“Therefore it is of faith that it might be according to grace,so that the promise might be sure to all the seed, not only tothose who are of the law, but also to those who are of the faithof Abraham, who is the father of us all” (Rom.4:16)

“For these are the two covenants: the one from MountSinai which gives birth to bondage, which is Hagar — forthis Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds toJerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children— but the Jerusalem above is free, which is the mother of usall” (Gal.4:24-26)

INTRODUCTION

Shortly before December 25th 1997, a huge front-page headline appeared in one of the UK’s qualitynational newspapers which read: “It Never Happened”.Above this headline was a portrait of the manger sceneat the birth of Christ. This article, by the anti-Christianwriter A.N. Wilson, set out to disprove the historicity ofthe Incarnation. In the wake of this conceit being pub-lished, there was no clamour from clergymen, no bellowfrom bishops and not a peep from the proletariat. It wasa highly blasphemous statement; but it was also “politi-cally correct”.

“ABRAHAM OUR FATHER,

JERUSALEM OUR MOTHER”A Biblical Analysis of Judaism & the Modern State of Israel in

Relation to the Church of Jesus Christ

by

Alan Morrison

There are certain Bible phrases which easily cause controversy and disagreement. For example,“...and all his household” (Acts 16:34; 18:8) has spearheaded the disagreement about baptism; thephrase “and bound him for a thousand years” (Rev.20:2) has led to division concerning the approachto the time of the end; the words “God our Saviour who desires all men to be saved” (1 Tim.2:3-4)have created controversy over the concept of universal grace; and a crassly literal understanding ofthe Lord Jesus' words “Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood” (Jn.6:54) has given rise to thedoctrine of transubstantiation. Such phrases have divided the professing Church throughout history— not because of any lack of perspicuity on the Holy Spirit’s part, but because of the faulty herme-neutics of fallen men and women.

Another phrase which could be added to those above is “And so all Israel shall be saved”(Rom.11:25). Among evangelicals today, a common interpretation of this verse is that shortly beforethe end of this age there will be a global mass conversion of all living Jews according to the flesh.The existence since 1948 of the earthly nation Israel in the Middle East is therefore seen by many aspart of the buildup to this phenomenon.

Correspondingly, there is an enormous interest throughout the Church in the modern nationIsrael and in Jewishness in general. One could even call it an obsession. There is today a massivecrusade of Judaising which is at least as pernicious as that which the Apostle Paul so forcefullyopposed in his ministry. In this article, our purpose is to examine these ideas in the light of the clearteaching of Scripture. It is our firm belief that the failure to rightly divide the Word of God has led toa wrongful division of the people of God in the Gospel Age, who are called to be one flock underone Shepherd. We plead with our readers to adopt a Berean attitude (Acts 17:10-11) by checkingall our Bible references and carefully weighing up our teachings against the Scriptures.

Now imagine what would have occurred if, above thatheadline, “It Never Happened”, in the place of theManger Scene, there was a portrait of Mohammedmaking his hegira to Medina, or of Gautama Siddhar-tha Buddha sitting under a Banyan tree in Bihar, or ofArjuna and Krishna conversing elatedly in their chariot,or of Guru Nanak plunging into the River Bain, or ofMoses receiving the Ten Commandments on Sinai.Imagine the huge chorus of outrage that would haveensued from the assorted packs of plebeian hordes —not to mention the outcry from the massed ranks of mor-tally offended church clergymen and their multifaithbishops.

In the present climate, it is fashionable to do every-thing possible to undermine the claims of Christianity.We are now living in an era in which one may utter thefoulest blasphemy against Jesus Christ, but one mustnever cast the slightest aspersion against any of theworld’s religious movements. Such is the global agendaof political correctness in the religious field. It has nowalso become the agenda of the ecumenical movement,under the century-long guiding hand of that socio-political organisation, the World Council of Churchesand its many offshoots.[1]

However, this same gag on exposing false religion haseven spread to the heart of evangelicalism. For example,at one time, Bible-based Christians regarded bothRoman Catholicism and post-Calvary Judaism as falsereligions, from which people needed delivering throughthe Gospel of Jesus Christ. However, in recent years,many evangelicals have come to regard Roman Catholi-cism as a mere denomination in the true Church andhave also become protective of the present-day religionof Judaism — even upholding that the modern anti-christian state of Israel in the Middle East is a fulfilmentof Bible prophecy.

Because so many professing Christians have boughtinto the lie of so-called “political correctness” — whichis merely the institutionalised suppression of truth —non-acrimonious and open discussion of these matters isuniversally barred, while emotive accusations of “anti-semitism” and “racism” are hurled at anyone who daresto analyse this dire state of affairs. The stultifying,“politically correct” atmosphere being generated in theChristian scene today, quite apart from being dishonest,is most unhelpful to proper analysis and discussion on arange of issues.

Even more disturbing than this is the fact that inmany professing Christian circles it appears that what

one believes about ‘Israel’ and ‘Jewishness’ has come todefine one’s Christianity. Those who do not toe theparty line on Israel — that is, who do not accept thatthe modern state of Israel is a restored biblical Israel —are likely to find themselves treated with considerabledisdain and even ostracised by fellowships of professingChristians. It is for this reason that this writer believesthat the present article is called for.

A startling fact about which most Christians are com-pletely unaware is that there was an equivalent in Jewishhistory to the situation in which the Roman EmperorConstantine declared his empire and subjects“Christian” after his own conversion, resulting in a mas-sive influx of pagans into the church, adulterating it andits beliefs. In 740 AD, the Emperor of Khazaria, in thesteppes of Russia, declared his subjects “Jewish” afterhis own conversion to Judaism. Genuine rabbis weresummoned from Babylonia to teach his subjects Phari-saic Judaism in the Khazar kingdom that flourishedfrom the sixth to tenth centuries. If one wonders aboutthe ghettos of Warsaw, Budapest and Prague being sofar from Palestine, it is because their Jewish inhabitantsnever came from Palestine but were part of the massconversion of the Khazar Empire.

What does this imply? That most of the Jews “return-ing” to Palestine never came from Palestine in the firstplace; that they are not even of the lineage of Shem.They are Gentile converts. This throws a massivecurved ball from an eschatolgical standpoint at the ideaof Jews returning to the modern State of Israel underdivine sanction.

In reality, upwards of 85% of today’s Jews aredescended from the Khazars, according to the respectedEncyclopaedia Judaica, Princeton Professor D.M.Dunlop’s The History of the Jewish Khazars, andArthur Koestler’s The Thirteenth Tribe (RandomHouse, N.Y., 1967). The Thirteenth Tribe was Koes-tler’s last book before he and his wife were found deadin an apparent suicide in their London apartment.Koestler, one of the most celebrated and brilliant Jewishwriters of the 20th Century, who himself believedstrongly in a Jewish state in Israel, laments in his intro-duction that “The story of the Khazar Empire, as itslowly emerges from the past, begins to look like the mostcruel hoax which history has ever perpetrated”.

The implications of all this are staggering for thosewho would claim that modern Israel is a restoration ofthe Israelite kingdom of the Bible. Yet, this claim isbeing vigorously asserted today by a vast number of

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1. For further information on this process, see our 30,000-word article “The Trojan Horse in the Temple: The Hidden Agenda of theEcumenical Movement”.

professing Christians who are also Zionists.[2] Therecan be no doubt whatsoever that a modern form ofJudaising has gripped many branches of the professingChurch and the spirit of Paul’s letter to the Galatiansneeds to be invoked.

It seems that an unconditional love for the modernearthly nation Israel has virtually become an ‘article offaith’ among evangelicals today. As a consequence, allmanner of strange and unchecked claims are beingmade by many untaught and often arrogant and aggres-sive people about Judaism and Israel. Here are some ofthe various claims which are being made today:

1. That the Jews as an earthly nation are still God’schosen people today and that modern Israel is theirrightful home.

2. That Gentile converts to Christ are of inferior statusto those converted out of Judaism.

3. That the nation-state called Israel in the MiddleEast today is the fulfilment of biblical prophecy anda sign of the approaching appearance of the LordJesus Christ — either for the Rapture or the SecondComing, depending on the belief system to whichpeople adhere.

4. That if we encourage the Jews of the world toemigrate to Israel the return of Christ will behastened.

5. That Gentile Christians have a God-given duty toassist the modern state of Israel in every way they can— including financially.

6. That the Jews are the real root of Christianity andshould therefore be held in the highest esteem.

7. That it is only because of the “temporary” rejectionof the Jews that Gentiles can be saved at all.

8. That Jews do not need to be born again because theyare already God’s chosen people.

9. That Jews who come to believe in Messiah do notneed to become part of the Christian Church, whichis intended specifically for Gentile converts toMessiah, but instead should gather in so-calledMessianic Fellowships.

10. That Jews who have “accepted Messiah” shouldcontinue with all the rituals and feasts of the Mosaiclaw — including a Saturday Sabbath — and evennon-biblical festivals such as Hanukkah.

11. That those who say (as the Bible plainly teaches)that the Old Testament promises to Israel have nowbeen fulfilled in Christ and His believing people arethereby guilty of a heresy which has been given thename: “Replacement Theology”.

12. That when the Lord said to Abraham “I will blessthose who bless you, and I will curse him who cursesyou”, it was also meant to be applied to those whodare to say anything critical about the state of Israeltoday.

13. That to write articles like this represents the heightof blasphemy, is racist, anti-semitic and will bring acurse down upon the writer’s head.

Obviously, no single individual will adhere to all ofthese claims — some of which are contradictory — butthey do not represent a straw man because this writerhas heard them all declared by Christian “zionists” fromvarious quarters in recent years.

It should be said here that the purpose of this analysisis not at all intended to incite any kind of animosityagainst Jewish people in general. On the contrary, weseek to remove division between Christians and promotethe salvation of Jews through encouraging the kind ofevangelism which is based on the Bible rather than afalse agenda dictated by Jewish people themselves andthe many theologically ignorant Christians who are dic-tating the agenda of the church today.

It might also be helpful to state here that the presentwriter — whose own Hebrew name is qj;x]yI-÷Be ÷roh}a'(Aharon ben-Yitzhak) — is himself from a sephardicJewish background and therefore understands the issuewell — having a father, sisters and other living relationswhom he earnestly desires to see come to faith in Christ.

We are aware that the accusation of “anti-Semitism”or “racism” may be made against us from certain Jewishand even Christian quarters. But to fall back on suchcharges is extremely disingenuous, manipulative, andplainly designed to stifle fruitful and honest discussion.An example of such behaviour occurred when theorganisers of a Christian event designed to evangeliseJews were accused of practising “spiritual Nazism” by aJewish Rabbi.[3] We see this kind of emotionalmanipulation frequently from Jewish people. Hidingbehind the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany, theyseek, through subjective emotionalism, to prevent people— Christians included — from conducting any biblical

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3. See the article “I Believe in Jesus — not Hitler” by Nick Howard in the Daily Telegraph, 20th February 1998. Nick Howard is theson of the former leader of the Tory party in the UK, Michael Howard, who himself is Jewish.

2. They give themselves the exclusive title “Messianic believers”. But such a policy creates wrongful division in the church, contrary toScripture (cf. Eph.2:14-22; John 10:16; 11:52; 1 Cor.12:12-13; Gal.3:26-29; Col.3:11; cf. Isa.19:24-25). The reality is that allbelievers in Christ are messianic, not just a few who happen to have a Jewish background.

debate about Jewish or Israeli matters.A typical example of this occured in an article on the

Internet, entitled “Antisemitism in the New Testament”by Shmuel Golding.[4] Here Golding writes:

“Christian love for the Jew is a kind of hatred. Itloves the Jew, yet hates him for being what he is. Itsees him as blind and in need of being changedinto a believer. When missionary efforts failed, orare fobbed, the love for the Jew quickly turns tohatred and contempt.

We are not deceived by the ‘new Christians’ oftoday’s hand-clapping Jew-loving fundamentalists.They teach the same anti-semitic doctrines as thechurch of yesteryear. Their tactics are different butwe know that the message is the same. Any Jewwho can pay homage to the New Testament orallow himself to believe in it, is, in my opinion inthe same category as a Jew who tries to justify Hit-ler's Mein Kampf or, as one who covers up for thedeeds of the Nazis”.

While it is true that Christians understand Jews (incommon with all unbelievers) to be spiritually blind andin need of becoming believers in Jesus Christ, it is not atall true that Christians hate Jews. Christians feel thegreatest compassion for all unbelievers, whether Jews orGentiles. To compare Christians to Nazis and the NewTestament to Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” is to indulge inthe most extreme form of emotional manipulation.Sadly, many professing Christians have also fallen intothe same sort of manipulative exercise, and would try tosmear the present article as an example of “anti-Semitism” or “racism”. Well, we categorically refuse tobe stifled by such false charges.[5]

Incidentally, it is inaccurate, to say the least, torestrict the name “Semite” to a person of the Jewishreligion, for it has a far wider definition. In Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary a Semite is defined as

“A member of any of a number of peoples ofancient southwestern Asia including the Akkadi-ans, Phoenicians, Hebrews, and Arabs”.

So the use of the term “anti-Semitic” to mean that aperson is anti-Jewish is strictly a misnomer. Secondly,

there is no such thing as the “Jewish race” — a termwhich many mistakenly use today. As the EncyclopediaBritannica states:

“The designation ‘race’ has been applied to lan-guage groups (the Aryan race), national groups(the Scottish race), religious groups (the Jewishrace), and the entire species of humans (the humanrace), but these usages are biologically and scien-tifically meaningless”.

Surely, therefore, any accusations about this article asbeing “anti-Semitic” or “racist” are equallymeaningless. It is perfectly acceptable before God for usto open these matters up for debate. As mature Chris-tian believers it is both good and necessary to analyseand discuss the bewildering array of claims being madetoday about Jewish people or Israel — especially bymany in the church. Our aim here is to reassert what webelieve to be the biblical view.

Our plan in this paper is, first, to examine the issue ofJudaism and Israel from an individual standpoint, com-paring post-Calvary Judaism with the biblical view, thento consider it on a corporate level, examining the manyclaims about the nation Israel, comparing the Middle-Eastern nation-state of today with that of the Bible.

I. THE HALLMARKS OF MODERNJUDAISM

First it would be useful to identify the origin of theterm ‘Jew’. In Scripture, the term originally referred to amember of the state of Judah (e.g., 2 Kgs.16:6; 25:25).In Hebrew, a Jew is ydiWhYÒ (yehoudi), while in Greek it

is ioudaio" (youdaios).In the New Testament, we find that the word “Jew”

is used to refer to members of the Jewish faith or theirrepresentative leaders — especially in the Gospel ofJohn where the word is used sixty-eight times, the apos-tle being at great pains to show the vituperative natureof Jewish opposition to Christianity and the redundancyof its religious foundations.

The word Jew has its origins in the Hebrew word hd;y:(yawdaw) which means ‘praise’. Paul takes this up as a‘play upon words’ in Rom.2:28 when he speaks of aJew as being a person “whose praise is not from men but

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5. Unfortunately, George Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury, allowed himself to be manipulated by these sort of accusations when,in March 1992, he broke a 150-year-old tradition by turning down an invitation to become ex-officio patron of the Anglican “Church’sMinistry Among the Jews”, declaring that it would be unhelpful in his efforts to “encourage trust and friendship between different faith com-munities in our land” (as reported in Christian News, Vol.30, No.44, November 30, 1992, p.6.). Similarly, we find the former AnglicanBishop of Birmingham, Hugh Montefiore, declaring: “In Jewish society, to become a Christian is to go over to the enemy, and I have foundit counterproductive to try to convert Jews” (Daily Telegraph, March 4th 1998). Here this “bishop” reveals his unbelief and failure tounderstand the sovereignty of God in evangelism (1 Cor.3:6). It is not our place to decide to whom we do or do not preach. The Gospelmust be taken to every person with the glorious proviso that the Lord will add His blessing according to His will and purpose.

4. See the website: http://jdstone.org/cr/files/antisemitisminthenewtestament.html

from God”. We shall be looking in more detail at thisimportant verse later in our study.

In exposing a brief comparison between the religionand aspirations of modern Judaism and the kind ofJudaism which is revealed in the Bible, we need to beclear that they are not at all the same. Modern Judaismhas certain trappings which are associated with the OldTestament religion of Israel, but in reality it bears verylittle relation to the true religion of the Bible. ModernJudaism is similar to the religion which was espoused bythe Scribes and Pharisees, with whom the Lord Jesustook issue, and which continued to be adhered to andcodified after Calvary and especially after the destruc-tion of Jerusalem and the Jewish temple in AD.70.

As John rather pointedly observed on a number ofoccasions, “there was a division” among the Jewscaused by the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ (Jn.7:43;9:16; 10:19). And that division was not of equal pro-portions, but consisted on the one hand of the mass ofthe people who went along with the Pharisees and onthe other hand of a small remnant who became His dis-ciples and thereby the firstfruits of the Christian Churchwhich would be made up of both former Jews andGentiles.

After the debacle in Jerusalem in AD.70, bothgroups — unbelieving Jews and the Christian Church,made up of converted Jews and Gentiles — were scat-tered across Europe and the Middle-East taking theirreligion with them. The Church began to evangelise theworld with the Gospel (in accordance with Acts 1:8)and the unbelieving Jews set about consolidating theirbeleaguered faith which by then had its roots in bothTalmudic Pharisaism and mystical Essenism.

From that time to this — as post-Calvary Judaismwas based on disbelief that the Messiah had come and ahatred of things Christian — certain characteristics ofJudaism have held sway. Principal among those charac-teristics is that it does not maintain the exclusive author-ity of Scripture, the Bible.

The only authoritative source of religious information,in both doctrinal and practical matters, is the writtenWord of God, the Bible:

“All Scripture is given by inspiration of God,and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for cor-rection, for instruction in righteousness, that theman of God may be complete, thoroughlyequipped for every good work”. (2 Tim.3:16-17)

The importance of neither adding to nor taking awayfrom the Word of God is paramount in both Old andNew Testaments. We see this near the beginning of theBible: “You shall not add to the word which I command

you, nor take from it...” (Deut.4:2), in the middle ofthe Bible: “Every word of God is pure; He is a shield tothose who put their trust in Him. Do not add to Hiswords, Lest He rebuke you, and you be found a liar”(Pro.30:5-6), and at the end of the Bible we find acouple of verses which plainly can be applied to morethan just the Book of Revelation:

“If anyone adds to these things, God will add tohim the plagues that are written in this book; and ifanyone takes away from the words of the book ofthis prophecy, God shall take away his part fromthe Book of Life, from the holy city, and from thethings which are written in this book”(Rev.22:18-19).

So, from start to finish, the Bible — consisting ofboth Old and New Testaments — is complete and allthat is necessary for revelation and teaching. Even theOld Testament Scriptures alone “are able to make youwise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus”(2 Tim.3:15).

