WORDS…What comes to you? ….Spreading, sheltering, spiritual, shading. solitary, stolid…. and I am reminded of Alan Watts’ lines:
“Death seems simply to be a return to that unknown inwardness out of which we were born…the truly inward source of one’s life was never born…Outwardly I am one apple among many. Inwardly I am the tree.”
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/4452080-death-seems-simply-to-be-a-return-to-that-unknown>
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All I thought I knew about world religions was that there was one I was be afraid of, because they killed and/or stoned errant women and traveled to other countries to kill those who disrespected their god. I am currently attempting to understand religions of the world on the Internet. There’s so much I never knew! I hope the following wasn’t written by A.I. Let me know if you suspect an error:
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Jesus is also revered in the Baha’i faith, the Druze faith, and Islam. In Islam, Jesus (often referred to by his Quranic name ʿĪsā) is considered the penultimate prophet of God and the messiah, who will return before the Day of Judgement. Muslims believe Jesus was born of the virgin Mary but was neither God nor a son of God. Most Muslims do not believe that he was killed or crucified but that God raised him into Heaven while he was still alive.[j] In contrast, Judaism rejects the belief that Jesus was the awaited messiah, arguing that he did not fulfill messianic prophecies, was not lawfully anointed and was neither divine nor resurrected. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus>
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The very first church was founded in Jerusalem nearly 2,000 years ago when 3,000 people responded to the first gospel sermon that was preached by Peter (Acts 2:14-41). It was a 100 percent Jewish church. Peter and all of Jesus’ apostles were Jewish. All the people who responded were Jewish. And the person who soon emerged as the leader of the Jerusalem church was the Jewish brother of Jesus named James.
Needless to say, these people did not shed their Jewishness overnight, nor did they build a church with a steeple and an organ. They continued to live as Jews, and they continued to practice the Jewish religion.
Take Paul for example. He was a trained rabbi committed to the annihilation of the Jesus-believing Jewish sect that came quickly to be called the Nazarenes. When he experienced his radical Damascus road conversion (Acts 9:1-9), Paul did not suddenly become a Gentile. He continued behaving as a Jew.
In Acts 22:3 Paul refers to himself as a Jew, not as a former Jew. He continued to call himself a Pharisee (Acts 23:6). In other places in his writings, he refers to himself as an Israelite (Romans 11:1) and a Hebrew (2 Corinthians 11:22).
Paul continued to attend synagogue services on the Sabbath (Acts 13:14; 14:1; and 17:1-3). He continued to observe the Jewish feast days as one “zealous for the law” (Acts 21:20). When he was accused of teaching Jews to abandon the Law, Paul took some men with him to the Temple to observe the Jewish purification rites (Acts 21:18-26). In like manner, Paul insisted that Timothy (a Jew) undergo circumcision so that he might be effective in witnessing Jesus to other Jews (Acts 16:1-3).1
While continuing to be an observant Jew, Paul took every opportunity to emphasize that Torah-observance was not a condition of salvation and should not be imposed upon Gentiles (1 Corinthians 9:19-23). He declared in Romans 3:20 that no one can be justified by observing the Law, and he severely rebuked the Galatian church for teaching such an apostate doctrine (Galatians 1:6-9). He called it “a gospel contrary to that which we preached” (Galatians 1:8-9).
The leaders of the Jewish church in Jerusalem agreed with Paul on this important issue, and they made this clear at the first church conference which was held in Jerusalem in about 48 AD (some 18 years after the establishment of the Church). The conference was prompted in response to Judaizers who were teaching that salvation depended upon circumcision and observance of the Law of Moses (Acts 15:1 & 5). Following extensive debate, the church conference issued a ruling that circumcision and Torah-observance would not be required of Gentile converts (Acts 15:23-29).
So, the very first believers in Yeshua were all Jews who continued to be observant Jews. What set them apart from other Jews was their conviction that they had found the promised Messiah. Some argue that another distinction was that they started a custom of meeting on the first day of the week to celebrate the Lord’s resurrection through the partaking of communion. This assertion is based on Acts 20:7 where it says that Paul and some Christians in Troas (in Greece) met “on the first day of the week… to break bread.” However, the breaking of bread most likely refers to a fellowship meal (see also Acts 2:42 & 46). We know from the records of the early Church Fathers that as late as the 3rd Century many Christians were still meeting on the Jewish Sabbath.
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I find strolling through Google fun and enlightening. The quotations I found there are a gas, but that’s another post. Don’t forget the time change tonight, and I hope we all enjoy our extra hour’s sleep….in the USA, anyway.
NANMYKEL.COM 