"Losing Jesus' Language"

[Dan Gan]

LOVING JESUS' LANGUAGE

from Christianity Today's article
Persecution of Assyrians during the past several centuries has centered around their Christianity, not their ethnicity. It is only in the 19th and 20th centuries that ethnicity has come to play a role in the Middle East as a source of friction.

Records from the 19th century are plentiful and clear: Islamic governments treated all "people of the Book" as tolerated second-class citizens. The Assyrians were subjected to poll taxes levied against non-Muslims and the oppressive feudal system prevalent in the Middle East, which combined to keep the Assyrians poor and starving.

The Assyrian Christians are truly blessed by God. They have kept the faith and fought the good fight for centuries.

Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:10 KJV)


Christians in Babylon have been blessed for nearly 1400 years now. Their homeland was invaded by Caliph Umar in 636A.D.

"Blessed are ye when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man's sake. Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for behold, your reward is great in heaven: for in like manner did their fathers unto the prophets." [Luke 6:22-23]


Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. (1 Peter 4:12-13)


Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.
(2 Timothy 3:12)


While many people in the Middle East converted to Islam after the invasion of the Arab Muslims out of fear of persecution and paying heavy taxes because they had "If you can't beat them, join them" attitude, the Assyrian Christians have followed Apostle Paul's attitude - I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith (2 Timothy 4:7)

Endure hardship with us like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. (2 Timothy 2:3)

and take heed to Jesus' warning :

And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. (Matthew 10:28 )


How many of us in English speaking world today are enduring hardship like a good soldier of Christ Jesus? Looking at my own hardship in life, I found that it is nothing if compared to those Christians who are facing persecution for their faith.

from Christianity Today's article

Can you maintain it (i.e. Aramaic) in America?

We have social institutions and church institutions that teach and propagate the language. One of the problems we have is that some churches insist that the vernacular should not be written [for services], and that the only language should be Syriac, which died out as a spoken language in the 14th century. Other churches, the Chaldean and the Church of the East, pushed for the vernacular. Using the vernacular means the church, when it teaches the language, teaches the vernacular. That helps to preserve the language.

Let us all who love the teachings of our Lord Yeshu' love the language that He once spoked to his disciples - Aramaic. Let us not hate it. I am sure many of us here (and elsewhere) who love the Word of God took the trouble to learn Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, because we love the Word of God.

If we wanted to benefit ourselves and gain materially in this world, we would have studied more popular languages like English, Chinese, Spanish, French, German, etc (or programming languages like C, C++, C#, Java, Visual Basic, Perl, Javascript, etc ) so that we can get better job or have a better resume instead of studying the language spoken by our Lord and His first disciples that is considered dead by certain people.



Shlama to all!