Charles:
Picture for a moment, if you will, the TORAH symbolized as a table on which is set out a beautiful and fulfilling meal. The Master of the House calls the children of the household to the table to eat the holy meal. NonJews may sit under the table and take the scraps that fall from the table; perhaps that is what all they can digest.
But there are many nonJews who CHOOSE to sit at the table and partake in the holy meal.
Statistically, in the United States of America, approximately 2000 Christians embrace the TORAH and join the Chosen People, the tribe of YESHUA, not because we ask them to join but because they realize that they want the meal. Scraps no longer satisfy them. That means 20,000 each decade. I am not sure how many Jews become Christians but it can't be anywhere that number, and those Jews who do convert to Christ lose their Jewishness. Yes, they are still Jews HALLACHICLY but an essential part of their Jewish soul is gone. And I believe that Jews who do convert are reigious ignoramuses who, if they did not become Christians, would become nothing. They are Jews by genetic accident, and perhaps their souls were not at Sinai with the rest of us but those gentiles who join us, they definitely stood with us at Sinai when God delivered the TORAH to us and thereby made us Jews.
And finally:
Romans 11:
17 "If ... you, being a wild [branches], were grafted in to the [tree of Israel], and with them became a partaker of the root and fatness of the tree, 18 do not boast against [or badmouth] the tree. But if you do boast, remember that you do not support the tree, but the tree supports you."
As my friend Tony says, were it not for us, other people would not have a path to God. YESHUA called us THE SALT OF THE EARTH. It is we who make humanity KOSHER. Without us, the world would cease to exist.
The next time you propose to say that the Jews' faith is invalied, remember this, You are a wild branch grafted into US. If we all cease being Jews, the tree will wither and die and with it, the branches.
Having said all this, I will continue to defend Christianity as I defend all religions in which the overriding sentiment is "that which is hatefull to you, don't do to another". That is because I remember what it means to be American. In America, unlike elsewhere, we do not insult our fellow American's race, national origin, and religion.
Charles, you ought to listen to a songsung by Frank Sinatra in 1946.
"The House I Live In"
What is America to me?
A name, a map, or a flag I see?
A certain word, "democracy"?
What is America to me?
The house I live in, a plot of earth, a street
The grocer and the butcher, and the people that I meet
The children in the playground, the faces that I see
All races and religions, that's America to me
The town I live in, the street, the house, the room
The pavement of the city, or a garden all in bloom
The church, the school, the clubhouse, the millions lights I see - But especially the people - That's America to me
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/franksinatra/thehouseilivein.html
But what about the REAL Jesus religion, the one that was headed by James, his brother; a Jewish religious sect? The Nazarenes, the Jewish followers of YESHUA, continued in various forms down to the beginning of the sixth century. After that, surrounded by Roman, Christian and Jewish opponents, it split up into various sects which blended in with Judaism, Islam, and Catholicism. But the Catholicism into which it submerged was not the official Catholic Church but rather a heresy which eventually was taken up by the Cathars, the Knights Templar, and lastly the Freemasons.
Many of the Fouders of our country, America, were Masons.
"The underground stream of Jewish Christianity that Freemasonry brought above ground at a time of enlightenment such as has never since been seen. It was a time profoundly influenced by the recapturing of Jewish and Jewish Christian thought. While Israel was always the smallest of countries, the religious genius of the Hebrew prophets made an incalculable contribution to western civilization all out of proportion to its size. The overarching theme of the Hebrew Bible is that God has made a covenant with the people of Israel that will ultimately bring blessings to all the people of the world. This is also the theme of the New Testament, which one-third of the people on earth today claim to follow. A large majority of Americans has always claimed that the United States is a Christian nation founded on Judeo-Christian principles; but in recent times, American Christians have largely abandoned these founding principles. American Christians have lost sight of the core principles of our Founding Fachers. Christians have lost sight of the core teaching of [Yeshua] the Nazarene. The pristine waters of original Jewish Christianity have been tainted by a misguided and bigoted Christian fundamentalism that would horrify [YESHUA]. We have lost the inclusive, salvific universalism that goes all the way back to the Abrahamic Covenant and was enshrined in the life and sacrificial death of the one who __ {as a Freedom Fighter] __ died on a cross so that [his people might be free of oppression by the uncircumcised enemy]."
"The open-minded. liberal thinking that Franklin displays here is remarkable. Of course most Christians today are completely unaware of Franklin's view, as well as the views of the other Founding Fathers on religion. It is sobering to think that in today's evangelic and fundamentalist religious climate in the United States, great leaders like Franklin, Jefferson, and Washington would have no chance of being elected to public office! Consider what Franklin once said about Islam and Christianity:
"In the present weak state of human nature, surrounded as we are on all sides with ignorance and error, it little becomes poor fallible man to be positive and dogmatical in his opinions. No point of faith is so plain, as tha morality is our duty, for all sides agree on that. A virtuous heretic shall be saved before a wicked Christian: for there is no such thing as voluntary error. Therefore, since 'tis an uncertainty till we get to heaven what true orthodoxy in all points is ... I hope ...that we shall as heretofore unite again in mutual CHRISTIAN CHARITY."
"While they probably did not consciously realize it, Jefferson, Franklin, And Washington were stepping back beyond the Christian Jesus to return to the Jewish Jesus. They were actually fulfilling what the Protestant Reformation had attempted, but ultimately failed to do --- return to pure apostolic Christianity. In the prophetic words of Hugh Schonfield:
"What the Protestants could not readily detect was that the ... Church had not started to go wrong in the fourth century. The process had begun in the first century CE with the movement of [Jewish] Christianity into association with an alien [Hellenistic] religious environment. To an appreciable extent, Protestantism was only reverting an earlier and less contaminated phase of the process of Gentilisation [than Catholicism]."
"If we can recapture and return to the original teaching of [YESHUA], James, and the Nazarenes; if we can recover the spiritual vision of the American Founding Fathers, there may yet be hope for reconciliation among Christians, Jews, and Muslims throughout the world ___ "
THE SECRET LEGACY OF JESUS by Jeffrey J. Butz, Inner Traditions Press, 2010
And we look forward to the time when a son of King David, a Jewish Messiah, may come to his rightful Jewish throne in a New Jerusalem."
Towards the end of his life, Billy Graham, Christianity's great American preacher, made the following comments in a speech.
"I used to believe that all those Chinese babies who had never heard of Christ were going to hell. I no longer believe that. I now understand that it is my job to preach and it is God's job to judge."
At a meeting in which he addressed a group of rabbis, he said, "It is I who should kneel before you and ask your forgiveness."
Lastly, I realize that any scripture, Jewish or Christian, contains verses that we 21st century people of good-will wish would be removed.