 So tonight, we're going to be exploring the parting of ways between Judaism and Christianity. I think it's safe to say that today, Judaism and Christianity are two different distinct religions, two world religions, that have their own faith system and faith structure. They have their own list of beliefs that they adhere to and we want to go back and explore how this parting of ways actually occurred. You see, two thousand years ago, if you walk into Jerusalem and you bump into a follower of Jesus, what's the first thing you know about that person? He's a Jewish. He's Jewish. He's a Jewish. It's the obvious thing we know about a follower of Jesus two thousand years ago. And so we want to understand that if the origins of this group, the origins of this Christian faith started out in Jerusalem, started out in the land of Israel, started out within the Jewish community, how did it go so far to become something that is no longer recognizable as part of the Jewish faith? Now in order to discover this, what we really would like to have are multiple sources of accurate information about this group. And the question is, where can we go to find it? Well, unfortunately, there are not many sources that we can go to. And so therefore, it's important for me to point out that this whole presentation tonight is speculative, which means to say that not all the details are ironed out and not all the things we can swear to are 100% accurate. Not what we will try to do tonight is present a plausible explanation as to what might have happened throughout the history of the church. So throughout Jewish history, generally speaking, the Jewish community viewed Jesus and his followers as being people who broke away from Judaism, started their own religion, and therefore, we have nothing to do with them. Where do Jewish people get this idea from? Well, one of the places that could be argued that this idea was taken from are from references in the Talmud. Historically, we know that people within the church accused Jews of disrespecting Christianity, disrespecting Jesus, the founder of Christianity, by making derogatory references to him in the Talmud. And it's because of that. Many cartloads of the Talmud were burned publicly because of this. And so there are references in the Talmud. In your reference sheet here, you'll see I've referenced about five of them. There may be one more, maybe six of them, which refer to an individual who's known as either Yeshua or referred to as Ben Stada. That's the person referred to. And it has been pointed out that there are some slight similarities between the character that's mentioned in the Talmud and the character of Jesus. However, many people have pointed out that there are serious discrepancies between these references and what we know about Jesus of the New Testament. For example, there's a problem with the dating. The Yeshua that is referred to in the Talmud is someone who lived in the time of Rabishur Ben Parakhia, who was about 100 years prior to the time of Jesus of the New Testament or to someone who actually lived 100 to 150 years after the time of the Jesus of the New Testament. And so therefore, there are automatically problems right there with the timing. Some Jewish sources argue that in fact it's the Christians that have the wrong dating, and we have the right dating in the sense that they believe that the views that are held about Jesus being someone who went and rebelled against Judaism and went to worship idols. That's the true story of Jesus, and the story in the Gospels are not true, and they're confused. However, other people point out that besides the name Yeshua, there's very little else within the context of these stories that seem to line up with Jesus. So for example, one of the things that's mentioned in the Talmud is that this person, Yeshua, had five students. Now we know from the Gospels that he had 12 disciples, the 12 apostles. It speaks about this person having a mother named Mary, the one who is the hairdresser, Magadla Nashaya. Now we know that Mary Magdalene was not his mother. And so there are a number of things that lead us to suspect that perhaps they're not one and the same person. However, we must leave it open as a possibility, perhaps it is the same person. But if we are going to say it's the same person, and if we are going to say that Jesus was just a rebel, someone who abandoned his Judaism and started a new religion, well then that would be the end of tonight's presentation. Because then we know where the break started, it started with Jesus, he came along, started a new religion completely different to Judaism, and that's the end of the story. However, there is so much within the New Testament. And what we know about the early followers of Jesus from sources outside of the New Testament that ask us to re-examine and to see whether perhaps there's more to the story. And that's what we want to look at tonight. I have a quote here in the second reference on your sheets from a rabbi named Rybiakim Emden. He was a great rabbi that lived in the 17th or 18th century, and he wrote that we should actually have another look and see that really Jesus wasn't somebody who came to teach about the abrogation of the Torah and that people should renounce their Judaism, but in fact he came to teach that we should follow the Torah and we should follow the laws of the Torah. So here I'll read to you, therefore you must realize and accept the truth from he who speaks it, that we see clearly here that the Nazarene and his apostles did not wish to destroy the Torah from Israel, God forbid. For it is written so in Matthew chapter 5 verse 17, the Nazarene having said, do not suppose that I have come to abolish the Torah. And then he goes on to say it is therefore exceedingly clear that the Nazarene never dreamt of nullifying the Torah. So here we have from a very respected Jewish rabbi that lived about 300 years ago who was of the opinion that Jesus didn't depart from Judaism and start another