The State of Israel
THE
PILGRIMS:
Many parallels could be drawn between the children of Israel in Egypt and the
Puritans and Pilgrims in England. Neither were allowed the liberty of
worshipping the Lord in freedom of conscience and expression. Both of them left
the land of their bondage and made a long journey through many hardships to
reach their promised land. Both of them were blessed and prospered in the
God-fearing nations that they founded and later generations of both groups
apostatized from the faith of their forefathers. In this issue I would like to
establish who the chosen people of God are, and why the Pilgrims who came in
faith, never wavering nor looking back, to establish "One Nation Under
God," should take a back seat to the rebellious and stiff-necked children
of Israel who hungered after the fleshpots of Egypt and died in the wilderness
because they lacked the faith to enter the promised land. The Pilgrims had no
doubts about who they were. They knew that they were God's elect, his chosen
people, the sheep of his pasture, and they came out at the call of God to
establish a nation where God would be worshipped and feared and where God's law
would be the foundation of Society.
THE
MIDDLE EAST:
For those who feel that deciding who the chosen people of God are is an exercise
in ivory tower hair‑splitting, let us be reminded that theology is the
queen of sciences. All things in society are decided by the theology of that
society. Theology forms the basis of every society whether pagan or Christian
and decides the culture, economics, and politics of that society. There has been
intermittent war in the Middle East for the past twenty‑five years and our
nation has been heavily involved. The question raised is eminently practical.
Our theology regarding Israel and the Jew will effect and influence if not
outrightly control our attitudes, commitments, and involvements in the Middle
East. Isaiah said "Therefore my
people are gone into captivity, because they have no know/edge." A
society founded on heresy terminates in national disaster. Therefore let us
seek knowledge—knowledge from God's Word, that founded on that foundation we
may be blessed.
THE
CHOSEN PEOPLE?
Who are the chosen people of God? Modern Jews still maintain that they are God's
chosen people. Many evangelical Christians, especially dispensationalists,
affirm that indeed the Jews are still the chosen people of God, but what saith
the Scriptures? In I Corinthians 10:32, Paul says "Give none offence, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor
to the church of God." Paul divides all men into three categories and
it is out of those three that we must select who the chosen people of God are.
In Romans 10:12-13, Paul says, "For
there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek…For whosoever shall call
upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. "With Paul, the issue is not
Jew or Gentile, neither of which will avail, but rather the issue is that those
whether Jew or Gentile who will confess that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the
living God, shall be saved. Again we see the three groups but the benediction is
clearly on the third group which is called out of the other two. It would seem
that one leaves one of the first two groups and ceases to be a Jew .or a Gentile
to join the third group as a Christian, a member of the Church of the Lord Jesus
Christ. This is confirmed in Galatians 3:28, where Paul affirms that "There
is neither Jew nor Greek…for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” In the
church of the Lord Jesus Christ, there is no distinction between Jew and
Gentile, a truth for which Paul consistently and valiantly battled and on which
he confronted the apostle Peter (Gal. 2:11-21). It is also clear that outside
the church the distinction is maintained and that God is maintaining the
separate identity of the physical seed of Abraham and has his purpose in it, and
that this relates to things of prophecy no one would deny; but, the concept that
the maintenance of that identity constitutes the Jews as the chosen people of
God needs to be challenged from Scripture.
THE
ELECT:
That the elect are the chosen people of God is clearly taught in Scripture. In I
Peter 2:9-10, we read, "But ye are a
chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that
ye should show forth the praises of him who hash called you out of darkness into
his marvelous light: Which in time past were not a people, but now are the
PEOPLE OF GOD." The apostle had addressed this epistle to the "Elect
according to the foreknowledge of God the Father."
Peter taught that the elect of God, assembled into the Church of the
Lord Jesus Christ, are the chosen people of God. Romans 8:28 through 39 gives a
perfect description of God's elect as "Those that are called according to his purpose. "These
are God's chosen people and he has called them unto himself. Scripture saith Many are called but few are chosen," "Ye have not chosen me but I have chosen you,"
"According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the
world, " "God hath
from the beginning chosen you to salvation."
In all of these passages, God affirms in his word that he chooses; he
chooses his ELECT. All of these passages apply to saved individuals in the
church and none to any particular race or nation. Elected
and chosen are synonyms, and so
obviously those that God elects, those that God chooses are the CHOSEN PEOPLE OF
GOD!
I
WILL BLESS THEM:
In Genesis 12:3, God tells Abraham “And
I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee."
