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Friday, September 16, 2005

Lutherans - the Leopards that Refuse to Change their Spots

Christian Attitudes has this interesting piece on the Lutheran World Federation’s blast of invective in the direction of the Israeli separation barrier.

In a public statement adopted yesterday at the end of its week-long meeting in Jerusalem and Bethlehem, the LWF council said that many of its members had encountered “the [Israeli] separation wall and found shocking its impact on the daily lives of Palestinians.”

Of course, not a word as to why they are building the thing - you know, the totally accidentally-exploding Arabs and the bullet-firing 100,000 year-old olive trees planted by Abraham, Jesus and Muhummad.

This is unfortunate, but what is to be expected from an ecclesial community whose revered founder (and yes, many devout Lutherans and Protestant Christians do revere Martin Luther as a quasi-Saint) wrote The Jews and their Lies in 1543.

If you can stomach it, read on [be warned, this is noxious, evil stuff from the founder of Lutheranism]:

Therefore be on your guard against the Jews, knowing that wherever they have their synagogues, nothing is found but a den of devils in which sheer self-glory, conceit, lies, blasphemy, and defaming of God and men are practiced most maliciously and veheming his eyes on them. ...

Moreover, they are nothing but thieves and robbers who daily eat no morsel and wear no thread of clothing which they have not stolen and pilfered from us by means of their accursed usury. Thus they live from day to day, together with wife and child, by theft and robbery, as arch-thieves and robbers, in the most impenitent security. ...

Did I not tell you earlier that a Jew is such a noble, precious jewel that God and all the angels dance when he farts?

Alas, it cannot be anything but the terrible wrath of God which permits anyone to sink into such abysmal, devilish, hellish, insane baseness, envy, and arrogance. If I were to avenge myself on the devil himself I should be unable to wish him such evil and misfortune as God's wrath inflicts on the Jews, compelling them to lie and to blaspheme so monstrously, in violation of their own conscience. Anyway, they have their reward for constantly giving God the lie.

And then, Luther goes on with this prescription for the Holocaust:

I brief, dear princes and lords, those of you who have Jews under your rule-- if my counsel does not please your, find better advice, so that you and we all can be rid of the unbearable, devilish burden of the Jews, lest we become guilty sharers before God in the lies, blasphemy, the defamation, and the curses which the mad Jews indulge in so freely and wantonly against the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, this dear mother, all hristians, all authority, and ourselves. Do not grant them protection, safe-conduct, or communion with us.... .With this faithful counsel and warning I wish to cleanse and exonerate my conscience.

What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews? Since they live among us, we dare not tolerate their conduct, now that we are aware of their lying and reviling and blaspheming. If we do, we become sharers in their lies, cursing and blaspemy. Thus we cannot extinguish the unquenchable fire of divine wrath, of which the prophets speak, nor can we convert the Jews. With prayer and the fear of God we must pratice a sharp mercy to see whether we might save at least a few from the glowing flames. We dare not avenge ourselves. Vengenance a thousand times worse than we could wish them already has them by the throat. I shall give you my sincere advice:

First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of his Son and of his Christians. For whatever we tolerated in the past unknowingly - and I myself was unaware of it - will be pardoned by God. But if we, now that we are informed, were to protect and shield such a house for the Jews, existing right before our very nose, in which they lie about, blaspheme, curse, vilify, and defame Christ and us (as was heard above), it would be the same as if we were doing all this and even worse ourselves, as we very well know.

Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. For they pursue in them the same aims as in their synagogues. Instead they might be lodged under a roof or in a barn, like the gypsies. This will bring home to them that they are not masters in our country, as they boast, but that they are living in exile and in captivity, as they incessantly wail and lament about us before God.

Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them. (remainder omitted).

Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb. For they have justly forfeited the right to such an office by holding the poor Jews captive with the saying of Moses (Deuternomy 17 [:10 ff.]) in which he commands them to obey their teachers on penalty of death, although Moses clearly adds: "what they teach you in accord with the law of the Lord." Thoses villains ignore that. They wantonly employ the poor people's obedience contrary to the law of the Lord and infuse them with this poison, cursing, and blasphemy. In the same way the pope also held us captive with the declaration in Matthew 16 {:18], "You are Peter," etc, inducing us to believe all the lies and deceptions that issued from his devilish mind. He did not teach in accord with the word of God, and therefore he forfeited the righ to teach.

This goes on and on and on, and I will not quote any more of it. You get the picture.

Lutheranism is one leopard that has not changed its spots.

On the other side of the Catholic / Protestant divide, Liz has this item on the upcoming meeting between Pope Benedict XVI and the Chief Rabbis of Israel. She also notes that Pope Paul VI, unlike his predecessor Pope John XXIII and his successor Pope John Paul II may have himself had some unpleasant attitudes towards the Jewish people. Read it yourselves.

1 Comments:

Blogger airforcewife said...

It's odd that so many of the hierarchy of churches are sliding relentlessly away from Israel, while so many of the people I know who attend those churches are avidly pro-Israel. Including the pastors of them...

The church we attended during hubby's deployment was Lutheran (we are Catholic) because the pastor was so amazing.

Which leads me to wonder (a) why anyone still belongs to a church/donates their money to a church with those beliefs and (b) why those denominations aren't a little worried about loss of revenue over their stands.

11:54 PM  

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