Homestar Runner Wiki Forum

Here's a web siteabout them.

_________________

Wow.

What does the Bible have to say about assuming the role of God, and deciding who is "condemned" or not, and who does and doesn't go to hell?

And yes, that's exactly what you're doing. It's for God (if He's up there) to say who's going to hell, not you.

And you've already exposed your ignorance about other groups of people before, Ian - please keep those sweeping statements to yourself.

hehe... Digs. I like it.

But anyway, I agree with WHF. You can't decide that all jewish people are going to hell because thousands of years ago, one of the leaders made a mistake is nailing a guy to a tree. We're talking about a massive time difference here too. Might it be that things in the afterlife work differently now, because the world works differently now?

Just a suggestion. but either way, you can't blame someone for something thier ancestors did.

_________________

I'm not blaming anyone. God sent all these prophecies that the Messiah was coming, & it turns out to be Jesus. The Jews didn't realize that.

_________________

i agree with Ian
Jews are no better than anyone else, if they want access to heaven they have to go through the blood of Jesus (bible even says so)

and i agree with the other guys we are not suppose to judge and we cannot say who goes to heaven or who goes to hell, God is the one that does that, however the bible says as a tree falls so shall it rise, simply meaning, you die without God, when he comes back and call everyone before the white throne judgement, if you died without jesus in your life, you will go to hell

yes the bible says not to judge but does say in Matt 7 that if we do judge to make a righteous judgement...

Ummm..... yes you are. Need I remind you of what you wrote?



In other words: "I, Ian, blame Jews (in which is implied all Jews living, dead, and yet to be born) for the crucifiction of Christ. And I accuse them all of not taking Christ as Messiah. Using this as my justification, I shall now usurp the role that God is supposed to have, and judge every single Jew fit only to burn in eternal damnation."



The problem here is that Ian's judgement was not righteous. A righteous judgement is made when the judge researches every resource available to him before making his judgement. And Didymus actually had to point out to Ian that there are Jews who believe in Christ, and Ian claimed he never heard of them. Therefore, his judgement was made in ignorance.

Christians aren't perfect, WHF. Just forgiven. I'm not judging or blaming anyone; that's God's job. I'm just saying that the Jews missed their Messiah.

_________________

i apologize for not knowing all that was said, cause i must admit i didnt read all 13 pages last night, but Ian is right in the fact with that the Jews or most Jews for the part reject Jesus as the Messiah and see him as only a prophet of the bible...

they say the Messiah is STILL yet to come

either way the fact still stands that the bible says without the blood of Jesus upon ones life and that they confess Christ as savior, that they are lost

Diddy brings up another point here. The jewish people that accept christ as their savior are, technically, non christians. Does that mean they're going to hell? Does god bend the rules a little bit here?

_________________

Jews who accept Jesus usually call themselves "Messianic", which is just a Hebraic way of saying "Chrisitan" ("meshiach" in Hebrew and "christos" in Greek both mean "Anointed One"). So, yes, Jews who accept Jesus are Christian; they just prefer a Hebraic designation to the Greek one.

_________________

I see

_________________

I see

_________________

The religious designation doesn't matter. If they accept Christ as their savior, then they're saved. I'm pretty sure God doesn't make exceptions as to who gets saved by accepting Christ.

_________________

Well, in this case, being Jewish is more of a cultural/ethnic distinction, one which does have an impact on their worship. But you are right. The point is they know Christ and honor him as Lord.

_________________

hey, this is my first post but i've been reading the forums for a long time.

ok, here's the thing: i'm Jewish, and i can say that the reason that Jews do not believe that Jesus was the messiah is that he didn't fulfill ANY of the prophecies that the messiah is supposed to fulfill, and all of the things that Christianity says about him (born of a virgin, doing miracles, dying and resurrecting, etc) are not supposed to be done by the messiah anyway. so even if all of that stuff were true, it still wouldn't matter because he didn't actually do anything that the messiah is supposed to do.