To whom does that refer today? Who are the heirs of Abraham? That the Jews claim
and that many evangelicals teach that this promise extends to modern Jewry is
true, but that this claim is scriptural is, however, not true. Today, these
promises are fulfilled through the Church. Paul says in Galatians 3:6 through 9,
". .. they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham .... So
then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham," and in
verse 29, "And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs
according to the promise." The elect of God, the Church of Jesus Christ,
they are the spiritual seed and spiritual heirs to Abraham and the promises.
When the physical seed of Abraham came to John the Baptist, he called them a
"Generation of vipers" (Matt. 3:7-9). When they based their
righteousness on physical dissent from Abraham, he warned them, "And think
not to say within yourselves, we have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you,
that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham." The
warning went unheeded and the axe was laid to the root of the trees. As
Scripture saith, “For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which
is Jesus Christ." When
Christians affirm that unbelieving Jews are the "Chosen People of God"
then they are laying another foundation.
The nation of Germany, being defeated in
both World Wars and partitioned by the Iron Curtain, has fallen on hard times in
this century. Why has the land of Martin Luther and the Reformation suffered so
much of late? Genesis 12:3 may well hold the answer, but which way do we take
it? Is Germany suffering the judgments of God because of Hitler's treatment of
the Jews or because of their apostasy from the faith of Martin Luther and their
treatment of the Church of Jesus Christ? Scripture affirms the latter and a
century of apostasy, theological liberalism, higher criticism, and rationalistic
anti Christian philosophy have brought their own reward and reaped the judgment
of God. Germany was the home and fountainhead of modernism and the fruits are
self‑evident. May the Lord preserve us from a similar fate, but the Lord
is no respecter of persons, or of nations! Some have even tried to affirm that
America's blessings have hinged in our treatment of the Jew with the clear
implication that only our continued unquestioning support of the State of Israel
will preserve and bless our nation. Holland, like America, has always been a
good haven for the Jew, sheltering them from Hitler and supporting there
consistently in the Middle East even through the recent Arab oil embargo. Surely
this is a perfect test of the promise of Genesis 12:3. Unfortunately, the Dutch
Republic, the product of the Calvinist Reformation, is today a socialist
nightmare. Apostasy, modernism, liberalism, and rejection of the faith of John
Calvin have brought their sure reward, and the best of relations with
unconverted Jews has not ameliorated the judgment of God one iota. My friends,
the Christians, God's elect, are the Chosen People of God and a nation falls or
rises according to its treatment of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. If
America would be blessed let it maintain the faith of our forefathers instead of
casting the Scriptures out of our national life.
THE
JEW TODAY:
In the light of all this, what is the position of the Jew today? In I John 2:22,
we read "Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is
antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son" According to John,
Christ-denying Jews are liars and anti-Christs—scarcely the chosen people of
God! The Jew today is laboring under the judgment of God. The Jew since the
crucifixion is laboring under the judgment of II Thessalonians 2:11, where we
read 'And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be
damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
"When people reject the truth as in Romans 1, God gives them up-God
gives them up to delusions and lies, and so it has been with the Jews. When they
rejected Christ, who is "the Way, the Truth, and the Life," they lost
all truth and Christ could say of them in John 5:45, “Do not think that I will
accuse you to the Father: there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in who ye
trust. Forbad ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me.
But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?" When
the Jews rejected Christ they rejected all truth, they rejected all Scripture
and plunged themselves into spiritual darkness and judgment. From the parable of
the wedding feast in Matthew 22 to the parable of the vineyard in Matthew 21,
the Scriptures confirm the words of Christ in Matthew 8:11, "But
the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall
be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Shall all the Jews therefore be
lost? Of course not. God's elect are composed of both Jew and Gentile. The
gospel is preached to both and the church is open to both. However, only those
who confess Jesus Christ as Messiah become the children of the living God. As
Paul says in Romans 11:5 through 7, speaking of the Jews, "Even
so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election
of grace…Israel hath not obtained that which he seeketh for; but the election
hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded," and speaking of the end
of the age in verse 26, "And so all
Israel shall be saved." Again the issue is clearly the election of God
rather than physical descent from Abraham. Christians who believe and preach
salvation by faith in Jesus Christ, the only name under heaven given unto men
whereby they must be saved, ought to appreciate the contradictions and
disastrous implications of calling a Christ-denying race the chosen people of
God.