religion but actually came to fortify the religion to fortify Judaism. Now there are references that people will look to in the New Testament which seem to imply that actually Jesus was constantly fighting with the Pharisees and so therefore they suggest that we see from this that Jesus opposed Judaism, he kept on pointing out the hypocrisy of the Pharisees that he was engaging and was lamenting against how the Pharisees of that time seem to have lost the way and what he wanted to do is bring people away from these Pharisees and to something new that he was trying to introduce. However if a person takes a little bit of a closer look we'll find that it's not so simple. I have over here in point number three from Luke chapter 13 verse 31 where we're told that when Herod was running after Jesus to excuse me not Herod but the Romans were looking for Jesus to kill him some of the Pharisees came up saying to him go away and depart from here for Herod wants to kill you so I'm sorry it was Herod. What this intimates is that the Pharisees actually had a decent relationship with Jesus and they had no intention of him being killed. As far as they are concerned if someone is out to kill Jesus we've got to warn him about this and we've got to ask you know give him time to run away. In Matthew chapter 23 we read what Jesus says to his followers, the scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat so you must obey them and do everything they tell you but do not what they do for they do not practice what they preach. Now what Jesus is saying over here is that as far as he's concerned it is the Pharisees meaning the rabbis of the day that really sit in Moses' seat sit in a place of authority and so therefore if you want to know what God wants from you you should follow the teachings of the rabbis. Clearly this is not something that somebody who believes that the rabbis have got it all wrong and are teaching false doctrine it's not something he would say. He manages to get in a backhanded slap over here at the Pharisees saying that look while they're teaching right doctrine but they're not practicing what they preach and one could say that that's actually quite common to hear rabbis quubble amongst themselves and accuse each other of being hypocrites but nevertheless they don't believe that people are out to teach false doctrine. And so therefore what these passages within the Gospels themselves seem to intimate is that Jesus actually was in line with the Pharisees and just had certain disagreements with them which is quite normal for his day. But we know from the Gospels and the reason why we're using the Gospels tonight is because really when we speak about Jesus the person of Jesus there are no other sources to really go to to tell us anything about his life. Yes, you can go to Josephus and read a small obscure passage that may have been forged may not have been forged but even that passage doesn't tell you much about his life. So if you want to go back and discover anything about Jesus you can go to the Talmud as we mentioned and there also you're not going to find much about him if those refer to him or you can go to outside sources which come up with nothing or you can go to the Gospels and so what we'll have to do is go to the Gospels and try and piece together whatever we can from there. So the story in the Gospels are basically like this. There's a man named Jesus who's born in a time when there's a brutal occupation of the Roman Empire that have occupied Judea and the life of the Jewish people is becoming increasingly increasingly more difficult especially when it comes to religious observance because some of the Roman Procuters were actually quite mean and they did everything they possibly could to offend Jewish sensibilities and so people were hoping and waiting for God to intervene as he has in the past and to bring about redemption to free them from these oppressors as he has done in the past and so within this context a man shows up his name is Yeshua Jesus whatever it might have been and he manages to gather together a group of followers who really like what he is teaching now what is he teaching what is Jesus teaching at this time at this time the most common teaching of Jesus is that the kingdom of heaven is at hand what does he mean when he says the kingdom of heaven the kingdom of heaven refers to a time when God's will is not only done in heaven but it's also done on earth and so when he says the kingdom of heaven is at hand that's another way of saying that the messianic era is about to come it's about to happen well that's good to know and what do we need to do about it well Jesus tells his followers repent you need to repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand and the truth is this is not just Jesus's message but this is a message of John the Baptist that came before him the same idea the kingdom of heaven is at hand and what we need to do is we need to repent is there anything wrong with that message I don't think so it sounds like a very Jewish message to me that the Messiah can come at any moment and we believe with sincere and complete faith in the coming of the Messiah and that he can come at any moment and that we can actually have a hand in making him come by repenting by preparing the world for that age so far so good and in fact Jesus in Matthew chapter 16 that's in reference five over here he turns to his followers and he says who do you say I am in other words who do you think I Jesus am and Peter answers Simon Peter Peter answered you are the Messiah the son of the living God that's what Peter answers now the question is what does that mean what does it mean when we say that somebody is identified as the Messiah what would that have meant 2,000 years ago well let's remember this is before Jesus was crucified this is before the alleged resurrection this is before all of this and so in fact what we find in this chapter in Matthew chapter 16 is that when Jesus tells Peter that he has