Butters

What I was reffering to was Isaiah 7. 7:14 contains the famous "and a virgin will be with child" bit that is supposed to prophesy the comming of Jesus. But of course when you read the whole chapter, you see it's nothing of the kind.
Ahaz was king of Judah, and was under attack by combined forces of Syria and Israel. Isaiah claimed that the birth of the child was a sign from God that Ahaz would be victorious. Although the child was born, Ahaz was defeated. As Walter pointed out, this was not the only failed prophecy, but I find it ironic that it is one of the most quoted by Christians.

Clarice O'C

Thanks, Butters. I'll be checking into the Ahaz thing further but for now I'll say that Isaiah was probably just having an off-day. After all, he predicted the coming of Jesus Christ the Lord, one with the God of the universe which overshadows the Ahaz boo-boo. There has to be a good explanation for it or else why would Isaiah expose himself as a false prophet by writing about his failures?

Best,
Clarice

[ November 08, 2002: Message edited by: Clarice O'C ]</p>

Butters

Posted by Clarice,
Well first off, I don't see where he predicted the comming of Christ. I only see him predicting a child that would be born in his time. The fact that he "goes unto the prophetess" and she then conceives a child is hardly remarkable, and has nothing to do with Jesus.
Second, he did not record his failure, it is recorded in 2Chronicals. Two different writers, two different times, two different books, brought together by someone else. No wonder the whole thing makes no sense.

Clarice O'C

The Christian reading of Isaiah makes no sense. The Jewish reading would be something like: the book of Isaiah is talking about Israel--Israel personified. I'll look for some references soon.

Cheers,
Clarice

Butters

I agree the Christian reading makes no sense. If we are talking about Isaiah 7, then the only reading that makes sense is a literal description of the time of the reign of Ahaz over Judah.
If we are talking about Is.5, then yes, he is talking about Israel personified, clearly.

TrueThinker

Well according to what you are saying, then Moses is also a false prophet. He prophesied to the first generation of Israelites that they will see the Promised Land, and yet they did not. Hmmmm....

So what gives??

Please provide the passages where the Bible CLEARLY states....

..and the verses of the specific prophecy you are referring to.

Butters

The prophecy is Isaiah 7, and the out come is recorded in 2 Chronicals. I prefer not to take things "out of context". Christians always claim that is what critics are doing, but they are the ones that taught us to do it. They always quote the mangeled translation of Is7:14, and most have not even read the rest of the passage, hey if Matthew says it refers to the birth of Christ, thats good enough.

Clarice O'C

From a Jewish website, the following is Hillel Ben Ya'akov's article, "Why Jews Aren't Christians."

Ya'akov sets the stage with Numbers 23:19: "God is not a man... nor the son of man...". Since there is no copyright on this article I'm pasting it below. Ya'akov also addresses Isaiah 7:4.

Is there anyone who can refute any or all of the points that Ya'akov makes?

Thanks,
Clarice

* * * *

"Christians view Jesus as the Christ; Jews do not. To understand
why, we must examine the difference between the Hebrew moshiach,
translated to English as messiah, and the Greek translation,
Christ. The meaning of the moshiach of the Hebrew Scriptures was
a military hero who would free the Jews from Roman bondage and
establish an age of worldwide peace in his own time. Jesus did
not none of the above and is obviously not the messiah spoken of
within the Hebrew Scriptures.

Nowhere in the Hebrew Scriptures does it say that the messiah
should be worshipped as a god or the son of G-d. For that idea,
you must pay a visit to Greek mythology.

Pagan Mythology

The Hellenists of the great Greek and Roman cultures were pagans
who believed a mythology of gods who looked and behaved like
people. It was common for mythical Greek and Roman gods to come
down to earth and fornicate with earth women, producing offspring
that were half man half god. The Jesus of the Christian
Scriptures fits this pagan Greek half-man half-god concept of a
Christ messiah.

