Quote: (05-12-2019 12:34 AM)BortimusPrime Wrote:
So then how much credulity do you guys give to the Jewish religion prior to Jesus? Say God could have, if he wanted to, instead come down to Earth as Thor or Hercules and given the New Testament, resulting in a Christianity that was basically the same set of moral principles but with Nordic or Hellenic window dressing.
The reason I'm thinking about this is that one of the most obnoxious things I hear from (((special people))) is the rationalization of all their misdeeds by virtue of being the chosen people of God. Problem is that Christians are kind of forced into implicitly accepting that framework due to the Old Testament being Israelite-centric, despite the universalism in Christianity. Comparatively if you go at it from say a Deist perspective (God spun the universe up initially and hasn't fucked with it since then) then the biblical importance of Israel looks a lot like it was written by a human hand with self-interest in mind.
This is really complex because it involves eschatology, the Scofield Bible, and especially the heresy of dispensationalism, among other things. Those who believe in the eschatological doctrine of dispensationalism, which is a very recent doctrine, believe that the future of the State of Israel is highly relevant to the end times and therefore highly relevant to modern Christianity.
People such as myself believe that modern Israel is utterly irrelevant to modern Christianity and is simply a fantastic historical place to visit to marvel where Jesus walked and where God's plan of salvation occurred. Christians (having accepted God's Son, Jesus Christ, as Lord and Savior) now constitute spiritual Israel -- and God's children. This was orthodox thinking for about two thousand years, until the advent of the doctrine of dispensationalism.
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Return of Jews Illusion.—The illusory hope of the restoration of the Jewish nation at Jerusalem is destined to lure millions into the desert of destruction. The promises to the Jewish nation were all conditioned on obedience. God did all that He could ever do for the Jews in sending them His prophets and finally His Son. He did not cast away His people. The very first Christian churches in apostolic times were made up almost entirely of Jews. The Israel of God, to whom the promises are made, is spiritual Israel. To Abraham and his seed belong the promises. "If ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise."
https://www.ministrymagazine.org/archive...ationalism