| Letter#31 Sermon on
the Mount
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| My dear Mr. Isaacs: |
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| I am well aware of
the fact that "Reform Rabbis claim Jesus as a great Jew," though I know less
than a dozen who have said so publicly. This would be hailed with Joy by Catholics were it
not modified by claiming "the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount, and not the
theological Jesus, who is worshipped as God." That is another one of the many modern rabbinical claims that are untenable, though intelligent-sounding to the superficial- minded. It is an adroit attempt to counteract belief in the divinity of Jesus, the Messiah, by claiming to accept the 5th, 6th and 7th chapters of St. Matthew's Gospel, which contain the Sermon on the Mount, and rejecting the other twenty-five chapters that teach Jesus to be the predicted Messiah, born of the house of David, of a virgin, Who is "Emmanuel, the God with us." Those rejected chapters proclaim Jesus to be the King of the Jews whom the Magi came from the East to Bethlehem to honor; and the Messiah whom crowds in Jerusalem hailed with Hosannas. They prove that Jesus instituted a Church, made up in the beginning of His Apostolic Band of Twelve; that they and their successors were given the priestly power to offer sacrifice and forgive sins; that Jesus instituted a new Sacrifice, wherein the "Blood of the New Covenant" was to be offered to God in place of the blood of the Old Covenant Moses instituted; that Jesus performed miracles, and also made predictions regarding His resurrection, the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem, which were all fulfilled. That rabbinical claim is just as preposterous as would be the declaration of Pagan priests, in pre-Christian days, that they accept the Moses of the Ten Commandments, as set forth in the twentieth chapter of Exodus, as a great Law-giver, but not the theological Moses, as proclaimed by the Jews. Thus would they disregard the institution of the Aaronic priesthood, sacrifices, tabernacle, altar; the miracles performed by Moses; his laws of justice, journey through the wilderness, etc., recorded in the other thirty-nine chapters of the same Book of Exodus. The Ten Commandments is Moses, as the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus, but only in part. The difference being that Moses told what God said; whereas Jesus spoke in His own name, as God. I beg of you, my dear Mr. Isaacs, to study the Gospel of St. Matthew, which was written by an Israelite, in the language of the Israelites, for his fellow-Israelites. Even if you reject its content, you will no doubt see that the Sermon on the Mount is only the introductory discourse of Jesus, delivered at the beginning of His public ministry. You will realize how preposterous it is to claim about one-ninth of the history in St. Matthew's Gospel of who Jesus is, what He said, what He did, and what He commanded to be done, and then to assume, as do your Reform Rabbis, that they have Jesus as He is. Yet the Sermon on the Mount makes plain that Jesus held Himself to be a greater personage than Moses, the Law-giver, whose teachings He assumed the power to amend, to set aside, and to enlarge upon. Jesus exercised authority in the Sermon on the Mount that God alone could exercise; speaking as God alone can speak: "You have heard it said of old--But I say,"--"I say." Who is this "I"? Dr. Abraham Leon Sacher, the Jewish author, noting that Jesus laid down the law for humankind to obey, in a way that God alone could assume to speak, says in "A History of the Jews,"
Dr. Trude Weiss Rosmarin, author, editor of "The Spectator" (N.Y. Jewish monthly), rightly said the same thing, in an article published in the Jewish press throughout the country during the last week of 1937.
Both Jewish authors are correct, only God can
lay down the moral law for man to obey in His own name; only God could abrogate the law of
Moses, or enlarge upon it. Thus you see that the claim of the Reform Rabbis is spurious,
for the acceptation of the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount logically leads from the
Synagogue to the Church, as in it Jesus speaks as God. |
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