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I was once sitting at an outdoor café just inside Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City. A loud-mouthed fellow American was seated at the next table with his family. Normally I try to blend-in and avoid this kind of person, but he did compliment my sunglasses so I took the opportunity to tell him I got them from my good buddy, Joe Bonsall, of the Oak Ridge Boys. Jack, as his family called him, barely registered a response before he was off on another running commentary.
This tourist family was enduring Dad’s loud commentary on his surroundings. He seemed unaware that he was being served by Palestinians, and loudly joked about being a terror victim.
But he was an equal-opportunity bigot and revealed himself to be a garden-variety anti-Semite. As if they’re harmless. I gathered that he had some church background, because he began talking in terms of Replacement Theology. He rattled off the usual nonsense about the Jews rejecting Jesus and thus severing their covenant with God.
He then peeled-off some large bills and slammed them on the table. His Arab waiter smiled stiffly, scooped up the money, and hurried inside. Jack ambled off waving his arms and pointing out things, as if he’d seen them before. He and his long-suffering family disappeared into the entrance to the Old City’s labyrinthine old streets. I actually felt sorry for the huckster merchants who would be in his path.
Sadly, Jack is not uncommon in our Christian world today. He doesn’t like Jews. It’s not unlike people a generation ago who didn’t like blacks, even though they’d never so much as seen a black person.
From where I sit in the fall of 2009, Replacement Theology is the bane of the Church. I so appreciated Chuck Missler saying this a few years ago at a conference in Fort Worth, Texas.
It only seems like a sudden wave of Jew-hatred (I don’t think the term too strong) has swept over the Christian community in America. In reality, it has been building.
The puzzling thing to me is that Replacement Theology and a rising support of the Palestinians has settled on the Church a mere 40 years after the Six Day War. Many Bible prophecy teachers fanned-out over the country in the last decades, promoting a pro-Israel and pro-Bible prophecy teaching. Somehow all these efforts have produced a church culture largely ignorant of the significance of the Jews.
This is due in part to the effectiveness of seemingly pleasant, intellectuals who have cleverly identified themselves as evangelicals. In Brian McLaren’s latest blog, he discusses his discussion of the Bible during a workshop in New York City. He says that the Bible has been used to justify a whole host of evils, from racism to oppression of women to anti-Semitism. McLaren apparently — like his ecumenical friends — fails to see the irony. What can be more anti-Semitic than denying the historicity of the Old Testament, particularly Genesis, where the Jews were born? Yet this is what these…evangelicals…do, especially as they embrace the Palestinians. Here, the evangelical world sees a strange alliance between McLaren and other Emergent leaders, John Spong, Hank Hanegraaff, John Piper, Skip Ryan, and Gary Burge. Presumably, Rick Warren is following suit, as evidenced by his visit with Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, and his address in front of an American Muslim audience.
Denying Jewish history is a favorite past-time of Palestinian liberation movements, Marxists, and Nazi sympathizers. Somehow, American Christian leaders have bought into Replacement Theology. It is a movement that is making inroads into American churches. I maintain, unlike some of my pro Israel friends, that Replacement Theology is gaining ground, for various reasons. For one thing, fewer pastors are pro Israel and willing to deliver sermons that highlight the miracle of predictive, fulfilled prophecy. This is to their great shame.
As Bill Koenig of Koenig’s International News (www.watch.org) has stated:
“Leaders of replacement theology churches, ministries and preterists/amillennialist do not acknowledge the biblical and prophetic significance of what is unfolding in Israel and the world today.”
The solution for those who love Israel and the Jews, and who see their prophetic significance? I can only tell you what my strategy is:
I’m not going to roll over.
I decided some time ago that if it comes to that, I will leave Christian friends behind if they embrace Replacement Theology, and if they understand the implications. I will step out of the lineup to stand with the Jews. And believe me, standing with the Jews will cost you. As the British historian Sir Martin Gilbert has succinctly put it: “People don’t like Jews.”
The astonishing thing is, if one believes the Bible is the very word of God, His covenant with the Jews is both eternal (Genesis 15) and ubiquitous (Deuteronomy 30; Psalm 102; Isaiah 11; Jeremiah 31-33; Ezekiel 37; Amos 9; and many, many others.
How are these people missing it? For some, they are simply in love with their own intellect; they love to cluck their tongues and join in the Jew-bashing. After all, there is safety in numbers. And in their narcissism, they oppose the Apple of God’s Eye (Zechariah 2:8).
Just like Jack the Tipper.
jim@prophecymatters.com