to go to Jerusalem and he has to suffer and die Peter says far be it from you that should never happen to you so Peter seems to be completely surprised by the notion that a Messiah is going to die well if you were living 2,000 years ago and there was no Matthew Mark Luke and John and there were none of the epistles of Paul where would you get your information about the Messiah well probably you'd get it from the Jewish scriptures and what do the Jewish scriptures tell us about a future anointed king what does it tell us so what I have over here I've done and again this is not really what we're going to delve into tonight about the differences between the Jewish idea of the Messiah and the Christian idea of the Messiah although we will go through it but briefly but what I want to do is I want to go through some of these references quickly okay we have in Numbers chapter 24 verse 17 to 19 passages which are actually part of the prophecy of the non-Jewish prophet Billa which describe a military victory that's going to be brought by this leader that's going to come in the future Isaiah 11 1 verses 1 to 9 speaks about a leader that's imbued with the spirit of God wisdom understanding counsel strength knowledge and fear of God and we're told that he will be a righteous judge and he will smite the wicked dead again these are passages that you can go back at home and look at it in depth and see entire chapters which speak about a portrait of about a leader that's going to be living and ruling at a particular time we have over here in Isaiah chapter 23 verse 5 through 8 speaking about a king who executes justice and charity and that there will be security for Israel in his days you have in Ezekiel chapter 34 verse 23 through 31 a shepherd and a prince during the time of peace security and bounty Ezekiel chapter 37 verse 22 through 28 speaks about this future leader in the context of the temple being rebuilt Israel's reconciliation with God the gathering of exile observance of the law etc this is where the followers of Jesus would have gone to get their notion of the Messiah and what they were hoping for is that this Jesus living 2,000 years ago to be that leader to be that righteous leader that's going to come and bring in this era of peace remove all those people that fight against God remove them from the land of Israel and ultimately bring everybody back to unity and worshiping God together they believed that this was going to happen in their lifetime that's really important to understand the followers of Jesus did not assume that Jesus was going to die and come back 2,000 years later that's not what they were hoping for they anticipated an immediate arrival of this messianic era that was going to be ushered in through Jesus and so Matthew chapter 16 verse 28 a couple of verses after Peter acknowledges Jesus as the Messiah Jesus tells them assuredly I say to you there are some standing here who shall not taste death till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom and this is again a reference to Daniel chapter 7 where in Daniel chapter 7 Daniel has a vision about someone that is like the Son of man that is brought close to God and ultimately given dominion over all his enemies and again this is in the in the context of the future messianic era Matthew 24 verse 34 assuredly I say to you this generation will by no means pass away until all these things take place Matthew 24 is where Jesus is speaking to a crowd and telling them about things that are going to happen in the future things are going to happen in the end time and he's saying we're right here right now it's going to happen now but we have a problem what's the problem the problem is that Jesus is crucified without anything happening what I mean without anything happening what I mean is all these promises that are spoken of in the Jewish scriptures about a utopia that's going to come and that will have a leader that serves as the catalyst for this change none of that comes about and Jesus is crucified like a common criminal and so the hope of the first followers of Jesus are shattered again we need to understand that the the New Testament paints the followers of Jesus as not understanding Jesus's messages about him having to suffer and die and I can understand why they wouldn't understand because that's not what we get from the Jewish scriptures and so what happens what happens ultimately is that when you have your your beliefs challenged and you start to feel very uncomfortable with what you're believing you need to do something to accommodate these changes to be able to remove the dissonance and this is a theory that was coined by somebody named Leon Festinger who spoke about something called cognitive dissonance cognitive dissonance and it is possible that what happened for the followers of Jesus is as they walking away from the cross as they're seeing him dead they're asking themselves so well what's going to be with all our hopes they didn't want to give up those hopes and I can understand that I wouldn't want to give up those hopes either and so what you want to try and do is come up with some kind of explanation about how God's plan is going to actually still continue that it's not being derailed imagine you've invested so much in something and you encounter a glitch what you want to do is say okay it's not the end of the world I can still go on with this I can still go on with this plan there's so much still here at stake and that's what they do they believe that Jesus is going to come back he's going to come back and therefore we can still hold on to this hope that Jesus will still take us out of this miserable occupation from the Romans now is that a problem for Judaism is it a problem for Jewish people to believe that someone will be resurrected and will serve as a leader serve as the Messiah so there are many that would say yes it's certainly a problem it's a huge problem we as Judaism believe in only one coming we don't believe in two comings and somebody