However, as post-Calvary Judaism has developed andadapted throughout the past 1900 years, the prevailingJudaism of today is drawn primarily not from the relig-ion revealed by Jehovah on Mount Sinai, or from theauthoritative sacred writings of the Bible, but from man-made writings which have a decidedly legalistic andantichristian emphasis. There are three ways in whichmodern Judaism fails to uphold the authority ofScripture.

1. IT DENIES THE JURISDICTION OF THE NEWTESTAMENT

Augustine of Hippo made the statement: “In the OldTestament the New is latent; in the New Testament theOld is patent”. The “Messiah who is to come” is theprincipal subject of the Old Testament. The “Messiahwho has come” is the principal subject of the New.The New Testament is the Divinely inspired outgrowthof the Old. The Jewish nation, with its special code ofcivil and ceremonial law, was instigated by the Lord asa vehicle of succession for the coming Messiah(Gal.3:19). Everything about their law pointed towardsthe advent of Christ (Col.2:16-17). So when He finallycame, they should have received Him (Jn.1:11). Andwhen the new revelation was given which became theNew Testament, they should similarly have receivedthat as authoritative.

However, post-Calvary Judaism has never acceptedthe sole authority of the New Testament or its writers.Indeed, the authoritative Jewish Encyclopedia refers toPaul the Apostle as an antinomian and a Gnostic,accusing him of contaminating God’s people by

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preaching the Gospel to gentiles:

“While thus opening the door wide to admit thepagan world, Paul caused the influx of the entirepagan mythology in the guise of Gnostic and anti-Gnostic names and formulas. No wonder he wasfrequently assailed and beaten by the officials of thesynagogue”.[6]

Furthermore, the words of the Messiah Himself, asrecorded in the New Testament, are judged by theauthorities of modern Judaism to be derivative of theteachings of either the Pharisees or the Essenes:

“Many of Jesus’s sayings can be traced to rab-binical sayings current in the Pharasaic schools;and many sentences, if not entire chapters, havebeen taken over from Essene writings”.[7]

This claim that entire chapters of the New Testamenthave been lifted from the writings of the Essenes is awild claim indeed, and worthy of exposure as a mislead-ing allegation — especially as this is also a major claimof the New Age Movement today.

It is significant that the sect of the Essenes is neverdirectly mentioned in the New Testament — unlike thePharisees and Sadducees who feature so prominently inthe four Gospels. The reason for this is most likelybecause they never attempted to confront Jesus directlyand tended to live in secluded, secretive circumstances.However, there are many indirect references which aremost instructive.

The word essene is derived from the East Aramaic,hasen, meaning ‘the pious ones’ (from which the nameof the orthodox Jewish Hasidim is derived). The Essenesect (2nd century B.C. to 2nd century A.D.) was anascetic, commune-based, Jewish monastic order whichregarded itself as the true Israel. In some ways theyresembled the Pharisees in terms of such elements as rit-ual purity and legal observances; indeed, in this respectthey often out-Phariseed the Pharisees! But their rigidadherence to the Levitical code was augmented by manyadditional works and practices which were, at best, intransgression of Pentateuchal Law and, at worst, down-right sorcery and superstition. For example, they adored

the sun and earnestly prayed to it before it rose,[8] theyused a variety of magical and esoteric books, they prac-tised divination and developed a highly elaborate ange-lology and cosmogony which went far beyond thebiblical teachings of Moses.[9] Their teaching onangels was, in fact, ‘derived from the Magi’,[10] and inmany ways, as Chambers Encyclopaedia states, theEssenes ‘became the forerunners of the Gnostics and ofthe Jewish Kabbalists’.[11]

This knowledge that the angelology of the Esseneswas derived from the Magi becomes doubly significantwhen we are informed that among these Magi ‘therewas a strong tradition which favoured the exercise of sac-erdotal and occult powers’.[12] Even more significant,these Magi ‘were in communication with evil spirits,and...they were well acquainted with Mesmerism andevery practice of modern Spiritualism’.[13] So theinfluences on the Essenes were decidedly occult.

Under these circumstances, is it at all likely — as the‘authoritative’ Jewish Encyclopedia claims — that vasttracts of the Gospels — and in particular the words ofthe Lord Jesus Christ — have been plagiarised from thewritings of the Essenes? In truth, there are far moresimilarities between Essenism and the later Gnosticismthan with the teachings of Jesus. As one authoritativesource puts it: ‘The suggestions, occasionally made,that...Christ Himself had Essene connections, are mostimprobable’.[14] Let us list some of the glaring con-trasts between Essenism and Christianity.

Unlike the Essenes, Jesus did not withdraw from, noradvocate withdrawal from the world (cf. Jn.17:15,18);neither did He reject the aged and the physically handi-capped (cf. Mt.12:9-13; 15:30) nor advocate hatred ofHis enemies, as did the Essenes. He never purifiedHimself before eating with sinners (Mt.9:10-13); Hedid not advocate or practise vegetarianism (Mt.14:19),and did not believe that defilement and uncleannesscomes from unpurified food, clothing and people(Mt.15:11) — all of which were part and parcel ofbeing an Essene. So deep was their bondage to the lawsof purification that if one of their members was expelledfrom the community for sins committed, he would find

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14. F.L. Cross & E.A. Livingstone, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (O.U.P., 1983), p.471.

13. G.H. Pember, Earth’s Earliest Ages and their Connection with Modern Spiritualism, Theosophy, and Buddhism (G.H. Lang, n.d.,first published in 1876), p.162.

12. Merrill C. Tenney, The Zondervan Encyclopedia of the Bible, 1975, Vol.IV, p.31.11. Ibid. The Kabbalah is Jewish Gnosticism and will be the subject of our study in a later section.10. Chambers’s Encyclopaedia (George Newnes, 1963), Vol.V, p.395.9. J. Hastings (ed.), Dictionary of the Apostolic Church (T. & T. Clark, 1915), p.368.8. J. Hastings (ed.), Dictionary of the Bible (T. & T. Clark, 1898), Vol.I., p.769.7. Ibid.6. The Jewish Encyclopedia, (Funk & Wagnalls, 1903), Vol.IV, p.52.

himself unable to eat the unpurified food of the outsideworld and die of starvation.[15] The Essenes also hadsuch a highly developed system of elitism within theirsect that the more ‘advanced’ members believed thatthey became spiritually polluted if they came into physi-cal contact with, or ate food prepared by,novitiates.[16] It is also quite probable that Jesus wasreferring to the Essenes when He made the enigmaticstatement: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shalllove your neighbour and hate your enemy’” (Mt.5:43).Nowhere is the idea of hating one’s enemy advocated assuch by the Jewish Law in the Old Testament(cf. Lev.19:17-18). There are, however, a number ofsuch references in the Essenic documents which werefound at Qumran in 1948.[17] Therefore, far frombeing an Essene Himself, the teachings of the LordJesus Christ were diametrically opposed to Essenicdoctrine.

In spite of this mountain of evidence against the ideathat Jesus was an Essene and that He proffered Esseneteachings, the Jewish Encyclopedia asserts otherwise.There can be no other reason for this than to underminethe authority and witness of the N.T. Scriptures.

Obviously, it should be of no surprise that modernJudaism fails to regard the New Testament as authorita-tive Scripture. But does it rely on any other authority?This brings us to the second way that Judaism does notuphold the authority of Scripture:

2. IT UPHOLDS THE TALMUD AS THEAUTHORITATIVE WRITINGS

One of the primary complaints of the Lord JesusChrist against the Pharisees was that they maintainedthe authority of man-made writings rather than the HolyScriptures, thereby bringing the people under unneces-sary bondage (e.g., Mt.15:8-9; 16:11-12; 23:1-4, 23;cf. Tit.1:14; Mt.11:28-30). On one occasion, the Jew-ish religious leaders asked Jesus: “Why do Your disci-ples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, buteat bread with unwashed hands?” To which He replied

“Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, asit is written: ‘This people honors Me with theirlips, but their heart is far from Me. And in vainthey worship Me, teaching as doctrines the com-mandments of men’. For laying aside the com-mandment of God, you hold the tradition of men”.

On the many occasions when the Lord Jesus haddealings with the Jewish religious authorities, there was

surely more than a touch of irony when He said: “Haveyou never read...?” He knew very well that they mostcertainly had “read” over and again the Old Testamentto which He was referring; and in the Scribes’ case theirtime was spent from morning till night copying outscrolls of Scripture to the highest degree of accuracy.They had indeed “read” the Scriptures, but they neitherupheld them nor implemented them in their lives astheir only rule for faith and practice, according to thecommandment of God (Deut.4:2; Prov.30:5-6).

From that time onwards — but especially after suchcomplete destruction of the Temple in AD.70 — unbe-lieving Judaism has continued to centre its teaching pri-marily on man-made written Talmudic teachings. Infact, even when the claim is made by Jews that the OldTestament is their highest authority, one generally findsthe most cavalier allegorisation of the text, very muchakin to that of the liberal Christian scholars who indulgein biblical criticism in university theologicaldepartments.

Regardless of any Jewish claims to uphold the OldTestament as the highest example of authoritative writ-ings, the truth is that the man-made Talmud takesprecedence over the inspired Word of God for the vastmajority of the Jews. The only exception to this is thesect known as the Karaites, who refuse to accept anyRabbinical writings which add to the Old Testament.However, it is interesting to note that the other Jews areparticularly scornful of the Karaites. For example, theglossary of Jewish terms advertised by the JewishAmerican-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (A.I.C.E.)defines Karaites as

“A Middle Eastern heterodox [i.e. deviant, ed.]Jewish group that arose in opposition to Rabbinismin the 8th century AD and emphasized the writtenscriptures while criticizing the rabbinic use of “orallaw”. [emphasis added]

And this disdainful view of the Torah-based Karaitesis shown in the words of the Jewish poet, WalterLichtenfeld Field, in his poem “The People’s Epic”,when he wrote about the dispute between the Karaitesand Talmudic Rabbis:

“With Saadia, the Gaonate [Talmudic scholar-ship] reached its peak,Karaites claimed for Judaism to speak,But Saadia proved all their arguments weak”.

And so the Talmud really holds sway over Scripture

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17. G. Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls in English (Penguin Books, 1975), pp.72-73, 91.16. Ibid. One is here reminded of the caste system in India.15. J. Hastings (ed.), Dictionary of the Bible (T. & T. Clark, 1898), Vol.I, p.769.

as the primary source of authority for modern Jewry.Even the Talmud itself says: “My son, be more carefulin the observance of the words of the Scribes than in thewords of the Torah”.[18] Accordingly, we find thestatement in an article in the U.K. Jewish Chroniclethat in true yeshiva (religious teaching), Jews are“devoted to the Talmud to the exclusion of everythingelse”.[19] In the authoritative Jewish Encyclopedia it isstated: “Those who professed Judaism felt no doubt thatthe Talmud was equal to the Bible as a source of instruc-tion and decision in problems of religion”.[20] And itgoes on to say even more explicitly: “For the majority ofJews [the Talmud] is still the supreme authority inreligion”.[21]

Frankly, it beggars belief to read translations of theoriginal editions (rather than the sanitised editions) ofthe Talmud, in which, for example, it is said that a manshould thank God every day for not making him a Gen-tile, woman or slave;[22] that Jesus is being boiled inexcrement in hell;[23] that those who read the NT areanathematised;[24] and that Jews are advocated todestroy Christian literature.[25] And such destructionreally does happen.

For example, in accordance with the entreaties intheir Talmud, Israelis burned hundreds of New Testa-ment books on March 23rd 1980 under the auspices ofYad Le’akhim, a Jewish religious organisation subsi-dised by the Israeli Ministry of Religions.[26] Mostnon-Jews are entirely unaware of the venomous, ‘Jewishsupremacist’ nature of the Talmud and modern JewishOrthodoxy. The reason for this — as the Israeli writerDr. Israel Shahak shows in his revealing work “JewishHistory, Jewish Religion” — is because “the rabbisdeceptively eliminated or modified certain passages —but not the actual practices which are prescribed inthem”.[27]

However, in spite of these wayward and offensivedirections, the Talmud is held to be the high authority

of modern Judaism and the proper field of rabbinicalexposition. It is true that much of secular Jewry world-wide is not too interested in the Talmudic writings; butin zionistic Judaism there has been a resurgence of inter-est in recent years in these extra-biblical sources andthey have plainly fueled Israeli nationalism. There canbe no doubt that it is vigorously anti-Christian, upholdsJewish supremacism (racism), and undermines theauthority of the Bible.

The third way that modern Judaism does not upholdthe authority of Scripture is seen in the fact that

3. IT CHAMPIONS THE KABBALAH ASWHOLESOME SPIRITUAL PRACTICE

A great many Jewish people today uphold the Kab-balah as being a valid spiritual pathway. The Kabbalahis a ‘theosophical system’ which ‘has strong connectionswith gnosticism and also with magical practices’.[28] Itis also described as ‘the ancient esoteric Jewish mysticaltradition of philosophy containing strong elements of pan-theism and is akin to Neo-Platonism’.[29] In sectionone above we have already noted that the Jewish sect ofthe Essenes ‘became the forerunners of the Gnostics andof the Jewish Kabbalists’. So the Kabbalah is a Jewishform of Gnosticism. As the Jewish Encyclopedia fool-ishly boasts: “Gnosticism was Jewish in character longbefore it became Christian”.[30]

By the time of the first century, Judaism had degener-ated into occultism through the Essene cults in Israel,which had borrowed from Persian Zoroastrianism andother oriental mixtures. During the early Church period,this Jewish mysticism developed into the teachings of theKabbalah — a complex esoteric-magical system whichapplies occult symbolism to the Old Testament, inmuch the same way as do the Freemasons. The Kab-balah subsequently became the foundation stone of suchoccult organisations as the Rosicrucians and transcen-dental magic practitioners such as Eliphas Lévi

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30. The Jewish Encyclopedia, op.cit., Vo.III, p.458.29. Hutchinson Encyclopedia (Helicon Publishing), 1992, p.453.28. Macmillan Encyclopedia (Macmillan & Co.), 1986, p.659.27. Ibid., p.24.

26. Israel Shahak, Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years, Pluto Press, 1997, p.21. This important bookby Dr. Shahak — an ex-concentration camp Israeli Jew, and a former professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem who was bravelywilling to expose the lies of his fellow-countryman — should be read by all Christians who seek to understand the true evolution of thestate of Israel and the Jewish people today.

25. Shabbath 116a.24. Sanhedrin, 90a; Rosh Hashanah 17a.23. Gittin, 57a.22. Menahoth 43b-44a.21. Ibid.20. The Jewish Encyclopedia (Funk & Wagnalls, 19), Vol.XII, p.26.19. March 26th 1993.18. Erubin, 21b.

(1810-1875) and Aleister Crowley (1875-1947).The Kabbalah is now extremely popular among

many Jewish groups, with radio stations devoted to itspropaganda in Israel. As long ago as 1990, this writerrecalls seeing a mainstream book on the Kabbalahprominently displayed in the book department of W.H.Smith in Temple Fortune near Golders Green (a pre-dominantly Jewish area in London), the commendatorypreface of which was written by none other than thethen Prime Minister of Israel! That is an indication ofhow far the Kabbalah has become another arm ofJewish-Israeli nationalism.

Furthermore, the Kabbalah has become the voguereligion among the Hollywood glitterati in much thesame way as the Maharishi and Eastern mysticismbecame vogue for the Beatles and other celebrities in the1960s and 1970s. Today, the Kabbalah is the cult ofJewish ‘filmstars’ such as Barbara Streisand and JeffGoldblum. Even the pop idol Britney Spears hasbecome a full time devotee of the Kabbalah, thanks tothe tutelage of Kabbalah devotee, Madonna, which iswhat lies behind her new ‘spiritual’ image and her 1998CD “Ray of Light”. In a recent BBC interview,Madonna said that the great attraction of Kabbalah forher is that it teaches the same as Buddhism and othermystical religions: “that we each control our owndestiny”.[31] This is essentially “works religion” pos-ing as “higher knowledge spirituality”, as is the casewith all forms of mysticism/gnosticism. On “The Kab-balah Web Page” on the Internet, the Kabbalah isdescribed in the following terms:

1. The essence of religion is in the reaching bymankind of the highest possible level ofdevelopment. This should be done in a good andpainless way, not by suffering.

2. The desired goal - reaching this highest level(depending on the amount of work the person hasdone on himself) is a possibility that exists in ourworld!

3. Religion has been given to us not as a means ofpleasure and benefit. It is rather a guide showing usthe ways for self-improvement.

“A guide to self-improvement”? We see here that theKabbalah is yet another aspect of the false salvation-by-works religion of Judaism, the same religion as that ofthe Pharisees whom Jesus confronted, and from whichSaul of Tarsus was saved (Rom.9:31-32; 10:3). Howfallen human beings love to wallow in works-religion,

seeking to establish their own righteousness, instead ofsubmitting to the fact that true religion means receiving“the righteousness of God” which has been revealed inthe Gospel of Christ (Rom.1:17-18). And for thosewho do not like their works religion to be too pedestrianand commonplace, in these New Age times they comein an esoteric wrapper posing as a mystery religion, suchas the Kabbalah.

Many people will not realise that the so-called “Starof David” — the Jewish symbol portrayed on the Israeliflag, as above — is derived from the occult-gnosticinspired Kabbalah. As the 1998 edition of the Encyclo-pedia Britannica explains:

“The term Magen David, which in Jewish lit-urgy signifies God as the protector (shield) ofDavid, gained currency among medieval Jewishmystics, who attached magical powers to KingDavid’s shield just as earlier (non-Jewish) magicaltraditions had referred to the five-pointed star asthe ‘Seal of Solomon’. Kabbalists popularized theuse of the symbol as a protection against evil spirits.The Jewish community of Prague was the first touse the Star of David as its official symbol, andfrom the 17th century on, the six-pointed starbecame the official seal of many Jewish communi-ties and a general sign of Judaism, though it has nobiblical or Talmudic authority. The star wasalmost universally adopted by Jews in the 19th-century as a striking and simple emblem of Judaismin imitation of the cross of Christianity”.[32]

Jewish magic — in common with other occult

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Originally designed as an occult symbol,the dwID; ÷g«m ; or so-called “Shield of David”is now used as a symbol of Judaism andthe emblem of the modern nation of Israel.

32. Encyclopaedia Britannica CD 98, Article on “The Star of David”.31. BBC World Service news programme, 0500hrs, Monday 16th March 1998.

traditions — has always used five and six-pointed stars(pentagrams and hexagrams) in its rituals and symbols.As the Encyclopedia Britannica states about the six-pointed “Star of David”:

“The symbol — which historically was not lim-ited to use by Jews — originated in antiquity,when, side by side with the five-pointed star, itserved as a magical sign or as a decoration”.[33]

The fact that modern Israel has borrowed its chosenemblem from the ritual designs of heathen transcenden-tal magic is hard to square with the Lord’s command-ment to His covenant people Israel in the Bible aboutthe need to be separated from the ways of the heathennations: “When you come into the land which theLORD your God is giving you, you shall not learn tofollow the abominations of those nations” (Deut.18:9).

