Secular Persecution of Religion

 

Koot van Wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD) Visiting Professor, Kyungpook National University, Sangju Campus, South Korea, Conjoint lecturer of Avondale College, Australia

 

It sounds like a topic for discussion in an English ESL class. For or against? All but. For the past three years, the media has been reporting on over a hundred Yeshiva Jewish Orthodox schools in England, which the Humanist Organization listed in Youtube claim to be “illegal” or without government permission, and then alarming of all, meddling with their curriculum.

Adventist Education is a religious education from A to Z. That is how it should be. It is the education of the last generation remnant and its associates of the theology of the End Time or Last Days. Also how it should be. The Humanist Agency is trying by means of lobbying, court-cases, appeals, legislation to force the Orthodox Jews to what they call “stopping indoctrination” of the youth with values that are not representative of the modern informed society: like maths, like science, like homosexuality, like woman ordination, like toleration with transsexual gender cases, and the list is actually extended.

The Yeshiva children stay in that school from the morning to the evening studying Torah and only Torah. It is a word that means Law but it means the religious revelation by God. It is a bit more tricky than it sounds. This is why an explanation will be given below to get to the essence of their education. But Adventist education is also in mind here, why? Because a certain core of Jewish Education and Adventist Education overlaps one hundred percent. It is the “extended section” that they do not share.


Adventism and Judaism.jpeg


Adventism and Judaism sharing

In the above diagram, it is clear what the area is that Adventism and Judaism shares: the Written Torah. The Old Testament [Law, Prophets and Writings] is the Written Torah because it was written by men of God who were influenced by the Holy Spirit to select and write down the things that the Divine Editor, the Holy Spirit, wished to be canonized as the Written Torah for all generations until Jesus comes. The consonantal text of the Hebrew is the literal fundamental Word of God or Revelation of God and cannot be changed by human hands.

The Jews copied it painfully with care and that is why there is almost 99.9% correspondence between the Daniel scroll from Cave 4 and Codex Aleppo from 1008 A.D. One can accept that such care was also operative between Moses and the Qumran fragment with the other books of the Old Testament.

 

Spirituality

Unless the heart is converted the spirituality will lack. This is emphasized by both Adventists and Judaism. Of course, the semantics of spirituality is different between the two. In Adventism that spirituality will be within the boundaries of the literal fundamental written Torah of God, namely the Old [and New Testament] only. For Judaism the spirituality is extended to include also the musing or thinking of famous past rabbis on the written Torah, which is considered the oral Torah.

A large proportion of this extended spirituality is an echo or mirror of the written Torah but there are many cases where it is obvious that what is considered negative by the written Torah is permissively altered to become positive in the oral Torah. Then again in reverse, what is viewed positively in the written Torah will be by ‘hook and by crook’ viewed negatively in the oral Torah.

So these young students in the Yeshiva spent the whole day in and out for many years studying only the spirituality of the written Torah and also the extended spirituality of the oral Torah.

The cancellation of the Trinity in the Old Testament by Judaism is an example where they change the written Torah to fit their own absolute monotheistic concept or one person, one nature, one God. The extended spirituality is also a loose and flexible concept since Rabbi Rashi may disallow something which Rabbi Redak will allow and Rabbi Abarbanel may have a different view on it. So the issue becomes a pick-a-rabbi situation. The written Torah in whole does not favor this looseness with the Word of God. You cannot fabricate or construct your own “God” and your own “commands of God”.

“To the Law and to the Testimony, if they do not speak according to this they are a people of no daylight”.

 

England forcing secularism on Religious Education

The header sounds shocking for the reader but look at this article recently by Gary Willig: “Haredi rabbis calls on community to pray as secular organization [of England] attempts to force left-wing curriculum on haredi schools.”

The Rabbis called for a day of prayer and reading from the Psalms after an atheistic agency took it upon them to persecute them: The call for a day of prayer was held after Humanists UK, a staunchly atheistic organization which opposes the operation of religious schools in Great Britain, called on local authorities to penalize the Yesodey Hatorah Senior Girls’ School in London for what the organization termed ‘censorship’ of subjects like homosexuality and abortion.”

 

Adventists Institutions in England

One wonders why Adventist Institutions in England are not listed with these Jewish religious schools for their stance on homosexuality, abortion and even woman ordination? Is it not the same test as in the days of Elijah that the schools of the prophets of Elijah are suffering persecution from the Baal prophets and their Baal orientated Jezebel and her husband Ahab the king supporting this equity of rights and equal respect for all in society [including Satan and his cronies and their destructive ethics].

 

The time will come when these organizations will distribute their ideas and plea to all countries and in those countries that are not willing to compromise their spirituality of the written Torah with extended spirituality of a modern cultural and secular kind, will also be persecuted for their objection to be swallowed up by modernity.

 

 

Gary Willig, "London rabbis plan day of prayer against 'education coercion'" Arutz sheva 13 March 2018. Online accessed at https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/243095