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Anti-Semitic graffiti

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Hate and antisemitism is in the news again:

Hate Crimes Soar in Major US Cities

Hate crime in America’s five largest cities rose sharply in 2019, with New York, Los Angeles and Chicago all setting highs not seen since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, according to a new report from California State University.

The Jewish community was the most frequent target of hate crimes amid a resurgence in anti-Semitism, according to the report by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism. In the wake of at least five anti-Semitic attacks in New York during the Jewish festival of Hanukkah this week, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Monday that police will increase patrols in several neighborhoods with large Jewish communities. “Hate doesn’t have a home in our city,” de Blasio tweeted.

Among the nation’s five largest cities:

* New York City will show an estimated 415 hate crimes for the year, up from 361 in 2018 and the highest level since 2001. Anti-Semitism incidents jumped more than 20%, to 213, accounting for more than half of all bias-motivated attacks.

* Los Angeles will show 309 hate crimes, up from 290 in 2018 and also the highest since the Sept. 11 attacks. Anti-Jewish incidents more than doubled, to 58, while attacks targeting blacks jumped more than 18%, to 58.

* Chicago will show an estimated 96 hate crime incidents, up from 77 in 2018, and a post-9/11 high for the nation’s third-largest city. Anti-Jewish hate crimes rose more than 46% over the previous year to a total of 19 incidents.

* Phoenix will show a 25% increase in hate crimes over the previous year.

* Houston, however, will show a decline in hate crime incidents of 25 percent.

Collectively, hate crimes in the five biggest cities rose from 867 in 2018 to 988 in 2019, about a 14% increase, according to the report. For the nation’s 10 largest cities, however, the overall increase was slightly more moderate, at about 10%.

The overall surge in hate crime comes at a time of demographic change and hyperpolarized politics in America, and follows a slight decline in bias incidents in 2018.

“These data reflect several trends, including an escalating tribalism, where various prejudices like anti-Semitism, xenophobia and homophobia, among others, are widely shared across a diverse grouping of people,” Brian Levin, the report’s lead author, said. https://www.voanews.com/usa/hate-crimes-soar-major-us-cities

December 29, 2019

‘Mass stabbing’ targets Hanukkah celebration in New York

29 December 2019

New York police responded to a “mass stabbing” at an Orthodox rabbi’s house in Monsey during Hanukkah celebrations late Saturday.

The victims were transferred to the hospital. Two remain in critical condition, according to the Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council.

Local police said the perpetrator fled the scene but that they were able to track him down. https://www.dw.com/en/mass-stabbing-targets-hanukkah-celebration-in-new-york/a-51824515

Antisemitism and threats against Jewish facilities are wrong. As far as stabbings go, there were a series of them in Jerusalem five years ago (see More stabbings in Jerusalem).

Of course, Jesus was a Jew (John 4:9-10) as were most of His earliest followers.

Here is a report from a Protestant writer about early Christianity:

It is clear that the Church’s attitude towards Jewish Christianity changed significantly over the first four centuries. The attitudes of the first century Apostles were generally tolerant of Jewish Christianity, taking it to be acceptable, if not normative. The second century was a time of transformation in which Jewish Christianity rapidly became the exception rather than the rule, considered a valid, if archaic, expression of Christianity. However, by the time of the third and fourth century, the Church Fathers appear to view any expression of Jewish Christianity, regardless of the theology behind it, as heretical. This change in attitude represented a massive reversal of opinion. It evolved over several centuries, shaped by a variety of complex and interconnected forces. …

It is clear that at its beginning the Church was a Jewish Christian phenomenon … the Jewish Christian church of Jerusalem had maintained relatively undisputed authority among Christians in Palestine until 135 C.E. (Howard K. Excommunicating the Faithful: Jewish Christianity in the Early Church, 3^rd ed. ASIN: B00HH1K3QQ © 2013 by Kenneth W. Howard, pp. 51-53).

Well, the original faith was one that most Protestants today would identify as Judeo-Christian. It was the ‘norm’ and was not supposed to be changed. However, in time, most who professed Christ ended up professing a different faith than the apostles.

Sadly, in the Greco-Roman world, various ones who claimed Christianity have long promoted antisemitism.

And persecution against ‘Jews’ has often turned into persecution against those with biblical Christians practices.

According to Eusebius’ Life of Constantine, Book III chapter 18, the Eastern Orthodox saint and Roman emperor Constantine in the fourth century stated:

Let us then have nothing in common with the detestable Jewish crowd; for we have received from our Saviour a different way.