Moreover, it is surely a great irony that the five andsix-pointed stars and the Swastika (as used by theoccult-influenced Nazi Germany) were all originallyoccult symbols used in magic and can plainly be seen inHindu designs and decorations. When we realise thatthe modern state of Israel has nothing whatsoever to dowith the theocratic nation founded by Jehovah in theBible, then it becomes easier to understand that bothNazi Germany and modern Israel have their roots in theoccult and in political cabals.

Above is the five-pointed star (pentagram) used inthe Kabbalah and other occult traditions. Here we see itborrowed by the occult-gnostic sect of the Rosicruciansand “impaled” on their cross surrounded by fourroses.[34]

That the Jewish “Star of David” has its roots inmedieval occult tradition and not in the Old Testamentera is even admitted by today’s Jewish rabbis. In an arti-cle on the star, Rabbi Scheinerman states:

“It further appears that the hexagram and penta-gram were used interchangeably until this period,and then the six-pointed star gained favor, as it wasassociated with the notion of a "shield" of God andtaken to have magical powers when used as anamulet. From the 14th century through the 18thcentury, the terms ‘shield of David’ and ‘seal ofSolomon’ were used in magical texts indiscrimi-nately though the hexagram ascended in popularityas the pentagram diminished in popularity. It is inthis context that the Prague Jewish communitychose to use the hexagram as its symbol when KingCharles IV granted them the privilege of havingtheir own flag in 1354”.[35]

Thus, the six-pointed “Star of David” actually hadnothing to do with King David, except as an inventionof freemasons and their occult understanding of the“Seal of Solomon” which is a six-pointed star consistingof two inverse triangles.

Modern Judaism and Israelite Zionism cannot beviewed outside of the influence of Jewish gnosticism andoccultism as contained in the Kabbalah. We can see,therefore, that modern Judaism is not really governed byHoly Scripture, and does not maintain the authority ofthe Bible, regardless of any hollow claims to have itsfoundations in the Old Testament. That is what charac-terises modern Judaism and its foundations today. It isanti-Bible and it is thoroughly antichristian.

Having examined the hallmarks of modern Judaism,let us now turn to discover how the Bible identifies thereligion of Judaism.

II. THE HALLMARKS OF JUDAISM INTHE BIBLE

If Biblical Judaism is to be understood at all, it mustbe understood spiritually; and to be understood spiritu-ally, it must be understood from the information pro-vided not only in the Old Testament but also in theNew.

We have already quoted Augustine of Hippo in say-ing: “In the Old Testament the New is latent; in theNew Testament the Old is patent”. While the Old Tes-tament Scriptures can make a person “wise forsalvation” (2 Tim.3:15), they are incomplete withoutthe vital additional divine revelation afforded in theNew Testament. And in the New Testament we findthat the Jewish converts to Christ, such as Saul of

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35. See http://scheinerman.net/judaism/rituals/star.html .

34. Illustration taken from John Ferguson, An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Mysticism and Mystery Religions (Thames & Hudson, 1976),p.159. As Martin Luther’s personal seal or emblem was a rose and cross, it is likely that the Rosicrucians, in the sixteenth century, stoleLuther’s emblem and then — to add further insult to injury — impaled on it the Kabbalistic five-pointed star!

33. Ibid.

Tarsus (who became Paul the Apostle) and SimonPeter, are especially eager to explain the real identity ofa true Jew.

We have isolated four ways that a true Jew can beidentified from the pages of the Bible:

1. A TRUE JEW IS A PERSON OF ANY NATION,TRIBE OR LANGUAGE WHO HAS FAITH INCHRIST

The covenant promises made to Abraham pointedforward to the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, as theone true Seed of Abraham in whom redemption underthat covenant would find its consummation. When theApostle states: “Now to Abraham and his Seed werethe promises made” (Gal.3:16), he goes to the veryheart of the Abrahamic Covenant.

Abraham is shown in Scripture as believing thepromise of God that he would have numerous descen-dants. But wrapped up in that promise was the mightyfact that the blessing to all mankind would comethrough a special One of Abraham’s descendants.Therefore unless the covenant community of Israelitesreceives the Messiah, who was the highest expression ofthe Seed of Abraham, it will not experience the bring-ing to fruition of the promises made to the fathers in thatcovenant. The Jews had centuries of preparation fortheir Messiah, and the knowledge that He would be notonly their Messiah but also “a light to the Gentiles”(Isa.49:6). This was what lay behind Peter’s preachingto the Jews, when he said:

“All the prophets, from Samuel and those whofollow, as many as have spoken, have also foretoldthese days. You are sons of the prophets, and ofthe covenant which God made with our fathers,saying to Abraham, ‘And in your seed all the fami-lies of the earth shall be blessed.’”. (Acts 3:24-26)

The preaching of the Gospel to the Gentiles andtheir entry into the kingdom was not a “Plan B”enacted as an afterthought by the Lord when the Jewsdid not receive Him (as is actually believed by manytoday). Neither is the current preaching of the Gospelto the Gentiles some parenthetical sideline before theLord once more begins again to deal with the earthlynation Israel. The ingathering of converted Gentiles,along with that of converted Jews, is the main businessof the Gospel until the Second Advent of Christ toeffect the Final Judgement.

So we discover that the promise to Abraham finds itsultimate expression not in Jews according to the flesh butin all those who have faith in Christ. Therefore we findAbraham described as “the father of all those whobelieve” (Rom.4:11), plainly of both Jews and Gentiles.

“There is one God who will justify the circumcised[Jews] by faith and the uncircumcised [Gentiles] throughfaith” (Rom.3:30). So then, neither circumcision[being Jewish] nor uncircumcision [being a Gentile]makes any difference to potential for salvation in thisGospel Age (Gal.5:6; 6:15). What counts instead is“faith working through love” (Gal.5:6) and being “anew creation” (Gal.6:15), which are the fruits of spiri-tual regeneration and not physical ancestry. As theapostle John puts it:

“He came to His own, and His own did notreceive Him. But as many as received Him, even tothem He gave the right to become children of God,to those who believe in His name: who were born,not of blood [i.e. earthly ancestry], nor of the willof the flesh, nor of the will of man [i.e. human deci-sion], but of God” (Jn.1:11-13).

After all, even Abraham was an uncircumcised Gen-tile when he first believed, about which Paul makes agreat deal in Romans chapter 4. In fact, Abrahamcan more properly be called a Christian ratherthan a Jew (see John 8:56), as salvation in allages has only ever been through the finishedwork of the Lord Jesus Christ (1 Cor.10:1-4;Rom.4:16), prospectively in the Old Testament, retro-spectively in the New Testament. Therefore we can saywithout reservation that a true Jew today is not a personof a particular line of descent who says “next year inJerusalem” every Passover. A true Jew has always beena person from any nation, tribe or language who hasfaith in Christ, whether of Jewish or Gentile origin. Sofar as his Jewish credentials are concerned — being“circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of thetribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews”, etc. —Paul said that he counted them all as “dung” (A.V.),“rubbish” (NKJV), which are translations of the Greekword skubalon, skubalon, which literally means thedregs that you throw out to the dogs (Phil.3:4-9). AJew after the flesh who comes to Christ has no furtheruse for, or real interest in, these things because theyhave found their fulfilment in the Messiah. This is whywe say that a true Jew is a person of any nation, tribe orlanguage who has faith in Christ.

For this reason, Paul said: “So then those who are offaith [i.e. Jew or Gentile believers] are blessed withbelieving Abraham” (Gal.3:9). In other words, “If youare Christ’s [i.e. a believer of Jewish or Gentile origin],then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to thepromise” (Gal.3:29).

Abraham’s “seed” (descendants) today are thosewho have faith in Christ. How we need spiritual

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eyesight to understand these things! One of thegreat problems with the Jews has been their inability tounderstand things spiritually rather than corporeally orsensually. That is what has always constituted the differ-ence between the believing Jew and the unbelieving Jew.The unbelieving Jew put his store in an earthly land asthe ‘be-all and end-all’; whereas the believing Jew knewfor sure that there was a spiritual reality beyond theearthly type (Heb.11:8-10; 13-16). The true Jew hasalways been able to spiritualise where necessary. This iswhy we say that Judaism must be understood spirituallyto be understood at all. A true Jew is a person from anynation, tribe or tongue who has faith in Christ, whetherof Jewish or Gentile origin.

2. A TRUE JEW IS A PERSON WHO HAS BEENINWARDLY TRANSFORMED BY THE POWER OFGOD

The great covenant sign of the Old Testament erawas circumcision. All male natural descendants ofAbraham would be physically circumcised, but onlythose who were truly saved would understand the fullsignificance of the rite. As baptism in the New Cove-nant signifies the washing clean from sin which comesthrough regeneration, so circumcision was symbolic ofthe cutting off of sin and casting of it away. Behind theoutward rite of circumcision there lay a deeper spiritualmeaning known only to the saved. Regardless of theoutward rite of circumcision, a Jew had to be convertedfor that circumcision to have any spiritual meaning inhis life. So we find that when Moses said to the childrenof Israel:

“When...you return to the LORD your God andobey His voice, according to all that I commandyou today, you and your children, with all yourheart and with all your soul...” (Deut.30:2)

he was referring to repentance and conversion, ulti-mately in the Gospel Age. Even the Jewish rabbi MosesMaimonides (1135-1204) understood it to refer to thetime of the Messiah. However, rather than being apromise of release from earthly captivity (as Maimoni-des and the Jews would erroneously believe), the fruit ofthat conversion which is given a few verses later inDeut.30:6 speaks of the fact that

“the LORD your God will circumcise your heartand the heart of your descendants, to love theLORD your God with all your heart and with allyour soul, that you may live” (Deut.30:6)

It is plainly referring to the spiritual work which takesplace in the heart of one who is a Jew after the flesh whothen comes to believe in the Messiah. And as a pro-found echo of this, the apostle Paul made an extraordi-nary statement which cuts right across standard Jewishteaching and that of a great many professing Christianstoday, who seem to misunderstand the true meaning ofJudaism. For Paul said:

“He is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor iscircumcision that which is outward in the flesh; buthe is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcisionis that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter;whose praise is not from men but from God”(Rom.2:28-29)

True circumcision is not a mere outward ordinancebut a permanent putting away of sin from the inner life.This is a work which can only be done by God throughJesus Christ the Mediator. This is yet another aspect ofthe fact that Judaism must be understood spiritually tobe understood at all. The many misunderstandingsabout Judaism and Israel have arisen precisely becauseof a failure at this point.[36]

One of the great problems with the Jews has beentheir inability to understand things spiritually ratherthan physically or sensually. Their literalism obscurestheir spirituality and their only sojourn into spiritualityinvolves the pathway of mysticism, which is false spiritu-ality. It is for this reason that pious Jews wear phylacter-ies (little black boxes containing scrolls of Scripture) onthe head and arm. In this way, they are applying acrassly literal interpretation of God’s word and therebygrossly misunderstanding Deut.11:18, which refers tothe exact opposite of an externalised placement of writ-ten Scripture on the human body:

“Therefore you shall lay up these words of minein your heart and in your soul, and bind themas a sign on your hand, and they shall be as front-lets between your eyes.”

This is referring to the internalisation of the spiritual

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36. One can say the same thing in reference to the entire Bible and its interpretation by Christians. Many Christians today seem to haveinherited this inherent Jewish inability to interpret Scripture spiritually. In fact, the more a Christian reveres Israel today, the more likely heor she will have a literal rather than a spiritual understanding of Scripture.

Without understanding the Bible spiritually where it needs to be so understood, one will be left high and dry with a two-dimensionalprosaic interpretation which castrates the true meaning of the message of God. Nowhere has this been more apparent than in the moderninterpretations of the Bible’s teaching on the time of the end. Although fundamentalists claim that one must have a literal interpretation ofthe Bible in order to be orthodox, they have taken their literalism too far and overlooked the need for a spiritual understanding of Scrip-ture where it is called for.

truth in God’s Word, as David well understood: “Yourword I have hidden in my heart, That I might not sinagainst You!” (Psa.119:11), and Paul reiterated whenhe said: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in allwisdom...” (Col.3:16). One can attach as many scrollson one’s body as one wants but it will not be of anyspiritual significance whatsoever.

Ultimately, Paul’s dictum in Rom.2:28-29 meansthat a true Jew is a converted person who, in the NewCovenant era would recognise Christ as his Saviour.Therefore, since the advent of Christ we can say that atrue Jew is a member of the Christian Church who is ofeither Jewish or Gentile background. Such have beencircumcised in the heart and now understand the truemeaning of the outward rite. As Paul exclaims: “Weare the circumcision who worship God in the Spirit,rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in theflesh” (Phil.3:3). The “we” to whom he is referring are“all the saints in Christ Jesus” at the church in Philippito whom he wrote his letter (Phil.1:1), coupled withhimself.

This is surely the essence of the Lord Jesus’s conten-tion with the church at Smyrna in Rev.2:9: “I know theblasphemy of those who say they are Jews and are not,but are a synagogue of Satan”. Jesus graphically callssuch Jews a “synagogue of Satan”. What would thepolitically correct lobby make of that today? Was theLord Himself an “anti-Semite”, or a “racist”, or a“spiritual Nazi”? Not at all! He was a Man of truthwho spoke plainly the words which people needed tohear and was not intimidated by threats from Jewishpeople; and neither would he be intimidated by theimmature politically correct autocrats today who con-tinually attempt to suppress any open discussion ofimportant controversial issues.

Disbelief in Christ is a work of Satan. For it is theGod of this world (i.e. the devil) who has blinded theminds of unbelievers (2 Cor.4:3-4, which refers primar-ily to Jewish unbelievers). Those who “say they are Jewsand are not” and who are “a synagogue of Satan” arethose Jews who claim their Judaism lies in their line ofdescent, who have confidence in the flesh. These willhave been Jewish people outwardly who were persecut-ing the Christians at Smyrna. However, although theywould have identified themselves as Jews, in reality theywere not true Jews who are inwardly changed — newcreations who would follow Christ as their Messiah nowthat He has come. They say they are Jews, but they can-not be so because they are not born again.

This was the rabbi Nicodemus’s problem. Look athis conversation with the Lord Jesus in the third chapterof John’s Gospel. Jesus told him that he must be “born

again” if he was to be part of the kingdom of God(Jn.3:3, 5). Nicodemus, being at that time stuck in theearthly, sensual way of Jewish thinking, could only con-ceive of Jesus’s words as referring to another physicalbirth (Jn.3:4, 9). Jesus even had to upbraid him withthe rebuke: “Are you the teacher of Israel, and do notknow these things?” (Jn.3:10). It is most likely thatNicodemus was eventually fully converted (cf. Jn.7:50;19:39); but at this time he was merely a seeker who saidhe was a Jew but in reality was not — one who onlyperceived spiritual truth as a religious husk, not having acircumcised heart of his own. A real Jew perceives thespiritual truth behind God’s words and acts on them.

And this was always the problem with the Jews fromthe very beginning: an inability to understand thingsspiritually rather than physically or sensually. That iswhat has always constituted the difference between thebelieving Jew and the unbelieving Jew. This is why weread that “the Jews therefore quarrelled among them-selves, saying, ‘How can this Man give us His flesh toeat?’” (Jn.6:52) after Jesus had said that he was the liv-ing bread who had come down from heaven whom theymust eat. This pathological inability to see the spiritualmeaning behind the words of the Lord — instead ofindulging in a crass literalistic interpretation — hasbeen the real Jewish problem to this very day. “He is nota Jew who is one outwardly...but he is a Jew who is oneinwardly...in the Spirit”.

We conclude that genuine biblical Judaism involvesreligion which comes from within, from the heart, ratherthan being imposed from without. That is the essence oftrue religion. A true Jew is a person who has beeninwardly transformed by the power of God and therebyperceives the truth about Jesus Christ in the Scriptures.

A third hallmark of biblical Judaism is seen in thefact that

3. A TRUE JEW IS, AND ONLY EVER HAS BEEN,ONE OF A SMALL REMNANT OUT OF THENATION OF ISRAEL

At the beginning of the section concerning Israel inhis letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul reveals that

“they are not all Israel who are of Israel, nor arethey all children because they are the seed of Abra-ham”. (Rom.9:6-7)

This needs to be properly understood as it is vital toour comprehending the true meaning of Judiasm andIsrael. What these verses tell us is that we have to differ-entiate between Israel as the nation-state and those whoare genuine Jews.

The nation-state of Israel was set up by God on thebasis of the twelve tribes of Jacob and was intended to

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serve a singular divine purpose until Christ came(Gal.3:19-29). Once the promised Seed had come —referred to by Paul in Gal.3:19, and plainly meaningChrist, as prophesied in Gen.3:15 — the Old Cove-nant nation of Israel’s national and legal status nolonger had any further purpose.

But always within the national body had been theremnant of true Jews who were genuine believers, look-ing forward to the Messiah, who would be the “Conso-lation of Israel”. The Saul/David axis was a classicillustration of this dichotomy between the true Jewishbeliever and the carnal professor who merely shelteredunder the covenant blessings but had no real spiritualinterest. Saul was primarily zealous for Israel and forhimself, but David was zealous for the Lord and Histrue spiritual purpose.

“They are not all Israel who are of Israel”. Not everyJewish person by descent was part of the true Israel, thebelieving people of God. Plainly, there was the “Houseof Jacob, who are called by the name of Israel, And havecome forth from the wellsprings of Judah; who swear bythe name of the LORD”. (Isa.48:1)

Yes, there was that national husk who were called“by the name of Israel” — it was nominally Israel. Andthey certainly “made mention of the God of Israel”(Isa.48:1) with their mouths. But the problem was thatin spite of all those external realities, their use of thename Israel and their mention of God was “not in truthor in righteousness”, as the prophet showed (Isa.48:1).They certainly “call themselves after the holy city, andlean on the God of Israel” (Isa.48:2), but sheltering inexternal, earthly blessings never was enough to save orlead to a sanctified life (cf. Psa.51:16-17).

However, among those external covenant people ofGod, there was always a small remnant of believing peo-ple — true Jews, who knew the spiritual realities whichlay behind the outer husk of Exodus deliverances, wil-derness wanderings, the provision of manna, animal sac-rifices, ritual washings, and promised lands. In theexperience of this remnant, the Mosaic law code drovethem not into increasingly abstruse legalism (as it laterdid with the lawyers, Scribes and Pharisees) but intothe arms of their Saviour, the Rock of their Salvation,the Anointed One. But the rest of Israel — the unbe-lieving majority — was an abomination to the Lord. AsIsaiah puts it:

“Unless the LORD of hosts had left to us a verysmall remnant, we would have become like Sodom,We would have been made like Gomorrah”(Isa.1:9-10).