THE
STATE OF ISRAEL:
In 1948, the physical seed of Abraham reestablished themselves as a national and
political entity and founded the State of Israel. What is the state of Israel?
Where does it fit in prophecy? Should Christians embrace it, reject it or ignore
it? The key to understanding the State of Israel is to understand the Jews. The
key to understanding the Jews is to fully appreciate the significance of their
rejection of Jesus as Christ. When the Jews accepted Barabbas and delivered
Christ up to be crucified they said, "His blood be on us, and on our children." Christ came to die but as Scripture saith "…it must
needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh."
The Jews are under a self‑inflicted curse and nowhere in Scripture is it
repealed. It is a HORRIBLE thing to call down on one's head and his children's
heads the responsibility for the blood of Christ. Although the Jews have never
repented of the crucifixion of the Messiah, and a recent Supreme Court decision
of the State of Israel upheld the conviction of Jesus of Nazareth by the
Sanhedrin nearly two thousand years ago, many still seek today to exonerate the
Jews from the blood of Christ. Pope Paul and liberal Protestants have both
outdone themselves in apologizing for the Jews. KEY '73 supposedly calling a
continent to Christ took special pains not to offend Christ-denying Jews with
the claims of the One that they crucified. Christianity
Today of March 29, 1974, on page 28, in an ill-advised editorial on
"streaking" in which they failed to condemn, such degenerate activity,
made light of it and related it to Mark 14:51 and 52. However, they were careful
to emphasize that the young man in question escaped a Roman centurion in the
Garden of Gethsemane. Scripture testifies that Christ was arrested by the
servants of the scribes and Pharisees and again the attempt to exonerate the
Jews from complicity in the murder of Jesus Christ is obvious.
PERSECUTION:
That this sinful world has abounded with persecution few would deny. The
question rather is who persecuted who. Much of the rationale for the creation of
the State of Israel was the persecutions that they had recently suffered. Claims
of SIX MILLION Jewish martyrs set the emotional backdrop for such cataclysmic
events in the Middle East. More important than even the figures, however, is
that it should have been seen in the light of God's judgment on them, and not in
the light of God's judgment on Germany. Nonetheless, the Jews have claimed for
themselves a record if not a monopoly in the realm of persecution and have made
tremendous gains under the mantle of real or alleged persecution and
anti-Semitism. Actually, the shoe has been on the other foot. The Church of the
Lord Jesus Christ has been bearing the brunt of the persecutions of this world.
As Jesus said, "In the world ye shall
have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world," and "If the world hate you ye know that ii hated me before it hated
you…If they have persecuted me, they
will also persecute you." Events in the Soviet Union bear this out and
while the Christian Church has been annihilated, the Jews use the alleged
persecution to whip up world support for their demands. The Jewish demands such
as their claim to the real estate of Palestine are usually so immoral and unjust
that only the whipping boy of Nazi or Soviet persecution could make anyone
listen to them. Furthermore, not only has the CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST BEEN
BEARING THE PERSECUTION, BUT THE BULK OF THIS PERSECUTION HAS HISTORICALLY COME
FROM THE JEWS!!! In the Scriptures from the opening of Christ's ministry when
the synagogue of Nazareth sought to slay him to the closing pages of the book of
Acts there is an incredible record of Jewish persecution of the Christian faith.
One must really study the Scriptures to appreciate the scope and degree of
Jewish enmity to the Christian gospel. They formed a conspiracy to murder
Christ, they sought to murder Lazarus, they imprisoned his disciples, stoned
Stephen, sent Saul to Damascus, and threaded the tentacles of their ungodly
hatred everywhere that Paul carried the Gospel. Anyone reading the following
Scriptures identifying the source of the persecutions of the early church in the
book of Acts will be amazed: Acts 9:23; 12: 1-3, 11; 13:4-12; 13:42-50; 14:1-7,
19; 17:5, 13; 18:6; 19:8-9; 19:13-20; 20:3, 19; 21:27; 23:12; 24:27; 25:9; 26:2;
or read Matthew 23:29-37. Paul, who understood this the most clearly, having
been an instrument of the persecutions and later bearing the brunt of it
himself, declared of the Jews "As concerning the gospel they are enemies" in Romans 11, and later
referring to them again in Galatians 5, declares, "/ would
they were even cut off which trouble you " Today, in America, the
Christians as always bear the brunt of persecution. In the public schools where
evolution, drugs, and immorality meet little effective opposition, the Bible and
prayer have been thoroughly banned. In communications where an X-RATED society
is flourishing, the Fairness Doctrine of the F.C.C. hounds the proponents of the
historic Christian faith.
