http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/2004/04/15_wiesel/this is a conversation with Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel discussing God and his faith. I read "Night" as a very young Jewish boy..very young, almost too young, and when I listen to Elie now thru the lense of the Messiah, my heart weeps...please saints, pray for the Jewish people.
"How can one live a meaningful life under the weight of such agonizing memories?"This question posed by the intellectual jew is something of the crux of the matter of why Jewish people can't accept a messiah. How could a God allow them to go through such turmoil as a people. But there is another holocaust coming where even the Church will be identified with the Jews to such a point as if we are goign to go throught it with them. Yes pray! and also ask God to allow us to understand our pivotal role as bring jealousy to the Jews that they might turn to God once again. Once the Church starts to become persecuted in ways beyond imagination for our stand and standard that we will hold to then that will attract and get the attention of the jewish people. We are representives of God and of Christ, shouldn't we live as such also?
An English historian with great synpathies for the Jewish people has written "Zionists, both religious and secular, interpret the Holocaust as a consequence of, or a divine punishment for, the unwillingness of European Jewry to leave the Diaspora and settle in Palestine when they had the opportunity early in the 20th century." "Some ultra orthodox see it as a divine retribution for Zionist attempts to bring about the ingathering of the exiles to the Holy Land rather than wait for God to send the Messiah." Paul Johnson: A History of the Jews. isbn 184212479X page 89Once the Church starts to become persecuted in ways beyond imagination for our stand and standard that we will hold to then that will attract and get the attention of the jewish people. I wonder why you say this. It didn't happen the first time. Christians were submitted to almost unbelievable horrors in the persecutions of Nero. Their fortitude had a considerable effect upon the ordinary people of their day, but not especially upon the Jewish population as far as I am aware.
Thank you for that word Greg and Ron. An Elie's not only an intellectual, but comes from an orthodox family and is himself devout, and he speaks of "bringing God to trial"?...eeee yikes!whats that passage in Jeremiah, "My ways are not your ways"....lemme look it up......ooops, wrong! Isaiah, (thank God for highlighter yellow.lol)"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways", declares the LORD.As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts."Isaiah 55:8-9 (NIV)put God on trial?....and you know what?....I'm would never deign to say to Elie, "do you think that God birthed the modern state of Israel out of the ashes of hitlers ovens, and the modern Israeli army out of the defeat of the Warsaw ghetto uprising"?....that in God's way, hitler and his demonic schemes were the unwitting tool God used to bring the world to a place, where the UN would vote to create the Jewish homeland?thats a hard saying, for a Jew, that maybe God used the holocaust to birth Israel.......I love that show, "Speaking of Faith"..simply because its a "cyber Mars Hill", you have every kind faith, and every kind of non-Christian (as well as Christian) spiritual belief presented, and if a believer is strong in their walk, and fairly mature in Christ, they can find out precisely what certains groups of non-believers think, and feel, without fear of compromise or backsliding. and THEN, your better equipped to give a Name to the "UNKNOWN GOD" , just like the Paul did on Mars Hill.Lord bless you today is my prayer.Neil :-?
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