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Jerusalem and the Temple Mount are never far from this issue dividing most Catholics and other Christians from the Jewish people and Muslims.
Why?
On this page we will give you a brief answer from history and some links to where you can get more information. |
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When Gibson is trying to understand the antagonism that his project has excited, he characteristically conjures his scenario of the great spiritual realms, unseen but ever warring over humankind. “I didn't realize it would be so vicious,” he says of the criticism. “The acts against this film started early. As soon as I announced I was doing it, it was 'This is a dangerous thing.' There is vehement anti-Christian sentiment out there, and they don't want it. It's vicious. I mean, I think we're just a little part of it, we're just the meat in the sandwich here. There's huge things out there, and they're belting it out -- we don't see this stuff. Imagine: There's a huge war raging, and it's over us! This is the weird thing. For some reason, we're important in this thing. I don't understand it. We're a bunch of dickheads and idiots and failures and creeps. But we're called to the divine, we're called to be better than our nature would have us be. And those big realms that are warring and battling are going to manifest themselves very clearly, seemingly without reason, here -- a realm that we can see. And you stick your head up and you get knocked.”
Quoted from, The Jesus War, by Peter J. Boyer.
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Jesus/Yeshua’s teaching about love and peace was delivered to a people subjugated by the Roman Empire. The New Testament writings all addressed a body of believers scattered throughout the Empire, who were small in number, sometimes welcomed and defended, but more often persecuted by their neighbors and Roman authorities.
This all changed in the 300’s AD with the elevation of Christianity as the official Roman religion under Emperor Constantine. He desired a unifying force to unite his empire and chose the rather new Christian religion as his vehicle. Politics influenced his doctrinal meddling in church affairs such as the Council of Nicea held in 325 AD. By that time the Jewish reputation for armed revolt was well ingrained in the real politic of Rome’s rulers. As a part of unifying harmony, one eliminates sources of division - forcibly, if necessary. The Emperors and their supporting bishops saw Christianity as a way to eliminate Judaism as a source of dissension or other trouble, so they therefore also forcibly removed any obvious Jewish roots of the new faith from the official, orthodox, state expression of Christianity. This strategy was based on the earlier decision that circumcision was not required to become a disciple of Jesus/Yeshua. (Acts 15)
Since neither the gospels nor the New Testament address the issues of Christians being in power, the rules and standards were established over time as laws and traditions. This is true for Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and various Protestant churches, and it explains why the relationships between church and state have varied over time and place.
Unfortunately, history records a seemingly endless chain of official church teachings, exhortations, and participation in religious oppression, persecution, and torture - both directly and through the civil state. These historical realities have distorted and sullied the original teachings of Jesus and the early disciples to the point that many fail to see God revealed in the Bible due to the many abuses promulgated and justified by doctrine supposedly based on Christianity’s traditional interpretation of scripture by the many different - but not all - established church organizations, as well as by a number of Bible-quoting fringe groups.
Doctrinally, the main problem may be rooted to a church’s or person’s understanding of the millennium. If a Christian group believes that Jesus must return to establish the political power of the faithful through the restoration of the Israelite Kingdom for a 1000 year millennium of peace, then those believers will not try to use political power to enforce their faith or their wishes upon others. They will certainly not persecute Jews. This understanding and behavior results from a literal interpretation of both Old and New Testament scripture.
However, most Christian churches, including the Roman Catholic, believe that, since His resurrection, Jesus is using the Church to establish His kingdom in the hearts mankind and their political entities. This interpretation of scripture was established in the orthodox churches by teachings and writings of St. Augustine as easily found within his book, City of God. Here begins the definition and promotion of concepts like “just war” and the Holy Roman Empire as the Kingdom of God on earth, which is also demonstrated by the fusion of temporal and spiritual power in the office of the Pope and the institution of the Vatican. It also gave birth to what later developed as the irrational characterization of the Jewish people as principal enemies of the everyone.