It was only the godly remnant which ensured the

continued preservation of Israel as a nation. “They arenot all Israel who are of Israel”. And neither have theyever been. Of course, even the unspiritual majority ofthe Israelites always imagined that they were also thetrue Israel. They based that solely on their family treebeing traced back to Abraham. But when John theBaptist “saw many of the Pharisees and Sadduceescoming to his baptism”, he said to them:

“Brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee fromthe wrath to come? Therefore bear fruits worthy ofrepentance, and do not think to say to yourselves,‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I say to youthat God is able to raise up children to Abrahamfrom these stones”. (Mt.3:7-9)

“They are not all Israel who are of Israel”. The LordJesus also used this double-reference for Israel veryclearly in a conversation with the Pharisees:

“I know that you are Abraham’s descendants,but you seek to kill Me, because My word has noplace in you. I speak what I have seen with MyFather, and you do what you have seen with yourfather. They answered and said to Him, “Abra-ham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you wereAbraham’s children, you would do the works ofAbraham. But now you seek to kill Me, a Manwho has told you the truth which I heard fromGod. Abraham did not do this. You do the deedsof your father [i.e. the devil]”. (Jn.8:37-41)

Do you see what the Lord is saying here? He firstsays that He knows that they are “Abraham’s descen-dants”. That much He grants. But he then says: “If youwere Abraham’s children, you would do the works ofAbraham”. Is He contradicting Himself? How can theybe Abraham’s descendants and yet not be his children?The answer is that he is using the same term in differentways. Just as Paul uses the term “Israel” in two differentways to describe fleshly Israel and spiritual Israel(Rom.9:6), so the Lord Jesus does the same here. Heknows that they are Abraham’s descendants accordingto the flesh; but from a spiritual standpoint they are notAbraham’s children. “They are not all Israel who are ofIsrael”.

So we also find the Lord Jesus recognising that differ-ence exemplified in Nathanael as he walked towardsHim. He said: “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom isno guile!” (Jn.1:47). An Israelite indeed! A REALIsraelite. A true Jew; who is one inwardly and notmerely dependent on external trappings or physicaldescent.

And this is the essence of the biblical understandingof Judaism. A true Jew is, and only ever has been, one

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of a small remnant out of the nation of Israel. As Paulputs it: “What then? Israel has not obtained what itseeks; but the elect have obtained it, and the rest wereblinded” (Rom.11:7). And therein lies the distinctionwhich must be made. It makes no difference being cir-cumcised, being of Israel according to the flesh, being adescendant of a tribe of Israel. Jewishness must beunderstood spiritually to be understood at all. Even ifyou could trace your genealogy back to Levi, Asher,Zebulun, Benjamin or Judah or whoever, that wouldmerely be what Paul calls an “endless genealogy” of thesort over which the Jews have always been so ready todispute (1 Tim.1:4). Such a genealogy is called by him“endless” because it goes nowhere of any importancetoday. The only meaningful genealogy now is the onetraced at the beginning of the Gospels which leads tothe Lord Jesus Christ, the epitome of the true Seed ofAbraham. For “all the promises of God in Him are Yes,and in Him Amen” (2 Cor.1:20). It is in Jesus Christthat God fulfilled the promise to Abraham that in hisseed all nations of the earth would be blessed. All cove-nant promises and blessings converge in Him. Withoutreceiving Him, there can be no fulfilment of the spiritualpromises made to the fathers in the old covenant.

If there is one lesson the neo-Judaisers need to learn itis that “they are not all Israel who are of Israel”. Eventhe psalmist, Asaph, knew this truth. When he said“Truly God is good to Israel”, he immediately qualifiedthat by saying “to such as are pure in heart” (Psa.73:1).“They are not all Israel who are of Israel”.

A true Jew is, and only ever has been, one of a smallremnant out of the nation of Israel.

Another hallmark of Judaism in the Bible is that

4. A TRUE JEW IS ONE WHO HAS MADE THETRANSITION FROM THE OLD COVENANTWITH OLD TESTAMENT ISRAEL TO THE NEWCOVENANT IN CHRIST

In spite of the fact that Israel broke the covenantwhich the Lord made with them, He promised a newcovenant which would be on a completely differentbasis. We find this most clearly laid out inJer.31:31-34:

“Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD,when I will make a new covenant with the house ofIsrael and with the house of Judah — not accord-ing to the covenant that I made with their fathers inthe day that I took them by the hand to lead themout of the land of Egypt, My covenant which theybroke, though I was a husband to them, says theLORD. But this is the covenant that I will make

with the house of Israel after those days, says theLORD: I will put My law in their minds, and writeit on their hearts; and I will be their God, and theyshall be My people. No more shall every man teachhis neighbour, and every man his brother, saying,‘Know the LORD,’ for they all shall know Me,from the least of them to the greatest of them, saysthe LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, andtheir sin I will remember no more”.

When the Lord says “after those days” (v.33) He isreferring to the time when the exile to Babylon is ended.He repeats this same promise in Jer.32:37-40:

“Behold, I will gather them out of all countrieswhere I have driven them in My anger, in My fury,and in great wrath; I will bring them back to thisplace, and I will cause them to dwell safely. Theyshall be My people, and I will be their God; then Iwill give them one heart and one way, that theymay fear Me forever, for the good of them and theirchildren after them. And I will make an everlastingcovenant with them, that I will not turn away fromdoing them good; but I will put My fear in theirhearts so that they will not depart from Me”.

Now those who uphold the notion that Israel is stillthe chosen nation of God today claim that this “newcovenant” mentioned in Jeremiah 31 and 32 has not yetbeen fulfilled. As one such publication puts it: “Sincesuch a revival has never occurred in Israel’s history, thisevent is yet to happen”.[37] But this is to misunder-stand the plain teaching of Scripture. The revival whichthat writer believes “has never occurred in Israel’s his-tory” most certainly did happen, but because it did notconform to the Jewish manner of thinking, both the Jewsand the neo-Judaisers have missed it entirely. It hap-pened with the coming of Christ — initiated in theApostles and the few others who at first believed, butwas then compounded at Pentecost when three thou-sand souls were saved out of Israel, with many more tofollow (e.g. Acts 4:4).

Moreover, the diligent student of Scripture will dis-cover in the Letter to the Hebrews that this “new cove-nant” in Jeremiah — which is quoted in full in Heb.8— is the same as the one established through the bloodof the Lord Jesus Christ (Heb.7:22; 8:7-13; 10:11-22;12:24; 13:20-21; cf. Mt.26:28). Please read thesetexts, by which the myths and fables of the neo-Judaiserswill surely be dissolved. There is only one Mediator ofthe “new covenant” of which Jeremiah speaks, and thatis the Lord Jesus Christ who has already come andannounced that covenant to both Jews and Gentiles

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37. Keith Parker, Is the Church the New Israel? A Biblical Analysis of the Teachings of ‘Replacement Theology’ (Prayer for Israel).

alike at His first coming.We see here once more how Jewishness must be

understood spiritually to be understood at all. When theWord says that the Lord will make a new covenant withthe house of Israel and the house of Judah, this finds itsfulfilment in believers rather than anyone with a physicaldescent from the twelve tribes. It is ratified in those whoare God’s people spiritually, whose sins are covered bythe blood of Christ, who have the indwelling HolySpirit — who don’t need mere external commands toknow the Lord but who actually have God’s law in theirminds and written on their hearts. After quotingJer.31:31-34, Heb.8:13 states:

“In that He [the Lord] says, “A new covenant,”He has made the first obsolete. Now what isbecoming obsolete and growing old is ready to van-ish away”.

This letter to the Hebrews was written shortly beforethe destruction of Jerusalem and the temple — whichwas God’s way of demonstrating that the Old Covenanthad been brought to a shattering conclusion. In reality,it had ceased the moment Christ had cried out: “Tete-lestai!” (“It is finished!” or “It has beenaccomplished!”). There are many aspects to that mightyWord from our Saviour on the Cross, but surely one ofthe central facets is a powerful statement that the entireMosaic economy was dissolved in order to make way fora better hope — the real hope of Israel in the finishedwork of Christ.

And for about another forty years there was a strangeinterim, transitional period during which temple wor-ship continued and Jews converted to Christ would stillhonour the Jewish Sabbath on the Saturday as well asassembling together on Sunday — the day of theLord’s resurrection. What happened in AD.70 wastherefore a powerful way for the Lord to remove visiblyevery last vestige of the Old Covenant. A “New Israel”based on a New Covenant was in the process of beingestablished. As Peter said to the Jews of Asia who hadcome to Christ:

“You are a chosen generation, a royal priest-hood, a holy nation, His own special people,that you may proclaim the praises of Him whocalled you out of darkness into His marvellouslight; who once were not a people but are now thepeople of God” (1 Pet.2:9-10).

This is virtually a restatement of that Old Covenantsaying in Ex.19:5-6:

“Now therefore, if you will indeed obey Myvoice and keep My covenant, then you shall be aspecial treasure to Me above all people; for all the

earth is Mine. And you shall be to Me a king-dom of priests and a holy nation.”

So there can be no purpose whatsoever in the Jewsadhering today to what is an “obsolete” covenant(Heb.8:13). We have already stated earlier that

“it is in Jesus Christ that God fulfilled the prom-ise to Abraham that in his seed all nations of theearth would be blessed — that all covenant prom-ises and blessings converge in Him and that with-out receiving Him, there can be no fulfilment of thespiritual promises made to the fathers in thecovenant”.

This is why the Lord Jesus is plainly referred to as“the Messenger of the Covenant”:

“Behold, I send My messenger, And he willprepare the way before Me. And the LORD, whomyou seek, will suddenly come to His temple, eventhe Messenger of the covenant, In whom youdelight. Behold, He is coming, says the LORD ofhosts” (Mal.3:1).

Throughout the entire O.T. era, from the judgementdelivered by the Lord after the Fall, the promise con-cerning the seed of the woman was the focus of godlyexpectation. And that godly expectation homed in onthe Messiah when He came in the fullness of time.Genuinely pious Jews at the time of the Incarnation ofChrist knew very well that He was the fulfilment of thispromise of a new covenant. That is the significance ofthe words of John the Baptist’s father, Zacharias, whenhe prophesied:

“Blessed is the LORD God of Israel, For He hasvisited and redeemed His people, And has raisedup a horn of salvation for us In the house of Hisservant David, as He spoke by the mouth of Hisholy prophets, Who have been since the worldbegan, that we should be saved from our enemiesand from the hand of all who hate us, to performthe mercy promised to our fathers and to rememberHis holy covenant, the oath which He swore to ourfather Abraham: to grant us that we, being deliv-ered from the hand of our enemies, might serveHim without fear, in holiness and righteousnessbefore Him all the days of our life”. (Lk.1:68-75)

That is why it is so important to realise that a trueJew is one who has made the transition from the OldCovenant to the New Covenant in Christ. The fleshly,unspiritual Jews who were looking for a crass earthlykingdom under an earthly king rejected their Messiahwhen He came; and that rejection has continued to thisday. But the true spiritual Jews recognised the Lord

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Jesus as the real “hope of Israel”, as the fulfilment of allthese O.T. prophecies concerning the covenant. And sowe find that Israel’s salvation lies not in any earthly res-toration to the land but in the new covenant blood ofChrist:

“And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written:‘The Deliverer will come out of Zion, and He willturn away ungodliness from Jacob; for this is Mycovenant with them, when I take away their sins’.”(Rom.11:26-27).[38]

The “all Israel” who are “saved” is spiritual Israelrather than fleshly, and their salvation is effectedthrough the first coming of Christ — the Deliverer whocomes out of Zion — and is based on the substitution-ary atonement in the blood of the New Covenant ratherthan any restoration to the land. This is why the Scrip-ture says elsewhere:

“Now [Christ] has obtained a more excellentministry, inasmuch as He is also Mediator of a bet-ter covenant, which was established on betterpromises” (Heb.8:4).

The children of Israel broke the Old Covenant, for-feited any rights to it, and instead the Lord graciouslyprovided a New Covenant which they should haveaccepted (Jer.31:31; Lk.22:20; Heb.8:8). Thereforethere is no covenant which can be claimed by Jewstoday other than this New Covenant in Christ. For Heis the fulfilment of the promise at the heart of God’scovenant: “For all the promises of God in Him are Yes,and in Him Amen” (2 Cor.1:20). Therefore the onewho wishes to adhere to the Judaism of the Bible willabandon the external trappings of Judaism, reject thebeggarly elements of ceremonial law, and insteadembrace the New Covenant in the blood of Christ.

* * * * * * *Having examined modern Judaism and compared it

with the spiritual meaning of Judaism in the Bible, onecan only conclude that modern Judaism, biblicallyunderstood, is a false religion and should be treated assuch. By this we do not mean that its adherents shouldbe treated with disparagement, but we merely wish todraw attention to the acute need for evangelism amongstJews, as amongst any other false religion.

Those who continue to call themselves Jewish todaybut who do not follow the Lord Jesus Christ andthereby not become part of His Church should not betreated as if they were from some special class of humanbeing who, despite their disobedience, are still under thefavour of God. Of all people, they need to hear and

believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ.God neither ordained nor created modern Judaism,

which must not be confused with the religion which wasordained and created by God as recorded in the OldTestament. Modern Judaism came into being after thereturn from exile in Babylon. It was the religion con-fronted head-on by the Lord Jesus during His earthlyministry. It is a false religion — a mark of apostasy fromGod’s ordained way.

So modern Judaism is a false religion. But, you maysay, “what if a Jew today follows the Old TestamentScripture to the letter and is very orthodox?” Actually,that is impossible, for the following reasons: 1) There isno temple at which to sacrifice; 2) The priesthood hasbeen abolished; and, 3) the entire ceremonial Leviticalcode was concluded on the Cross. In fact we discoverthat all the constituents of the Old Covenant economyfind their fullness in Christ. If people were to readRom.4; Rom.9 – 11; Gal.3 & 4; Heb.7-10 with theeyes of faith none of these problems would arise. Howimportant it is to understand these things in order toensure that we evangelise in a God-honouring manner.

Therefore, having been scattered around the world as“a desolation, an astonishment, a hissing, and a curse”(Jer.25:18) — in fulfilment of the awesome covenantcurse in Deut.28:15 & 64 and what they brought ontheir own heads in saying “His blood be on us and onour children” (Matt.27:25) — the hope of salvation forany Jew today lies only in obedience to the Gospel ofJesus Christ:

Rom.10:16-17: “But they have not all obeyedthe gospel. For Isaiah says, ‘LORD, who hasbelieved our report?’ So then faith comes by hear-ing, and hearing by the word of God”.

Therefore, we must conclude that the only true Jew inbiblical terms today is one who has made the transitionto Christ — who is the only “hope of Israel”, as weshall discover in the next part of our survey.

Having now considered Judaism at the personal,spiritual level — identifying what is a true Jew and con-trasting this with the Judaism of today — we now turnto look at Judaism on a corporate level, concentrating onthe array of claims made by many professing Christiansabout the earthly nation Israel.

Before opening this up, it is important to note that weshould not be influenced by the fact that so many peopleadhere to the ideas about Judaism and Israel with whichwe are taking issue here. The fact that vast multitudes ofprofessing Christians believe a certain teaching to beright — no matter how passionately they may believe it

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38. We will be dealing with the eleventh chapter of Paul’s Letter to the Romans more fully later in this paper.

— does not prove that the teaching itself is right. Mil-lions of sincere, devout Christians believe much of thehype about Israel and Judaism today, and these teach-ings have found their way into a broad section ofrespectable Bible commentaries, in spite of the widerange of written material which adequately refutes them.Does the widespread nature of such teachings give themauthenticity? Of course not. The sheer number of pro-fessing Christians who believe a matter to be true is nopointer to its accuracy.

In the early years of the Church, Athanasius, a gentledeacon from Alexandria stood up against the prevailingheresy of Arianism, which denied the Trinity and thedeity of Christ. As a result of this he became known asAthanasius Contra Mundum (“Athanasius against theworld”) — a reference to the fact that it was just one lit-tle man against the multitudes — and was banishedfrom his country five times while a “contract was put outon him” for his assassination. But history eventuallybore witness to the fact — as it has done so often —that the multitudes were wrong and Athanasius wasright. It is fair to say (from a human standpoint) that ifAthanasius had not resisted the beliefs of the majority ofprofessing Christians at that time, there would be noGospel to preach today. Christian truth would have per-ished. So much for the majority view at any time in theChristian Church! Truth is never authenticated by thenumber of people who adhere to it.

A mighty fact of divine sovereignty is that heresiesand false belief systems regularly appear in the churchesin order to spark the Body of Christ into life and tobring the truth sharply into focus (1 Cor.l 1:19; cf. 1Jn.2:18-20). And then the Lord always raises up teach-ers who will successfully oppose those who bury thistruth behind the alluring skirts of falsehood. Do not for-get that at virtually every stage in Church history therehave been far more professing Christians who wouldrather adhere to the false, complex, often sensationalman-made systems of their choice than those who holdto the simple truths of the Scriptures.

As William of Ockham (1285-1347) put it:

“In matters of faith and science I am moreimpressed by one evident reason or by one authori-tative passage of Holy Scripture correctly under-stood than by the chorus of mankind. I am notashamed to be convinced of truth. In fact, to havetruth victorious over me I consider the most usefulthing for me. But I never want to be defeated bythe multitude. It may, indeed, be read in the sacredutterances that the multitude, as a rule, errs, andthat very often one solitary man may put all the restto flight”.

An insatiable thirst for the truth has never had a veryhigh premium in the Christian churches at large. Hold-ing to truth is uncomfortable, and reaching it requiresstudy beyond what is merely superficial; but most pro-fessing Christians want to be comfortable and appear toprefer superficiality. When Paul spoke of the time thatpeople in the churches would heap up to themselvesfalse teachers because they have ears which are just itch-ing to hear them (2 Tim.4:3) — although he couldhave been referring to the prevailing situation in almostany era of the Church — surely the plethora of crazyteachings of the present day take some beating.

So let us not be overawed by the large numbers ofpeople who may believe something. This is no barome-ter of truth, as even the most false of religions havealways had a massive following, while those who arefaithful are referred to in Scripture as a ‘remnant’.

Having now established how Scripture defines a trueJew, in comparison with “those who say they are Jewsand are not”, let us now examine the main claims thatare made about the nation-state of Israel today.

III. ANALYSING SOME COMMON CLAIMSABOUT ISRAEL AND JUDAISM

Claim No.1: “The Establishment of the Middle-

Eastern Nation-State of Israel Today is a Fulfilment

of Bible Prophecy”

This claim is based primarily on two erroneous ideas.First, that the land promise to Abraham was never ful-filled in the Old Testament era and is therefore out-standing, awaiting its full accomplishment, of which thepresent Israeli state is the ‘first instalment’. The seconderroneous idea is that the O.T. prophecies whichappear to speak of the restoration of the nation Israel toa land inheritance still await fulfilment. To these claims,we respond:

1. THE LAND PROMISE WAS FULFILLED IN THEOLD TESTAMENT ERA

One of the principal claims made from certain quar-ters is that the land promise to Abraham was never ful-filled during the Old Testament period. But the wordof God says otherwise. Two promises which God madeto Abraham are a multiplicity of descendants and a por-tion of land which is described in clear terms. We seethese clearly laid out in two Bible texts:

“Blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I willmultiply your descendants as the stars of theheaven and as the sand which is on the sea-shore”. (Gen.22:17)

“The LORD made a covenant with Abram,

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saying: “To your descendants I have given thisland, from the river of Egypt to the greatriver, the River Euphrates”. (Gen.15:18)

The key words are in bold text. However, these areno longer awaiting fulfilment, for during the reign ofSolomon, we find a statement made which virtually mir-rors the language used in Genesis concerning thesepromises. In 1 Kings 4:20-21 we read:

“Judah and Israel were as numerous as thesand by the sea in multitude, eating anddrinking and rejoicing. So Solomon reigned overall kingdoms from the River to the land ofthe Philistines, as far as the border ofEgypt.”