who dies that disqualifies him and that's the end of the story however it's not so simple it's not so simple although it may not be viewed as normative but nevertheless we do know that Daniel in chapter 12 speaks about a time when the Jewish people will be resurrected there'll be a resurrection of the dead Daniel chapter 12 verse 2 multitude to sleep in the dust of the earth will awake this idea is also spoken about in Ezekiel and so therefore it's not completely outside of the pale of Judaism to speak about people being resurrected and when it comes to what exactly is going to happen and how it will all play out there is room for a bit of ambiguity the Bible doesn't lay out step by step how the redemption will take place so although it might not be normative but nevertheless it still can be considered within the realms of a possible hope for a Jewish person to believe that someone has died but God will choose to raise them and that they could then lead as the Messiah it's possible however time passes a generation passes many of the first followers of Jesus are now dead they've passed away and so the followers the believers are starting to ask themselves what's with our hope we believe that Jesus is coming back but he hasn't come back and a generation has passed and people have passed away and what you'll see in first Thessalonians chapter 4 verse 13 is that Paul has to deal with this Paul remember is writing around the year 50 and he's writing to people who are dealing with this challenge to their faith that nothing has changed they're still under this brutal occupation and really it's business as usual nothing's changing so he says but I do not want you to be ignorant brethren concerning those who have fallen asleep lest you sorrow as others who have no hope he doesn't want his followers those who he's ministering to to give up their hope in Jesus to give up their hope in this future redemption and so therefore he's trying to tell them that verse four verse 15 for this we say to you by the word of the Lord that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means proceed those who are asleep what's interesting to note in this verse is Paul seems to believe that it's going to happen in his lifetime he thinks that Jesus is coming back in his lifetime and so until more than a generation two generations pass everything is still on track but then the next generation grows up and there's nothing there and they're left with a very very uncomfortable question and that question is if Jesus is coming back and at the time that he comes back he's going to bring about this incredible change to the world that we're all looking forward to why did he need to show up a hundred years ago and be crucified like a common criminal what's the point of that who needed Jesus to come the first time around if everything that he's going to do is only going to happen the second time around that's a very very strong question and so what really began the parting of the ways between Judaism and Christianity is when a particular change had to come in to be able to deal with this difficult question and that was perhaps the role of the Messiah isn't just to bring in a future utopia perhaps there's another very very significant role that the Messiah plays what's that role that role is to die for the sins of the world that in order for us to have a relationship with God we need to have a Messiah who comes and dies for our sin now you may think that perhaps that's something we should consider what's so wrong with that well apart from there being absolutely no scriptural support for such a concept what do I mean by that when I say there's no scriptural support for that concept what I mean is there's nowhere in the scriptures that speaks about a future Davidic king that will come and rule that is to first die and suffer for our sins there is no such passage there is no such passage that speaks about a future Davidic king that dies and suffers for the sins of the world and that's clear besides for that what happens is that in the wake of this assumption or assertion that a Messiah comes to die for the sins of the world what happens is we are automatically dealt a whole new series of questions what do I mean when I come along and I tell you that someone has come to die for your sins the first question is why do I need somebody to die for my sins that's ridiculous last week we had a whole presentation on how one can navigate their way back to God after sinning and it's clear in the scriptures that the way to navigate your way back to God is by doing exactly that returning to God and God makes it very clear in many many places that if you seek God with a sincere heart you humble yourself and you return to obeying what God has asked of you that's the way back to God so what then happens is in order to be able to still hold on to a notion that a Messiah has to die for your sin what has to happen is I need to negate the possibility of you being able to actually get right with God yourself and so that's exactly what the Christian scriptures end up doing Paul in Galatians chapter 2 verse 21 says if righteousness could come through following the Torah then Christ died in vain what that means is as far as Paul is concerned it is not possible to follow the law it's not possible now you see this idea that you cannot follow the law is there to be able to help us justify Jesus is dead do you see the connection he connects it quite plainly over here if the righteousness could come through following the Torah then Christ died in vain Jesus would not have to have died if we could keep the Torah well what do we know from the Torah we know from the Torah that we can keep it Deuteronomy chapter 30 verse 11 through 14 this is in reference 17 over here it says now what I'm commanding you today this is Moses speaking it's not too difficult for you or beyond your reach no the word is very near to you it is in your mouth and in your heart that you may do it God tells us through Moses