Now more than ever is the time for the Jewish nation to consider Jesus Christ, Son of David, as the answer and way for authentic peace in Israel. John-Henry Westen: An open letter to PM Benjamin …More
Now more than ever is the time for the Jewish nation to consider Jesus Christ, Son of David, as the answer and way for authentic peace in Israel.
John-Henry Westen:
An open letter to PM Benjamin Netanyahu and all Jewish people on the way to peace
Dear Mr. Netanyahu, here is the road to peace for your nation.
In the Hebrew Bible, peace is mentioned quite frequently. “When a man’s ways please the Lord,” we read in Proverbs 16, “he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.” Peace depends on the Almighty as the Psalms reveal: “For you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.” (Ps. 4:8)
So let me tell you in all honesty, Mr. Netanyahu, I have the key to peace for you and for your people. But let me begin with why I’m wanting to share this with you.
It relates to the immense love and gratitude that I hold in my heart for the Jewish people. The example of your people has molded my life, has inspired my mind and heart, and in fact gives my life meaning and purpose.
Father Abraham, with his great faith in God, was ready to accept that his 90-year-old wife could bear him a son. He believed so strongly that even when God asked him to sacrifice his one and only son, the son of the promise, who was to beget for him as many descendants as the stars, Abraham did not hesitate to sacrifice Isaac.
Isaac too in his turn was ready to be sacrificed, was ready to accept death at the hand of the God who made him and called him forth out of his mother’s aged womb.
Jacob, after heeding the advice of Rebecca, his mother received the birth rite and was loved by the Lord. He wrestled with even an angel in order to receive the blessing of heaven and suffered a limp ever after as a result of the struggle – surely a constant reminder of the promise and presence of the Almighty.
In Jacob’s son Joseph we see the awesome work of God in bringing good from evil. The treachery of his brothers led to a miraculous saving of the people of Israel from famine and allowed the children of Abraham to flourish.
Even after the persecution by the Egyptians, God raised up Moses to deliver His people out of bondage with great and awesome signs and wonders up to and including the striking down of the first-born of Egypt. But even once allowed to leave, Pharaoh sought revenge and pursued the chosen people into the desert.
Undeterred, Moses by God’s command parted the Red Sea and led the Israelites across on dry ground. When pursued by the Egyptian army, God dealt the final blow upon Pharaoh’s soldiers as they were drowned in the sea, leaving the progeny of Abraham to rejoice at their deliverance by the hand of the Lord.
The intimacy with God caused Moses’ face to shine like the sun so that it could not be gazed upon by the people. The Almighty wrote on tablets of stone the great commandments which stand today as a rule for all mankind.
The awesome majesty of God and the reverence due Him were drilled home in the care and splendor with which the Ark of the Covenant was constructed and revered. When it was touched by unconsecrated hands the guilty party was slain by the Lord of hosts.
The succession of judges and kings culminate in David, the tragic hero, in whom we see the mixture of ardent love for God mixed with a humanity weak to the temptations of the flesh. He teaches us the awesome mercy of God when His people repent of their sins.
The great prophet Elijah evidenced so powerfully that there is no God other than the Lord God Almighty, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. His example of fidelity under persecution is for us a shining beacon of hope as we await with you Elijah’s return from his celestial place of repose.
Keep me updated via email on this petition and related issues.
It is for all these reasons and many many more that followers of Christ – Catholics – love the Jewish people. We count your ancestry as our own spiritual ancestry as well. We revere the saints of your ancient fathers, we honor them, and we implore God that we may follow their example of unyielding fidelity. We are grateful beyond words for the grace your people have bestowed on the world.
And there is one more prophet whom we share who stirs our hearts but also marks a delineation between our peoples: Isaiah. The great prophet who tells of the Lord’s sign that a virgin will conceive and bear a son who will be called Emmanuel – God with us (Is. 7:14). He writes about the Lord’s suffering servant in whom “all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God” (Is. 52:10) He who is, as Isaiah 53 reveals, to be “despised, and the most abject of men, a man of sorrows” who has “borne our infirmities and carried our sorrows” one who people would believe to be “struck by God and afflicted.”
“But he was wounded for our iniquities, he was bruised for our sins: the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his bruises we are healed… The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” He was to be the atoning sacrificial lamb, who “was offered because it was his own will, and… was led as a sheep to the slaughter… and shall not open his mouth.” The suffering servant, Isaiah tells us, “has done no iniquity, neither was there deceit in his mouth,” but yet, “the Lord was pleased to bruise him in infirmity” and that “he shall lay down his life for sin” that would “justify many and he shall bear their iniquities,” that he would even “pray for the transgressors.”