The way that Jesus, who was Jewish, taught differently was love. Jesus never taught to have ‘nothing in common with the detestable Jewish crowd.’ Roman Catholics refer to Constantine as ‘Constantine the Great,’ but he obviously held anti-semitic views.

Notice something that Jesus the Jew said what would happen to Christians:

20 If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. (John 15:20)

Around 332, Constantine issued what is known as the Edict Against the Heretics which included persecution against Christians who held to the original faith and had practices, such as the date of Passover, the same as the Jews (see also Persecutions by Church and State).

In 387, the Eastern Orthodox saint and bishop John Chrysostom preached the following:

The festivals of the pitiful and miserable Jews are soon to march upon us one after the other and in quick succession: the feast of Trumpets, the feast of Tabernacles, the fasts. There are many in our ranks who say they think as we do. Yet some of these are going to watch the festivals and others will join the Jews in keeping their feasts and observing their fasts. I wish to drive this perverse custom from the Church right now…If the Jewish ceremonies are venerable and great, ours are lies…Does God hate their festivals and do you share in them? He did not say this or that festival, but all of them together. (John Chrysostom. Homily I Against the Jews I:5;VI:5;VII:2. Preached at Antioch, Syria in the Fall of 387 AD. Medieval Sourcebook: Saint John Chrysostom (c.347-407) : Eight Homilies Against the Jews. Fordham University. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/chrysostom-jews6.html 12/10/05).

John Chrysostom preached the following in his Homily Against the Jews (of which there are at least eight anti-Semitic homilies):

But do not be surprised that I called the Jews pitiable. They really are pitiable and miserable (I:II:1).

So the godlessness of the Jews and the pagans is on a par. But the Jews practice a deceit which is more dangerous (I:VI:4).

Do you see that demons dwell in their souls and that these demons are more dangerous than the ones of old? (I:VI:7).

Since it is against the Jews that I wish to draw up my battle line, let me extend my instruction further. Let me show that, by fasting now, the Jews dishonor the law and trample underfoot God’s commands because they are always doing everything contrary to his decrees. When God wished them to fast, they got fat and flabby (VI:IV:2).

Indeed, the fasting of the Jews, which is more disgraceful than any drunkenness, is over and gone (VIII:I:5).

John Chrysostom is considered to be a major Roman Catholic saint. He is one of the four ‘doctors of the church’ who is shown supporting a large black chair that is called the Cathedra Petri (Chair of Peter) in St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City. The late Joseph Tkach once referred to this chair as Satan’s throne (see Satan’s Throne).

The improperly named Protestant publication Christianity Today once had a link titled, “Person of the Week: John Chrysostom” which went to an article titled: John Chrysostom Early church’s greatest preacher. So, Protestants too, endorse an anti-semite. More on him can be found in the article John Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople and Antisemite.

These anti-Semitic views have included persecutions against Christians who the Greco-Romans considered to have “Jewish” practices.

It is not just physical, ethnic Jews that are at risk–spiritual ones are as well (cf. Romans 2:28-29; John 15:20; see also The Spanish Inquisition and Early Protestant Persecutions).

There was a poem many decades ago by Martin Niemöller:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

It is not just Jews that are hated or will be in the future. Throughout history, true Christians have sometimes been called “Jews” and have been subject to persecution supposedly directed towards Jews. True Christians also had to suffer through the so-called Inquisition (see The Spanish Inquisition and Early Protestant Persecutions), which utilized torture against those that had Church of God beliefs–and more is expected in the future (see Persecutions by Church and State).

Real Christians have always been on the side being persecuted and have never been on the side of the persecutors. And this will be true again in the future.

People like the Albigneses were condemned by various councils. And one, the Council of Albi (sometimes spelled Alby) in 1254 apparently stated:

They savour of Judaism…they observe the Jewish sabbath, but say that the holy Dominical day is no better than any other day; let them be accursed (Quoted in Davis, Tamar. A General History of the Sabbatarian Churches. 1851; Reprinted 1995 by Commonwealth Publishing, Salt Lake City, p. 64).

Notice what a former Roman Catholic priest reported:

It has been reckoned that in the last and most savage persecution under Emperor Diocletian about two thousand Christians perished, worldwide. In the first incident of Pope Innocent’s Crusade ten times that number of people were slaughtered. Not all were Albigensians. It comes as a shock to discover that, at a stroke, a pope killed far more Christians than Diocletian (De Rosa, Peter. Vicars of Christ. Poolberg Press, Dublin, 2000, pp. 160-161).

