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From: emery@fluke.UUCP (John Emery)
Newsgroups: net.religion.christian,net.religion.jewish
Subject: Re: Historical Persecution of Jews
Message-ID: <1614@vax3.fluke.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 24-Mar-86 01:32:55 EST
Article-I.D.: vax3.1614
Posted: Mon Mar 24 01:32:55 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 29-Mar-86 09:29:24 EST
References: <852@leadsv.UUCP> <335@aero.ARPA>
Organization: John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc., Everett, WA
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Keywords: isolation,holocaust
Xref: lsuc net.religion.christian:404 net.religion.jewish:1938

In article <335@aero.ARPA> homeier@aero.UUCP (Peter Homeier) writes:
>My personal opinion is spiritual.  I believe that God deeply and specially
>loves the Jewish people, and that they have always and will always be
>particularly blessed and graced by Him, as His chosen people.  Since God
>loves them, Satan hates them.  I believe that it is Satan's hatred of God
>that leads him to inspire all these persecutions, as a way of getting back
>at the Lord through His relativily unprotected people.  I just don't see how
>you can explain the consistent, virulent hatred of the Jews except as a
>planned program by the enemy.

My beliefs also, from the heart.  To me, the Jews are a special people.
All the stories of the Old Testament in which God chooses these people
and reveals himself to them are beautiful.  I believe also that the Jews
will always be special to God.  Just as there are false Christians, there
are also false Jews.  They are put there by the enemy to arouse hatred 
towards the whole people.  Satan knows the tendencies of the human heart
and how easy it is to promote prejudice to a group.

>In whatever way Christians or anyone else have been acting to persecute the
>Jews, they have been serving Satan, not God.

The first letter of John gives us words which we should take to heart when
considering one group persecuting another, in this case Christians 
persecuting Jews:

"Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray.  He who does what is 
 right is righteous, just as he is righteous.  He who does what is sinful
 is of the devil, becaus the devil has been sinning from the beginning.
 ... This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children
 of the devil are:  Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child
 of God; neither is anyone who does not love his brother."  1 John 3:7,8,10

Anyone can claim to be a child of God.  Anyone can claim to be a Christian.
However, a true child of God is born of God and since God is love, a true
child of God lives in love.  Regardless of who we are talking about, the
way to separate the sheep from the goats is by their fruits of their deeds:

"The man who says, 'I know him,' but does not do what he commands is a liar
 and the truth is not in him." 1 John 2:4

"And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands.  As you have
 heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love."  2 John 6

Those who preach persecution are of the flesh and not of the Spirit of God.
Man's downfall has been to uplift himself.  And as part of this human nature,
man tends to prejudge others in order to exhault himself.  How often does
man prejudge an entire group of people based on the actions of a few within
the group.  How often does man magnify the shortcommings of a few and apply
it to a whole group.  All this comes from the self seeking nature of man
and is not of God.

"Live in peace; and the God of love and peace shall be with you." 2 Cor. 13:11

John Emery
-- 
UUCP: {uw-beaver, sun, allegra, sb6, lbl-csam}!fluke!emery

"...and if have faith that can move mountains, but have not love, 
 I am nothing."  1 Corinthians 13:2

"And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love.  But the greatest
 of these is love." 1 Corinthians 13:13