We see in this prophesied son of David, your long-awaited Messiah, the son of Mary and Joseph, both descendants of David. And from David himself, we see Isaiah’s sentiments of the suffering servant echoed as he writes “they have pierced my hands and feet, they have numbered all my bones.” (Ps. 22)
He came to free first the Jews and then all the Gentile world from slavery to sin and the devil. He established the one true Church, revealing Himself as the Messiah, the Holy One of Israel.
Perhaps these verses from your own revered prophet can reverberate in your heart and stir you to see in this calamitous time, to recognize the truth of Jesus the Christ. To see in Him the peace that has so eluded the people of Israel since the time of Christ.
We know from Proverbs that something is wrong, for we are told: “When a man’s ways please the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.” (Prov. 16:7) Peace depends on the Almighty, as the Psalms reveal: “For you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.” (Ps. 4:8)
Jesus is there for you and all your people. All followers of Christ believe that one day the prophecy of Zechariah will be fulfilled: that a spirit of grace will be poured out on the house of David, and the Jews will “look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn.” (Zech. 12:10)
In our New Testament which we include in our Bible alongside yours, Jesus is recorded as lamenting for the Jews – His own people. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.” (Mt. 23:37)
I am ashamed to admit it, but it is true, there are some followers of Christ who out of a mistaken sense of charity, or a cowardice for fear of disdain, refused to invite our Jewish brothers and sisters to recognize in Jesus, the Messiah, to see Him for what He is – flesh of your flesh, bone of your bone, a descendant of David. He fulfills the sign prophesied by Isaiah, “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign. Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel.”
So out of love for you, for your heritage, and for the gift you gave to the world, let me, a nobody but someone who holds in his heart great love for you and a debt of gratitude, invite you to consider Him whom your heart desires, consider Him whose hands and feet were pierced for love of you, He who allowed Himself to be crucified to save you and all of us from our sins, Who offered Himself as the Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world and to grant us peace.
Some time ago at LifeSiteNews we ran a show with Mother Miriam, a Jew from New York who became a Catholic. She calls herself a “completed Jew,” since she has recognized in Jesus, the Holy One of Israel, the Messiah, the Prince of Peace.
Reacting to the deplorable stance of some Catholics and Christians who refuse to offer Jesus to the Jews, she castigated them by saying that the greatest form of anti-Semitism was keeping Jesus from the Jews. Here is her testimony.
Some commented that her remarks were anti-Semitic, so I wanted to explain that her stance comes from a great love, a great love of her own people, her heritage, and the ardent desire that the people of her ancestry come to the same divine love which has so permeated her heart and soul that she is steeped in a joy and peace that no earthly power can ever take from her. She wants that same joy and peace for you, and is righteously angered by those who would dare to deprive her own people of the knowledge of the Messiah.
So out of love, respect, and gratitude for the Jewish people, I beg you with Mother Miriam, to turn to Emmanuel – God with us – and see in Him the Lord, the answer to the puzzle in Genesis which speaks of the One and only God saying “let US make man in OUR image.” The One God is three persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. He chose Abraham and his descendants as the means to bring the Messiah to all mankind through the woman whose glory shines brighter than the praises of Judith. She is the Mother of the Messiah, and she – the faithful daughter of the house of David – is the crown of all women on earth.
What Prince Ozias said of Judith applies all the more to Miriam (or Mary as we call her): “Blessed art thou, O daughter, by the Lord the most high God, above all women upon the earth… Because he hath so magnified thy name this day, that thy praise shall not depart out of the mouth of men.” It is also said of her: “Blessed art thou by thy God in every tabernacle of Jacob, for in every nation which shall hear thy name, the God of Israel shall be magnified on occasion of thee.”
Hear the prayer of Miriam, the Mother of Jesus, after the Messiah was conceived in her womb by the power of God. Hear in her words the echo of the prayers of all the holy women of Israel, of all the prophets and holy ones of Abraham’s children. She prays for you, her kinsmen, and her prayer will be heard by the Almighty one day, and one day soon.
My soul doth magnify the Lord.
And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior.
Because he hath regarded the humility of his handmaid;
for behold from henceforth…
all generations shall call me blessed.
Because he that is mighty,
hath done great things to me;
and holy is his name.
And his mercy is from generation unto generations,
to them that fear him.
He hath shewed might in his arm:
he hath scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart.
He hath put down the mighty from their seat,
and hath exalted the humble.
He hath filled the hungry with good things;
and the rich he hath sent empty away.
He hath received Israel his servant,
being mindful of his mercy:
As he spoke to our fathers,
to Abraham and to his seed forever.
