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Messianic Jews Persecuted In Israel

Posted by LaVrai in Saturday, June 21st 2008

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I am disappointed with the information revealed in this article, but I am not very surprised. It is ashame that people would treat each other this way, but even more so that Jews would treat each other this way — that one people of two different viewpoints cannot agree to disagree. Religious Jews pride themselves on their faith and that GOD gave father Abraham the Covenant, and they seem to have such a zeal for GOD…yet would such a Jew burn a holy book, set fire to a place of worship or place an explosive at a child’s home?

TEL AVIV, Israel - Safety pins and screws are still lodged in 15-year-old Ami Ortiz’s body three months after he opened a booby-trapped gift basket sent to his family. The explosion severed two toes, damaged his hearing and harmed a promising basketball career.

Police say they are still searching for the assailants. But to the Ortiz family the motive of the attackers is clear: The Ortizes are Jews who believe that Jesus was the Messiah.

Israel’s tiny community of Messianic Jews, a mixed group of 10,000 people who include the California-based Jews for Jesus, complains of threats, harassment and police indifference.

The March 20 bombing was the worst incident so far. In October, a mysterious fire damaged a Jerusalem church used by Messianic Jews, and last month ultra-Orthodox Jews torched a stack of Christian holy books distributed by missionaries.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry and two chief rabbis were quick to condemn the burning, but the Ortiz family says vigorous police action is needed.

“I believe that it will happen again, if not to us, then to other Messianic believers,” said Ami’s mother, Leah Ortiz, a 54-year-old native of South Orange, N.J.

Proselytizing is strongly discouraged in Israel, a state that was established for a people that suffered centuries of persecution for not accepting Jesus and has little tolerance for missionary work.

At the same time, Israel has warm relations with U.S. evangelical groups, which strongly support its cause, but these generally refrain from proselytizing inside Israel. Even the Mormon church, which has mission work at its core worldwide, agreed when it opened a campus in Jerusalem to refrain from missionary activity. Read the rest here…

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When the Holy Bible says every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is LORD that means it’s a fact. When it says they shall look upon HIM whom they have pierced and be ashamed, it’s a fact. So I pray that as many as the LORD calls will accept HIS Only Begotten Son Jesus Christ, Messiah and Savior of the world — before HE returns to separate the wheat from the tares, which some see as being perhaps only just a few years away.

And for those who want to assume that I am anti-Semitic, you are quite wrong. I am not racist in any way, shape or form. I respect all peoples. What I write here I write with love, for I know what the LORD has written and HE hides nothing from HIS people (read the book of Isaiah, for example).

Isaiah 45:14-25 (New King James Version)

18 For thus says the LORD, Who created the heavens, Who is God, Who formed the earth and made it, Who has established it, Who did not create it in vain, Who formed it to be inhabited: “I am the LORD, and there is no other. 19 I have not spoken in secret, In a dark place of the earth; I did not say to the seed of Jacob, ‘ Seek Me in vain’; I, the LORD, speak righteousness, I declare things that are right.

20 “ Assemble yourselves and come; Draw near together, You who have escaped from the nations. They have no knowledge, Who carry the wood of their carved image, And pray to a god that cannot save. 21 Tell and bring forth your case; Yes, let them take counsel together. Who has declared this from ancient time? Who has told it from that time? Have not I, the LORD? And there is no other God besides Me, A just God and a Savior; There is none besides Me. 22 “ Look to Me, and be saved, All you ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other.

23 I have sworn by Myself; The word has gone out of My mouth in righteousness, And shall not return, That to Me every knee shall bow, Every tongue shall take an oath. 24 He shall say, ‘ Surely in the LORD I have righteousness and strength. To Him men shall come, And all shall be ashamed Who are incensed against Him. 25 In the LORD all the descendants of Israel Shall be justified, and shall glory.’”

Zechariah 12:10-14 (New King James Version)

10 “And I will pour on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and supplication; then they will look on Me whom they pierced. Yes, they will mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son, and grieve for Him as one grieves for a firstborn. 11 In that day there shall be a great mourning in Jerusalem, like the mourning at Hadad Rimmon in the plain of Megiddo. 12 And the land shall mourn, every family by itself: the family of the house of David by itself, and their wives by themselves; the family of the house of Nathan by itself, and their wives by themselves; 13 the family of the house of Levi by itself, and their wives by themselves; the family of Shimei by itself, and their wives by themselves; 14 all the families that remain, every family by itself, and their wives by themselves.

Revelation 1:4-8 (New King James Version)

4 John, to the seven churches which are in Asia: Grace to you and peace from Him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven Spirits who are before His throne, 5 and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler over the kings of the earth. To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, 6 and has made us kings and priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. 7 Behold, He is coming with clouds, and every eye will see Him, even they who pierced Him. And all the tribes of the earth will mourn because of Him. Even so, Amen. 8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End,” says the Lord, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”