I can sympathize with your plight RG. That is a wicked heresy you were under, very unfit for man, woman, and child - for everyone. I have a woman friend who has since converted to Catholicism after studying the Bible and realizing the errors she was brought up under. She was literally cursed at when she wanted to play basketball, she endured a stern lecture from her father when she as an adult cut her hair, and the make-up she wore? That was even worse. Jesus extended the Covenant to the Gentile - the non-Jew, and when Peter the Head of the Apostles (or Bishops) had a vision about eating shell fish and other prohibited foods under the dietary laws, he understood by a gift of the Holy Spirit that to change the dietary laws and further development by Apostle Paul was to say that the non-Jews did not have to obey all the Jewish laws (dietary, not cutting the hair on the side of the head, not cutting the bottom of the beard, etc..) but only the laws that were required of all men: Observance of the Ten Commandments, etc.. Icons were allowed as they were allowed and in fact commanded by G-d who ordered the ornaments of the Holy of Holies and the golden Cherubim of the Arc of the Covenant. Unfortunately the teachings of Jesus are not in a Executive Summary. I had in fact been waiting for you to write about the Jewish law that requires Jews to avoid others who are not Jews, and furthermore to marry only those who are Jewish. (There have been very notable exceptions to this and it would be interesting reading if anyone wants to pursue the time when Jews married foreigners (non-Jews) because there were NO Jewish women). I had been waiting for you or CB to speak up, as I thought you were Jewish, and perhaps you are. As many here know a person's being a Jew is determined by his mother - which is the reason for marrying only Jews. Thus it is possible for men and women to have Jewish family names but they have been brought up in another religion. My father-in-law had to family, his name was an obvious Jewish family name. The first family raised their children Catholic. The second family of which my wife was born was Jewish because Dad married a Jewish woman and begat three children - all of whom are Jewish, and two of them worship faithfully at temple, while my wife is a convert to Christianity, and was baptised "In the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit." Earlier, RR, mentioned that Jesus never claimed to be G-d in the Bible. There are many passages that show otherwise. *Evidence from the Scriptures*<http://www.catholicbasictraining.com/apologetics/coursetexts/6b.htm> There are many verses in the New Testament which confirm the divinity of Christ. In John 20:28 <http://bible.cc/john/20-28.htm> Thomas falls to Jesus’ feet saying, “my Lord and my God!” and Jesus does not rebuke or correct Him. In John 5:18 <http://bible.cc/john/5-18.htm> Jesus “called God His Father, making himself equal with God.” In John 1:1 <http://bible.cc/john/1-1.htm> we are told that “the Word [Jesus] was God”. <http://niv.scripturetext.com/john/8-58.htm>John 8:58-59speaks of Jesus' divinity both by talking about His eternal nature and also by using the name of God; “I AM” - – this should be compared with <http://bible.cc/exodus/3-14.htm>Exodus 3:14 <http://bible.cc/exodus/3-14.htm>, <http://bible.cc/exodus/20-7.htm> 20:7 <http://bible.cc/exodus/20-7.htm>, Leviticus 19:12<http://bible.cc/leviticus/19-12.htm>and 24:14-16 <http://niv.scripturetext.com/leviticus/24-14.htm>. Would Jesus (an observant Jew) make such a claim and use the very name of God so casually in light of the teaching in these verses? In John 10:30-33 <http://niv.scripturetext.com/john/10-30.htm> Jesus says that He and the Father are one. John 10:38<http://niv.scripturetext.com/john/10-38.htm>, 12:45 <http://niv.scripturetext.com/john/12-45.htm> and 14:8-12<http://niv.scripturetext.com/john/14-8.htm>all contain clear teaching that Jesus and the Father are intimately connected. Colossians 2:9 <http://bible.cc/colossians/2-9.htm> contains a explicit teaching of Christ's divinity, as does 1 Timothy 2:13<http://bible.cc/1_timothy/2-13.htm> . There are other verses which point to the divinity of Christ, but these verses are the main ones which are explicit and easiest to understand. Jesus commands to baptise in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in Matthew 28:19 <http://bible.cc/matthew/28-19.htm> and here at at other places that the One Go-d is a g-d of relationship, that within Himself, the One, are three, which are called the Trinity. He (Jesus) was the Word, and the Word existed with G-d and always existed with Him and there was never a time where the Word that made everything didn't exist. There is a curious word in Genesis when G-d was creating the world which the Jews were perplexed over: the word "us"<http://niv.scripturetext.com/genesis/1-26.htm>. Then God said, “Let *us* make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth,b<http://niv.scripturetext.com/genesis/1-26.htm#footnotesb>and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So there are many other verses. There are also verses which show that by baptism and repentance we are forgiven by the authority placed in Jesus apostles to forgive sins, that we share in kinship with Jesus, not that we become identical with him, but that the relationship given by grace grows stronger as we persevere using that grace and avoid sin so that it continues to flower and when our body dies, the remaining soul continues its journey to be in His Father's House where there are many rooms, and that Jesus has to go there and prepare those rooms for us in John 14.2<http://bible.cc/john/14-2.htm> . 73 DR On Fri, Feb 15, 2013 at 5:41 PM, Ron George <xgeorge@xxxxxxx> wrote: > Neither does some Christian religions. I was raised in religion so > conservative that other Protestant religions were considered > evil and their members doomed to hellfire. If your son or daughter > married outside the faith then they would not only be > shunned by the church but also by their parents. Wedding rings were of > the devil along with lipstick. No reading of your mail > on the Sabbath day or eating lobster at any time. The bible was to be > taken literally, i.e. science was wrong, the earth was only > 7,000 years old, dinosaurs were a result of interbreeding different > species of animals and we don't have any today because > Noah didn't take them in the Ark. > > I am told the church has liberalized quite a bit since I departed many > years ago. > > Once you convince a child to believe in an imaginary god you can control > them until they die. > > On 2/15/2013 2:22 PM, Ron Ristad wrote: > > Traditional Judaism does not permit interfaith marriages. > > >