Judaism rejects Jesus for the important reason that he never fulfilled the prophecy of what the messiah was supposed to do. The messiah was to establish a kingdom of God on earth. The messiah would establish his kingdom in Jerusalem and God’s law would be proclaimed to the world.
Jesus didn’t do it. Like hundreds of others, he was crucified as a traitor to Rome.
If you read Jesus’s teachings, he could never have done what the Jews expected him to do. Turn the other cheek, love those that hate you, bless those that curse you, pray for those that persecute you.
These are not methods for achieving world rule. If everybody really lived that way, perhaps we could have the kingdom of God, but we know that ain’t gonna happen.
In Matthew 24, Jesus warned against would be messiahs and those who would come in his name. He said not to believe any of them.
But that’s human nature. We seek a leader. We hope for someone to present that image we can trust to make the world better. The very thing our nature cries out to do is just what Jesus said don’t do. Don’t look for such leaders. Don’t jump on the bandwagon with friends and family. Instead, come ye out and be a separate people. Many Jews understand this. That’s part of the reason they oppose Zionism. It’s too easy to look for a strong leader to deliver us from bondage. The nearly impossible part is to walk away from the crowd and live by truth, especially in a world where truth was dismissed centuries ago.
We’re told to join this, join that, change the world by group force against group force. What you have done by that method, as Jesus said in Matthew 23:15, is to make converts twofold more a child of hell than yourself.
American founders knew that. All men are created equal. They are endowed by their creator with inalienable rights. No group, no government, no body of men could violate or interfere with those rights.
When Moses was about to face the Pharaoh, he asked God, “Who shall I say sent me?”
God answered “I AM. Tell them I AM sent you”.
I am. I exist. I need no one’s permission to claim it. Good or bad, right or wrong, if I harm no other, you have no power over me.
