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Except, again, Jesus WAS a JEW. He BELIEVED IN the very same GOD as the JEWS, YHWH. That is why you have the same holy books. It's the same God, different views of how He operates. If someone thinks I'm nice and someone else thinks I'm an a*****e, I'm still the same person, it doesn't mean they are seeing two different people. They're interpreting what I do differently.

Of course Jesus was Jew. I've written quite a bit in this thread about Jesus and his relationship and interaction to Judaism. If I have made an error, or if you disagree with any point I made, please bring it up.

The Bible has a few examples challenging your claim. Here's one from Exodus: After the Jews left Egypt, Moses was on Mt. Sinai with God and receiving the 10 Commandments. He had been up there for a long time, and the Jews didn't know what was going on. So, they built a golden calf and worshipped it. They called it YHWH. They claimed the golden calf was the one who had brought them out of Egypt, the one who had spoken to Abraham and made the covenant. "Behold, oh Israel, here is your God!" It doesn't matter if they beleived that they were worshipping the same god. They weren't. They were wrong; they should have known better, and their error was because of their lack of faith: they should have waited for Moses to come back rather than taking matters into their own hands.

That's how it is with Jews today. It doesn't matter if they use his name; or if they believe he has done all the things in the Old Testament; they have rejected God and so something else has taken his place. Instead of the Bible, they follow writings of rabbis, written after Christ came, as the guide to their living, writings which they don't even claim to be the Word of God. They don't have priests anymore; there's no temple; no altars; they don't make sacrifices. It is not the same religion that it was before Christ came. That's because Christ fulfilled that religion, and the true followers of it became what we call Christians.

Jesus came to the Jews, and thousands of them recognized him as the Messiah, the Lord. These were the Jews who were worshipping truly, the faithful remnant of Israel spoken of so many times in the Old Testament. The Jews who never came to accept him had never truly been worshipping God; they were like the Jews with the golden calf, or something worse. Anyone who reads the gospels will see this clearly; Jesus had so much criticism for the hypocracy that was prevelent in Israel when he came. The ones who were faithful, who numbered in the thousands, were those who accepted him. The ones who rejected him showed that they had already rejected God; otherwise they would have recognized him as the Messiah.

That may sound harsh, but that is precisely what Jesus taught about it, from his own words. (I explained it with more detail and examples in previous posts in this thread.) The strength of Christ's words should drive us to question ourselves, to make sure our own beliefs are sincere and match the teachings of the Bible.

The sad thing is, that many Christians today are equally hypocrital as the Jews were, and aren't truly following God; they are no better off than the Jews of today; in fact they are even worse, since they claim to follow Christ when they don't.

Jesus lamented over the lack of faith that people called "Christians" will have at the time of his second coming. He asks, "When the Son of Man comes, will he even find faith on earth?”

The Bible is filled, in both Old and New Testaments, with examples of false religion in the name of the true God. The name, the book, the history, the prophets, the building; all of them mean nothing if you do not have faith in your heart that the Lord is your salvation, if God is not your father, if you are not really following the teaching of his Word.



If one person thinks you are nice, and another thinks you're an a*****e, yes you're still the same person. But would you take the person who thinks you're an a*****e to be a friend of yours? Of course not, you couldn't even if you wanted to, because they would refuse your attempt.

But we're not talking about people who think God is nice or an a*****e, we're talking about people who worship something and call it "God." If they think God is an a*****e, obviously they're not following or worshipping him...

But if they are worshipping something, does that automatically make it God? To follow your analogy, what if one person thinks you're a human, and another person thinks you're a frog. Are you still the same person? Yes. Are they both referring to you? Kind of, in a way; but one of them is somehow very off. Are they both right? No, they aren't; and the one who thinks you're a frog is doing nothing more than wasting a lot of time by looking for you in the pond.

No matter how hard they search for you, no matter how sincerely they try, they will not find you. This is because they are blinded by some false belief; in this case, the belief that you are a frog. So it is with false religion. They spend their time worshipping something that is not God. Believing it to be God does not make it so, no more than a person believing you to be a frog makes you a frog. When they find a frog, as naturally happens when one spends enough time looking around a pond, does that mean they have found you? No, they have found something else, and it has taken your place.

Now that they have accepted the frog to be you, they could see the real you face to face, and still not recognize you. The Pharisees and other Jews who rejected Jesus had seen the Christ, the one they had been waiting for, the Son of God, face to face; and yet they did not recognize him. It's because they weren't looking for the kind of person God really is: one who forgives sins, not based on our own merit or how "good" we are, but because of his own grace, because of his love for us. One who will call us his brother or sister, his friend; who will put his very spirit to dwell within us as his temple. This was not the kind of God they were looking for, and not the one they wanted; and so when this stood before them, they could not see. Of all the world religions, only Christianity has this kind of a God. The others are worshipping something else. But here, we have been told of the true God; the freedom to accept him is given to us while we have this life. The true God has standards so high that, because of our sinfulness, we cannot possibly earn his love; but he will give it freely and has provided our way of salvation, in the sacrifice of his son, Jesus Christ. By his love, he is the only one worthy of our worship; there is no one else, no other idea of a God as loving.