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B'nai Chayim: Ask the Rabbi Do you have questions about Messianic Judaism? Salvation? G-d in general? Submit a question to Rabbi J. Michael Terrett, and he will try to answer. Questions that are answered will be posted here. Names will not be used, and confidentiality is assured. To submit a question, send an e-mail. While every effort is made to answer all questions received, we cannot guarantee that all questions will be answered due to time constraints. We also reserve the right not to answer questions that are deemed inappropriate or abusive, nor so we intend to engage in circular theological debates.Current Question Question: If salvation is only achieved through accepting Jesus, does that mean the 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust are in hell? Answer: When two worlds collide, there is often as much friction and debris as when two theological worlds try and understand events like the holocaust, which do not fit into the neat packages traditional theologies are fond of constructing. Judaism saw the heartland of Yiddishkeit decimated even more ruthlessly than the Roman destruction of the Holy Land in 70 C.E. and again in 132 C.E. Christians saw their brethren succumb to an antichrist and perform acts of demonic barbarism, the likes of which this planet has never seen. Even the Mongols just swept in to slaughter their victims - they did not dehumanize them, starve them and then systematically feed them into gas chambers and ovens. These were professing Christians who were Hitler's acquiescent henchmen and whose slaughter of the House of Jacob was the worst chapter of the generational demonic attack on the Apple of G-d's Eye.So Jews have struggled to understand the unspeakable horror and its bastards - those who deny it ever happened and Christians have often hidden in theological positions which are both ugly, and stupid, not to mention totally unbiblical. Now, as a Messianic Jewish believer, I am finally throwing off some of the nonsense which I have always had trouble accepting and at the same time, I am doing my best not to adopt some of the nonsense of which the synagogue has an equally alarming share. I always had a hard time believing that all those who had not had the chance to personally respond to the L-rd Yeshua and personally invite Him into their hearts, were eternally condemned. At the same time, I was also struggling with Noah's Ark and Evolution, the role of gender in leadership, the charismatic gifts, eternal security and that gem of all dispensational gobblygook, the rapture with all of its raping of the Revelation - adding and taking away like a psycho with a meat cleaver in one hand and buckets of maggots in the other. So, let me present the Scriptural case for those who have not had the chance to personally respond to our Messiah, as well as the case for those whose response to this same Messiah has lacked the spiritual reality to make it genuine. I base my case a passage in Romans - 2:13-16; on a passage in I Corinthians - 4:5 and in 2 Corinthians - 5:10; on a passage in Revelation - 20:11-14; on two passages in Acts - 17:22-31 and 14:16, 17; and on a passage in Ecclesiastes - 12:13, 14 and on a passage in John - 3:15-21. There are many other passages which could be used in support of the righteous judgment of G-d upon those who have never heard (Ps. 19:1-4 and Prov. 1:20-33 and 8:13-21 and 2 Chron. 16:9, to name a few), but I give these passages so those who read what I am about to say can examine the Scriptures to see if what I have said is true. We are all the physical descendants of one blood - of one man and one woman. Our L-rd flooded the earth and scattered the generations who grew from the survivors of that great catastrophe. He selected one man and one family, out of all of earth's families to be the vehicle through which all the families of earth could be blessed and brought into relationship with their Heavenly Father. Abraham and his household eventually produced David and David's line eventually produced our Glorious Messiah, who died on the cross for the salvation of all mankind, to the Jew first and also to the Gentile. Now many people and many peoples before the Cross and since the Cross have not had the opportunity of hearing of the marvelous love of G-d, and have died in ignorance - and many of them died seeking, because unlike the pagan Magi, they did not find that for which they sought - that which G-d planted in their conscience, in their culture and language and in the cosmos (here Rom. 1:18-32 gives a beautiful, harsh, extremely Jewish condemnation of the pagan nonsense the Roman world was defiled with). But, the lack of opportunity does not equal the lack of desire, and the spiritual realities of G-d have their roots in both the human heart and in the trauma of human history, so that the Hand of G-d has not been inactive in the lives and generations of those pagans who never succeeded in finding freedom in the truth of the light of David's Greater Son. They shall be judged on the contents of their hearts, just as all believers shall also be judged, in truth and righteousness. It is our privilege to walk with the Judge, but never to escape either His scrutiny or His righteous judgment - which is what Israel found out in the first two generations after her exodus from Egyptian bondage. G-d seeks for those who worship Him in spirit and in truth, not just in dogma and liturgy. The Gospel is the truth of G-d for the Salvation of all mankind. There is no other truth, nor any other access to G-d and Heaven, except through the Carpenter from Nazareth. He must personally judge each case, each life and each heart, all the while not desiring that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance - that all should come to the light and have their works judged that they were wrought in G-d. Many shall call Him L-rd, L-rd in that day and He shall say He never knew them, because their faith was sham, hollow and not built upon the spiritual realities of the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes - Matt. 25:31-46 speaks of a terrifying judgment where no theology is discussed, just spiritual realities. I have accepted the L-rd into my heart, but I sought for Him and for His truth long and hard before He cornered me. I did not accept a theological position, much as those who lead me to faith tried to reduce my experience to a formula, where the magic words of a stock sinner's prayer and the mystical experience of an emotional sensation they called sincere repentance, caused salvation to sprout in my heart, whether I liked it or not. Some thirty years later I am amazed that my faith survived these theological assaults upon authentic biblical teaching, and these insults to logical thinking which should always be derived from an honest, literarily valid interpretation of G-d's Holy Word. The Jews who died in the Holocaust are waiting with the rest of mankind to be judged after the second resurrection, when two books shall be opened - the Book of Life and the Book of Works. All men shall be judged out of both of them and the names which are written in them, that is in both of them, shall escape the second death. This escaping is based on the judgment of G-d upon the secrets of men's hearts, and upon the condemning and the approving activity of men's consciences, and upon the spiritual truth which is both cherished in the hearts of all true believers, and which is evident in their lives, to the Jew first and also to the Gentile - to the professed believer and to those who spent their lives languishing in ignorance and paganism, through lack of a better option, but whose heart desire and inner striving never gave up that highest of all spiritual quests - final truth and spiritual reality. Some died in the quest, without ever reaching their goal. Some reached the goal, but lost that which they quested for. Some gave up the quest and delved so deeply into darkness that they lived as spiritual mummies and zombies, devoid of all natural feeling and affection - the fornicating disciples of that great Whore of Babylon who has been deceiving mankind in every generation and culture, without yet ever succeeding in gaining the total domination of earth that she once enjoyed just prior to the flood. We may be on the verge of another great darkness, but those victims of Hitler's great darkness are safe in the keeping of the Just Judge, who shall raise them from the dead and sift through their hearts with as much grace and thoroughness as He shall sift through ours, to the Jew first and also to the Gentile. Theology doesn't save you. Faith does. Faith is both the quest for G-d and the shining forth of that faith - the works which James speaks of. Saved by works? Nope. Saved by faith? Yup, if it is real. Saved without faith? If the heart and life is filled with the spiritual quest for the same, then, in my understanding of biblical faith, this equivalent faith is the same thing as genuine faith, so also yup.
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