The rise of Islam in the 600’s AD added to the world’s stage another theocratic synergy of church and state to oppose Byzantine and Roman Christianity. As a result, today we have three primary religious-political forces interested in Jerusalem and control of the Temple Mount: the Vatican, Islam, and the state of Israel (a temporary and very fallible human proxy for the God of Israel). In the end, the Bible predicts that God will establish new Temple on the site where it has stood from old. (Pictured is a model of Herod’s Temple, or Second Temple, which is what stood on the Temple Mount platform in the days of Jesus/Yeshua.)
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Articles:
The Omission of the Christ
by Aaron J. Shuster
Most importantly, I was shocked that Mel Gibson had Jews in a movie set in a period two thousand years ago. Why, for at least one hundred years, the Arabs and Moslems have been telling the world that the Jews don't come from Israel and have never lived there. They have been telling everyone who will listen that the so-called "Palestinians", or Arab inhabitants of the Land of Israel, are the genuine inhabitants of Israel and that the Jews are nothing more than foreign invaders, or as they like to call them, "colonialists." |
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In this web site go to:
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For more background on the current situation in the Middle East go to our pages:
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Go to our article on :
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Related Articles:
Constitutionally Unchristian
By Francis X. Rocca, 8/29/2003
Pope John Paul II this week repeated his call for the forthcoming European constitution to acknowledge Europe's Christian heritage. Three days later, the presidents of Poland and Lithuania (two of the 10 nations entering the European Union next year) joined the leaders of Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain in supporting the Pope's idea. High officials of the Anglican and several Orthodox churches have also lent their endorsement.
Digging Jerusalem
By R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. 12/13/2002
Jerusalem -- This is no place for an atheist or even a suave agnostic. From my window on the top floor of the massive King David Hotel I am looking out on a stone heap that is thousands of years old, the Old City of Jerusalem.
As Christmas approaches American Christians might take note of the intolerance here. Their sacred shrines -- and some belonging to Judaism -- are under threat from the Islamofascists of the Palestinian Authority. What is more, the Christian population of the West Bank is not being treated as hospitably by Yasser Arafat's colleagues as, say, the Muslim population of Detroit is being treated.
Holy Places
By Paul M. Weyrich, 9/26/2003
Think about this. Just because women can't visit Mt. Athos, it is an infringement of women's human rights. See where this ideology has taken us? Women have a fundamental right to go to a place where they have not been able to go for 1,000 years.
But no, not in this enlightened age. The European Union believes it has the right to interfere with tradition, values, symbols and even religious faith. Mind you next, religions which do not have women ministers, including Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and in the USA, for example, Southern Baptists, will be judged guilty of discrimination. And in due course the UN will demand that these religions permit women to be ministers.
Put Christ in Europe's Charter, Lithuanians and Poles Declare
By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, ILNIUS, Lithuania, Aug. 27
The presidents of Lithuania and Poland both support enscribing specifically Christian values in a new constitution for the European Union, according to a communiqué issued here today after talks by the two leaders.
The Vatican's Holocaust, by Avro Manhattan (1914-1990)
Avro Manhattan was the world's foremost authority on Roman Catholicism in politics. A resident of London, during WW II he operated a radio station called "Radio Freedom" broadcasting to occupied Europe. He was the author of over 20 books including the best-seller The Vatican in World Politics, twice Book-of-the-Month and going through 57 editions. He was a Great Briton who risked his life daily to expose some of the darkest secrets of the Papacy. His books were #1 on the Forbidden Index for the past 50 years!!
The Vatican's Holocaust - Revealed at Last! is a sensational account of the most horrifying religious massacre of the 20th century. Startling revelations of forced conversions, mass murder of non-Catholics, Catholic extermination camps, disclosures of Catholic clergy as commanders of concentration camps; documented with names, dates, places, pictures and eyewitness testimony. (click above to read online.) |
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