in the scriptures that it is possible to keep the commandments and so here what happens is not only do we start to have different views about the role of the Messiah but what happens is and remember the title of the lecture tonight is the domino effect once you hit one domino once you start to change one thing in Judaism then there are consequences and those consequences who knows where they end because watch what happens you you start with redefining the role of the Messiah to be able to accommodate your hope and then you have to start to redefine the notion of commandments and whether whether it's possible to follow the commandments of God and then what happens is then what happens is that a person is told they cannot keep the commandments and therefore they need to have a sacrifice and the sacrifice is the death of Jesus right you ask yourself the question well why specifically Jesus why did Jesus have to die we have so many thousands if not millions of other people who died at the hands of the Romans and people before them and people after them why does it why is the death of Jesus so significant what happens then is we have a whole new world that opens up and that is Jesus wasn't just an ordinary person Jesus was actually sinless and the sacrifice needs to be sinless the one that's going to serve as a sacrifice to atone for your sins needs to be sinless Jesus was sinless but doesn't the Bible say that there's no one that is sinless this is where we come to another change and that is Jesus wasn't a human he wasn't like me and you he was actually God incarnate he was the second member of the triune Godhead and so God had to send himself into the world in order to be able to sacrifice himself in order to be able to have your sins forgiven and that's the function of the Messiah and so the problem we have the problem we have is that from going from a righteous Davidic king who comes to transform the world we ultimately end up with a God born of a virgin who comes to die for the sins of the world that's our radical departure that's a radical departure from the notion of the Messiah that we have in the Jewish scriptures now the question is what about the followers of Jesus the first followers of Jesus did they subscribe to these ideas did they subscribe to these doctrines well what we have from the New Testament itself are two very very interesting passages in Acts chapter 15 we're told about the council that took place in Jerusalem that gathered together to deal with a very very interesting question that they had you see today we take it for granted that Christians followers of Jesus are non-Jewish and when we hear about a Jewish follower of Jesus Jesus we're all surprised we're all in shock what a Jewish follower of Jesus but in the first century in Palestine what happened was for a Gentile to be considered a follower of Jesus was out of the ordinary and so they had to deal with a question of whether or not a Gentile that wanted to follow Jesus had to go through conversion had to embrace all the commandments and go through circumcision like anybody who wanted to convert to Judaism in that time and at that council they ultimately decided that there was no need for a Gentile to adopt all of the commandments or to go through circumcision but what they would have to follow are some of the universal Noahide laws that God had intended for all of mankind what is incredibly insightful in this passage is and for this you need to have a little bit of a Gomorrah cop as they say goes like this if they're discussing about Gentiles and asking the question whether they need to keep the law in order to follow Jesus what does that say about what they thought about themselves of course they need to keep the commandments it's without it goes without saying that they felt that they have to if they didn't believe that they need to follow the commandments then the whole council wouldn't have taken place they wouldn't have been having this discussion about Gentiles having to keep the law and then we go to Acts 21 where we read that this is when Paul came back to Jerusalem and there was this whole meeting and many of the people were very upset with Paul very very angry with Paul because they were hearing rumors that Paul was going around in the diaspora teaching people against the law of Moses and they were very upset about it and so it says it says over here in Acts 21 21 they have been informed that you teach all the Jews who live among the Gentiles to turn away from Moses telling them not to circumcise their children or live according to to our customs they were incensed and in fact in that passage it talks about followers of Jesus who were zealous for the law Pharisees they speak of over there what this tells us is years after the death of Jesus none of the followers of Jesus assumed that they don't have to keep the law in fact I'll tell you something interesting in this passage in Acts 21 in order to be able to prove to the council that Paul had not forsaken the way of Moses they require him to make a demonstration that he's actually still faithful to Moses and to the commandments and what do they ask him to do they ask him to pay for the sacrifices of people who had come to the end of the time of growing their hair we know in Judaism in the book of numbers it speaks about Nazarites people who take upon themselves an oath to grow their hair and to refrain from drinking any wine and at the end of the period they were told to bring a sacrifice in Numbers chapter 6 we're told that that sacrifice was actually a sin sacrifice so what's interesting over here is the followers of Jesus are telling Paul that you need to pay for sin sacrifices years after the death of Jesus what does that tell us what that tells us is that the followers of Jesus had no notion whatsoever about Jesus coming to die for their sins and abolishing the sacrificial system once and for all but on the contrary they still believed that Jesus wanted them to keep on going in the way