The White Crucifixion, Marc Chagall

 

For Christians

The Ebionite Community holds a lot of criticism for Christianity. But it is a mistake to believe that we hate Christians. We have Christian friends, neighbors, colleagues, and family. And more importantly, our dissassociation with Christian belief and practice does not indicate any negative thoughts about Yahshua ("Jesus") at all! We love Yahshua.

We do not see Yahshua as part of Christianity. Christianity is the religion of Paul. Very little and often none of Yahshua seeps through enough to be noticeable. Our findings lead us to the strong conviction that the faith of Yahshua ("Jesus") and Christianity are worlds apart.

We become angry at Christians many times everyday, and work hard to overlook the things they do, because we later realize that they too are working through life according to the beliefs they have embraced. They are convinced that their beliefs honor Yahshua.

But we believe that Christianity dishonors not only Yahshua but YHWH, the Father. And this is what is so hard to tolerate and even comprehend about Christians. To say that YHWH wants a human sacrifice for sins is the most bizarre thing and so oblivious to Scripture it is insulting. To say that YHWH died, as a sacrifice of Himself to Himself as a man smacks of pagan mythology, not Scripture that Yahshua believed. It says there is one deity, and no others. When Christianity boasts about "God" while putting aside everything He said as "done away with" on the command of a man from Tarsus, how can they be taken seriously or with respect? And when they "honor" Yahshua with pagan holidays and services drawn from the practices that Scripture condemns, it is hard to hold anything but anger. Then to hear Christians brush it all off because of "grace" which is used as an excuse for whatever Christians please to do---this is almost unbearably evil. We believe that Christianity like this is a horrible mockery of everything Yahshua was and stood for. How could they hate him so much?

But this is mostly theology. When Christians act with human kindness and decency and even (unconditional) love, they are wonderful people, and the theology is not involved. Of course, the things just mentioned are not only Yahshua's teachings, but human decency.   But how many have those teachings ever been acted upon? That would be a big enough job for any of us, and we should start (all of us) as soon as possible. How can we look to a Reign of Heaven, if we can't take its rules and spirit seriously now? And one of Yahshua's teachings is forgiveness. So we do not wish to harm or hate Christians, fueling the cycle of hatred that never ends until it consumes all. But it is so hard to forgive sometimes. Yet forgiveness doesn't mean we close our eyes to what has been done.We must flee evil and keep sins from being repeated.

The picture above by the painter Marc Chagall is more than a picture worth a thousand words. It represents the fact that many of Yahshua's own people have been murdered in his name, Jews murdered in the name of a Jew. But Yahshua, according to Gospel accounts, said "Father, forgive them, because they do not understand what they are doing." For centuries Christians have ignored both what Yahshua said and taught while claiming to be his followers. And so while Christians have hated and victimized Jews, his brethren, in every way, they have done the same to Yahshua the Jew by misrepresenting and disobeying him. Again and again, Yahshua must be saying, "Father, forgive them, because they do not understand what they are doing."  Christians have tormented not only to "the least of his brethren" but Yahshua himself.

Christians spend millions of dollars to missionize Jews and infiltrate Judaism through "Messianic Judaism" in a business-like enterprise. Christians console themselves that the reason their efforts are wasted by pontificating on the "blindness of the Jews." But it is Christianity that is "blind drunk" from it's Babylonian cup. Christianity is responsible for its own failure to reach the people Yahshua came to and the failure of Christianity to embrace Yahshua.

 
For Jews

Jesus is a Jew who has done as much for Judaism as any other, but has been hated by many Jews. Others have seen not Jesus---the invented god in whose name Christians murder us---but Yahshua (Y'shua) the rabbi, the great man obscured and mocked by both Christians and Jews.

"Without doubt,  it is that whereas none of the claims and aspirations of Jesus can be said definitely to associate him with role of Messiah, not to speak of that of the son of man. the strange creation of the modern myth-makers, everything combines, when approached from the viewpoint of a study of the first-century AD Galilee, or of charismatic Judaism, or of his titles and their development, to place him in the venerable company of the Devout, the ancient Hassidim....

...The discovery of resemblances between the work and words of Jesus and those of the Hassidim, Honi and Hanina ben Dosa, is however by no means intended to imply that he was simply one of them and nothing more....it is nevertheless still possible to say...that no objective and enlightened student of the Gospels can help but be struck by the incomparable superiority of Jesus....

...The positive and constant testimony of the earliest Gospel tradition, considered against its natural background of first-century Galilean charismatic religion, leads not a Jesus as unrecognizable within the framework of Judaism as by the standard of his own verifiable words and intentions, but to another figure: Jesus the just man, the zaddik, Jesus the helper and healer, Jesus the teacher and leader, venerated by his intimates and less committed admirers alike as prophet, lord, and son of God.
(Geza Vermes. Jesus the Jew: A Historian's Reading of the Gospels. London: Collins, 1973. Pp. 223-5.)

"'Jesus was not a Christian,' but he became a Christian. His teaching and his history have been severed from Israel. To this day the Jews have never accepted him, while his disciples and his foolowers of every generation have scoffed at and persecuted the Jews and Judaism. But even so, we cannot imagine a work of any value touching upon the history of the Jews in the time of the Second Temple which does not also include the history of Jesus and an estimate of his teaching. What, therefore does Jesus stand for in the eyes of the Jews at the present time?"

From the standpoint of general humanity he is, indeed, "a light to the Gentiles." His disciples have raised the lighted torch of the Law of Israel (even though that Law has been put forward in a mutilated and incomplete form) among the heathen of the four quarters of the world.No Jew can, therefore, overlook the value of Jesus and his teaching from the point of view of universal history. This a fact which neither Maimondes nor Yehudah ha-Levi ignored."

"... in his ethical code there is a sublimity, distinctiveness and originality in form unparalleled in any other Hebrew ethical code; neither is there parallel to the remarkable art of his parables. The shrewdness and sharpness of his proverbs and his proverbs and his forceful epigrams serve, in an exceptional degree, to make ethical ideas a popular possession. If ever the day should come and his ethical code be stripped of its wrappings of miracles and mysticism, the Book of the Ethics of Jesus will be one of the choicest treasures in the literature of Israel for all time."


(Joseph Klausner. Jesus of Nazareth: His Life, Times, and Teaching. Trans. Herbert Danby. New York: Bloch, 1989 (1922). Pp. 413-4.)
We fully believe that in spite of men do, YHWH has the final say, and, perhaps, if you will, the last laugh. What is the real purpose of the rebellious Christian religion as it slowly is harnessed back to YHWH's loving plan for mankind? Read "Why Did YHWH Allow Christianity?"  This article is for both Christians and Jews and speaks of how both are meant to be brought into Yahweh's Reign as one.