Judaism doesn't require anyone to be "saved" -- it requires that we observe a certain number of commandments (613 for Jews and 7 for everyone else) and we observe them not because we're afraid of going to hell if we don't (because there is no hell in Judaism anyway) but because they represent the correct way to live in this world. Judaism says that "the righteous of all nations have a place in the world to come," meaning that everyone who is a good person will end up in heaven eventually. nobody is without sin, but there is nothing in the Jewish Bible (which predates the Christian version, obviously) that says that anyone who doesn't perfectly observe everything is damned to hell for eternity. quite the opposite -- not only is it always possible to repent and have your sins forgiven at any time, but one of the commandments IS to repent, meaning that it isn't even possible to observe all 613 commandments unless you've already sinned!

but all this stuff only applies to Jews anyway; non-Jews don't have to observe all the commandments and they still get to go to heaven, they don't need to be "saved" by believing in a messiah or anything like that. that isn't what the messiah is for.

ok, that was a bit long-winded. i just felt the need to express this side of the issue. thanks.

Actually, Jesus fulfilled ALL the messianic prophecies except those that apply to the very last day, and he'll get around to those in the Father's good time.

_________________

nope, actually Jesus fulfilled NONE of the messianic prophecies, aside from being a Jewish male. he "fulfilled" a bunch of stuff that appears nowhere in the writings of the prophets, and he quite clearly violated a bunch of prophecies that the messiah is supposed to do. which is why Jews believe in him as the messiah. if he fulfilled the prophecies, we wouldn't have much of an argument, would we? we know our own prophecies better than anyone else would, don't you think?

and there's no precedent for a "second coming" either; the Jewish messiah, as prophecied, is quite clearly supposed to succeed the first time, and not get killed. sorry.

Obviously not, or you would recognize him as the messiah.

You might want to check out this web site sponsored by Apple of His Eye, a Jewish organization that does recognize Jesus as messiah. They seem to think he is: http://www.appleofhiseye.org/prophecy.html

You might want to check out this one, too, from an organization called Jews for Jesus: http://www.jewsforjesus.org/

_________________

just looking at your very first link, and the list of "prophecies" that the messiah is supposed to fulfill, i can already see something drastically wrong. first of all, any references to the so-called New Testament are irrelevant as far as prophecies are concerned. i won't even bother with those as verifications of Jesus having done stuff, because all the Jewish Bible references are already wrong so it doesn't even matter. that's what i was talking about in the previous post about Jesus having "fulfilled" things that weren't prophecies to begin with. if you actually read the verses that are referenced, the vast majority of them are universally recognized not to be messianic prophecies at all, but to refer to the Jewish people as a whole. it's mostly translation errors, but if you read it in the original Hebrew it becomes clear that the text is talking about the Jewish people, and usually in contemporary terms and not in the future at all (from the perspective of the authors of the text).

in fact, the majority of the text cited aren't even prophecies at all, and the ones that are are totally mistranslated. you won't find the word "virgin" ONCE in the prophecies of Isaiah, for example, not if you actually know any Hebrew, and anyway that prophecy was fulfilled 400 years before Jesus was even born.

none of those are references to actual prophecies that the messiah is supposed to fulfill.

here's a good list of actual messianic prophecies, vanishingly few of which Jesus actually fulfilled:

First of all, he must be Jewish - "...you may appoint a king over you, whom the L-rd your G-d shall choose: one from among your brethren shall you set as king over you." (Deuteronomy 17:15)

He must be a member of the tribe of Judah - "The staff shall not depart from Judah, nor the sceptre from between his feet..." (Genesis 49:10)

To be a member of the tribe of Judah, the person must have a biological father who is a member of the tribe of Judah.

He must be a direct male descendant of King David and King Solomon, his son - "And when your days (David) are fulfilled, and you shall sleep with your fathers, I will set up your seed after you, who shall issue from your bowels, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will make firm the throne of his kingdom forever..." (2 Samuel 7:12 - 13)

The genealogy of the New Testament is inconsistent. While it gives two accounts of the genealogy of Joseph, it states clearly that he is not the biological father of Jesus. One of the genealogies is through Nathan and not Solomon altogether!

He must gather the Jewish people from exile and return them to Israel -"And he shall set up a banner for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth." (Isaiah 11:12)

Are all Jews living in Israel? Have all Jews EVER lived in Israel since the time of Jesus?

He must rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem - "...and I will set my sanctuary in their midst forever and my tabernacle shall be with them.." (Ezekiel 37:26 - 27)

At last check, there is NO Temple in Jerusalem. And worse, it was shortly after Jesus died that the Temple was DESTROYED! Just the opposite of this prophecy!