of the commandments of the Torah and to continue within Judaism the only difference between them and other Jews would have been whether or not they anticipated Jesus to be the one to come and redeem the Jewish people in the future what happens centuries later in the second century we have a group of Jews who still believe that Jesus was the Messiah and they were known as the Ebonites and what we read about from Irenaeus is that these Ebonites they use the gospel according to Matthew only which means they do not accept any of the other gospels they repudiate the apostle Paul I want to why maintaining that he was an apostate from the law we're told that this group of followers of Jesus that lived in the second century practice circumcision preserve and observance of the customs which are enjoined in the law and are so Judaic in their lifestyle of life that they even adore Jerusalem as if it were the house of God so what that tells us is that the church is starting to split in a major way with a few Jews remaining loyal to their Judaism but the majority of the church shifting radically away Eusebius who was a church historian tells us about these Ebonites saying that they did not believe in the virgin birth they did not believe in the Trinity they kept the Torah and they followed the Hebrew gospel of Matthew of Matthew and they rejected Paul and so what happens over time is not only does the church the Pauline church drift away from Judaism they end up persecuting the original group of Jewish followers of Jesus they try to stamp them out they consider them heretics because they don't accept the Trinity because they don't accept the virgin birth because they still maintain a loyalty to the law of Moses and to the Jewish people and so we ultimately end up in the fourth century with somebody named St. John Chrysostom who writes the following the Jews sacrifice their children to Satan they are worse than wild beasts the synagogue is a brothel a den of scoundrels the temple of demons devoted to idolatrous cults a criminal assembly of Jews a place of meaning for this for the assassins of Christ a house of ill-fame a dwelling of iniquity a gulf and abyss of perdition the Jews have fallen into a condition worse than the vilest animal it is the duty of all Christians to hate the Jews and so when we move so far from a group of Jews living in Jerusalem who were loyal to the Torah who believed in the keeping of the commandments to a group of people who are not Jewish living outside the land of Israel who despise even Jewish followers of Jesus and become rabid anti-Semites we are very very very far away from the original group that followed Jesus I was debating whether or not to discuss tonight something that I have been speaking about on my facebook over the past 24 hours the reason why I'm hesitating to uh to bring it up is because my intention is not to label all Christians as anti-Semites or to justify anybody who uses passages from the New Testament to vilify Jews but nevertheless it is important for us to recognize that European anti-Semitism did not grow in a vacuum it's not something that popped up out of the blue European anti-Semitism I would argue is very much rooted in the texts of the New Testament the way they have been read over centuries and the way they were taught throughout their communities it is by no coincidence that the Holocaust did not only contain murderers from Germany there were people from every background every uh nationality that took part in murdering Jews it didn't come as a surprise to them to view Jewish people as subhuman where did that come from you want to know where it came from it came from this notion that Jews by their mere rejection rejection of Jesus are so intrinsically evil and vile that they need to be hated unfortunately that message has been around for so long that it is really really really difficult to uproot and so when I saw that this Robert Bauer had prominently posted on his internet profile John chapter 844 which referred to the Jewish people as children of the devil I wasn't surprised I wasn't surprised does that mean I think that every Christian that reads the book of John is going to pick up a gun and walk into synagogue not at all there are very decent people in the church there are very decent Christians that are I consider friends of mine and neighbors I'm not saying that Christians are going to do that but what I am saying is that the texts of the New Testament have a very bloody history and more needs to be done to challenge the way these texts are understood by Christians when a Jew is pointed to as somebody who rejects Jesus Christians ought to be telling their children that Jewish people reject Jesus because they believe that that is what God wants them to do it is because they love God that they reject Jesus it's okay for Christians not to agree with us and it's okay for us not to agree with Christians it's okay for us to have different points of views but once I start attributing motives to another group that doesn't agree with me that ultimately leads to dehumanizing that person and so when Christians read in their scriptures about Jewish people rejecting Jesus what they're not hearing in the Christian scriptures is how these people actually love God and believe that it is their duty to reject doctrines which they believe go contrary to what the Bible teaches and so what I'd like to conclude with tonight is a message to all of us that we need to judge other people favorably we need to think of people in the best possible light and we need to speak of them in that way the reason why we need to speak about them in that way is because the more you speak positively about somebody the more they become positive the more they will try to live up to that characterization however if we speak negatively about people it just has a negative effect and it ultimately leads to stereotyping racism and ultimately prejudice and persecution of people that are different to us thank you for coming