Search For the Historical Jesus

It is necessary to separate Jesus, the historical man, from the
Jesus Christ of Greco-Christian pagan mythology. The first
important modern theologian to search for the historical Jesus
was Albert Schweitzer, author of "The Quest for the Historical
Jesus." Since then, there have been other books that peel away
the myth from reality. One such document is "The Passover Plot"
by Hugh J. Schonfield. Christian scholars today generally realize
that the resurrection story is a myth; not a historical fact.
And, perchance Jesus never existed at all.

Obviously Jews do not regard Jesus as the messiah or, to use the
Greek word, the Christ. The messiah was to bring a period of
peace on earth; to usher in a messianic age. If Jesus was the
messiah, there would be peace now. Instead of being the "Prince
of Peace" (a Christian mistranslation of Isaiah), Jesus claimed
not to send peace, but the sword (Matthew 10:34).

Because Jews rejected Jesus, Christianity had to go to
Greco-Roman pagans for converts. The Jesus myth is a pagan story.
Christianity rejected the Jewish dietary laws and painful
circumcision, and adopted Hellenist myths to be able to appeal to
Greco-Roman pagans. Christians today are not descendants of
Abraham, but descendants of converted pagans.

What About Biblical Prophecy?

The pagans of the time of Jesus distrusted all newfangled
religions, but venerated old, established religions. The pagans
did not know Judaism, for contrary to Hellenistic practice, Jews
rejected other people's gods and worshipped only their own.
Because of their dietary laws, Jews kept themselves separate from
pagans. To make the new Christian religion palatable for pagan
converts, the new religion had to appear to be old. To facilitate
that, the Greek Christians revised the Tanach to fit the
Christian myth of Jesus Christ.

Since the pagan Greeks did not know Hebrew, they had to rely on a
Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures (Tanach). The earliest
translation of the Hebrew Scriptures to Greek is the Septuagint,
finished from 200-300 BCE by a committee of over seventy rabbis
in Alexandria. Alexandria was an important capitol of learning;
the site of the greatest library of the ancient world. The rabbis
who translated the Septuagint were, of course, not infallible,
and altered the text to remove pagan ambiguities. Today most Jews
rely on translations of the Masoretic Hebrew text which dates
between 600 and 800 CE. This, however, was also flawed. There is
a new translation of the old Hebrew published as the Tanach.

About the year 140 CE, in the early years of the new Christian
religion, Aquilia translated the Hebrew Scriptures, revising it
to suit Christian myth. For example, Christians believe that
Jesus was born of a virgin. The "Emmanuel" referred to in Isaiah
7:14 is not born of a virgin (Hebrew: betulah) but of almah, a
young woman who has not had children before. Translations of the
Hebrew scriptures that refer to virgin birth are false, scripture
revised to fit Christian myth. This is only one of many
deliberate falsifications of the translation to make it appear
that the Hebrew Scriptures predict the coming of the messiah.
What the Christians call their "Old Testament" is a Christian
document, not the Bible of the Jews. Aquilia's Christian version
gave credence to the pagans that Christianity was a continuation
of an old religion, not a newfangled cult.

The Christian Claim of Supersession

The Aquilan falsification of the Hebrew Scriptures fit the
Christian claim that Christianity was a continuation of Judaism;
that Judaism was the Old Covenant and Christianity the New
Covenant which supersedes it. This claim of supersession declares
that Judaism is dead, that Jews are incomplete and unfulfilled
without Jesus. The trouble with that theory is that, besides
being based on a false mythology, it assumes that Judaism stopped
where Christianity began. However, it did not!

Christian scripture and history are filled with attempts to
belittle Judaism and discredit Jews. Judaism is called the Old
Covenant, obsolete and dead unless fulfilled in the New Covenant
of Christ. To belittle Judaism, the Hebrew Bible is called the
Old Testament and the Christian Scriptures New. To hide the pagan
roots of Christian mythology, the term Judeo-Christian tradition
was invented. This is anti-Judaism, the seed of the anti-Semitism
that ultimately produced the Holocaust. Christianity is in fact
Judeo-Hellenism, a pagan religion celebrating polytheism. Many
Christian sects reject the Trinity as polytheism, but still
accept the pagan myth of Jesus as G-d's son and Satan as the god
of the underworld or "hell."