For LifeSiteNews, this is John-Henry Westen, and may God bless you.
Source:
An open letter to PM Benjamin Netanyahu and all Jewish people on the way to peace - LifeSite
John-Henry Westen:
An open letter to PM Benjamin Netanyahu and all Jewish people on the way to peace
Dear Mr. Netanyahu, here is the road to peace for your nation.
In the Hebrew Bible, peace is mentioned quite frequently. “When a man’s ways please the Lord,” we read in Proverbs 16, “he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.” Peace depends on the Almighty as the Psalms reveal: “For you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.” (Ps. 4:8)
So let me tell you in all honesty, Mr. Netanyahu, I have the key to peace for you and for your people. But let me begin with why I’m wanting to share this with you.
It relates to the immense love and gratitude that I hold in my heart for the Jewish people. The example of your people has molded my life, has inspired my mind and heart, and in fact gives my life meaning and purpose.
Father Abraham, with his great faith in God, was ready to accept that his 90-year-old wife could bear him a son. He believed so strongly that even when God asked him to sacrifice his one and only son, the son of the promise, who was to beget for him as many descendants as the stars, Abraham did not hesitate to sacrifice Isaac.
Isaac too in his turn was ready to be sacrificed, was ready to accept death at the hand of the God who made him and called him forth out of his mother’s aged womb.
Jacob, after heeding the advice of Rebecca, his mother received the birth rite and was loved by the Lord. He wrestled with even an angel in order to receive the blessing of heaven and suffered a limp ever after as a result of the struggle – surely a constant reminder of the promise and presence of the Almighty.
In Jacob’s son Joseph we see the awesome work of God in bringing good from evil. The treachery of his brothers led to a miraculous saving of the people of Israel from famine and allowed the children of Abraham to flourish.
Even after the persecution by the Egyptians, God raised up Moses to deliver His people out of bondage with great and awesome signs and wonders up to and including the striking down of the first-born of Egypt. But even once allowed to leave, Pharaoh sought revenge and pursued the chosen people into the desert.
Undeterred, Moses by God’s command parted the Red Sea and led the Israelites across on dry ground. When pursued by the Egyptian army, God dealt the final blow upon Pharaoh’s soldiers as they were drowned in the sea, leaving the progeny of Abraham to rejoice at their deliverance by the hand of the Lord.
The intimacy with God caused Moses’ face to shine like the sun so that it could not be gazed upon by the people. The Almighty wrote on tablets of stone the great commandments which stand today as a rule for all mankind.
The awesome majesty of God and the reverence due Him were drilled home in the care and splendor with which the Ark of the Covenant was constructed and revered. When it was touched by unconsecrated hands the guilty party was slain by the Lord of hosts.
The succession of judges and kings culminate in David, the tragic hero, in whom we see the mixture of ardent love for God mixed with a humanity weak to the temptations of the flesh. He teaches us the awesome mercy of God when His people repent of their sins.
The great prophet Elijah evidenced so powerfully that there is no God other than the Lord God Almighty, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. His example of fidelity under persecution is for us a shining beacon of hope as we await with you Elijah’s return from his celestial place of repose.
Keep me updated via email on this petition and related issues.
It is for all these reasons and many many more that followers of Christ – Catholics – love the Jewish people. We count your ancestry as our own spiritual ancestry as well. We revere the saints of your ancient fathers, we honor them, and we implore God that we may follow their example of unyielding fidelity. We are grateful beyond words for the grace your people have bestowed on the world.
And there is one more prophet whom we share who stirs our hearts but also marks a delineation between our peoples: Isaiah. The great prophet who tells of the Lord’s sign that a virgin will conceive and bear a son who will be called Emmanuel – God with us (Is. 7:14). He writes about the Lord’s suffering servant in whom “all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God” (Is. 52:10) He who is, as Isaiah 53 reveals, to be “despised, and the most abject of men, a man of sorrows” who has “borne our infirmities and carried our sorrows” one who people would believe to be “struck by God and afflicted.”
“But he was wounded for our iniquities, he was bruised for our sins: the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his bruises we are healed… The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” He was to be the atoning sacrificial lamb, who “was offered because it was his own will, and… was led as a sheep to the slaughter… and shall not open his mouth.” The suffering servant, Isaiah tells us, “has done no iniquity, neither was there deceit in his mouth,” but yet, “the Lord was pleased to bruise him in infirmity” and that “he shall lay down his life for sin” that would “justify many and he shall bear their iniquities,” that he would even “pray for the transgressors.”
