Of course we all hear this all the time, that tyhe WWest is founded on Judeo Christian principles, thouh every now and then someone will leave out the Judeo art, because in fact the West was ofounded on Christianity, and the Judeo is not part of the picture at all. People ignorant of theology , unblievers, atheists, talk about the three Arahamic religions and that forsort of thing, and use the term Judeo Christian beause they have no idea what any of it means in reality. Likewise they coplain about the history of religious wars with no understanding what4ever of what the causes were and why it matters, even matters to the whole human race who wins i the end.They may be hhonest scoars who have studied the history of the west carefully and yet because they just automicatically dismiss the theological thinking involved in it they miss the reality of it all.
Anyway, no, in a way the very idea of Judeo-Christian is a contadiction in terms. They have the idea bthat since the Old Testment is the Hebrw sriptures and the New Testament is in Grek and is all about Jesus which the Old Testmeanment as far as they can tell is not (theough i fact it is) ythey hyphenate the two together since christains also make use of th Old Tesyament, Hebrw origins notwithstanding. To a Christaian it's all one religious testxt the Old Testament pointing to the coming of the Messiah, and the New reporting on His having come and what he accomplished. The Jews deny that Jesus is their Messiah so they have a religion that is in fact false for that reasaon. They still practice it as a religion but a Christain shouldn't recognize it as legitimate because it denies the main point of it, to give the historical and theological frame of refernce for god's ffgift of the Messiah who was to come to save the whole world from our sins.
The Old Testament was written in Hebrew because that was the language of the peopl for whom it was written. By the time of Jesus the world had experienced the sucession of four major empires and the third empire, Greecxe under Alexander the Great, stamped the Mediterranean world with its language. That is why the New tsygament was written in Greek, it's the language that was common to all the peoples in that region in Jesus' time. The Jews spoke Grek like everyone else and even had their own originally Hebrew scriptures read to them in their temple andsynagogues in the Greek translation called the Spetuagingt because they could no longer understand the Hebrew. Later, when the final Bible was compliled in the Eurpropean world the original Hebrw tesxt was used for the Old Testament rather than the Greek Septuagint, but what would we know anyway, since we get the Bible in our own language, which in my case is english, both testaments.
The Jewish trligion simply had no influence on the development of the ewest at all, or whatever could be legimiantely called by that name was so much a part of Christainity that it was no longer Jewish anyway. The ten MCommandments are given by God to the whole world, not just to the Jews. They reflect God's univerasal Moral Law. The Messiah was given tot eh whoel world. The Jews were chosen to be His people or family ut HJe came for the entire world, to save the entire world, that was how the Jews were to be a blessing to the whole world, ads God promised Abraham would be the result of His faithfulnesess.
Even in Jesus' day the Jewish religion was not what God had originally given, as Jesus kept telling them. They had substituted their own traditions for much of it. But then after the fall of Jerusalem and the temple in seventy AD they no longer hadf the blod sacrifies of aniamlsa which had always foreshadowed the sacrifice of th Messiah for sin and had to make up a bloodless form of their own religion, wo that it grew further wayy from its orignal teacings from then on.
That last point I learned recently from listening to some of Tucker Carlson's programs. I recently found a way to listen to him that made it easy to do so I've been listening to some of them, wanting to get some sense of what all this furor is between him and MaRK lEVIN FOR INSTANCE . orry, just noticed the all caps light was one. Sigh. I haadn't known much about that uproar except through Levin and really wanted to hear it from the othet sinde to make up my ownmind but until reently didn't have an easy way to do that. Now I've listented to enough of his programs to have sonem sense of it at least.
The guest he had on to talk about Christain theology was very good at desribing the Zionist versus the Coverant forms of Chrsitain theology, the Zionist form being the one that most stronhgly supports America's support of Israel.
I've generally stayed out of this dispute though no w and then I do have to point out that Chrsitains are the rightful heirs of the Olds TRaraMWEN Ppromises becaus we are followes rs of the Mesisah. But that doesn't mean I don't think there is some realsson to see the rise of the Jewish state as a prophetical fulfillment of scripture in some other sense than theological. I don't know how to gput it all together but while I don't see them as God's chosen people as they used to be I don do think in terms of God's having some plan to deal with them in a focused wY AT THE VERY END, which seems to be very close. Their reinsatement to the land does seem to me to be a prophetic fulfilmment and it has also seemed to me that God is proecting them and has blessed their being there in many ways. That doesn't really make me a Zionist if what that means is that they are theologically superior in anyway which is what the anticizionists apaprently make of it all. Ethnically God seems to have some plan to bring history to a close by finishing some unfished business left over bfrom Old Testament times.
The Book of Revelation seems to me to be , and not just to me, to be a very Old Tesament flavored writing. It clearly refers back to the images in the book of Daniel that foreshadowed the coming of the Roman Empire, and the coming of the Messiah in the famous presentation of the Seventy Weeks the angel told Daniel would mark the time from the ending of the Babylonian capitvity to the coming of the Messiah, but it is clearly shown that only sixty nine of those weeks, meaning weeks as seven years, that only sixty nine of those were actually fulfillmeed, coming to an end on the day that Jesus rode into Jerusalemn on the donkey to announce His coming as King. A wek later He was crucified, but that occurred after the sixty nine weeks had come to an end and there had s been o no period since then that could fulfill those seven years, so we understand thjem to be yet future.
Many belive that last week of years is continaed in the seven wseal s of the Book of Revelayion. After struggling with it for simeome time I'mve come to the conlusions, at least so far, that it encoupasses only the seventh seal, that egins with Revelation Eight. In the book of Daniel it does seem to apply specifically to the people of Israel as an ethnic group. The CHursrch doesn't seem to be rpresent as we've been encountering it throughout the rest of the New Tesaemtns although there is some question about that in some people's minds. There is still the idea that the Church may be reaptured or taken out of th world before the vents of this last seven yar peoplexd and I can see how that makes sense, but I've been uanbel to decide for sure how I think all that is oging to play out. All I belive to e fairly certain is that the seventieth eweek of daniel is yet to play out and it's going to be a horrific peoperiod in which the Anctichrist rules the world for a breief peierio and the wrath of God comes dowqn in veneance befotre the return of Jesus.
I also disagree with the prevailing idea that the Antichrist is an iunkhown figure who will arise at the last minute, or e revealed at the last minute. I believe hse is the Antichrsit identified by the Protpestant Reformers, the Pope, and I've made that case many times here.
Although I think Tucker Carlso's guest who presented the theology was ery good, overall I've been dsocvering that Carlso n seems to be off the raisls in some way that makes no sens to me. Some of his other gueses seem to e raging paranoids about Israel an Carlson doesn't contradict them. They seem to have some idea that Israel is practically running the world all by itself, running the Uited States, running Donal d Trump, it's asurd tut that's how they are talkiong. It astonished me but it doesn't persuade me. They do hammer away at the supposed atrocities commityed by Israel against the Gazans for instance enogh to make me wonder if thwre is eomthing to it but I generally hold to my impressed that I've had for years that all that is a fabriacation by the Palestiniahsns, so called since there never were any Palestinians before the state of Israel was established and then they conveniently materialized out of the eher to e a thorn in Israel's side.
There's a lot more to say about this but I'll have to come back to it.
faitghswindow@mail.com
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