If he existed at all, Jesus was a Jew. His apostles were all
Jews. The Judaism practiced by the historical Jesus was one of
Torah and temple animal sacrifice. The Judaism of today has, in
addition to the Torah (the five books of Moses), the complete
Hebrew Bible (Tanach), the Talmudic commentaries, the Mishna, and
the Gemarah. Judaism today has no animal sacrifices. Jews are
guided by Torah law and ethical principles. Christianity, on the
other hand, abandoned the Torah in exchange for salvation through
the mythical Jesus. They are two wholly different religions.

Christianity Rejects the Torah

If you believe that the Eucharist, eating the flesh of Jesus and
drinking his blood, is a means of "getting with god," please note
Deuteronomy 12:23-24, as follows: "Only be steadfast in not
eating the blood; for the blood is the life; and thou shalt not
eat the life with the flesh. Thou shalt not eat it." It is
forbidden to eat human flesh. "Ye may eat every beast that
parteth of the hoof, and hath the hoof wholly cloven in two, and
cheweth the cud" (Deuteronomy 14:3-8). Yet, many Christians
include the symbolic drinking of this Jewish blood and eating
Jewish flesh as their holiest sacrament! And they are the ones
who accuse Jews of drinking the blood of Christian children (e.g.
Hugh of Lincoln) or using Christian blood in the making of the
Passover unleavened bread! The only blood drinkers are
Christians!

The celebrated Biblical story of the sacrifice of Isaac, with a
ram substituted, marked the end of human sacrifice in Jewish
history. Other cultures continued this barbaric practice. They
call Jesus the "lamb of God," a human sacrifice and worship him.
The sacrifice to God is not God, but only a sacrifice. If you
sacrifice a lamb to God, you do not worship the lamb. Even if
Jesus were the messiah, Jews would not worship him anymore than
they do Moses or the Muslims worship their messiah.

Who Crucified Jesus?

As part of anti-Jewish propaganda, for centuries Christians were
taught that the Jews were Christ-killers. Until 1956, it was
official Catholic policy to hold the Jews personally responsible
for the death of Jesus. But who crucified Jesus and for what
crime? Under Roman occupation, Palestine had a ruler; Herod. For
Jesus to proclaim that he was "King of the Jews" was sedition.
The Romans convicted Jesus of sedition and crucified him. The
Jews had no authority to impose capital punishment.

For Jesus to claim that he was the son of G-d was heresy. "Thou
shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shalt
thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou
conceal him; but thou shalt surely kill him; thy hand shall be
first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of
all the people. And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he
die; because he hath sought to draw thee away from the Lord thy
G-d" (Deuteronomy 13:9-11). If the Jews had executed Jesus, he
would have been stoned to death, not crucified.

The Myth of the Resurrection

Unlike the Christian Scriptures, which were written long after
the alleged death of Jesus and the writings of Paul (who
glaringly never met Jesus), the Dead Sea scrolls are contemporary
with the time of Jesus. Until recently they were suppressed both
by the Jews and the Catholics. Why? The Jews apparently feel that
revealing the contents of the Dead Sea scrolls will be rejected
as Jewish propaganda. Why the Catholics tried to suppress the
scrolls becomes immediately obvious:

In the video "Secrets of the Dead Sea Scrolls," sold by the
Discovery Channel, researcher Dr. Margaret Fiering reports that
Jesus was on the cross only six hours. When Jesus said he
thirsted, a sponge soaked in a potion was held to his lips. The
potion made him appear to be dead and he was taken down. Now it
is clear why Jesus was not buried, but hidden in a tomb. He was
revived and taken away to recover from his wounds; not
resurrected, but resuscitated. It was a clever Jewish ruse to
fool the Romans. Dr. Fiering believes that Jesus married Mary
Magdaline and hid away in the hills.