This is precisely the same territory referred to inGod’s promise to Abraham (cf. 2 Chron.9:26). Andafter the return from exile, the Levites and others raisedup a mighty prayer to the Lord in which they said:

“You are the LORD God, Who chose Abram,And brought him out of Ur of the Chaldeans,And gave him the name Abraham; You found hisheart faithful before You, And made a covenantwith him to give the land of the Canaanites, theHittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites,and the Girgashites — to give it to hisdescendants”. (Neh.9:7-8)

But they were in no doubt about the outcome. Unlikethe confused neo-Judaisers of today, they were not wait-ing for a future fulfilment of this land promise, for theyimmediately said: “You have performed Your words, forYou are righteous” (Neh.9:8). As the psalmist alsoexclaims:

“He remembered His holy promise, and Abra-ham His servant. He brought out His people withjoy, His chosen ones with gladness. He gavethem the lands of the Gentiles, And theyinherited the labour of the nations”.(Psa.105:42-44).

However, another aspect of this land promise is thefact that it is said to have been given to Israel “forever”.In support of this, the modern Judaisers often quoteGen.13:14-15:

And the LORD said to Abram, after Lot hadseparated from him: “Lift your eyes now and lookfrom the place where you are—northward, south-ward, eastward, and westward; for all the landwhich you see I give to you and your descendantsforever.

They claim that because the text says “forever”therefore that must still apply today and should thus be

forcibly taken back. They say that one must distinguishbetween the covenant made with Abraham and theMosaic covenant. The Mosaic covenant, they say, wastemporary and fulfilled in Christ; whereas the covenantwith Abraham involving the land was spoken of as an“everlasting covenant” (Gen.13:14-15; 17:7,19), thusit must still be in force.

However, once one understands the symbolic natureof so many Old Covenant promises, then the “forever-ness” of the land promise becomes clear. Plainly, apatch of geographical territory cannot be given foreverbecause we know from elsewhere in Scripture that theearth will come under the fire of judgement and bedestroyed (2 Pet.3:10). Consequently, there will be nophysical land left to own forever.

However, the “forever” bit can be plainly under-stood when one sees that the Promised Land was onlyever a “type” — a symbol of heaven, which is eternal.Just as the physical nation Israel pointed to the church,so the physical land pointed forward to eternity. Toenter the true Promised Land is to come into eternity.

The Israelite patriarchs understood this symbolicaspect of the “foreverness” of the land very well. Abra-ham, for example,

dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign coun-try, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, theheirs with him of the same promise; for he waitedfor the city which has foundations, whose builderand maker is God” (Heb.11:9-10).

Unlike the modern Judaisers, who see the fulfilmentof the land promise as the be-all and end-all of spirituallife, the patriarchs “confessed that they were strangersand pilgrims on the earth” (Heb.11:13) and theydesired “a better, that is, a heavenly country”(Heb.11:16). They knew very well that the promise ofthe land “forever” was really the promise of a spiritualhome in eternity. They understood this symbolic aspectof the “foreverness” of the land very well. Abraham, forexample,

“dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreigncountry, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, theheirs with him of the same promise; for he waitedfor the city which has foundations, whose builderand maker is God” (Heb.11:9-10).

Actually, we Christians are the continuation of theeverlasting nature of the promise to Abraham. Paulmakes it plain that “if you are Christ’s, then you areAbraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise”(Gal.3:29).

So when the Lord said “I will establish My covenantbetween Me and you and your descendants after you in

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their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be Godto you and your descendants after you”, it transcendsmere physical descent. As Matthew Henry puts it:

“here [in Gen.17], where it is promised for aneverlasting possession, surely it must be lookedupon as a type of heaven’s happiness, that everlast-ing rest which remains for the people of God”.

It is this inability to recognise the spiritual nature ofso many of the Old Testament promises regardingIsrael and her patriarchs, coupled with a willingness toforce certain prophecies into a mythical endtime sce-nario which has led to the deception we have today —Israel the impostor.

The problem with Jewish people today and so manyChristians too is that they will not accept that the prom-ise of the geographical land was for fulfilment under theOld Covenant, which is now obsolete: “In that [God]says, ‘A new covenant,’ He has made the first obsolete”(Heb.8:13). The land promise to Abraham was ful-filled a long time ago. Therefore we conclude that theMiddle-Eastern nation state of Israel today cannot pos-sibly be a fulfilment of Bible prophecy but, on the con-trary, is merely the product of the inner workings ofinternational political cabals,[39] coupled with abhor-rent acts of terrorism which were every bit as bad asthose of the Palestinian extremist groups.[40]

2. THE RESTORATION OF ISRAEL IN THE O.T.HAS ONLY EVER BEEN BASED ON CERTAINCLEAR CONDITIONS

The many Christians today who simply accept thenotion that modern Israel is a fulfilment of Bible proph-ecy appear to overlook the important fact that any resto-ration of Israel must be based on some conditions whichare clearly set out in Scripture. In Jer.50:4-5, we areprovided with a classic example of the conditions for therestoration of the people of Israel:

“In those days and in that time, says the LORD,the children of Israel shall come, they and the

children of Judah together; with continual weepingthey shall come, and seek the LORD their God.They shall ask the way to Zion, with their facestoward it, saying, ‘Come and let us join ourselvesto the LORD in a perpetual covenant that will notbe forgotten’”.

This plainly refers to the restoring of Israel in the pur-poses of God. But note that there are preconditionsattached. Never once do we find in Scripturethat Israel is restored without these conditionshaving been fulfilled. Let us look at what those con-ditions are.

The first condition of this restoration is

i. Deep Repentance

We read “with continual weeping they shall come”.That is a clear precursor to restoration. The desirefor restoration is not simply to be restored tothe land but to be restored to the Lord. Andthat involves deep repentance of heart. This is a funda-mental law of restoration of any kind in Scripture —whether corporate or individual.

There are a great many times when we find Old Tes-tament writers expressing the mind of God on the factthat He has no time for mere outward actions in wor-ship but instead desires a contrite heart, a penitentmind-set. And that is the trigger for restoration. Othertexts which plainly show the need for repentance as aprecursor to restoration are Dan.9:1-6; Neh.1:4-11.

Do we find that it was this kind of repentance whichled to the founding of the modern nation-state of Israeltoday? Not at all. There was only national pride, embit-teredness because of having been persecuted, a desire toclaim “their right” to a national homeland and a willing-ness to kill anyone who got in the way.

The awful truth is that until there is a repenting ofhaving broken the Covenant and killed their Messiah,Jewish people will perpetually be subject to trouble anddevoid of a real relationship with the Lord.

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40. To say that modern Israel is the product of terrorism is no exaggeration. Many of its leaders have been full-blown terrorists of the kindthat they claim to disdain so much today and of the type which the USA incarcerates in Guantanamo Bay! For example, the formerIsraeli Prime Ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir were both terrorist extremists who fomented murder before Israel wasfounded as a state. Shamir, leader of the terrorist Lehi group — also known as the Stern Gang — ordered the murder of Lord Moynewho was gunned down in Cairo in 1944. In a 1998 interview with the Daily Telegraph, Shamir said that he “would have been happy tokill Lord Moyne himself” (Daily Telegraph, April 18th 1998, p.20 -- internet link can be found athttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/htmlContent.jhtml?html=/archive/1998/04/18/weu118.html ). These men literally bombed their way intooffice, relying on guilt about the Holocaust to engender feelings of sympathy for their cause. Shamir actually gave himself the pseudonym“Michael”, inspired by the IRA leader Michael Collins. The Israeli state is a terrorist state founded on murder and massacre. All thepolitical correctness in the world cannot change that.

39. This conspiratorial, occultic aspect to Israel is even being recognised in some Jewish circles. One recent example can be seen in theNovember 9th 2004 “Golden Report” by Jerry Golden [see the full report on Jerry’s website at the linkhttp://www.thegoldenreport.com/asp/jerrysnewsmanager/anmviewer.asp?a=817&z=2 ]. He rightly acknowledges that modern Israel hasmore or less been constructed (in some instances, literally) by the Illuminati. His points of reference merely represent the tip of the iceberg.

A second precondition for the restoration of Israel is

ii. Faithfulness to God

In our text in Jer.50:4-5 it is said that the restorednation will be “seeking the LORD”. What does it meanto “seek God”. Surely it refers to the desire to be disci-pled by Him, to be obedient to Him and to keep Hisways. A seminal text in this respect is Deut.30:1-3:

“Now it shall come to pass, when all these thingscome upon you, the blessing and the curse which Ihave set before you, and you call them to mindamong all the nations where the LORD your Goddrives you, and you return to the LORD yourGod and obey His voice, according to all that Icommand you today, you and your children, withall your heart and with all your soul, that theLORD your God will bring you back from captiv-ity, and have compassion on you, and gather youagain from all the nations where the LORD yourGod has scattered you”.

Here we see that the compassion on Israel and itsingathering as a people of God is dependent on firstreturning to the Lord and “obeying His voice”. Andthat indeed is the spirit that was found at the return ofthe Jews from the exile in Babylon:

“On the first day of the first month he began hisjourney from Babylon, and on the first day of thefifth month he came to Jerusalem, according to thegood hand of his God upon him. For Ezra hadprepared his heart to seek the Law of the LORD,and to do it, and to teach statutes and ordinancesin Israel”. (Ezr.7:9-10)

Where does that leave the Israeli state of today? Forit was not founded on obedience to the commandmentof the Lord which, in a post-Calvary world, finds ithighest expression in obedience to the Gospel of JesusChrist (cf. 1 Pet.4:17)? Surely, the Israelites of todayhave not at all sought God, otherwise they would haverealised that they should no longer be under the law ofMoses but under the law of Christ (1 Cor.9:21).

Another precondition for the restoration of Israel is

iii. Being True Zionists

We read in our text in Jer.50:4-5 that an Israel whichdesires to be restored will be asking “the way to Zion”.The word Zion has become most misused by modern-day Israel, mainly due to its earthly understanding ofdivine things.

To be a “Zionist” in Scripture is to desire to bewhere God especially manifests His presence: “Arise,and let us go up to Zion, To the LORD our God”(Jer.31:6). Zion is the dwelling place of God in

relation to His human creation: “For the LORD haschosen Zion; He has desired it for His dwelling place”(Psa.132:13). “For the LORD dwells in Zion”(Joel 3:21).

First, we find this manifested in relation to the city ofJerusalem in Old Testament times, where the Templewas, which was the heart of spiritual life in those days.Then, under the New Covenant, we find Zion used torefer to the body of Christ, the Church (see Heb.12:22-23). However, the ultimate meaning of Zion is heavenin the new universe after the restoration of all things atthe end of the age, as we see the heavenly Jerusalemportrayed in the closing chapters of the Book ofRevelation.

If Israelites today were serious about “asking the wayto Zion”, and thereby being restored, they would becoming into the Church, the body of Christ, where theLord dwells by His Spirit. The body of Christ is Ziontoday.

Another precondition for the restoration of Israel is

iv. Engaging in Genuine Spirituality

Our text says: “They shall ask the way to Zion, withtheir faces toward it”. With their faces towards it, i.e. insincerity of faith. There would be spiritual integrity.How can there be any spiritual integrity in the Israel oftoday when it is not only seeking Zion in the wrongplace but it has such a hatred toward the One whocame as their Messiah nearly two thousand years ago?

Another condition of the restoration of Israel is

v. The Desire to be in a Perpetual Covenant Relation-

ship with God

An Israel which is desirous of restoration to Godsays: “Come and let us join ourselves to the LORD in aperpetual covenant that will not be forgotten”. But wehave already shown above that Israel was disobedient tothe Old Covenant, having rejected the New Covenantin the blood of Christ and still does to this day.

So where does all this leave the Israel of today in theMiddle-East? The picture we are given here regardingconditions for the restoration of Israel is one involvingthe deepest spirituality, penitence, desiring to be amongthe people of God and covenant obedience. Is that whatwe see in the so-called restored Israel of today in theMiddle East?

Modern Israel is a secular state. It is proud and arro-gant in its claims. It regards Zion as a nationalist polityrun by human beings on a piece of earthly territoryrather than the spiritual dwelling-place of God. Itoppresses helpless people in a manner which defies theLaw of God in a most dramatic fashion. For example,we read in the Torah: “You shall neither mistreat a

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stranger nor oppress him, for you were strangers in theland of Egypt” (Ex.22:21). Bear in mind that this par-ticular command comes immediately after the com-mands: “You shall not permit a sorceress to live.Whoever lies with an animal shall surely be put to death.He who sacrifices to any god, except to the LORD only,he shall be utterly destroyed”. This is how seriously Godmeans His people to help the afflicted, helpless andoppressed foreigners. After all, the end of the law is love(Rom.13:10; 5:14). All this cuts entirely across one ofthe three signs of the presence of true religion desig-nated by James in his letter: “Pure and undefiled religionbefore God and the Father is this: to visit orphans andwidows in their trouble” (Jas.1:27a). Helping the help-less and afflicted lies at the heart of the Law of God,which the redeemed are to enact in their lives(Eph.2:10; Tit.2:13-14). To say otherwise is to takethe heart out of the Law and to give the edge to “Lib-eration Theologians”, who think that religion only con-sists of righting injustice. It was J.C. Ryle who said:“We are not justified by our works, but the justified per-son works”. People who are in God’s covenant wouldnot be brutal, and be seen as such by the world. Com-pare their brutality against the Palestinians, and the vio-lent audacity of the Israeli state security force Mossad.Even the Israeli Defence Force has an official policy ofshooting unarmed Palestinians indescriminately.[41]How then can the nation of Israel be living in covenantobedience even to the Old Covenant of the Mosaic era?We believe that the modern nation-state of Israel is anevil regime, and we are utterly amazed that professingChristians could give this corrupt, anti-Christian countrytheir spiritual and financial support. As the courageousIsraeli commentator, Dr. Israel Shahak, dares to state:

“The extent of persecution and discriminationagainst non-Jews inflicted by the ‘Jewish state’ withthe support of organised diaspora Jews is also enor-mously greater than the suffering inflicted on Jewsby regimes hostile to them”.[42]

However, not only is Israel today disobedient to theOld Covenant, it is also utterly defiant of the New

Covenant which is now in force and which was prophe-sied for them in Jer.31:31-34.

It is often stated by Christian supporters of Israel thatIsrael is restored to the land initially in a state of unbe-lief. However, nowhere in Scripture is there sanctioneda “restoration in unbelief”, as is often asserted today.As we have shown, there are conditions attached to anyrestoration of Israel and those conditions have not beenfulfilled.

Almost the entire world of Christianity takes it forgranted that an endtime restoration of Israel has beenprophesied in the Bible and that the modern state ofIsrael is preliminary evidence of the fulfillment of thatprophecy.

This idea of the restoration of Israel is just as false asthe idea of the restoration of the gifts of the Spirit.Those twin-deceptions of “restoration” go together asthe main platforms of deception in the Christian scenetoday. Not only that but they claim that this“restoration” will take place with the Jews who return tothe land living in unbelief to begin with.

This goes hand-in-hand with the idea that whenChrist returns He will set up His headquarters as anearthly king in Jerusalem with restored temple sacrificesand Old Testament style worship for a period of exactly1000 years, based on an entirely false understanding ofchapter 20 of the Book of Revelation.

Apparently, so they say, when Christ returns, theinhabitants of Israel will “look on Him who they piercedand mourn” and thus all Israel will be saved.

They ignore entirely the fact that the Zechariahprophecy about looking on Him who they pierced andmourning (Zec.12:10) was primarily fulfilled whenChrist hung on the Cross, as John’s record shows (John19:34-37).[43]

And this is the problem. Ignoring the plain fulfillmentof prophecy as having already taken place and insteadtrying to make them fit a future plan entirely of theirown making.

How the neo-Judaisers deal with this is to say thatIsrael is restored initially in a state of unbelief althoughlater they will believe after God allows the Antichrist to

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43. There is another sense in which the Jews will “look on Him who they pierced and mourn”, but it will not be out of genuine repentance.“Behold, He is coming with clouds, and every eye will see Him, even they who pierced Him. And all the tribes of the earth will mournbecause of Him” (Rev.1:7). Along with the rest of the unbelieving world, they will stand aghast in horror at what is materialising beforetheir eyes at the return of Christ. As Matthew Henry puts it: “He shall come, to the terror of those who have pierced him and have notrepented and of all who have wounded and crucified him afresh by their apostasy from him, and to the astonishment of the pagan world. Forhe comes to take vengeance on those who know not God, as well as on those that obey not the gospel of Christ”. In that day, every knee willindeed bow and every tongue will indeed confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, not because they are saved or because they are penitent butsimply because they will reluctantly have learned the awful truth of Christ’s reality and the hopelessness of their condition at that endpointin history (cf. Phil.2:10-11).

42. Dr. Israel Shahak, op. cit., p.103.41. See details of this at http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1374851,00.html .

kill two-thirds of all Jews — the Talmudic and Illu-minist element — and preserve the one-third remnant.This fantasy is supposedly based on the prophecy inZechariah 13:7-9. Let us just take a look at this:

“Awake, O sword, against My Shepherd,Against the Man who is My Companion,” Saysthe Lord of hosts. “Strike the Shepherd, and thesheep will be scattered; then I will turn My handagainst the little ones. And it shall come to pass inall the land,” says the Lord, “that two-thirds in itshall be cut off and die, But one-third shall be leftin it: I will bring the one-third through the fire,Will refine them as silver is refined, And test themas gold is tested. They will call on My name, AndI will answer them. I will say, ‘This is My people’;And each one will say, ‘The Lord is my God.’”(Zec.13:7-9).

The first part of this prophecy was shown to be ful-filled when Christ was arrested in the garden of Gethse-mane (cf. Matt.26:31). The rest of the prophecy wasplainly fulfilled in the divine judgement which tookplace soon after that when the Romans ransacked Jeru-salem in AD.70.

The section about refining, as Matthew Henry says,“was fulfilled in the persecutions of the primitivechurch”, which was the continuation of the Jewishnation under the New Covenant. Peter virtually quotesthis section in his letter “To the pilgrims of the Disper-sion”, when he says “Beloved, do not think it strangeconcerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as thoughsome strange thing happened to you” (1 Per.4:12).