COMMUNISM:
Few have been able to explain the affinity of Jews for Communism. Nathaniel Weyl,
a Jewish conservative, wrestled with this fact in his book, The Jew In American Politics. More unreasonable men have advanced
theories too ridiculous to even be discussed here. The Bible has a clear and
straightforward answer. The Bible only allows for two positions: Christ or
Antichrist! When the Jews rejected Christ, as the apostle John affirmed, then
they became antichrist. This is the nature of the judgment of God. God gives
them up. God gives them over to Satan. As Christ, himself, said of the Jews, "Ye
are of your father the devil" and
in Revelation 3:9, "Behold I will
make them of the synagogue of Satan…to come and worship before thy feet, and
to know that I have loved thee." Now communism is antichrist. Marxism
is the theology of antichrist. The Jewish rejection of Christ placed them
squarely in the camp of antichrist and clearly explains their otherwise
inexplicable affinity for Marxism. Why did Trotsky, a Jew, financed by Kuhn,
Loeb & Co., a Jewish banking firm,
to the tune of $30,000,000, with a cadre of several hundred New York Jews go to
St. Petersburg to precipitate the Bolshevik revolution? Why did the Warburgs of
Germany, a Jewish banking family, finance Lenin to the tune of $20,000,000
to bring communism to Russia? Why were most of the Russian revolutionists
and anarchists Jews? Why were a preponderance of the early Bolsheviks Jews? The
evidence of such professional and respected historians as Mrs. Nesta Webster
cannot be denied although she, herself, is at a loss to explain the results of
her own historical research. Not sufficiently familiar with the Scriptures, Mrs.
Webster refusing to give credence to "crackpot” theories, dodged the
question. Christ did not and neither should Christians. The logical conclusion
of rejecting Christ is to become anti-Christ. The fruit of apostasy is
consistent and establishes the society of anti-Christ. This is not to say that
communism is Jewish. It merely is to affirm that communism is the logical end
point of a road that is marked by rejection of Jesus Christ.
THE
MIDDLE EAST:
The Middle East is a highly strategic area. Controlling the Suez Canal, the
Dardenelles, and the Eastern Mediterranean, ii straddles the crossroads of the
world while below lies endless reservoirs of the lifeblood of industrialized
nations. Throughout history, the armies of empire and the road of conquest has
continually threaded through the Middle East. Since for 2000 years the Middle East was Arab territory and the Arabs
were strongly anticommunist, how did we get where we are today? The answer lies
in the State of Israel. The genesis of the State of Israel founded in 1948 lies
in World War I. With the British and Ottoman Empires locked in combat, the
British, through the legendary Lawrence of Arabia, promised the land to the
Arabs it they would ally with the British and throw off the rule of the Ottoman
Turks. Simultaneously, the British in the
Balfour Declaration negotiated
by Lord Rothschild, pledged the land as a Jewish homeland. In return, the
international Jewish community was to labor for America's entrance into the war
as 6 British ally. Both Jews and Arabs felt betrayed as a victorious: Britain
temporized and the Jews mounted a terrorist war against. the British mandate in
Palestine. The same no‑win temporizing policies that were to later drive
the French out of Algeria and the Americans out of Korea and Vietnam, drove the
British out of the Middle East and the matter was dumped into the lap of the
United Nations. In 1948, the same United Nations that partitioned Vietnam in
1954 precipitating a generation of war, and that partitioned India and Pakistan
provoking endless strife, partitioned Palestine into Arab (Jordan) and Jewish
(Israel) states, virtually ensuring perpetual conflict and forever destroying
the peace and stability of the Middle East. Significantly, every communist
nation on the face of the earth voted in the U.N. to establish the State of
Israel. The communists like to fish in troubled waters. Although the USSR
extended immediate recognition to Israel, in the conflicts that ensued as the
Western nations lined up unreservedly behind Israel, the foundation of Arab
allegiance to the West waned. As anti‑Israeli grass‑roots pressure
in Arab lands mounted, pro‑Western or moderate policies became political
suicide. Radical socialist Arabs such as Nasser were swept into office, often by
revolution as the Arabs were reluctantly but surely being squeezed into the
Soviet camp. At each Arab defeat by American weapons, at each Israeli
territorial expansion, the Arabs are driven into further dependence on the
Soviets. Meanwhile, the Soviets have gained access to the Dardenelles (during
1967 war, accomplishing an age‑old dream), have established naval bases in
the Arab nations of North Africa, and are fast turning the Mediterranean into a
Soviet Lake as they prepare to reopen the Suez Canal now under Soviet control
through their ally, Egypt. That was worthwhile losing a few acres in the Sinai
for, wasn't it!!! Bad theology like the proverbial chickens always comes home to
roost and our unqualified support of the State of Israel is turning the Middle
East into a Soviet Empire.