He will rule at a time of world-wide peace - "...they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore." (Micah 4:3)askyourself...

Have you seen a newspaper lately? Are we living in a state of complete world peace? Has there ever been peace since the time of Jesus?

He will rule at a time when the Jewish people will observe G-d's commandments - "My servant David shall be king over them; and they shall all have one shepherd. They shall follow My ordinances and be careful to observe My statutes." (Ezekiel 37:24)

The Torah is the Jewish guide to life, and its commandments are the ones referred to here. Do all Jews observe all the commandments? Christianity, in fact, often discourages observance of the commandments in Torah, in complete opposition to this prophecy.

He will rule at a time when all people will come to acknowledge and serve one G-d - "And it shall come to pass that from one new moon to another and from one Sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before Me, says the L-rd" (Isaiah 66:23)

there are still millions if not billions of people in the world today who adhere to paganistic and polytheistic religions. It is clear that we have not yet seen this period of human history unfold.

About 300 prophecies foretold the coming of Jesus the Messiah. I only give you a few, but on His last day alone, Jesus fulfilled over 30.






These predict the Crucifixion centuries before the process was even invented!

Didymus knows Masoritic Hebrew...

_________________

I'm pretty sure both of those refer to the second coming and the end of time, which clearly is not right now. Just because he hasn't yet fulfilled a prophecy doesn't mean he won't in the future.

mistranslation. according to the original Hebrew it should read "But he was WOUNDED FROM our transgressions, he was crushed FROM our iniquities." it's referring, again, to the Jewish people as a whole who were sent into exile because of their own sins -- it doesn't refer to a messiah who suffers for the sins of others (a concept utterly without precedent in Jewish thought). if you read the whole chapter and not just take passages out of context, it's clear that the passage couldn't possibly be referring to Jesus; not only are several parts of the passage written in the third-person plural, but it flat-out describes qualities and events that contradict Jesus's behaviour in the New Testament.

how convenient.

Josh McDowell cites 61 prophecies concerning Jesus' birth in his book Evidence that Demands a Verdict. Here are a few:

_________________

I'm going to call you on this one. If you study the Tanak in the Hebrew as I do, then you'd know that your arguments are unfounded. The preposition min (or in this case, m-) can and sometimes does mean "on account of."

As for the correct interpretation of the verb, hll. In the Piel, it typically means "wound," but in the Qal, it typically means "pierce." Same with the Pual, the Po'el, and the Po'al forms as well. I left my copy of Brown Driver Briggs at the church, so I can't be more specific than that at this time. My point is that, regardless of the verb form, it still implies piercing.


The rabbi who taught me Hebrew explained to me that the differences in Jesus' geneology are probably best explained by the practice of Levirite marriages (Deut 25:5f). As for whether or not Jesus could receive the kingship as a non-biological descendent, the point is rather moot if in fact he is the son of the Most High, the heavenly King.


The rabbi who taught me Hebrew seems to think this is an example of Pesher, a type of Scripture quotation commonly used in ancient rabbinical teaching practices. According to Dr. Hooks, if a rabbi wanted to quote a passage of Scripture, all he had to do was say the first line, and his students would realize he was actually referring to the whole passage. By quoting Psalm 22 on the cross, Jesus was essentially saying to the people around him, "This is me. David foresaw this."

As for the whole thing of whether God can abandon God, I will not get into the finer points of trinitarian theology here. I will simply point out that, just as David wrote this psalm while crying out from his anguish, so Yshua cried out in his anguish as well, even as he suffered in reality the torments David only described.

But here's the key for me. Throughout his entire life, Jesus called himself the Son of Man, a reference to Daniel 7:13f. When before the Sanhedrin, he even told them that they would see him on the clouds of heaven. Further, he continued to claim divine authority. For example, in Matthew 25, he claimed the right to judge sheep as their shepherd, which, according to Ezekiel 34, only the Lord God had the right to do. Here's the issue: if Jesus was not indeed who he claimed to be, then how in the world could he have accomplished all that he did? How is it that Saul of Tarsus, a man who was basically an Orthodox-trained rabbi in that day, come to see him and recognize him as Lord?

So we are back at the same place we have come so often in this thread. If your goal is to convince us Christians we are wrong for believing as we do, you still have the resurrection to contend with. For as that very same Saul of Tarsus said, if Christ Jesus was not raised from the dead, then our faith is meaningless and we are still dead in our transgresses.

