines up with scripture is amazing. 

You can be a Jew and a Christian at the same time.  As a Chistian Jew you recognize that the Torah and writings of the Prophets (the OT to us) was all about the Messiah that came.  When He came, He was indeed the Messiah that Moses and Isaiah and the rest were anticipating. He proved it.   The problem was the Jewish leaders of Jesus' day did all they could to deny this and fought against it.  They turned many away painting Christ as nothing more than a lunatic.  Some believed in Christ some didn't.  The nation as a whole because of the leadership did not accept Christ as the anticipated Messiah.  Jesus didn't come for the leaders anyhow.  He came for the lowly.  He came to those who had ears to hear and eyes to see.  Today that is still going on in the movement we call the Messianic Jewish movement. 

And today the religious mucky mucks whether they be of "Christian" persuasion or Jewish are still fighting against Christ.  Nothing different; nothing new under the sun.  They are still doing alot of damage in NOT drawing people closer to God.  Instead they are driving people away with their hypocrisy and malice. 

I agree.

leauki posts:

And picking up from there, we learn in St.Luke 19: 28-44 that as Jesus was riding into Jerusalem being greeted with the prophetic words referred to the enthronment of the Messias, Psalm 118:26, "Blessed is He who enters in the name of the Lord", He looked over the city and wept for Jerusalem. He explains why He is weeping by prophecying the destruction of Jerusalem which was fulfilled in 70AD when Titus razed the city and the Temple was destroyed.  

"And when He drew near and saw the city He wept over it, saying, "would that even today you knew the things that make for peace! But now they are hid from your eyes. For the days shall come upon you, when your enemies will cast up a bank about you and surround you, and hem you in on every side. And dash you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another in you, becasue you did not know the time of your visitation."

70AD was punishment for the Jews and Jerusalem failure to recognize the time of its visitation, that is, for closing its gates to the salvific coming of the Redeemer. Jesus loved the Jews with a special love, and they were the first to whom the Gospel was preached, and to themspecially He directed His ministry. He showed by His word and by His miracles that He was the Son of God and the Messias foretold in the Scriptures. But the Jews for the most part failed to appreciate the grace the Lord was offering them and their leaders led them to the extreme of calling for Jesus to be crucified. The chief priests, the heads of the Jewish nation and the official guardians and exponents of the Jewish religion told Pilate, "We (the Jewish people...the chosen people of God) have no king but Caesar". At that moment, the chosen people of God reject what they were chosen for. They officially merged their nation into the pagan Roman Empire. After that as Pilate washed his hands before the people, they answered, "His blood be upon us and upon our children!" St.Matt. 27:24-25.   

Leauki's post 276 testifies that the debate over who the "Jews" are never ends.

As to who the Jews are, I'd say Christ is the dividing line. The Jews define themselves in encounters with Christ in St.John's Gospel 5 and 8 where the issue of lineage and patrimony is disputed.  When Jesus arrived in Jerusalem, it was decision time. Some Jews accepted Christ and are known as Christians. Those Jews who reject CHrist are still waiting for the Messias on their terms.

...

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Ha, that too!

quote]Lula,

For the last time, the Christian "New Testament" does NOT define Judaism.[/quote]

Why? Because you (and other revolutionary Jews who refuse to accept Christ as the Messias) say it doesn't?  

The Scriptures show that Christ intended the perfect development of the Mosaic religion (Christianity..Catholicism) to be distinct from the religion of the Synagaogue which has ended. Christ said, I will build My Chruch at the time the Synagague was already established. Christ prescribed new doctrines, new modes of worship, and a new form of authority. He even predicted to His Apostles, in the synagogue you shall be beaten." St.Mark 13:9. The intended disctinction of His Chruch from the prefigurative Synagague is most clear.

CHRIST WAS FULLY AWARE OF THE PROPHECY OF ISAIAS 2:2, THAT ALL NATIONS WOULD BE CALLED TO HIS CHURCH. He did intend that His doctrines should be preached to the Jews first and only afterwards to the Gentiles and for this reason He told His disciples not to preach it to the time reserved to the Jews. But in St.Matt. 16:19, Christ Himself tell sthe Apostles to go, teach all nations. That's what is happening now.

The New Testament is the New Covenant in the Blood of Christ and it does indeed define Judaism.  

The Jews were God's first chosen people until the coming of Christ and they could/can be among His chosen people now had they remained true to God's will. Almighty God is faithful and did not change His attitude toward them. In Genesis, Almighty God promised a Redeemer that would come and save them...and all through the Book that you reference above, the Jews had been taught to look for Him (and we know a remnant of 7,000 Jews did). But when He came, the revolutionary Jews rejected Him (as you do now with the same revolutionary spirit) becasue they wished Him to bring temporal things, not spiritual gifts to save their eternal souls.

