Eternal fate of Jewish brethren?

[longdistancerunner]

I can't remember what was said in the CoC about what about happen to people of the Jewish faith who did not accept the messiah and join the CoC. Were God's chosen people condemned to eternal torment or was there a special dispensation for God's chosen people?

[B.H.]

Only the Church of Christ was special. The Jew burned in hell next to the Baptists and Methodists

[no-cults-4-me]

The ancient Hebrews believed that one dies, he goes to Sheol, the realm of the dead. It's like it sounds, you're dead. Everyone goes there whether he was good or rotten. It's much like the Greek Hades. There is no eternal raging hellfire and torment. That idea seems to have crept into the mythology through the influence of Persian mythology. But it's a heckuva marketing tool for religions isn't it?

[agricola]

Honestly, growing up in the CoC -
I truly believed all the Jews either became Christians in the first century, or else they all fell over and died or something.
I didn't think there were any living Jews.

It made perfect sense, but was certainly helped by the fact that grade school history (and even high school) never got past the Great Depression. I had to learn about the Holocaust later from books and such.

Looking back, this was weird, because at the same time as thinking (without thinking about it) that there were no more Jews, I also knew things like 'Einstein was a Jew', and 'the Inquisition', etc. Somehow, that knowledge never moved the needle in my head, though. Jews vanished when the New Testament was over.

And then the church (the true church) went into caves until Campbell, right? Caves? In hiding? We were in hiding, right?

In other words, by never teaching us anything about Jews, the CoC taught us they didn't EXIST.

However, assuming that they did, of course they had to burn in hell with everybody else, because only good CoC members went to Heaven.

[no-cults-4-me]

Let's face it. It's all about hate. The idea of sending people that they love to hate to the pits of Hell gives them a feeling of power. Our society is overrun with people who feel otherwise powerless, so hate is the only power that they have. It was one of the best lines from Star Trek. There was this episode where a couple of aliens whose faces were half black and half white were desperately trying to kill each other. In the end, Lt. Uhuru gives this great line, 'Do you suppose that this hate is all that they ever really had?'. And what is this about antisemitism anyway? Why are Jews hated? We'd better take a look at the most brilliant minds of the past 150 years. Wanna know what a huge number of them had in common? They were Jewish! The smartest people in the world are the Ashkenazi Jews. And we are in dire need of these smart people. The antisemites aren't smart enough to realize that they may never catch polio because of a Jew named Jonas Salk. And the list goes on and on.

[Shane R]

I have known an unusually high number of CoC people who had a favorable opinion of Adolf Hitler's views of the Jews. At the same time, I knew many who had read too many grocery store books by evangelical authors and were convinced of Zionist views. So you just never could tell whether you were going to get the super racist or the other.

But I don't think any CoC person I knew had ever actually sat down and had a conversation with a practicing Jew. My first wife's mother was a convert and we visited her at Passover one year. Her husband led the event and it was very interesting to see how it went. Not my favorite food but I ate it anyway and drank the wine and was polite.

[B.H.]

I don't have anything against Jews or blacks. It's the Methodists I can't stand.. Just kidding.

[longdistancerunner]

I don't have anything against Jews or blacks. It's the Methodists I can't stand.. Just kidding.

A whole lot of people didn't like John Wesley!

[longdistancerunner]

I have known an unusually high number of CoC people who had a favorable opinion of Adolf Hitler's views of the Jews. At the same time, I knew many who had read too many grocery store books by evangelical authors and were convinced of Zionist views. So you just never could tell whether you were going to get the super racist or the other.

But I don't think any CoC person I knew had ever actually sat down and had a conversation with a practicing Jew. My first wife's mother was a convert and we visited her at Passover one year. Her husband led the event and it was very interesting to see how it went. Not my favorite food but I ate it anyway and drank the wine and was polite.

Many believe Hitler's view of the Jews was largely taken from Martin Luther, who also advocated their extermination!