There is and should be a deep concern on the part of American Christians for our nation in view of the virulent 4,000 year-old hatred of Jews exploding in our country today. This spiritual aberration is a cancer in the college campuses such as the Ivy League schools along with MIT et al. We see frenetic demonstrations, endless mindless chants ("From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free."). We saw students in a high school in San Francisco rampaging through the halls yelling and chanting antisemitic slogans, the same students who probably can't even spell Palestine.
True to form, the United Nations has once again placarded its long-lasting hatred of Israel: "The United States was looking increasingly isolated on the world stage on Tuesday after a resounding vote at the UN general assembly calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza.
"Cheers and clapping echoed around the general assembly chamber in New York as the emergency vote was announced. A thumping 153 member states out of the 193 total membership backed the resolution, with only 10 including the US, Israel, and Austria voting against, and 23 – including the UK and Germany – abstaining." (from a news report)
"Cease fire" means, "Israel, stop fighting and let them kill you." The 153 countries were opposing a nation the size of New Jersey. They gang up and condemn Israel day after day, year after year.
BUT WAIT!
Antisemitism is in American churches too. These churches promote antisemitism by teaching something called "Replacement Theology." This theology infects seminaries, scholars, books and journals. If you are in a church and you've heard from your Sunday school teacher or your pastor that God is finished with the Jewish people and that the church is now the “new Israel," if you have heard , "The covenants God made with Israel (the Abrahamic, the Palestinian,, the Davidic, and the New Covenants) are no longer valid," then you're sitting in and supporting an antisemitic church that has robbed Israel of her God-given promises.
Adherents of replacement theology believe the Jews are no longer God’s chosen people, and God does not have specific future plans for the nation of Israel. So, the prophecies in Scripture concerning the blessing and restoration of Israel to the Promised Land are “spiritualized” or “allegorized” into promises of God’s blessing for the church.
HOW IN THE WORLD?
How could the early leaders of the church read the promises that God had made to Israel and justify this replacement? They found that they could do so only by spiritualizing the promises, that is, deliteralizing them. This method of interpretation allowed them to replace Israel as the beneficiary of God’s unfulfilled promises. The words of these early Christian leaders reveal their theology of replacement.
Here is a sample of writings from the first 300 years of the church. The Epistle of Barnabas, written around A.D. 100, states that the Jews have no further claim to God’s promises:
Take heed now to yourselves, and not to be like some, adding largely to your sins, and saying, “The covenant is both theirs and ours.” But they thus finally lost it.
Irenaeus, writing around A.D. 180, said, “They who boast themselves as being the house of Jacob and the people of Israel, are disinherited from the grace of God.”
Origen, the most prolific writer of the early church (c. A.D. 250), grounded his Replacement Theology in allegorical interpretation. For instance, when explaining that Jesus was sent to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel.” he argued that the lost sheep are not Jews, who are “carnal” Israel, but Christians, who are “heavenly” Israel.
John Chrysostom preached the same message in the capital city of the Roman Empire in A.D. 387:
It is because you killed Christ….It is because you shed the precious blood, that there is now no restoration, no mercy any more and no defense…. You have committed the ultimate transgression. This is why you are being punished worse now than in the past….If this were not the case God would not have turned his back on you so completely.
John Calvin, a follower of Augustine and a leading figure of the Reformation, viewed the Old and New Testaments as continuous, with the Church inheriting the promises made to Israel. Luther was so done with the Jews that his 80+ page rant against them was quoted favorably by Hitler and his propaganda master, Goebbels. Luther infected Germany with Jew-hatred.and later came the Holocaust in his native land.
When you hear your pastor or Sunday school teacher tell you that God is through with the Jews, it's time to go and take your wallet with you. Period. Why? Because to stay involves complicity with those who are gouging God's eye: Zechariah 2:8: "For the Lord of armies says this: “After glory He has sent me against the nations that plunder you, for the one who touches you, touches the apple (lit. "pupil") of His eye.
The covenant God made with Abraham began in Genesis 12:1-3, it's concluding words are still in effect, "Those who curse you, I must curse." Be careful America, you are treading on the thinnest of ice.
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