Back to the Future
Updated: Apr 4
Elana and I are in Europe raising awareness in churches concerning the rising tide of antisemitism. What we are seeing now is a repeat of history. The enemy has hated Israel for millennia. Israel’s restoration represents his end. When Yeshua returns, he will judge the survivors based on how they treated his physical brothers. That is what the "sheep and the goats" prophecy is about!
One day (perhaps soon), war will just have taken place against Israel, and when all seems lost, the Messiah will come and fight for her. “Then the Lord will go out and fight against those nations as when he fights on a day of battle. On that day, his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives (Zec 14:3–4).”
Demonic Replacement Theology
Satan entered the hearts of the Church Fathers, and they actually created anti-Jewish theology, saying that God was finished with Israel. Justin Martyr said it was impossible to be Christian and Jew at the same time. John Chrysostom accused the entire Jewish people of deicide and were guilty of killing God. Augustine, whom we wrote about last week, believed that Jewish people were spared by God only because their blindness testifies that the Scriptures are true.
It is essential to understand that they were not merely making arguments for fun or arguing with shadows—there must have been a sizeable minority of Jewish-loving Christians throughout the empire for centuries, as these arguments took place from the early second century until the 5th.
Luther and his Jew-Hatred
Luther showed up 1,000 years later after Jews had been murdered (falsely accused of poisoning wells during the Black Death, falsely accused of kidnapping Christian children for blood sacrifices and killed or raped simply for being Jewish during the Crusades) with his Reformation breakthrough, challenging the corrupt popes and bishops in his day‚ many of whom had secret concubines and lived better than most prosperity preachers!
Luther argued for new and refreshing doctrines:
Justification by sola fide “faith alone.”
Everyone should be free to read the Bible in his native tongue.
The Bible is given precedence over all other sources of authority (like the pope!) in sola Scriptura.
While these ideas were a threat to the control that the Catholic Church had over people’s lives, Luther was convinced that the Jews would convert en masse to follow Jesus, given the new and powerful truths that were being preached. However, when they did not, Luther turned hard against the Jews. He even wrote a book called The Jews and Their Lies. In it, he called for severe persecutions against the Jews, for their prayer books to be burned, and summed up his racist recommendations with this: “Dear princes and nobles who have Jews in your domains, if this advice of mine does not suit you, then find a better one so that you and we may all be free of this insufferable devilish burden—the Jews."
It is no wonder that the Nazis made Luther their hero, saying that his teaching and Hitler’s struggle were aligned against the Jews. In fact, many have claimed, and I would agree, that the Nazis couldn't have brought forth the Holocaust without Christian anti-Jewish writings.
Institute for Dejudaizing the Bible 1939, Germany
Were you aware that in 1939 the Nazis created "The Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Church Life” (Institut zur Erforschung und Beseitigung des jüdischen Einflusses auf das deutsche kirchliche Leben)?
Their goal was:
"Seeking to create a dejudaized church for a Germany that was in the process of ridding Europe of all Jews, it developed new biblical interpretations and liturgical materials. In the six years of its existence, as the Nazi regime carried out its genocide of the Jews, the Institute redefined Christianity as a Germanic religion whose founder, Jesus, was no Jew but rather had fought valiantly to destroy Judaism, falling victim to that struggle. Germans were now called upon to be the victors in Jesus’s own struggle against the Jews, who were said to be seeking Germany’s destruction.”[1]
And that leads us to where we are today. It does appear that we are in the time of birth pangs that Yeshua spoke of. How could so much of the world—leftwing, far rightwing, LGBTQ, Jihadists—all come into agreement that Israel and Jews are evil? Iran calls for Israel to be wiped off the map. Some who identify as Christians, like Candace Owen, have taken on the antisemitic tropes of noted antisemite Nick Fuentes (who dined with President Trump last year!).
We Must Be Getting Close
I wrote in Birth Bangs that the topic of Israel would become more controversial than abortion. That was just 3.5 years ago, and I NEVER expected that it would come to pass this quickly. We are entering a time of testing for the Church. Please guard your heart. Understand that Christians who hate Jews are unwittingly hating the Messiah, who is a Jew (see more). He will not return for a Jew-hating Bride.
Amazingly, Paul warned the future Church against judging Israel, saying such attitudes would bring judgment on the Church (Romans 11:17-26). However, I think that God is raising up a church that will heed Paul’s warning and protect Israel. When I wrote Birth Pangs, I felt that we had crossed over a point in history and that we would not go back. In the same way, October 7th was a turning point for the world. We are getting close!
[1] Susannah Heschel, The Aryan Jesus (Princeton: PA: Princeton University Press, 2008), 1, Kindle.