(Again, this is speaking of Jews in the theological sense).

Why didn't/don't/won't the Jews accept Christ? We know that many individual Jews did, but as a race the Jews did not. You refuse to believe the infallible New Testament Scriptures....well, then read Jewish history and you'll find it wasn't becasue Christ didn't sufficiently prove His mission, but becasue the Jewish leaders and teachers had lost the true religious spirit, had selfishly transferred their affections from God and His prophets to a love of their own high places, and had substituted the idea of a magnificant temporal ruler for the spiritual Savior. They wanted deliverance from tyranny of the Romans and help to trample them. Christ, the suffering and dying Christ, did not/does not fit in with their earthly notions and ambitions, and that's why the leaders then and revolutionary Jews today reject Him.

Then the majority of the people depended upon the Scribes and Pharisees for religious direction, and the majority of Jewish people today depend upon leaders of the same revolutionary spirit found in Rabbinical Talmudic Judaism.

The modern Jew take Judaism for granted without inquiring deeply into the question.

leauki posts:

Regarding the highlighted....BINGO! And the Judaism which already existed long before Jesus' birth is NOT Rabbinic Talmudic Judaism which was devised in 90AD by revolutionary Jews who rejected Christ and everything concerning Christianity.

The word "exists" here is not correct.  

The point is that Judaism, the Judaism that already existed long before Jesus' birth, is the Judaism recorded in the OT, which is God's revealed, Aaronic High priestly sacrificial religion, is non-existent having been translated by the Messias instituted predicted priesthood and Sacrifice of a higher order, as seen in the New Covenant House of God, the Catholic Church.

It is therefore as unreasonable to expect the Judaism of the pre-Christian ages exists in the world today.

The only Judaism that God brought into being through Moses and Aaron, that Jews can embrace today is the Judaism full-blossomed into Catholic Christianity. Biblical Judaism was the caterpillar that evolved into the butterfly of Catholicism.  

To the smallest detail, the OT prophets foretold the true Messias, but many Jews would not listen.

Instead, they prefer to listen to Maimonides who established the criteria whereby the Jews could identify the Messias.  He wrote, "IF there arises a king from the house of David, versed in Torah (who) performs the commandments like David his ancester...and wages a war of God, it is assumed he is the Messiah. If he successfully does this and builds the Temple in its proper place and gathers the dispersed of Israel, behold he is certainly the Messiah."

Well, the true Messias Christ came to deliver Israel but instead of being a strong and powerful warrior king, the Messias endured a shameful death. No way would a suffering Messias do and so from there on, the revolutionary Jews define themselves by their rejection of Christ. This path of rejecting Christ brought on a path of revolutionary activity that brought woe to them immediately within their own generation exactly as the Son of man, the Christ predicted at His trial.....in 70AD. And from then on, it has been a Jewish revolutionary path of woe ever since.  

Maimonide's political warrior king definition of the Messias became axiomatic. If the claimant didn't fulfill certain political and revolutionary criteria, he was ipso facto, not the Messias. How many times have we heard that from you?

kfc posts:

My mistake. I typed the passage in haste and omitting the end of verse 4 was just an oversight.

kfc posts: 

And this is predictable since you reject the Church and believe the utterly false fable of Millenarianism. 

Accept it or not, here, Isaias was prophecying that in the last days, God's New Covenant Church  would be prepared....the one founded by Our Lord in 33AD which the New Testament confirms. Christ fulfilled Isaias' prophecy when He established the New Law (Covenant) in His Blood and founded His Church. Of this Church, the Church of all nations, Christ said, You are the light of the world. A city situated on a mountain cannot be hid." St.Matt. 5:14-15.

It's no small thing that Isaias 2:2 begins, "And in the last days..."  

To an ancient Israelite, history fit into 3 ages. First there was the period before Moses and the Law...Adam, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph lived during this age.

The 2nd was the time of the Law...the years from Moses until the Messias' coming. Most of the OT fits into this second age. It includes Moses and all of the major and minor prophets.

The 3rd and final age expected by the Jews was the Messianic age. The promise of a future Messianic king or Anointed One, can be traced all through the OT starting in Genesis.  The promise and that hope of Christ is the heart and soul of Biblical Judaism.

The Advent of the Messias (Christ's First Coming) signaled the start of the last age. Since it's the final stage of salvation, it's called "the last days."

In Hebrews 1:1-2 St. Paul says, "God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days, He has spoken to us by a Son." Later, in 9:26, we read that Christ "has appeared once for all at the end of the age to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself."

IN JERUSALEM, on the day of Pentecost, St. Peter quoted from the prophet Joel saying that he and the multitude of listeners were in the last days...he said this becasue the Messias had come and the last days were upon them. Both St.Paul and St.John shared this view. 2Tim 3:1 and 1John 2:18. And let's not forget St.Jude 1:18, "You must remember beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ; they said to you, In the last time there will be scoffers....."  

