Questions by Non-Christians (Archived)This forum is for non-believers seeking to know more about Christianity. This forum is NOT for Apologetics or debates.
Look at Peter's Vision when he saw the blanket coming down from Heaven with unclean animals on it and God told him to eat the unclean animals but he refused and God told him that eveything was to be equal because anything that he made was to be clean.
God therefore made everyone equal and Jesus said that Jews and Gentiles were one and the same.
How many religions were there when Jesus came to live on Earth?
I think the Jewish people are the "chosen people" because Jesus came as a Jewish person right?????? And the prophecies specify they won't believe He is the Messiah because He was there, and He knows what they will believe and what they won't?!
I always noticed a pattern in Genesis and throughout of God picking the poorest people or of the lowest esteem and making them great to demonstrate his power. Not Egyptians or Babylonians.
He had an affinity for the nomadic sheep herding types as upposed to the agricultural metropolitan types. (Able over Cain, Jacob over Essau) Abraham was an old goat herder with an infertile wife and no children. How about that for humble beginnings. Joseph was a slave. Moses was a slave baby on the brink of death. David was a young boy of no account. He created a nation out of slavery. Isreal was entirely sustained by God, and when it wasn't, it fell.
Jesus was just a carpenters son, born in a manger, and worse of all, from Nazareth.
As Serapha posits, we don't know who else God offered his Grace to. God made man, and choose man. Isreal choose God. The Tribes of Isreal are the choosen people. but the choosing was done by them - not God.
The Lord did not set his love upon you, or CHOOSE YOU because you were more in number than any people ...for you were the FEWEST of all people.(8) But because the Lord loved you..........
Adam was the first of the Jewish race. We trace the lineage of the Jewish nation from Adam. The very man God created. And from Eve...the woman God created from Adam.
We can trace this through Biblical records, as the Bible itself is a record of the Jewish nation from Adam.
__________________ To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
What about that verse "blessed are those who bless the jews" or something meaning those who are good to the Jews will recieve blessings.
I'm not a fan of Jack Chick, but one of his tracts is "Love the Jewish people" and he claims in it that the fall and rise of countries and their success is due to their support or lack of support for Israel.
He also chose the Jews because that was the line Jesus was born from - the line of David which was a Jewish one. The Jews were cercumsised when they were born, I don't think this is the right place to discuss cercumsision, but it showed that they had a covenant with god.
God choose the nation of Isreal (or they choose him - can we know if Yahweh called to others who failed to heed him?)
God also blessed al the other nations, and set them seeking after him. This may be a blessing for us, the Law is hard (look to the OT for how few were able to keep it. According to revelations only 144,000 out of all the Jewish people will have kept it on the last day). For the rest of us all that is required is that we live by the precepts of Christ. For the nations prior to Christ (and in modern times those that have not received the Holy Spirity) - the seeking and living in accordance with natural precepts was all that is required. Read Acts 17:22-34. God is far more merciful to the Pagens then to his choosen people.
All will be well.
__________________ Rev. Mark A.W. Smith, O.C.C. M.Th. St. Fechin's Old Catholic Church All are welcome to God's table.