Another Scripture misused to prove that Israel isrestored in unbelief is in Ezekiel 36-37:

“For I will take you from among the nations,gather you out of all countries, and bring you intoyour own land. Then I will sprinkle clean water onyou, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you fromall your filthiness and from all your idols. I will giveyou a new heart and put a new spirit within you; Iwill take the heart of stone out of your flesh andgive you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spiritwithin you and cause you to walk in My statutes,and you will keep My judgments and do them.Then you shall dwell in the land that I gave to yourfathers; you shall be My people, and I will be yourGod” (Ezek.36:24-28).

But yet again, this has already been fulfilled. It wasfulfilled in one sense when the Jews were restored toIsrael out of captivity in Babylon, but surely it was ful-filled even more fully (and more spiritually) when theyturned to Christ in the New Covenant. It is a parallel

text to Jer.31:31-34, which speaks of the New Cove-nant in Christ. Those texts are all about the Jewish rem-nant becoming the foundation of the new people ofGod, the Body of Christ.

Similarly, the passage in Ezek.37, which speaks ofthe valley of dry bones and the bones living again isplainly referring to the restoration of Israel after the cap-tivity in Babylon. It can also be figuratively referred tospiritual regeneration in Christ and even to the resurrec-tion from the dead. But there is no way that theseprophecies in Ezek.36 and 37 can be used to justify therestoration of the theocratic state of Israel at this point inhistory.

How, therefore, can the nation-state of Israel on aplot of land in the Middle-East today be a fulfilment ofBible prophecy?

So far we have shown that the land promise was ful-filled in the Old Testament era and that the restorationof Israel in the O.T. was only ever based on certainclear conditions. There is yet a further aspect whichproves that the establishment of the nation state of Israeltoday cannot possibly be a fulfilment of Bible prophecy:

3. THE REAL HOPE FOR ISRAEL IS NOT A RESTO-RATION TO THE LAND OF ISRAEL BUT TOJESUS CHRIST AT HIS FIRST COMING

The O.T. prophecies which appear to speak of therestoration of the nation Israel to a land inheritancewere either fulfilled at the end of the exile in Babylon orare to be understood to refer figuratively to the gatheringunder the Messiah at His first coming. This is wherethe real point of resistance to Bible teaching occurs.The failure to accept that the Lord can speak figura-tively when uttering prophecies in the Old Testamentabout the future restoration of Israel is one of the maincauses of confusion concerning its proper inheritance.

One of the main problems here is that it is assumedby so many professing Christians today — especiallythose who believe that there is still a place for the theo-cratic nation Israel in God’s purposes today — that ifone interprets an O.T. prophecy figuratively rather thanliterally then it implies a liberal, even apostate, approachto Scripture. However this is a false deduction. It is cer-tainly true that liberal theologians allegorise the Word ofGod in the places at which it should be taken literally.But that does not mean that one should never under-stand any Scripture figuratively, for fear of being a lib-eral theologian! For example, when we read that anangel came down from heaven, “having the key to thebottomless pit and a great chain in his hand”(Rev.20:1), are we to take that literally? Is it an actualmaterial chain with metal links which is being spoken of

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here? And if one takes that chain figuratively does thatmake one apostate? Surely not! Is it not true that everysingle Christian has taken that chain to be figurative —interpreting it figuratively rather than literally?

However, when it comes to O.T. prophecies aboutIsrael, so many folk are suddenly overcome with a fit ofhyper-literalism and begin to denounce anyone whodares to spiritualise a text in any way. While it is obvi-ously true that there are dangers in allegorisation andthat “no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpre-tation” (2 Pet.1:20), there are sound rules which wecan follow which have even been laid down for us in theWord of God. Let us demonstrate with a classic exam-ple. Take Amos 9:11-15, which says:

“On that day I will raise up the tabernacle ofDavid, which has fallen down, and repair its dam-ages; I will raise up its ruins, and rebuild it as inthe days of old; that they may possess the remnantof Edom, and all the Gentiles who are called byMy name, says the LORD who does this thing.Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, whenthe plowman shall overtake the reaper, and thetreader of grapes him who sows seed; the moun-tains shall drip with sweet wine, and all the hillsshall flow with it. I will bring back the captives ofMy people Israel; they shall build the waste citiesand inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards anddrink wine from them; they shall also make gardensand eat fruit from them. I will plant them in theirland, and no longer shall they be pulled up fromthe land I have given them, Says the LORD yourGod”.

On the face of it, if one was to take this passage abso-lutely literally, it appears to be a prophecy of therebuilding of the earthly temple in Jerusalem, and therestoration of God’s people Israel to the land. However,although that may be the way it looks to the casualreader, if we want to be true to the Word, we have totake into account the fact that this passage is interpretedfor us very differently elsewhere in Scripture. For whensome Judaisers were causing problems in the earlyChurch by saying that converted Gentiles needed to becircumcised in order to be saved (there they go againwith their failure to understand things spiritually), acouncil was called to make a ruling on the matter. Afterthe debate had taken place, everyone present fell silentand James issued his wisdom:

“Men and brethren, listen to me: Simon hasdeclared how God at the first visited the Gentilesto take out of them a people for His name. Andwith this the words of the prophets agree, just as it

is written: ‘After this I will return And will rebuildthe tabernacle of David, which has fallen down; Iwill rebuild its ruins, and I will set it up; so that therest of mankind may seek the LORD, even all theGentiles who are called by My name, Says theLORD who does all these things’. Known to Godfrom eternity are all His works”. (Acts 15:13-18)

Do you see what James is saying? He quotes here theprecise text from Amos 9 which many have taken liter-ally as being a reference to a future earthly restoration ofthe nation Israel to the land. However, we are herebeing furnished with a model of correct exegesis when-ever we are confronted with Old Testament texts whichseem to imply an earthly restoration of the Davidic king-dom and the bringing back under its dominion of theneighbouring non-Israelite nations over which Davidhad once ruled.

The unbelieving Jew of today, with a veil over hiseyes when he reads the Bible, will only ever see anearthly kingdom and an earthly dominion, just as didunenlightened Jewry at the time of Christ (Jn.6.15;18:36; Lk.17:20; Acts 1:6). To his support will comethe over-literalistic, fundamentalist Christians of todaywho have failed to follow James’s lead in sound Bibleinterpretation. For James, here in Acts 15:13-18, isplainly revealing that the rebuilding of “the tabernacle ofDavid” referred to in Amos 9 is a figurative reference tothe building of the Church of the New Covenant inJesus Christ, into which would come the Gentiles. Infact, James is here showing that the Bible certainly doesteach a form of “replacement theology”. The New Tes-tament Church has replaced the Old Testament taber-nacle and temple, which was the heart and soul of thetheocratic nation of Israel (cf. 2 Cor.6:16; Eph.2:21).The Church is the Israel of God today! That is pre-cisely what James reveals and that is precisely what theneo-judaisers refuse to accept.

This is why we say — in answer to the claim that theMiddle-Eastern nation-state of Israel today is a fulfil-ment of Bible prophecy — that the real hope forIsrael is not a restoration to an earthly territorybut to Jesus Christ at His first coming.

We can adduce further proof of this mighty fact fromthe words of the Apostles. For example, when Paularrived in Rome, he called a meeting of the leaders ofthe Jews to present his case before them. During his dis-course, Paul tells them why he was a prisoner:

“For this reason therefore I have called for you,to see you and speak with you, because for thehope of Israel I am bound with this chain”.(Acts 28:20)

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What was this “hope of Israel” for which Paul hadbeen indicted? What message of hope for Israel hadPaul been preaching that was so offensive to the Jews?Was it a future restoration of Israel to the land under anearthly king like David? Not at all, for that would havebeen perfectly acceptable. In his great commentary,Matthew Henry gives an illustrative paraphrase ofPaul’s words to the Jewish leaders here, which plainlyreveals the identity of the true “hope of Israel”:

“They would have you still expect a Messiahthat would free you from the Roman yoke, andmake you great and prosperous upon earth, and itis this that occupies their thoughts; and they areangry at me for directing their expectations to thegreat things of another world, and persuading themto embrace a Messiah who will secure those tothem, and not external power and grandeur. I amfor bringing you to the spiritual and eternal bless-edness upon which our fathers by faith had theireye, and this is what they hate me for,— because Iwould take you off from that which is the cheat ofIsrael, and will be its shame and ruin, the notion ofa temporal Messiah, and lead you to that which isthe true and real hope of Israel, and the genuinesense of all the promises made to the fathers, aspiritual kingdom of holiness and love set up in thehearts of men, to be the pledge of, and preparativefor, the joyful resurrection of the dead and the lifeof the world to come.’’[44]

What a masterly summary this is by Matthew Henryof the meaning behind Paul’s words. The “cheat ofIsrael” has always been the continued notion of a tem-poral Messiah and an earthly kingdom in the land. Butthe “true and real hope of Israel” is the spiritual king-dom which has its roots in the death and resurrection ofthe Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ and which finds itsonly earthly expression in the Church which is calledout by His name. The true hope of Israel is “The Deliv-erer” who “will come out of Zion, and He will turnaway ungodliness from Jacob; for this is My covenantwith them, When I take away their sins” (Rom.11:25-26). Sins can only be taken away by the blood of Christin His New Covenant; and it is this which is the realhope of Israel.

This is why we find that all the godly, pious Jewssuch as Simeon, who were alive around the time of theIncarnation, were “waiting for the Consolation of Israel”(Lk.2:25). So for people like Simeon, Anna,Zacharias, Mary, Joseph and all the rest of the godlyremnant of Israel who were alive when the Son of God

came in the flesh, the fulfilment of the Jewish kingdomcentred not on any restoration to the land but on beliefin and union with the Lord Jesus Christ as the “Hopeof Israel” and the “Consolation of Israel”. There isnever the remotest hint in the gospels — nor in the restof the New Testament — that the hope of Israel lies ina restoration to the land. Indeed, we see clearly from theScriptures that the eye of faith enabled even the godlybelievers of the Old Testament to focus on somethingbeyond a piece of real estate in the Middle East! Forexample, we are told that

“by faith Abraham dwelt in the land of promiseas in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaacand Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise;for he waited for the city which has foundations,whose builder and maker is God”. (Heb.11:9-10)

Those Patriarchs knew that there was somethingbeyond the promised territory on earth. Indeed, ratherthan revel in any territorial rights to land they

“confessed that they were strangers and pilgrimson the earth. For those who say such things declareplainly that they seek a homeland. And truly if theyhad called to mind that country from which theyhad come out, they would have had opportunity toreturn. But now they desire a better, that is, a heav-enly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to becalled their God, for He has prepared a city forthem.” (Heb.11:13-16)

That was the knowledge that all godly believers helddear in the Old Testament times. Their hope was in aheavenly country, a city prepared by God. What city isthat? The answer lies in the next chapter of this letter toJewish converts:

“But you have come to Mount Zion and to thecity of the living God, the heavenly Jerusa-lem, to an innumerable company of angels, to thegeneral assembly and church of the firstborn whoare registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, tothe spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus theMediator of the new covenant, and to theblood of sprinkling that speaks better things thanthat of Abel”. (Heb.12:22-24)

The city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, isnone other than the Church of the New Covenant medi-ated by Jesus Christ, the fulfilment of the promise toAbraham that in his descendants all nations of the earthwould be blessed. And we find this heavenly Jerusalemreferred to by Paul in his extraordinary allegory inGal.4:24-26, where he speaks of the difference between

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44. Commentary, in loc.

the Old and New Covenants. First there is “the onefrom Mount Sinai which gives birth to bondage...andcorresponds to Jerusalem which now is [i.e. the earthlynation of Israel]”, and then there is “the Jerusalemabove [the New Covenant community]” which “is free,which is the mother of us all”, that is, all of us who arethe people of God in the Gospel Age.

So the “heavenly city” to which the patriarchs lookedforward was the Church of Jesus Christ made up of bothJews and Gentiles. This is why the Lord Jesus said thatAbraham “rejoiced” to see His day (Jn.8:56). A transi-tion in redemptive history has occurred which any godlyJew would have expected: The transition from anearthly nation (Ex.19:5-6) to a spiritual nation(1 Pet.2:9-10), from an earthly Jerusalem to a heavenlyone, from incessant corporeal sacrifices of lambs, goatsand bulls, to a once for all time spiritual sacrifice of theLamb of God who takes away the sins of Jews andthose from every nation of the world, if they believe(Jn.10:14-16; 11:49-52).

For four hundred years there had been an awesomesilence of divine revelation. Just as the whole creationgroans now, as it awaits the full revealing of those whoare sons of God by adoption, so the world was thenfilled with pregnant longing for the appearance of theexpected One who is the Son of God by nature. And asthe time approached it must almost have been possibleto cut the spiritual air in Israel with a knife. At that timeZacharias, Elizabeth, Mary, Simeon and Anna and allthe rest of the remnant were waiting for their Hope,their Consolation (Lk.2:25). They were not looking foran earthly king to lead a revolt against the Roman occu-piers (although Judas might have been). They were notwaiting for a restoration to the land. Theirs was a spiri-tual hope. As Simeon said:

“LORD, now You are letting Your servantdepart in peace, according to Your word; For myeyes have seen Your salvation which You have pre-pared before the face of all peoples, a light to bringrevelation to the Gentiles, And the glory of Yourpeople Israel”. (Lk.2:29-32)

The hope of Israel was also the hope of the Gentiles.And that hope did not rest on a mere piece of land inthe Middle East. It was the hope of salvation throughthe death and resurrection of Christ. And when theIncarnate Son of God grew and called out disciplesfrom the godly remnant of the Jews, these became thefirstfruits of the New Covenant people — a spiritualnation which would consist of both Jews and Gentilestogether.

Therefore, for all the above reasons we believe that

the Middle-Eastern nation-state of Israel today cannotpossibly be a fulfilment of the Bible prophecies whichspeak of a restoration of Israel.

Claim No.2: “The Nation Israel is still God’s Cho-

sen People Today”

We hear a great deal of complaining today from theChristian Zionists about what they call “replacementtheology” — a disparaging nickname they have given tothe idea that the New Testament Church is the peopleof God today (which is precisely what we are teachingin this paper). However, it is rather bizarre to give anickname to something which the Bible plainly teachesand then call it a heresy, thus pulling the wool over somany young and gullible believers’ eyes.

The reality is that a replacement has indeed takenplace. The old inadequate, obsolete covenant wasreplaced by a new one. This replacement has happenedon many levels. For example, the Holy Spirit was givento the Church on the Day of Pentecost. The beautifulsignificance of this can be seen in the fact that Pentecost(the Feast of Weeks) was actually a Jewish festival reaf-firming the Sinaitic Covenant (Ex.34:10,22) and com-memorating the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai(Deut.16:9-12). We see here that the Holy Spirit,given to the Church at Pentecost in Jerusalem, was areplacement for the Law given to Israel on Sinai.Replacement Theology is indeed taught in the Scrip-tures. The Body of Christ — made up of convertedJews and Gentiles — is the people of God today. It hasreplaced Old Testament Israel, which did not obtainwhat it sought. That is a fact not a heresy!

The real heresy-teaching “replacementists”are those who teach that Israel today repre-sents the chosen people of God. This is the realityof the situation. The idea that corporate national Israelis still God’s chosen people is prevalent in the minds ofmany today. But we wonder if they have seriously con-sidered the plain verdict of Scripture. For the Word ofGod shows that as a nation Israel has come under thewrath of God, who — although ever-willing to receiveinto the New Covenant kingdom individual believingJews — has finished with Israel as a national-religioustheocratic entity.

Israel broke the Old Covenant and thereby forfeitedany rights to it. Virtually all Israel — except for a smallremnant — rejected the New Covenant in the blood ofChrist. They even killed their long-awaited Messiah.Interestingly, the Pope has said that the Church now nolonger believes that the Jewish nation was responsiblefor killing the Messiah. In order to foster good relationsbetween Christians and Jews this claim is being widely

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made today. But what does the Word of God say? Inthe first place the Bible shows that Jesus was rejected bythe Jews: “He came to His own, and His own did notreceive Him” (Jn.1:11). No one would argue with that.However, it does not stop there, for the guilt for that sinwhich then came upon Israel is almost beyond compre-hension. First, the Lord Jesus Himself upbraided therulers of the people with the charge:

“Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers’ guilt.Serpents, brood of vipers! How can you escape thecondemnation of hell? Therefore, indeed, I sendyou prophets, wise men, and scribes: some of themyou will kill and crucify, and some of them you willscourge in your synagogues and persecute from cityto city, that on you may come all the righteousblood shed on the earth, from the blood of right-eous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Bere-chiah, whom you murdered between the templeand the altar”. (Mt.23:32-35)

He saw His own rejection as the culmination of apathological pattern of rejection which had dogged thechildren of Israel from the outset. When they rejectedHim, He laid the punishment clearly before them:

“Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of Godwill be taken from you and given to a nation bear-ing the fruits of it”. (Mt.21:42-43)

And the Lord Jesus predicted how the judgement forHis rejection would begin when he told a parableconcerning

“a certain king who arranged a marriage for hisson, and sent out his servants to call those whowere invited to the wedding; and they were notwilling to come. But they made light of it and wenttheir ways, one to his own farm, another to hisbusiness. And the rest seized his servants, treatedthem spitefully, and killed them. But when the kingheard about it, he was furious. And he sent out hisarmies, destroyed those murderers, and burned uptheir city”. (Mt.22:2-7)

And this was fulfilled in AD.70 at the fall of Jerusa-lem under the Roman army commanded by Titus,which was given a literal prophecy by the Lord Jesus:

“If you had known, even you, especially in thisyour day, the things that make for your peace! Butnow they are hidden from your eyes. For days willcome upon you when your enemies will build anembankment around you, surround you and closeyou in on every side, and level you, and your chil-dren within you, to the ground; and they will notleave in you one stone upon another, because you

did not know the time of your visitation”.(Lk.19:42-44)

The Jews even invited this judgement upon them-selves when they chose Jesus rather than Barabbasbefore Pontius Pilate:

“When Pilate saw that he could not prevail atall, but rather that a tumult was rising, he tookwater and washed his hands before the multitude,saying, ‘I am innocent of the blood of this just Per-son. You see to it’. And all the people answeredand said, ‘His blood be on us and on ourchildren’”. (Mt.27:24-25).