So the first part of Isaias describes the sins of the people and the disastrous situation in Judah. Then comes Is. 2:1-4 which we are discussing. Isaias gives the people a glimmer of hope..a messianic vision which shows that salvation of all nations centers on Sion, the mountain of the Lord, that is Jerusalem. Note the part highlighted above in blue and the significance of Jerusalem where the New Covenant Church began.  Read in Acts. 1:6-9..Just before Our Lord ascended into Heaven, the Apostles question Him about restoring the kingdom of Israel. which shows they are still thinking in terms of an earthly resoration of the Davidic dynasty. For them eschatological hope in the kingdom extended no further than expectation of world-embracing Jewish hedgmony.

Our Lord tells them they need the help of the Holy Spirit to be able to grasp the teaching. We know that help comes at Pentecost. verse 8, "But you shall receive the power when the HS has come upon you, and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth."

So the growth of the Church begins in Jerusalem and will spread to all nations to the end of the earth. This is the geographical structure of St.Luke's account as well. Jerusalem was the destination point of Our Lord's public life (which began in Galilee) and here it is the departure point.

Is. verse 3, is prefaced by "in the last day"..."for the law will come from Sion..." This is the New Law, KFC...it's the New Covenent in Christ's Blood which was established at the Last Supper IN JERUSALEM.  1Cor. 11: 24-26, "...This is My Body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of Me. In the same way also the cup, after supper saying, "This cup is the New Covenant in My blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes."

In the prophets, the expression "in the last days', refers to the messianic era Mic. 4:1 which brings to an end the long period of waiting for the promised Redeemer and marks the start of the Kingdom of God which will last forever. Dan. 7:14; 27; St. Luke 1:33. the fullness of time began with the coming of Christ and will reach its zenith with His return in majesty and glory for the Last Judgment. The last days, in the NT perspective, ciovers the entire period of the Christian era, it's the Church age. This is the earthly phase or stage of the Kingdom of God and is characterized by the presence of the good and the bad, side by side St. Matt. 13:47-48 and the cockle sown among the wheat. 13:24. 

Again, rejecting a revolution is not a revolutionary act.

Jews continued living their old religion.

No. Leauki...after 70AD,  it was impossible for Jews to continue to "live their old religion."

"living the old religion (Biblical Judaism) required 3 holy things...High priests. Temple Altar, Torah prescribed sacrifices in that Temple. From 70AD, these are of the historic past.

Furthermore, the Jewish Encyclopedia rightly declares, that "the official genealogies disappeared with the destruction of the Temple" that this was "deplored as a calamity" vol 5, page. 597, that "it is extremely rare to find a Jewish family that even claims to trace its ancestry further back than the 16th century. vol 9 page 517.

Do you (and others) imagine that Almighty God who provided our holy forebears in Israel with an authoritative priesthood and sacrificial means of honoring Him, and obtaining forgiveness of sin, left man without such a guidance and means of atonement after the end came of those Torah-recorded blessings?

A new, universal priesthood of a higher order was instituted who offers Sacrifice on Altars all over the world (in all nations) as foretold in the OT (Jewish) Scriptures. That priesthood of God, that Sacrifice, those Altars, are found in the Catholic Church, the one and only visible, spiritual society that functions by the will of ALmighty God.

Just as it did St. Peter and Paul and all the rest throughout 2,000 years through today, it is bellief in the faith of the fathers of ancient Israel that leads Jews into the CC.  That Old testament faith fulfilled its glorious mission in and through the birth of the Son of David, Jesus Christ. He caused the Jewish acorn to blossom forth into the gloriious Oak, known as the Catholic Church, the Millennial Kingdom of God,

I pray that all Jews will be blest by being grafted onto that Oak.   

How so?

Please point out any differences between today's Judaism and the Judaism of the bronze age!

And I don't mean "differences" like "Jews failed to acknowledge the Messiah" or any blabla like that. I mean actual factual differences in belief or ritual.

I don't see you having changed your opinion much in this discussion either.

We listened to the prophets that did come, not to the self-proclaimed prophets that came afterwards.

Are you not running out of clean priests?

Actually, the OT Scriptures tell something different.....that only a remant of Jews actually listened to Almighty God's prophets  and remained faithful.

If the majority of Jews had listened to the prophets, including the one that Moses spoke of (Christ Himself), they would not have missed the Messias Christ's visitation.

The simplest way to understand the prophecies is that it's meant to encourage the Jews at the time of the prophet. Take Zacharias for example whose prophecy encourages the Jews of the 6th century BC with the promised coming of the Messias. It starts with that time and culminates with the events of Christ's First Coming.    

Anyway, we've been round and round on that.