I assume that a demon sensed I was of Christian faith. Thus the “I know you”. Take heart Mr. Simon, the fact you were struck with such profound physical symptoms implies God’s presence within you. Otherwise there could be no such reaction. I am a feeble humble Christian. I make the above statement through no boast of my own. Just my perception of things beyond what our modern scientific minds comprehend.

Many people do not comprehend evil. They look at it from a relative morality, not an absolute morality. Most would think you truly crazy to comprehend demons, and perhaps Lucifer himself. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be in the presence of Satan? Would you suspect it would be any different than your experience?

Deepest apologies. I mistook you for a Catholic. I don’t hate Catholics but the outrageous presumption of people calling themselves “Roman” or the “New Israel” offends me.

A roman patriot hated Christianity, small c or cap, and did everything he could to stamp it out. The Roman dictators, including Constantine, along with the legions, remained Helios worshipers until the fall of the empire. The Old Israel and the New Israel are one and the same.

I’m sorry if you encountered hostility in Israel. I am technically a Palestinian born under the British Mandate and my birth certificate so states. My mother’s is an old Jerusalem family.

In the mid nineteenth century, British Evangelicals imposed on Lord Peel to dispatch a sub-Viceroy to the court of the Grand Turk. The British emissary’s specific mission was to persuade the Pasha to protect his Jewish subjects in Turkish Palestine from murderous Muslim pogroms.

I may well owe my existence to the Turkish troops the British Evangelicals arranged to protect my ancestors.

Evangelical Christians hark back to the very earliest Gentile Christians. Here in the United States, they are the modern branch of the Puritan Pilgrim root whose ethic Jews share and which continues to profoundly inform American culture and makes this country so familiar and comfortable a home for Jews.

Evangelicals are the only American Christians whose per capita charitable giving compares with that of American Jews. Evangelicals are Bible literate in an environment where most Christians and Jews can’t quote three consecutive lines from the Bible, Old Testament or New. Evangelicals are the only Christians who recognize the Hebrew Bible for the history of the Jews and robustly support Zionism. They are the only Christians who may be relied upon to hold the line against the Muslim invasion.

May the Lord bless you and keep you, Scott. I’m only as secular as you want to imagine me.

I do not accept the Roman Catholic doctrine of Replacement Theology. Heresy actually. The promisers are yours and yours alone. We gentiles are only riding your coat tails. We shall not usurp you nor replace you. We just get to share. Can we have that much David? Please.

I apologize for all the evils done to the Jews in the name of christianity (with a small c). We modern Evangelical Orthodox fundamentalists are trying very hard to make it up to you. I know you don’t believe it but really this has nothing to do with hurrying up the Second Coming (as if that were in any way possible). We are simply obeying the Word of God and honoring His People that are called by His name. We do not want to be cursed. We want to do the right thing before God.

In my visits to Israel I was at first surprised to encounter your kind of hatred of Evangelicals. It never occurred to most of us that our existence was an affront to Jews. It was a surprise to us that many Jews viewed our efforts as a continuation of the Holocaust. That if a Jew were to accept that The Nazarene was in fact The Messiah said Jew would die to Judaism as if he had been burned in Hitler’s ovens. This is a surprise to us because Jesus was a Jew. The Twelve were Jews. The first converts were Jews and none of them ever saw themselves a ceasing to be Jews. It is only you and yours who have taken their jewishness from them. It is you who have cast your own into the ovens.

First you suggest that I’m calling Jesus a liar and a con artist. Then you suggest that I’m jealous and hateful. None of this is true, Scott. I’m being flip and provocative—gratuitously perhaps—but your criticism is baseless.

I like Joshua the Galilean. I think he was a fine and upstanding Jew who preached righteousness to his Jewish brethren. I merely question what any of this has to do with you, Scott.

You say I’m jealous. Of what, I wonder and on what evidence? Do Jews claim they are the new Scots? That they are new scotch poured into old casks? Do my Rabbis get themselves up in plaids and kilts and play the bagpipes? Do Jews claim ancient Scottish religion and culture for their own?

No, Scott. You claim to be the new Israel while your priests turn themselves out in the linen, the miter, the ephod and tribal stones of out Levite priests. You claim our Bible and our liturgy for your own. You mimic our way in your every religious ceremony. You enter the world to the Jewish ceremony of Baptism and leave it to recitations from the Jewish psalms. In between you mark every life’s turning by our tradition. You claim our religion, our culture, our ancestry itself.

Are we imitating you, Scott, or are you imitating us? So who is jealous of whom, Scott?

And what kingdom do you imagine you have seized from us, Scott? The kingdom of heaven? You’re welcome to it. As I already explained, Scott, we Jews do not believe in heaven and hell. Nor in existential good or evil. We are monotheists.

I don’t hate you Scott. But belief in existential evil and the Devil leads to persecution and murder. And Jews are not its only victims. At the height of the European witch craze, over 100,000 people were tortured burned and hanged. Most were women. Most were elderly. None were witches. None were evil or in league with the Devil.

If you insist on following St. Paul, Scott, dropping those scales from your eyes might be a good start.