It is a great mystery to us to know how anyone couldimagine that the Jewish nation bore no guilt for thedeath of Christ. The Apostle Peter charged them in hissermons thus:

“Him, being delivered by the determined pur-pose and foreknowledge of God, you have takenby lawless hands, have crucified, and putto death... Therefore let all the house of Israelknow assuredly that God has made this Jesus,whom you crucified, both LORD and Christ”.(Acts 2:23, 36)

“But you denied the Holy One and the Just,and asked for a murderer to be granted to you,and killed the Prince of life, whom Godraised from the dead, of which we are witnesses”.(Acts 3:14-15)

“Let it be known to you all, and to all the peopleof Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Naz-areth, whom you crucified...”. (Acts 4:10)And Stephen said to the Jews:

“Which of the prophets did your fathers not per-secute? And they killed those who foretold thecoming of the Just One, of whom you now havebecome the betrayers and murderers...” (Acts7:52)

And Paul wrote to the church at Thessalonica:

“For you also suffered the same things from yourown countrymen, just as they did from the Jews,who killed both the LORD Jesus and theirown prophets, and have persecuted us; and they donot please God and are contrary to all men, forbid-ding us to speak to the Gentiles that they may besaved, so as always to fill up the measure oftheir sins; but wrath has come upon themto the uttermost”. (1 Thess.2:14-16)

“Wrath has come upon them to the uttermost”. Asanyone can testify, that wrath which began at Jerusalem

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in AD.70 has echoed down even to our own day. HerePaul is referring back to the curses for rejection of thecovenant which are so awesomely and graphically por-trayed in Deut.28:15-68. The Old Covenant thusbecame obsolete, as the Apostle said in the sixth decadeof the first century AD:

“In that He says, “A new covenant,” He hasmade the first obsolete. Now what is becomingobsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away”(Heb.8:13)

Surely it is plain to see that the nation of Israel canno longer be God’s chosen people. The New CovenantChurch, made up of both converted former Jews andconverted Gentiles, has now replaced the Old Covenantnation-state of Israel as the people of God today. This isbasic New Testament teaching which any disciple ofChrist should know. The Lord Jesus himself warnedthat this would happen when he said to those who sat inMoses seat: “Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of Godwill be taken from you and given to a nation bearing thefruits of it” (Matt.21:43). And it was prophesied longago by God to Abraham when He said “In you allnations of the earth will be blessed” (Gen.22:18, etc.).

Yet we are continually told that the Jews are stillGod’s chosen people. How can God have two differentcovenant peoples today, when the New Covenant hasreplaced the Old? Which covenant could the Jews pos-sibly be under? There is only one covenant and onecovenant people.

It should be stressed that the ‘replacement’ which hasoccurred is not a straight ‘one for one’. For the NewCovenant people of God began among the godly Jewishremnant who received their Messiah. In that sense, sal-vation is indeed “of the Jews” (Jn.4:22). So the newIsrael began with the Jews, grew out of the people ofIsrael, and became the root of the New Covenant peo-ple of God. But Jesus Himself said that as well as thoseJews who would believe there would also be

“other sheep I have which are not of this fold;them also I must bring, and they will hear Myvoice; and there will be one flock and one Shep-herd” (Jn.10:1).

“One flock and one Shepherd”. There are NOT twocovenant peoples of God — Israel and the Church,with one somehow held in abeyance for a time. Thecovenant people of God are one!

“For He Himself is our peace, who has madeboth one, and has broken down the middle wall ofseparation, having abolished in His flesh theenmity, that is, the law of commandments con-tained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one

new man from the two, thus making peace, andthat He might reconcile them both to God in onebody through the cross, thereby putting to deaththe enmity. And He came and preached peace toyou who were afar off and to those who were near.For through Him we both have access by oneSpirit to the Father. Now, therefore, you are nolonger strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizenswith the saints and members of the household ofGod, having been built on the foundation of theapostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself beingthe chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building,being joined together, grows into a holy temple inthe LORD, in whom you also are being builttogether for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.”(Eph.2:14-22)

So it is wrong to teach, as some do today, that Godnow deals differently with Jews and Gentiles. Both Jewsand Greeks are all under sin (Rom.3:9). There is nodifference between the two; “for all have sinned and fallshort of the glory of God” (Rom.3:22-23).

“Is He the God of the Jews only? Is He notalso the God of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentilesalso, since there is one God who will justify the cir-cumcised by faith and the uncircumcised throughfaith”. (Rom.3:29-30)

Jew and Gentiles together. God now deals with themas one. As Paul says: “So then those who are of faithare blessed with believing Abraham” (Gal.3:9). “If youare Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring”(Gal.3:29). Believing Jews and Gentiles are both thetrue seed of Abraham today, understood spiritually.Once the Seed (Christ) had come there was no furtherneed for the theocratic nation of Israel under Old Cove-nant law (Gal.3:23-25). The restoration of Israel andthe salvation of the Gentiles are one and the same:namely, in Christ as part of His Church.

Claim No.3: “The Establishment of the Israeli state

in 1948 is the Beginning of a Process that will Cul-

minate in a Global Conversion of Living Jews after

all the Gentiles have been Saved”

We have already dealt with the founding of the Israelistate in 1948, which, for the reasons given above, we donot believe can be the result of specific Bible propheciesabout the restoration of Israel. The notion that thefounding of the Israeli state will lead to a global conver-sion of Jews has, in the main, been grounded on thewords of the Apostle Paul in the eleventh chapter of hisletter to the Romans. However, this entire section ofPaul’s writings needs to be understood correctly. Many

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seem to regard Rom.11 as a kind of coded propheticmessage for the end times — the prevailing idea beingthat Israel as a corporate theocratic nation, which hasbeen out of God’s favour since AD.70, will be restoredto its former glory with a total global conversion and in-gathering of all Jews alive, once the parenthetic (as theysee it) “times of the Gentiles” is over. However, we donot believe that such a doctrine can be supported fromthe eleventh chapter of Romans, as we will now show.

The whole section in Romans 9 – 11 is primarilyabout the mystery of Divine election and the sovereignwork of God in salvation. The fact of election in relationto Israel and the Jews is mentioned, both explicitly andimplicitly, at least ten times. These chapters are notman-centred or even nation-centred but God-centred.It is because of a widespread wilful failure to accept theBible’s teaching on election that Romans 11 has beenso awfully misinterpreted. Let us look at this section ofScripture in more detail, for herein lies the key to all ourthinking about national Israel.

Having dealt with the issue of righteousness, how toobtain it (justification) and its effects in the life of thebeliever (sanctification) in the first eight chapters of hisletter to the Romans, Paul begins to speak about howthe Jews fit into the Divine plan of salvation in the wakeof the Cross. The key to this whole section lies inRom.9:6-7:

“But it is not that the Word of God has takenno effect. For they are not all Israel who are ofIsrael, nor are thay all children because they are theseed of Abraham”.

Unless one understands the pivotal significance ofthis verse, one will fail to grasp Paul’s (and the HolySpirit’s) intent throughout the three chapters 9 - 11and, in particular, in the peroration of Rom.11:25-36.For Paul is showing that in order to understand Israel’ssituation in the scheme of the Divine plan, one mustunderstand God’s purposes in election. So when welook at Israel, we must realise that

“those who are the children of the flesh, theseare not the children of God; but the children of thepromise are counted as the seed”. (Rom.9:8)

Paul first demonstrates this with a historical examplein Jacob and Esau (Rom.9:9-13). Both of them are“children of the flesh”, that is, offspring of Abrahamgenetically speaking. But only Jacob is one of the electchildren of God by adoption (cf. Heb.12:17; Jn.1:12-13). Then, in Rom.9:14-24, Paul develops an argu-ment supporting the doctrine of election against thosewho would say that God is unjust: “O man, who areyou to reply against God?”. Here he is still preparing

his readers for the climax of his argument. The awesomedoctrine of reprobation is then set forth inRom.9:21-22, in which it is seen that the glory of Godthrough His elective will is always the objective(Rom.9:23-26).

Then, in Rom.9:27-29, we are introduced to a mostimportant parallel concept to that of election in this pas-sage, namely, “the remnant”, which Paul confirms inRom.11:5 as being “according to the election of grace”.And this “remnant theology” runs right the waythrough the Old Testament too. Israel, according to theflesh, according to its bloodlines, does not consist whollyof saved people, even though they were certainly greatlyfavoured as a corporate body. However, salvation is aDivine act of grace in a person. “It is the gift of God, notof works, lest anyone should boast. For we are Hisworkmanship...” (Eph.2:8-10). Therefore, in terms ofsalvation, only those Israelites who were elected by themercy and grace of God are saved: “Therefore He hasmercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hard-ens” (Rom.9:18).

Only a very small number of Israelites were saved,and that on the basis of faith, which is the burden ofPaul’s argument in Rom.4. This small number consti-tutes “the remnant according to the election of grace”.But the major problem with Israel, from start to finish,was that “they did not seek [righteousness] by faith, butas it were, by the works of the law” (Rom.9:32). Theysought “to establish their own righteousness”, instead oftaking hold of the imputed righteousness provided byGod through the Lord Jesus Christ (Rom.10:3-4; cf.1:17).

Paul then shows that salvation comes to the Jews bythe same means as it does to the Gentiles(Rom.10:9-16), through hearing the Word of God,and exercising faith. Then he quotes Deut.32:21 andIsa.65:1-2, concluding the chapter with the words: “Allday long I have stretched out My hands To a disobedientand contrary people” (Rom.10:21). Because at thispoint one may well conclude that the disobedience ofthe Jews has rendered them unsalvable, Paul thenbegins Rom.11 with that begging question: “I say then,has God cast away His people?” The answer is straight-way given: “Certainly not!”. But he doesn’t just leave itat that. This is where so many have come unstuck onthe subject of Israel. For the assumption is here madethat Paul is saying that Israel as a theocratic nation hasnot been cast away — that there is yet a purpose for theJews as a nation in the plan of God. But Paul qualifieswhat he means by the exclamatory “Certainly not!”. Hecites himself as an example of the fact (Rom.11:1), as ifhe is saying: “Look, I’ve been saved, so God cannot

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have cast away his people”. But Paul is not using him-self as a representative of the theocratic nation —merely as a member of the elect Jewish remnant:

“What then? Israel has not obtained what itseeks; but the elect have obtained it, and the restwere blinded”. (Rom.11:7)

Israel as a theocratic nation has not obtained right-eousness, but the elect children of God have done so.The vast majority of the theocratic nation of Israelthought that they could become righteous solely throughkeeping the law by the letter. It failed to perceive thatthe purpose of the law was to drive them to realise thatthey could never keep it in the spirit and therefore theycould only throw themselves on the mercy of God andtrust in the Saviour whom God would send.

All the Old Testament saints who obtained right-eousness obtained it on that basis (e.g. Abraham,Jn.8:56). Right in the middle of the giving of the OldTestament law, that Saviour was plainly shown to them(Deut.18:15-19). The entire purpose of the law was topoint to Christ the Saviour as the only way to obtainrighteousness (Gal.3:19-25).

This is what he means when he says that “God hasnot cast away His people whom He foreknew”(Rom.11:2). He has finished with Israel as a theocraticnation (which has not obtained what it sought, becauseit sought to obtain righteousness in the law, which wasprecisely the sin of the Pharisees), but He has not fin-ished with those out of that nation whom He foreknewaccording to election — for that is the meaning of theword “foreknew”, as we can see from Rom.8:29: “Forwhom He foreknew, He also predestined to be con-formed to the image of His Son”. Peter uses this word inrelation to the elect Jewish remnant:

“To the pilgrims of the Dispersion in Pontus,Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, electaccording to the foreknowledge of God theFather, in sanctification of the Spirit, for obedi-ence and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ”(1 Pet.1:1-2).

So, in answer to the question “Has God cast awayHis people”, the answer is “No”, so long as you under-stand that it refers to the people whom God “foreknew”— the elect, the believers, the remnant. From this wesee how important it is to see these three chapters as agrand lesson in the process of election in redemption. Aproblem is that many of those who so avidly make beliefin Israel into a virtual article of faith are virulentlyopposed to the doctrine of election. Their opposition to

that biblical doctrine is one of the key points which hasblinded them to understanding the true position of Israelin relation to the church today and the flow of history.

Thus, in answer to the claim that there will be aglobal conversion of living Jews after all the Gentileshave been saved, it is vital that we grasp the context ofthe elect remnant in Rom.11. Yes, the nation is finishedas a corporate theocratic nation, but God is still sav-ing people out of those who physically havetheir roots in that nation. God has not cast awaythose whom He foreknew, the elect remnant. They willcontinue, unabated, to come into the church of God. Ifany Jews after the flesh “do not continue in unbelief,[they] will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them inagain” (Rom.11:23). If they believe, they will bebrought back into the Covenant people of God, whichtoday is the body of Christ made up of Jews andGentiles.

It is here that Paul comes to the climax of his argu-ment — the “mystery” concerning the salvation of theJews. Just as there is a “mystery” concerning the salva-tion of the Gentiles, “that the Gentiles should be fellowheirs [with the Jews], of the same body, and partakers ofHis promise in Christ through the gospel” (Eph.3:6), sothere is also a “mystery” concerning the Jews. And themystery is this: That the divinely appointed judicialblindness on Israel is set to last until the very last num-ber of the elect Gentiles — “the fullness of the Gentiles”— has been brought into the people of God, which willherald the end of the age and the return of the LordJesus Christ. But that does not mean that there is no sal-vation for Israel. There is always a remnant according tothe election of grace. Israel as an earthly nation has notobtained what it seeks. But they are not all Israel whoare of Israel. At the end of the age, when all the electGentiles have been saved, all Israel WILL indeed havebeen saved — because “all Israel” here means all theremnants put together, all elect Jews from the beginningto the end of time. So God has not cast away His peo-ple whom He foreknew. Regardless of any confu-sion about Israel now, at the end of the age it will beshown that ALL Israel, all elect Jews, all those who areJews inwardly (for they are the real Israel) will havebeen saved.

Many have stumbled into a false understanding of the“all Israel” in Rom.11:26 because they read the phraseas “Then all Israel will be saved”. Whereas the textsays “And so”. The Greek words translated here as“and so” are kai outw", kai houtos, which means“and thus” or “and in this manner”.[45] Paul is

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45. As shown in, e.g. Such basic works as Strongs Enhanced Lexicon.

saying, “and in this manner all Israel will be saved”. Itis “in this way” that all Israel will be saved. Which man-ner? Which way? How will “all Israel” be saved? In themanner in which he has been demonstrating throughoutthe whole of the three chapters, 9 - 11 in his letter to theRomans — through the process of the Divine electionof a remnant.

This is why we say that this section of Romans can-not be understood outside of the context of election andthat if one does not accept God’s election of people tosalvation then one will miss the point of what Paul issaying and flounder on the phrase “all Israel will besaved”. Remember: “They are not all Israel who are ofIsrael”. But those who are of spiritual Israel — the electremnants — are the “all Israel” who will be saved.What a mystery! Paul immediately follows up his state-ment that all Israel will be saved by saying “as it is writ-ten” and giving a proof in Isa.59:20:

“The Deliverer will come out of Zion, and Hewill turn away ungodliness from Jacob; for this isMy covenant with them, when I take away theirsins”.

This is a prophecy of the coming of the Messiah whoenters into a sin-bearing New Covenant in His bloodpersonally with all those who have faith — Jew andGentile — throughout this Gospel age. This has noth-ing to do with any end-time restoration of national Israel— “all Israel” simply means the sum total of all believ-ing Jews who will be saved through faith in Christ, thedeliver who comes out of Zion, the only hope of Israel,the only Consolation of Israel. It is in the believing rem-nant of Israel that the promises are realised, not in anearthly nation settling down in a land in the MiddleEast to build an earthly kingdom. The unbelieving massof Israel always saw things in political/national land-based terms. Whereas the believing remnant was alwayslooking for something better, something beyond theland, something which really would be “forever”.

Just as blindness in part will happen to Israel “untilthe fullness of the Gentiles has come in” (Rom.11:25),so the earthly city of Jerusalem will be “trampled byGentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled”(Lk.21:24). And then the end will come. The “timesof the Gentiles” refers to the Gospel Age, the presentage which has so far been in force for some two thou-sand years, and which will one day be brought to a con-clusion with the Last Judgement when Christ returns toenact the judgement, bring the history of this universe toa close and bring in the new heavens and new earth.

The common assumption that there is something

beyond the times of the Gentiles on the earth as it ispresently constituted is a false one. The word “until”does not imply, “then something else afterwards”. TheScripture also says that Jesus must remain in heaven“until the times of the restoration of all things” (Acts3:21); but there is nothing after that on the earth as it ispresently constituted!

We do not close the door on the possibility that as theend draws near, there will be a mighty quickening ofJewish converts to Christ — indeed, we would dearlylove to see such a thing — but we do not believe thatScripture gives any credence whatsoever to the idea of afuture glory for Israel as an earthly nation. We areaware that many say that God cannot be glorified unlessHis ancient covenant people are seen to be restored as anation. However, God Himself says “Though Israel benot gathered, yet shall I be glorious” (Isa.49:5). Hisglory is in the Church of Jesus Christ comprised of con-verted Jews and Gentiles. It is “in His saints” of allnations that He is glorified (2 Thess.1:10; Jn.17:10;Eph.3:21).

IV. WHERE DOES ALL THIS LEAVE THEJEWISH PEOPLE TODAY AND IN THEFUTURE?

Having rejected their Messiah when He came at Hisfirst advent, it is surely not at all beyond the bounds ofpossibility that the unbelieving Jews will in some way becaught up in the deception of the Antichrist, when he isrevealed. In fact, it is very likely. Many of the EarlyChurch Fathers assumed that the unbelieving Jews —far from being restored to a great earthly God-glorifyingnation — would instead be engaged in welcoming theAntichrist. For example, Cyril of Jerusalem stated:

“Since the true Christ is to come a second time,the adversary, taking occasion by the expectation ofthe simple, and especially of them of the circumci-sion, brings in a certain man who is a magician,and most expert in sorceries and enchantments ofbeguiling craftiness; who shall seize for himself thepower of the Roman empire, and shall falsely stylehimself Christ, by this name deceiving the Jews,who are looking for the Anointed, and seducingthose of the Gentiles by his magical illusions”.[46]

According to the genuine treatise of Hippolytus,Christ and Antichrist, the Antichrist was to restore thekingdom of the Jews, to collect the Jews out of everycountry of the Dispersion, making them his own, asthough they were his own children, and promising torestore their country, and establish again their kingdom

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46. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, Lecture XV.

and nation, in order that he may be worshipped by themas God, and he will lead them on to persecute thesaints, i.e. the Christians .[47] And Ireneus of Lyonssaid that the Antichrist “shall remove his kingdom intoJerusalem, and shall sit in the Temple of God, leadingastray those who worship him as if he were Christ”.[48]

An interesting and significant fact is that the conceptof a coming Christ-like figure, a World Teacher whosets up a Golden Age on earth, can be found in manyworld religious systems as well as in the literature of theoccult. At present, numerous religious groupings are liv-ing in such an expectation.