We see in this prophesied son of David, your long-awaited Messiah, the son of Mary and Joseph, both descendants of David. And from David himself, we see Isaiah’s sentiments of the suffering servant echoed as he writes “they have pierced my hands and feet, they have numbered all my bones.” (Ps. 22)
He came to free first the Jews and then all the Gentile world from slavery to sin and the devil. He established the one true Church, revealing Himself as the Messiah, the Holy One of Israel.
Perhaps these verses from your own revered prophet can reverberate in your heart and stir you to see in this calamitous time, to recognize the truth of Jesus the Christ. To see in Him the peace that has so eluded the people of Israel since the time of Christ.
We know from Proverbs that something is wrong, for we are told: “When a man’s ways please the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.” (Prov. 16:7) Peace depends on the Almighty, as the Psalms reveal: “For you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.” (Ps. 4:8)
Jesus is there for you and all your people. All followers of Christ believe that one day the prophecy of Zechariah will be fulfilled: that a spirit of grace will be poured out on the house of David, and the Jews will “look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn.” (Zech. 12:10)
In our New Testament which we include in our Bible alongside yours, Jesus is recorded as lamenting for the Jews – His own people. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.” (Mt. 23:37)
I am ashamed to admit it, but it is true, there are some followers of Christ who out of a mistaken sense of charity, or a cowardice for fear of disdain, refused to invite our Jewish brothers and sisters to recognize in Jesus, the Messiah, to see Him for what He is – flesh of your flesh, bone of your bone, a descendant of David. He fulfills the sign prophesied by Isaiah, “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign. Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel.”
So out of love for you, for your heritage, and for the gift you gave to the world, let me, a nobody but someone who holds in his heart great love for you and a debt of gratitude, invite you to consider Him whom your heart desires, consider Him whose hands and feet were pierced for love of you, He who allowed Himself to be crucified to save you and all of us from our sins, Who offered Himself as the Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world and to grant us peace.
Some time ago at LifeSiteNews we ran a show with Mother Miriam, a Jew from New York who became a Catholic. She calls herself a “completed Jew,” since she has recognized in Jesus, the Holy One of Israel, the Messiah, the Prince of Peace.
Reacting to the deplorable stance of some Catholics and Christians who refuse to offer Jesus to the Jews, she castigated them by saying that the greatest form of anti-Semitism was keeping Jesus from the Jews. Here is her testimony.
Some commented that her remarks were anti-Semitic, so I wanted to explain that her stance comes from a great love, a great love of her own people, her heritage, and the ardent desire that the people of her ancestry come to the same divine love which has so permeated her heart and soul that she is steeped in a joy and peace that no earthly power can ever take from her. She wants that same joy and peace for you, and is righteously angered by those who would dare to deprive her own people of the knowledge of the Messiah.
So out of love, respect, and gratitude for the Jewish people, I beg you with Mother Miriam, to turn to Emmanuel – God with us – and see in Him the Lord, the answer to the puzzle in Genesis which speaks of the One and only God saying “let US make man in OUR image.” The One God is three persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. He chose Abraham and his descendants as the means to bring the Messiah to all mankind through the woman whose glory shines brighter than the praises of Judith. She is the Mother of the Messiah, and she – the faithful daughter of the house of David – is the crown of all women on earth.
What Prince Ozias said of Judith applies all the more to Miriam (or Mary as we call her): “Blessed art thou, O daughter, by the Lord the most high God, above all women upon the earth… Because he hath so magnified thy name this day, that thy praise shall not depart out of the mouth of men.” It is also said of her: “Blessed art thou by thy God in every tabernacle of Jacob, for in every nation which shall hear thy name, the God of Israel shall be magnified on occasion of thee.”
Hear the prayer of Miriam, the Mother of Jesus, after the Messiah was conceived in her womb by the power of God. Hear in her words the echo of the prayers of all the holy women of Israel, of all the prophets and holy ones of Abraham’s children. She prays for you, her kinsmen, and her prayer will be heard by the Almighty one day, and one day soon.
My soul doth magnify the Lord.
And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior.
Because he hath regarded the humility of his handmaid;
for behold from henceforth…
all generations shall call me blessed.
Because he that is mighty,
hath done great things to me;
and holy is his name.
And his mercy is from generation unto generations,
to them that fear him.
He hath shewed might in his arm:
he hath scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart.
He hath put down the mighty from their seat,
and hath exalted the humble.
He hath filled the hungry with good things;
and the rich he hath sent empty away.
He hath received Israel his servant,
being mindful of his mercy:
As he spoke to our fathers,
to Abraham and to his seed forever.
For LifeSiteNews, this is John-Henry Westen, and may God bless you.
Source:
An open letter to PM Benjamin Netanyahu and all Jewish people on the way to peace - LifeSite
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