_________________

hey, i was born of the seed of a woman too! maybe i'm the messiah!



yeah, ok...but i'm reading Micah 5:2 and it doesn't actually seem to say that the messiah is supposed to be born in Bethlehem. i mean, just read it: it says that the distant ancestor of a king was to be born in Bethlehem. besides which, even if Jesus was born in Bethlehem, what distinguishes him from the other thousands and thousands of people who were also born there?



it totally doesn't say that at all. read Psalm 22 in the original Hebrew. verse 16 says "For dogs have surrounded me, the assembly of the wicked have enclosed me, like a lion (who has) my hands and feet."

"k'ari" means "like a lion," it doesn't mean pierced. if you spell it wrong and then totally ignore Hebrew grammar i can see how you could make that mistake, but very obviously not the correct translation.

i'd really like if you could bring me some reference for this.





oh, that's interesting. i haven't heard that one before. except for the fact that the two lineages first diverge as to which one of David's sons Joseph is descended from, Solomon or Nathan. and it's pretty clear that neither of them died and married the other's widow. so i don't really see how you can support this claim.



i quite disagree. the point is extremely relevant. God wouldn't say that the messiah will be descended from David if that wasn't what He meant. if He meant that He was going to impregnate a woman and the messiah would be "the son of the Most High, the heavenly King" in any different sense than you and i are, He certainly would have mentioned it. however, the prophecies go to pains to make the point that the messiah will be biologically descended from David, which Christianity doesn't hold. i particularly don't see why Matthew and Luke would spend so much time enumerating the genealogy of Joseph if they weren't trying to prove that Jesus had a legitimate, biological claim to the kingship.




and Jesus was the only one who ever suffered, huh? if you want Psalm 22 to be a prophecy, it seems like it fits someone like Rabbi Akiva, or even the millions of Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust. Jesus didn't even suffer that much, really. it was, what, a couple of days up there?



i don't see that Jesus particularly accomplished very much in his life. to what accomplishments are you referring? sounds to me like he just liked to talk big. i could say the same things, it doesn't make me the messiah.

as far as Paul coming to believe that Jesus was the messiah -- ok, but what about all the other hundreds and thousands of learned people who didn't? they don't count?

in the generation after Jesus, Rabbi Akiva, arguably the greatest Torah scholar of all time, way wiser and more recognized than Paul, believed that a man named Bar Kochba was the messiah. Bar Kochba fulfilled a lot more of the prophecies than Jesus did. then Bar Kochba was killed in battle fighting the Romans, and Rabbi Akiva had to admit that he was wrong, Bar Kochba wasn't the messiah, because the messiah can't die before he accomplished his mission. even the wisest people can be wrong sometimes, so Paul having believed in Jesus doesn't prove anything.



my goal is not to convince you that Christianity is wrong; please feel free to believe anything you like, be my guest. i'm only trying to show why we Jews do not believe that we require Jesus to be saved from hell -- that is what this thread is all about, isn't it? the reason that we don't fear eternal damnation is not only because the idea of hell is a Christian invention in the first place, so Jews never had an expectation that a messiah would come who would save us from being condemned to suffering there forever, since that's not what anyone ever expected or hoped for the messiah to do in the first place. not only that, but it's not that we just reject Jesus out of ignorance, either. the Jews never rejected Jesus, they just evaluated him based on the prophecies that the messiah is supposed to fulfill, and found him lacking in every department.

Jesus can come back from the dead as many times as he wants (and note that even Matthew says that Jesus's own disciples "doubted" his resurrection even though they supposedly witnessed it, so i certainly don't see why i, sitting here two thousand years later, should believe it), but unfortunately that's just not one of the criteria for being the messiah. miracles don't prove anything. i'm simply not impressed by magic tricks.

Deuteronomy 13:2-5 says:

"If there arise in the midst of thee a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and he give thee a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder come to pass, of which he spoke unto thee saying: 'Let us go after other gods [including other ways and beliefs] which thou hast not known, and let us serve them', thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or unto that dreamer of dreams; for the Lord your God putteth you to proof, to know whether ye do love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. After the Lord your God shall ye walk, and Him shall ye fear, and His commandments shall ye keep, and unto His voice shall ye hearken, and Him shall ye serve, and unto Him shall ye cleave."