THE
MARXIST STATE:
Although it has been nearly 2000 years since our Lord and Savior ministered in
Palestine, the Name "Holy Land" has tenaciously clung to it. At the
present at least, that presents a major misnomer. There is little holiness or
righteousness to be found in the socialist state of Israel which is organized
more in conformity to the Communist Manifesto than according to the Ten
Commandments. While the communist party is uniformly banned throughout the Arab
world (Christian Beacon, 8-3-72),
Israel was the first Middle East nation to establish diplomatic relations with
the communist bloc nations which supplied 70% of her population (American
Mercury, Aug. 1957). Golda Meir is Vice President of the Socialist
International, which is committed to a one-world socialist state and thus
logically is committed to the destruction of these sovereign United States as
presently constituted. While 50,000 American boys died in Southeast Asia, the
State of Israel maintained diplomatic relations with the North Vietnamese. The
Bible ordains and establishes the family. In Israel, the family has been
replaced as in Red China and Russia with the commune. In Israel, it is simply
called a "kibbutz." Marriage is downgraded and the children are raised
by the state. The Bible places the man as the head of the home and as the one in
authority, and maintains God created distinctions between male and female. In
Israel, women's liberation and equal rights are the order of the day. Women are
drafted into the army and share the same duties as men including combat roles. A
woman rules over them (Isa. 3:12) and the women labor in the fields and the
factories equally with the men and return to eat in the communal mess hall while
the children are raised in the communal nursery. Whether one takes it from the
horse's mouth in Leon Uris' Exodus with
his "free love" society or from Dr. Bob Jones who writes, "No people
have ever been more modest than the Arabs, and one thing that incenses them more
than anything else is the sight of half-naked Jewish girls dressed in
mini-skirts or short-shorts, exposing themselves as they walk through Arab
towns" (Faith For The Family; Vol. 1, No. 6). One must admit that
Israel is a highly immoral society who's state is scarcely worthy of being
termed the "Holy Land."
SATAN'S
DESIGN:
The Old Testament reveals that in the economy of God, God called the Children of
Israel out of Egypt, gave them the Ten Commandments on Sinai, established them
in Palestine, made them his people, and sent them the Messiah. The New Testament
reveals that they rejected that Messiah and that God cut them off. In the light
of that we must now appreciate that Satan is counterfeiting the plan of God.
Everything that Satan does is the counterfeit of and the reversal of God's
design. Satan is now taking the Christ-denying Jews, is making them his people,
has given them the doctrines of Marxism, is establishing them in Palestine, and
is preparing to send them his messiah, the Antichrist, who will rule over them
in Jerusalem. Jesus said, "/ am come
in my Father's name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own
name, HIM YE WILL RECEIVE" (John 5:43). For the Lord's people, the
Christians to endorse the above is tantamount to SPIRITUAL TREASON and DISLOYALTY to THE LORD JESUS CHRIST!!! This is the final culmination of that
age-old conspiracy of Antichrist that subverted Eve in the Garden of Eden and
that murdered the Lord Jesus Christ and has persecuted his church ever since.
Let those who LOVE CHRIST soundly REBUKE it.
IN
CLOSING:
This is not an easy subject to write on much less to do justice to. Many may
consider it foolhardy to rush in where angels fear to tread. This has been written about a nation and a people in general and not to
malign those individuals that
do not share the vices and viewpoints of their race. This will scarcely be the
last word on the subject, but it has been written with God-fearing
conviction—and the conviction that the present views and attitudes among
Christians are unscriptural, intolerable, and must grieve the Head of the
church, the Lord Jesus Christ. To those who would interpose the eternal
accusation of anti-Semitism, let me remind them of this. I worship the Lord God
of Israel, Jehovah. I worship a Jew, the Lord Jesus Christ. I daily read and
base my life upon a book, the Bible, that was almost entirely written by Jews. I
seek to follow the example of twelve Jewish men, the Apostles of the Lord Jesus
Christ. I base my salvation on the shed blood of the Jewish Messiah, and on the
same saving faith that in Abraham was counted to him as righteousness.
AMEN
