By your question, I’m not sure you’ve understood my posts, PRmerger. The point of all that stuff about how Christians divide history is needed to explain how it is that we can (and always have, and continue to, and always will) say Christ is foretold by the OT prophets, who were very much Jews. With the incarnation of Christ, however, everything changes (this is the entire ‘point’ of the Incarnation, in fact, if it can be viewed on a utilitarian basis for the sake of simplification). This is what makes Theosis possible, and what gathers together the lost sheep of not just Israel, but of the many mansions of God. What was to some degree shrouded and found in archetypes in the OT becomes explicit with the incarnation of our Lord. If you ever attend an Oriental Orthodox liturgy, this is manifest symbolically in the usage of the altar veil, which is thrown open to symbolize the revelation of God in Christ (among other things), which has torn history in two. Again, with the defining event that tears away the veil over the people’s eyes having passed us (and the Jews, and the Muslims, and everybody) some 2000 years ago, we cannot look at things before that time and after that time and say that they are the same or to be considered the same for those who claim to be the descendants of this or that group of spiritual forefathers. Again, it is the Jews who have changed; not God…The true followers of God in the OT worshiped Him in hopes of His coming, while those of the NT worshiped Him in celebration of His having come. We as Christians are perhaps more closely identified with those of the second era (since we too worship in a post-Incarnation world), but they are both ours. The entire Bible and all of its history and promises are ours, as the same God is worshiped throughout. As to those who remained in their unbelief (the Jews of today), and those who would refashion that unbelief into a bold new (really old, but to them it was bold and new) statement of monotheistic fervor (the Muslims), what can we say of them? As they recognize the OT prophets in some way (you know, the “Abrahamic religion” label), it would be wrong to say that they bear no relation to us. At the same time, however, it would be wrong to place them together with us when they themselves deny what we affirm: That Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten before all ages, the promised Messiah and deliverer of Israel and through His fulfillment the very same Messiah and Savior of all peoples, has come and that their unbelief is therefore disbelief in the One God who spoke to Moses in the burning bush, who gave Him the tablets of the law, and who said of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ “This is My Son, in Whom I am well pleased”.
Do the Jews worship that God? No. Again, they have chosen not to due to what are, in their view, perfectly valid theological and eschatological reasons. The same is true with the Muslims and any other non-Christian group. The denial of the unbelievers has no bearing on the truth, however. Saying that the God of the OT and of the NT are one and the same (as is right for every Christian to say) does not “trap” us into worshiping as the modern Jews or Muslims worship. These are the descendents of the first disbelievers in Christ our God, while our God is indeed the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
