(GERMANY) The year 2017 marks the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s Reformation, which challenged the religious hierarchy in his day of the salvation by merit system of the Cahtolic Church.  Yet, in Germany today, theologians are proposing that there are two paths of salvation:  confessing Christ or just being a Jew.

According to the Religious News Service:

• Germany’s main Protestant church, The Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) has officially renounced its mission to convert Jews to Christianity.
• The EKD mostly gave up efforts to convert Jews in the decades after the Holocaust, and closing that chapter should have been a formality.
• The EKD’s annual synod, which it calls its “church parliament,” finally drew up a resolution that was passed unanimously on Nov. 9 in Magdeburg.
• It said that Christians “are not called to show Israel the path to God and his salvation.”
• Since God never renounced his covenant with the Jews, his chosen people, they do not need to embrace the new Christian covenant to be saved, it said.

“All efforts to convert Jews contradict our commitment to the faithfulness of God and the election of Israel,” the resolution read. That Christians see Jesus as their savior and Jews don’t is “a fact we leave up to God,” – EKD in Germany

Further, the organization in Germany determined that ‘Messianic Jews’, those of Jewish heritage who have converted to Christ, were not mentioned in the announcement, but it was implied by participants that once someone confessed Christ, they were no longer Jews.

The document reads in it’s final statement

“The secret of God’s revelation includes both the expectation of the return of Christ in splendor and the confidence that God will save his first-called people,”

This blatantly outlines a dual-track path of salvation, which contradicts two millennia of traditional Christianity.

The Scripture clearly declares that the Church is to preach the message of the Gospel to all people, and even outlines the priority of evangelism:

Romans 1:16 says:

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.”

Jesus made the salvation of people of Jewish heritage a priority in His mission.  Jesus said in Matthew 15:24:

“I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

Jesus Himself outlined a pattern for global evangelization immediately before His Ascension as we read in Acts 1:8:

“But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.”

Paul the Apostle actually wept for his fellow Jews and their rejection of Christ as Savior.  Look in Romans 9:1-3

I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart.  For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh.

A THEOLOGY OF GUILT

German theologians have allowed their sentimentality to overrule scripture. They simply cannot believe that God will allow His Chosen People to experience such a holocaust as was formented under Hitler’s regime. But the Scripture is clear that there is only one path of salvation, and that is through Christ alone.

Jesus said in John 14:6

I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  NO ONE comes to the Father but through Me.

The Bible says it will take a period of incredible tribulation to bring the Jewish people to the end of themselves — to the point where they will be willing to bend their knees and confess Jesus as their Messiah AND Savior.  The Scriptures teach that the great remnant of the Jews who will one day accept Jesus will do so ONLY after they have experienced a period of unparalleled tribulation, referred to in Jeremiah 30:7 as “the time of Jacob’s trouble.” In short, the Jewish people will have to be pounded with the wrath of Man, Satan and God before they are brought to the point where they will be willing “to look upon Him whom they have pierced” and repent (Zech. 12:10).

This concept of a future period of overwhelming tribulation during which two-thirds of the Jewish people will perish (Zech. 13:8) is offensive to those who are enamored with this idea of two paths of salvation. They reject the concept completely even though it is emphasized repeatedly in the Old Testament scriptures (Deut. 4:30, Isa. 2:10-19, Dan. 12:1, Joel 3:12-14, Zeph. 1-3, Zech. 13:7 – 14:9, and Mal. 3:1-4).

Jews desperately need Jesus. It is a perverted love that says, “I love the Jewish people too much to share Jesus with them because I don’t want to offend them.”  Or, “I feel guilty for what has happened to the Jewish people in recent and ancient history, so they get a pass on salvation.”

It is the ultimate form of anti-semitism to condem the entire race of people of Jewish heritage to Hell because the Church will not preach the salvation of Christ alone to them.