(The entire persecution that Roman Emperor Diocletian unleashed lasted from 303-313 A.D; the inquisition-persecution that Pope Innocent III unleashed lasted hundreds of years.)

It perhaps should be pointed out that sometimes those in the true Church of God have been considered to be secretly Jews by some in Greco-Roman faiths:

In the Middle Ages, the Popes and the Councils were successful in destroying the Jewish revolutionary movements which appeared within Christianity in the form of false teaching and which were introduced by those who were Christians in appearance but Jews in secret. The latter then recruited upright and good Christians for the arising heretical movement by persuading the latter in a crafty way.

The secret Jews organised and controlled in secret manner the movements, which were the creative and driving force of wicked false teachings, such as those of the Iconoclasts, the Cathars, the Patarines, the Albigensians, the Hussites, the Alumbrados and others. (Pinay, Maurice. The Plot Against the Church, Part Four Chapter One. Translated from the German and Spanish editions of the same work. 1962)

The above book is still recommended by and for many Catholics (though some others distance themselves from it). Hence, some of the Greco-Romans have considered some of whom we in the Continuing Church of God include in our tracing of our spiritual ancestors (like some of the Cathars and Albigenses) to have been a secret Jewish group that only professed Christ.

As far as Protestant leaders themselves with anti-semitic views, one can notice the some of the teachings of Martin Luther, who wrote in the 16th century:

My heart is fuller of these thoughts than my tongue can tell. I have come to the conclusion that the Jews will always curse and blaspheme God as all the prophets have predicted. He who neither reads nor understands this, as yet knows no theology, in my opinion. And so I presume the men of Cologne cannot understand the Scripture, because it is necessary that such things take place to fulfill prophecy. If they are trying to stop the Jews blaspheming, they are working to prove the Bible and God liars (“Martin Luther’s to George Spalatin,” from Luther’s Correspondence and Other Contemporan, Letters, trans. by P. Smith (1913), Vol. 1, pp. 28-29).

Furthermore he wrote:

I had made up my mind to write no more either about the Jews or against them. But since I learned that those miserable and accursed people do not cease to lure to themselves even us, that is, the Christians, I have published this little book, so that I might be found among those who opposed such poisonous activities of the Jews and who warned the Christians to be on their guard against them…They are so blind and stupid that they see neither the words found in Genesis 17 nor the whole of Scripture, which mightily and explicitly condemns this lie…They are real liars and bloodhounds who have not only continually perverted and falsified all of Scripture with their mendacious glosses from the beginning until the present day. Their heart’s most ardent sighing and yearning and hoping is set on the day on which they can deal with us Gentiles as they did with the Gentiles in Persia at the time of Esther…The worse a Jew is, the more arrogant he is, solely because he is a Jew — that is, a person descended from Abraham’s seed, circumcised, and under the law of Moses. David and other pious Jews were not as conceited as the present-day, incorrigible Jews…I wanted to present this to us Germans so that we might see what rascals the blind Jews are and how powerfully the truth of God in our midst stands with us and against them (Medieval Sourcebook: Martin Luther (1483-1546): On the Jews and Their Lies, 1543)

Martin Luther advised his followers:

…to burn down Jewish schools and synagogues, and to throw pitch and sulphur into the flames; to destroy their homes; to confiscate their ready money in gold and silver; to take from them their sacred books, even the whole Bible; and if that did not help matters, to hunt them of the country like mad dogs (Luther’s Works, vol. Xx, pp. 2230-2632 as quoted in Stoddard JL. Rebuilding a Lost Faith, 1922, p.99).

Accordingly, it must and dare not be considered a trifling matter but a most serious one to seek counsel against this and to save our souls from the Jews, that is, from the devil and from eternal death. My advice, as I said earlier, is: First, that their synagogues be burned down, and that all who are able toss in sulphur and pitch (Martin Luther (1483-1546): On the Jews and Their Lies, 1543 as quoted from Luther’s Works, Volume 47: The Christian in Society IV, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971). pp 268­293).

The sad reality is that leaders esteemed by the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholics, and Protestants have all advocated horrible antisemitism.

Sadly, many people hold anti-Semitic views.

People should not be antisemitic. People should not hate others.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, December 29th, 2019 at 8:45 am and is filed under Religious News.

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