Now it is obvious why Christians tried to suppress the Dead Sea
scrolls. Christianity is the belief that Jesus died on the cross,
was resurrected, and that belief in him as G-d frees his
followers from sin and gives them everlasting life. With no death
on the cross and no resurrection, the Apostles Creed is a
fiction. Christian mythology disappears in the light of modern
scholarship. Christianity is based on a lie.

The historical Jesus was a man; not the mythical son of G-d.
Jesus did not fulfill the Hebrew prophesy of a messiah to free
the Jews from Roman bondage and establish a world of peace in his
own lifetime. That's why the Jews reject Christianity.

Christian scholars today recognize that the Christ story is a
mythical fabrication. What happens to Christianity without it's
Christ? Does it return to the "Old Covenant?" Do Christians
become Jews? Hardly. They reject circumcision and the dietary
laws. They reject the Torah. What's left if they also abandon the
myth of resurrection?

G-d's covenant with the Jews never ended, as stated in
Deuteronomy 29:13-14, Jeremiah 32:40, and Isaiah 55:3."

<a href="http://torah.freeyellow.com/page56.html" target="_blank">http://torah.freeyellow.com/page56.html</a>

TrueThinker

Actually, this is more consistent with Genesis 6. It says the sons of God became interested in the daughters of men and produced offspring- the Nephilim, Raphaim, and Anakim race of giants. They were men of suprnatural strength who were seen as 'gods'. Many have dismissed these stories as "myth" because they don't sound believable, but they are probably grounded in truth.

Note: Jesus is fully man and fully God, not half & half. That is the mystery.

There are Messianic Jews, albeit few in number. The first Christian Jews tried to minister to other Jews, but it was not the right time. God wanted his message to be gived to the Gentiles first. But the day is fast approaching when the Jews will say, "Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord." This doesn't mean all Jews would be converted, but a majority of them will turn to Jesus Christ.

Modern-day prophecy in action, July 25, 1996, in Detroit:
"The Spirit of prophecy is in this building. I am shaking right now. "I am shaking this place. I am shaking your ground. I am shaking the earth. There has been a terrorist act and there will be another. For the Spirit of the Lord says, America will retaliate, but God says, even as they retaliate with natural weapons of war and they say, we will go the place of the east and we will go and we will bring them down for what they did to our people as they flew in the air, over Long Island. But the Spirit of the Lord says, another will take place, but I will prevent many deaths, because I will cause a security thing to happen so they will not die. I will look after you, America. But God says, the retaliation will not be right. It will not be of my Spirit. It will be a wrong decision, but God says the saints of the Lord, of the most high God, will begin to pray. And your God says, I will strike down the god of the east. I will bring something to pass very soon. I have told you about it. The very god of the east, the very king of the east, the very prince of the east. The one that waged a war against America. They spoke about the mother of wars. For God says, This is going to be the mother of wars as you have never seen. For the Spirit of God will rise up against the prince of the east, and He will bring him down."

for the entire prophecy go here:
<a href="http://www.kimclement.com/words/1996/detroit_july_1996.htm#Attack%20on%20America" target="_blank">Attack on America </a> or listen here: <a href="http://www.kimclement.com/words/1996/july1996.wma" target="_blank">Audio</a>

I'm sure most of you would go scrambling trying to find something that debunks or defames the prophet or find some other reason not to believe. Well, y'all have fun.

Is God real? You wait and see...

edited to correct hyperlink.

[ November 15, 2002: Message edited by: TrueThinker ]

[ November 15, 2002: Message edited by: TrueThinker ]</p>

Butters

Well, Mankind has waited at least 10,000 years to see evidence of God, none yet.

Oh, and no defence of Isaiah?

[ November 15, 2002: Message edited by: Butters ]</p>