For example, the Shi’ite Muslims believe that “Godhas designated a line of the family of ‘Ali’ to act assources of spiritual guidance to the community”.[49]The various members of this family line are known as‘Imams’. However, in the ninth century the twelfth ofthe line disappeared, and this led to a hiatus in themanifestation of the Imams. However, “the Shi’is nowawait the return (raj’a) of the expected Imam, who willre-establish a reign of justice and peace on earth”.[50]The significance to world events of this expectation ofthe Mahdi, as he is called, should not be missed. Forthe Shi’ites believe that

“towards the end of the world, before the LastDay (Qiyama), a Mahdi, often identified with thereturned Jesus, will establish a reign of justice onthe earth. In Shi’ism the Mahdi is a vital figure,identified with the Hidden Imam who will reap-pear and rule by divine prescription”.[51]

The Ayatollah Khomeini was a Shi’ite Muslim andhis Iranian Revolution of 1978-9 was a Shi’ite-inspiredevent. It is worth noting that after this Revolution, theAyatollah Khomeini became recognised as ‘VilayatFaqih’ or supreme temporal representative in Iran of theHidden Imam or Mahdi who is still to come.[52] Thepower of the Shi’ites worldwide is enormous. If a WorldTeacher was to appear who could fulfil their expecta-tions, his powerbase would be immense.

However, it is not only the millions of Shi’ite Mus-lims who are expecting a World Teacher to establish areign of peace and justice on the earth. Classical Bud-dhism also speaks of the expectancy of a future WorldTeacher to follow in the line of its founder ShakyamuniGautama Buddha, who was alive in the sixth century

B.C. Establishing the link even more profoundly, thename of their expected teacher is Bodhisattva Maitreya,which corresponds precisely with the name of the‘Ascended Master’ expected to come as the WorldTeacher of the Neo-Gnostics.

There is yet another interesting connection here: InNeo-Gnostic ideology, the ‘etheric’ retreat where the so-called “Ascended Masters” are reputed to live isreferred to as Shambhala. In the religion of TibetanBuddhism, the same name of Shambhala refers to

“a mystic kingdom ruled by the lineage holdersof the Kalachakra Tantra (Wheel of TimeTantra). It is said that King Suchandra of Shamb-hala received this Tantra from Buddha in the lat-ter’s eightieth year and entrusted it to hissuccessors, the last of whom, Rigden Pema Karpo,is expected to return and establish Shambhala as auniversal kingdom”.[53]

Once again, we discover in yet another religion thisidea of a coming World Teacher who sets up a GoldenAge on earth. Let us remember here that the TibetanBuddhist Dalai Lama, who is so influential among theNeo-Gnostics of today, occupies a similar role to that ofthe Ayatollah Khomeini in terms of being the “supremetemporal representative” of the Buddha, until the com-ing of the Maitreya to “establish Shambhala as a uni-versal kingdom”. In anticipation of this occurrence, theTibetan Buddhist organisation known as Vajradhatu,with its headquarters in Boulder, Colorado, has set upan imprint entitled the “New Science Library Series ofShambhala”, which publishes many titles propagatingthe New Gnosticism.

And the possibility of a great deception comes to thefore when we consider that the unbelieving Jews of theworld are still awaiting their Messiah to bring a reign ofpeace and justice on earth. This fact takes on sinisterproportions when one considers that enigmatic state-ment of the Lord Jesus to the Jews that, although theywould not accept Him as Messiah, “if another comes inhis own name, him you will receive” (Jn.5:43). Herewe begin to gain an insight into the true identity of thisWorld Teacher expected by so many of the world’sreligions. As Augustine of Hippo (A.D.354-430)rightly states, concerning the words of the Lord Jesus tothe Jews in Jn.5:43: “He intimated that they would

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53. Ibid., p.294.52. Ibid., p.58.51. Ibid., p.198.50. Ibid., pp.162-164.49. John R. Hinnells (ed.), The Penguin Dictionary of Religion (Penguin, 1984), p.161.48. Ireneus, Against Heresies, Book V, chap.25, § 4.47. Hippolytus, Of Christ and Antichrist, § 25, 54, 56.

receive Antichrist, who will seek the glory of his ownname”.[54]

Thus, what we believe on this issue is important. Mil-lions of professing evangelicals are being swept into fol-lowing the Jews and putting all their eggs in the basketof Israel. But that is the pathway of apostasy. Theearthly Israel of today is an apostate anti-Christiannation and should never be followed by Christians anymore than they should follow Indonesia or Iraq.

The accepted teaching in many circles today is thatafter the Jews refused Christ, He turned away fromthem to bring the Gospel to the Gentiles, but, as theysay, His dealing with the Gentiles is merely atemporary, parenthetical state of affairs, and that after amysterious rapture of the Church from off the earth,God will begin to deal with the Jews again and subse-quently will come back to earth with the saints fromglory and establish an earthly kingdom reigning from arestored temple regime in Jerusalem for exactly onethousand years. This strange unbiblical teaching isbased on what carnal, unbelieving Jews have taught forcenturies and it must be a matter of great bemusementto them that so many Christians have come to believethe same thing. However, the timeline is crystal clear inthe Scriptures, and it cuts across what so many arebeing taught today. To the Jews, Peter said that JesusChrist was sent,

“who was preached to you before, whom heavenmust receive until the times of restoration of allthings, which God has spoken by the mouth of allHis holy prophets since the world began”. (Acts3:20-21)

What place is there here for any strange pre-tribulational raptures and carnal Jewish dreams about aone thousand-year reign of Christ in an earthlykingdom? Peter’s words are clear: Jesus will remain inheaven until “the times of restoration of all things”, i.e.the Final Day of Judgement, when He will return toeffect the resurrection from the dead, judge the world,and create the new heavens and the new earth, exactlyas foretold by all the prophets from the beginning.

Peter gave out much the same timeline in his secondletter, when he showed that we are looking not for anystrange rapture or thousand-year earthly reigns ofChrist, but for the Day of the return of the Lord, whichwill be contemporaneous with the Judgement andrenewing of the entire universe:

“But the day of the Lord will come as a thief inthe night, in which the heavens will pass away with

a great noise, and the elements will melt with fer-vent heat; both the earth and the works that are init will be burned up. Therefore, since all thesethings will be dissolved, what manner of personsought you to be in holy conduct and godliness,looking for and hastening the coming of the day ofGod, because of which the heavens will be dis-solved, being on fire, and the elements will meltwith fervent heat? Nevertheless we, according toHis promise, look for new heavens and a new earthin which righteousness dwells”. (2 Pet.3:10-13)

It couldn’t be any clearer than that. When Christreturns, there will not be a secret rapture followed by aone thousand year reign on earth from Jerusalem.Instead, the universe will be dissolved and the new heav-ens and new earth will be brought into being with noplace for sin any longer. That is what the apostle plainlyshows. All things will have been made new.

So let us reject the teachings of the New Judaisersand the many Jewish myths they have put into circula-tion in these confusing days. As Paul put it nearly twothousand years ago:

“Rebuke them sharply, that they may be soundin the faith, not giving heed to Jewish fables andcommandments of men who turn from the truth”.(Tit.1:13-14 cf. 1 Tim.1:4; 2:7; 2 Tim.4:4)

CONCLUSION

Having covered all this ground, readers may stillquestion whether it matters what we believe about Israeltoday. Is it not merely a ‘secondary issue’? On the sur-face, it may not appear to matter and, in a sense, is is asecondary issue. Christians have always had minor dif-ferences about things which do not affect the Gospel orthe foundational truths of Christianity. But there aresome profound problems here.

First, although the place of Israel is technically a sec-ondary issue — that is, one’s eschatology would notnormally be counted as a fundamental of the faith —the problem is that what one believes about Israel hasindeed been given the status of a primary issue in somecircles today. For example, one well-known propagatorof these Jewish Messianic teachings wrote to the presentwriter as he was preparing this paper, warning:

“You are likely to lose many of the friends youmade among Charismatic and Pentecostal moder-ates if you proceed on this ill-contrived course”.

Frankly, such a statement highlights the sinful schismwhich lies at the heart of the pro-Israel movement

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54. Augustine of Hippo, Tractates on the Gospel According to St. John, Tractate XXIX, §8.

among evangelicals today. Why should a man losefriends simply because of what he believes the Scrip-tures teach about Israel? For this reason, we believe thatthis issue now matters very much, as it has becomeunnecessarily and harmfully divisive, not to mentioninculcative of other false teachings.

Secondly, there is the question of our stewardship offunds. If Israel today is not God’s chosen people, andthat cruel country in the Middle-East is not a fulfilmentof Bible prophecy, then is it right that we should besiphoning our treasury in the direction of such an anti-Christian earthly nation? Surely this is another reasonwhy our beliefs on this subject do make a difference.

Thirdly, we have noticed that a fascination withIsrael and Jewishness usually becomes progressivelyobsessive, leading to an almost cultish mentality, inwhich one shuns other Christians who do not sharethese beliefs. This regularly happens to a greater orlesser degree. But where it becomes an obsession, thereis always spiritual damage and the pursuing of harmfuldelusions. The present writer recently received a com-munication complaining of people on a Jewish Messi-anic style newsgroup on the Internet asking

“if they should wear beards, where they can buyprayer shawls from, guidance on blowing the shofar(a Jewish trumpet made of a ram’s horn) and soforth”.

Such redundant Judaising has become increasinglywidespread in recent years and has plainly come aboutbecause of a failure to understand the transition fromthe Old Covenant to the New. One could be forgivenfor such confusion in the first half of the first centuryAD; but twenty centuries later there can be no excusefor such ignorance among professing Christians.

Fourthly, the whole subject of Israel and the Jewshas come to consume an inordinate amount of unneces-sary prayer-time in the lives of many. There are a num-ber of organisations today which are solely devoted tothis issue, with many folk being drawn into wastinghours of valuable prayer-time about an obsoletesituation. We would certainly advocate prayer that Jew-ish people will come to a saving knowledge of Christ;but not to waste time praying about the country Israel asif it is the answer to the world’s spiritual problems.

Fifthly, we must always remember to distinguishZionism from Judaism. Zionism is a crusading move-ment which believes that Jewish people have a divineright to the land of Israel and that they are still God’schosen people. But not all Jewish people automaticallybelieve that. Many Jews will have no truck with the

Zionist movement. They await their Messiah patientlyin whatever country they are in and will not recognisethe state of Israel as having any divine permission to bethe restoration of O.T. Israel. One organisation withsuch a view is Jews against Zionism and it is well worthreading their material.[55]

I salute those Jews. Although they are not really opento the truth about Christ, they are devout within thescope of their religious aspirations and will not be side-tracked into setting up impostor nation-states. Thiswriter has a strong feeling that, as the time of the enddraws near, many such Jews as those will realise thetruth and become true believers — what some peoplecall “completed Jews”.

Sixthly, let us be quite clear here: we are not sayingthat the present state of Israel has no right to exist at allas a nation. That would be to misunderstand this paperentirely. Most countries in the world have been arbitrar-ily drawn on a map or have been established throughviolent events and each has as much right to existence asthe other.

What we are saying is that although the earthlynation Israel has a right to exist, it never had the right tojettison unwanted peoples from the land, which is theroot of so many of the problems of today in theMiddle-East.

How the country established itself amid so muchbloodshed is one of the banes of modern history. Themassacre of the inhabitants of the village of Deir Yassinnear Jerusalem on April 9, 1948 by a mixture of Jewishforces and militant Zionist groups spread terror amongPalestinians as a result of which hundreds of thousandsfled to Lebanon, Egypt and the area now known as theWest Bank, where they became refugees.

It is the treatment of the Palestinians as pariahs bythe Zionists and the hate-filled legacy of those refugeecamps which has continued to fuel the conflict there tothis day.

Thus, although the earthly nation Israel has as muchright to exist as any other country, it has no right to bechampioned as God’s land, as if it was the same as theIsrael of the Old Testament of the Bible.

Put simply: It is an impostor.Finally, it is a real concern that so many have

become grounded in a crass over-literalistic form of bib-lical hermeneutics. For this naturally colours one’s gen-eral Bible interpretation and leads to erroneoushermeneutics in other aspects of Christian doctrine. Fur-thermore, it has serious ramifications for the way that weunderstand modern politics and governance.

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55. See their website at http://www.jewsagainstzionism.com

The blame for the proliferation of these over-literalistic ideas lies squarely at the feet of the C.I.Schofield and his Study Bible. Since 1909, this ten-dentious work has been hugely influential in shaping theeschatology of generations of Christians, by placing itsnotes in the pages of the Bible to make them seem asmuch a part of the Bible as the Word of God itself.Especially the teaching about the restoration of Israel tothe Middle-Eastern land.

This false understanding of Israel by so many profess-ing Christians today has meant that millions all over theworld have been completely hoodwinked by the emerg-ing New World Order, which they mistakenly see asbeing a benign part of their prophetic plan centred onthe restoration of earthly Israel. This has led to a mas-sive deception involving the majority of evangelicals andfundamentalists. That is why so many of them backedthe illegal and amoral invasion and occupation of Iraqin 2003. So intense is their deception that they will sup-port any act of barbarism and cruelty so long as it isseen to be to the advantage of their blessed Israel.

We must not see any of this as an earthly battle but aspiritual one. We need to understand that so many havebeen deceived about the modern state of Israel becausethey have been the victims of spiritual deception. This isserious because it has caused a completely false herme-neutic to be applied to prophetic Scriptures such as theBook of Revelation.

As an example of the way that this false hermeneuticworks, consider the fact that countless millions of Chris-tians believe that the “Armageddon” mentioned inRev.16:16 refers to an actual geographical location onthis planet (i.e. the actual Valley of Megiddo or Jezreelin Israel). To believe that is to misunderstand the spiri-tual nature of the term under the New Covenant andthe highly symbolic nature of the Book of Revelation.Surely, what we have in Rev.16:16 is what Philip E.Hughes described as: “A term of symbolicalsignificance, denoting worldwide revolt rather than a par-ticular territorial locality”. Armageddon in the Book ofRevelation is — as Leon Morris puts it — ultimately“a symbol for the final overthrow of all the forces of evilby an almighty God”.

If we believe that Rev.16:16 refers to a geographicallocation, we are going to miss completely the signifi-cance of what lies at the heart of the Book of Revelationand that which is the climax of a long process which hasbeen active throughout history. If we believe thatRev.16:16 refers to a geographical location, we aregoing to be completely swept away by a great many fal-lacies regarding the outworking of prophecy — as manyalready have. In fact, if we believe that Rev.16:16 refers

to a geographical location, we are going to be totallyduped by real Armageddon which is being hatched bythe emerging New World Order.

A rule that we constantly find in Scripture is that forevil to be ripe for Divine judgement it must fill up thecup of its iniquity. We saw it at the Flood — we saw itat Babel. And those alive at the end of this age will seeit again — only that time it will be forever, with nogoing back. Armageddon is the climax of a processwhich has been at work throughout this Age but whichquickens as the end of the Age and the return of JesusChrist approaches. We are in the midst of Armageddonwarfare at this moment of history. But if we adhere tothe prevailing false understanding of Israel today, wewill fail to understand this properly and be open tomanipulation and deception.

The darkness is gathering for the ultimate battle.When the Scripture speaks of a battle against “the campof the saints and the beloved city” (Rev.20:9), it is not areference to some onslaught against national Israel, asmost evangelicals and fundamentalists believe today. Itis instead the battle by the forces of darkness against theNew Jerusalem, the true church of Jesus Christ, the sumof all true believers -- also known as “Mount Zion... thecity of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem... the gen-eral assembly and church of the firstborn who are regis-tered in heaven” (Heb.12:22-23). The ‘camp of thesaints” today is not the city of Jerusalem in the earthlycountry Israel. It is the true church. All the venom ofSatan is directed towards faithful spiritual believersrather than an earthly multifaith city. This is a spiritualbattle and its lines are being drawn up even now.

Thus, true believers can expect to become increas-ingly suppressed and persecuted today -- especially bythe false church which supports the emerging NewWorld Order under one of its key advocates, the mod-ern state of Israel.

Israel is championed by many big names. Peoplesuch as Pat Robertson, the founder of the ChristianBroadcasting Network, go to Israel and give speeches to“the elite of Israel’s political and militaryestablishment”, to a rapturous response:

“when he [Pat Robertson] wrapped up his give-no-ground speech to the elite of Israel’s politicaland military establishment with the ringing declara-tion “Be strong! Be strong!” many of his listenersjumped to their feet to give him a boisterous roundof applause... Just days later, about 16,000 U.S.churches, many of them in the South, participatedin a one-day “Stand for Israel” prayer campaignco-chaired by Ralph Reed, who formerly headedthe Christian Coalition and is now the

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Atlanta-based head of the Bush-Cheney re-electioncampaign in the South”.[56]

Big money is involved. In 2003, the Chicago-basedInternational Fellowship of Christians and Jews gave$20 million to various Israeli causes. What we have hereis a deception fit to deceive even the elect. As authorand film-maker, Ted Pike, puts it:

“Just as Babylon the Great will deceive allnations in the end times, including, if possible, the‘very elect,’ so we see the descendants of the Phari-sees in perfect conformity to their ancient character-istics, presenting a whitewashed facade to theChurch and the nations — a whitened wall whichhas never been more scrupulously maintained orconvincing. The fact that the Jewish lobby in theUS has literally deceived the very elect into anunquestioning support of its ambitions and atroci-ties in the Middle East is awesome evidence ofhow compelling will be the Jewish powers ofthought manipulation as we draw even closer to theend. It reminds us when Christ warned us that thedelusions of the end time would be so compellingthat ‘even the very elect’ would be deceived, if thatwere possible...”.

This is why this deception is so effective and far-reaching. It completely deceives Christians into

supporting injustice and oppression and sets them up tobe hoodwinked by something to come which will beeven more devastating.

Nevertheless, in spite of all that we have said above,however much the neo-Judaisers of today desire to fossil-ise the redemptive plan of God in an Old Covenantmould — however hard they try to make nicknamessuch as “replacement theology” stick and become vogueterms — the Bible is clear about the true place of“Israel” today, and the nature of the real Jerusalem.The true Church is Israel today (Gal.6:14) and theindividual believer has that indelibly stamped on hisheart. As the Lord Jesus Himself confirms:

“He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar inthe temple of My God, and he shall go out nomore. And I will write on him the name of MyGod and the name of the city of My God,the New Jerusalem, which comes down out ofheaven from My God. And I will write on him Mynew name. He who has an ear, let him hear whatthe Spirit says to the churches” (Rev.3:12-13).

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© Copyright, Alan Morrison, 1998, 2004, 2007

truthtake@gmail.com

30,535 words

SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: 1) Oswald T. Alliss, “Prophecy and the Church” (P. & R, 1955), 339pp; 2) John L. Bray, “Israelin Bible Prophecy” (available from the author, P.O. Box 90129, Lakeland, Florida 33804, U.S.A.), 80pp; 3) Louis A. DeCaro, “IsraelToday: Fulfillment of Prophecy?” (P. & R., 1976), 241pp; 4) William Hendriksen, “Israel in Prophecy” (Baker Book House, 1968),63pp; 5) Philip Mauro, “The Hope of Israel” (Grace Abounding Ministries, Sterling, Virginia, 1988), 261pp; 6) Israel Shahak, JewishHistory, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years (Pluto Press, 1997), 127pp; 7) Ted Pike, “Israel: Our Duty... OurDilemma” (National Prayer Network, 2002).

56. See http://www.patrobertson.com/Speeches/speechreaction.asp