A Response to the New Anti-Jewish Theology

All right, well, welcome.

Thank you for coming out tonight. I was not expecting this big of a turnout, but I'm really glad to see you all. There's a lot of faces, and actually,

I don't think I've met you. So, I'm John. What's your name? Jonah. Jonah. Oh, that's a great, great

Jewish name there. A great Old Testament name. I don't think we're gonna talk about Jonah, but maybe we could slide it in somehow.

Thanks for coming. So, yeah, my pleasure. Let me start at the beginning, my personal journey, and why

I decided to offer this and do this tonight. I have never been interested in eschatology.

All right, it's like my least favorite theology, segment of theology.

I don't like discussions about it because there's so many opinions. I've always had trouble understanding why

I should care about details. I get the big picture that Jesus is coming back, but there's been a rising threat that I've noticed in our circles, which are more

Reformed Evangelical, probably in the last two years, and it's really escalated since Charlie Kirk's assassination.

I was used to some of the more, I would say, maybe crazy or overly enthusiastic, sometimes heretical, prosperity preachers who would talk about Israel, sometimes in ways that just were not biblically justifiable, but that was never in my circle, really.

What's happening now, though, is there are threats to other theologies,

Christology, our understanding of hermeneutics, understanding of the Second Coming, our understanding of biblical ethics, that are now coming into the

Reformed Evangelical camp, and they're motivated by what I'm just calling an internet -driven anti -Jewish theology.

I think it's in development, and I think there's many versions of it, and we're not going to know exactly where it goes to until it actually reaches that destination.

So we may even be waiting a while, but there is something in the water. There is something developing, and I want to take an opportunity to critique it in the phase that it's in now, and in order to do that,

I realized not only do I need to understand what the Bible says and what church history has said about Israel and Jewish people,

I also need to help other people kind of arrive at this point, because so much of what's said online is just ignorant.

It's just totally devoid of any understanding of what the Bible has said, what church the Fathers have said, what the

Reformers have said, what the Puritans have said. All of that is just totally missed, and oftentimes the conversation comes down to it's either

Protestantism or Dispensationalism or some kind of ism that is blamed for everything that went wrong with our view of Israel.

So this is really for my own understanding and also to help you and your understanding of this issue, so when you see some of the things that I'm going to talk about that are threats to our

Orthodox theology, you'll be able to recognize it, you'll be able to challenge it, and you'll know what you believe.

That's the goal. So the hope that God holds a special place for ethnic

Israel and will finish restoring them in some capacity is traceable to the origins of our faith.

It derives from clear biblical teaching, and it has been the conviction of many of the church's greatest theologians from the past, regardless of disagreements over the timing and nature of this restoration.

So I'm going to give you a lot of different theologians from different eras that had different views about what a restoration would look like, but they all believed that something on the prophetic calendar was coming, and Israel was involved in that, that there was going to be some kind of an ingathering or a restoration of the

Jewish people in some way. I think the conversation is relevant to us in addition to trying to stave off threats to our biblical theology.

There's two other reasons. One is that in Romans 9 through 11, Paul argues that Gentiles can have faith in God's promises to them because God keeps his promises to ethnic

Israel, and to me that is a very personal thing because if God failed in his promises to ethnic

Israel, what is to make us think he's going to keep his promises to us? So we need to, for our own faith, understand what

God's plans are and have been with the Jewish people with ethnic Israel. Secondly, we need to have a theological category for what the modern state of Israel does or does not represent theologically because there are all kinds of claims ranging from the notion that Jews are

God's permanent enemies post 70 AD all the way to the idea that the modern state of Israel represents the beginning of the restoration prophesied by Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel.

This is where it gets political. I don't want to get too political because I want to keep it theological.

I do have my own views about how America should, this country we're living in, behave towards Israel and what an alliance should look like, but I'm way more concerned right now with the theological end of it.

So I'm willing to take questions on the politics of it, but we're in a church, we're doing theology, we're doing church history.

That's what I want to primarily focus on. There are three simple points that I want to make. First, the

Bible consistently speaks about a future completed restoration of ethnic Israel.

Second, spiritual fathers throughout church history believe this promise, and third, the command to bless

Israel is still in effect. So let's talk about the restoration of Israel, and in order to do that we have to start at the beginning, which is the

Abrahamic Covenant. In Genesis 12, 1 through 3, God promises

Abram at that point, that's his name, a land, a nation, and a blessing. Now, this is the foundation for everything else we're going to be talking about, so we have to understand this, and there's three components here to the promise, right?

There's a land, there's a nation, and there's a blessing. You could add in there's a protection clause as well, that the people who treat you in a certain way are also going to be treated in a certain way from God.

But there's three primary elements. Now, God reminds Abraham of this promise nine more times throughout the book of Genesis, and he specifies that the land promise will ultimately expand to the region between the

River Egypt, he doesn't say which river, it's probably the Wadi River, some people say the

Nile, but it's probably the Wadi River, which is more of a brook, which is actually much closer to the current border, and the

Euphrates River, and he says that in He says that it will include many nations and kings,

Genesis 17, 5 through 6, that circumcision will be the sign of the covenant, Genesis 17, 11, and that Abraham's seed will rule over their enemies,

Genesis 22, 17, and that the covenant will be established with Isaac and not Ishmael, that's

Genesis 17, 18 through 21. Now, in Genesis 15, God ratifies this covenant.

You know the story, perhaps he makes Abraham fall into a deep sleep, and then he decides to pass through these sacrificed animals that were cut in half, a ram, a goat, and a cow, along with a pigeon and a turtle dove, and the significance of this is that the promise itself is not contingent on Abraham's ability to keep the promise.

It is totally dependent on God's promise itself. So, God is essentially saying, this is an irrevocable, unconditional covenant that I'm making with you.

It's very important to understand, because it's different than the Mosaic Covenant, which was dependent on Israel's performance.

This is not dependent on anyone's performance or the fulfillment of it. Now, at this point,

I need to mention something. There is an Islamic interpretation of this. Now, why are we going to talk about Islam? The reason we have to talk about Islam is because Islam is now becoming popular on certain segments of even the political right in a very startling fashion, and I have caught whiffs of this, even with those who claim to be

Christians. They are depending on some Islamic interpretations of what this means, and so I need to talk about it briefly.

In Surah Al -Baqarah 2, verse 124, the Qur 'an says this, and it's saying this about Muhammad.

It says, And mention, O Muhammad, when Abraham was tried by his

Lord with commands, and he fulfilled them, Allah said, Indeed, I will make you a leader for the people.

Abraham said, And of my descendants, and Allah said, My covenant does not include the wrongdoers.

Now, in this section, the Qur 'an is addressing Israel's claims to religious legitimacy over Islam, and the

Qur 'an teaches that both of Abraham's sons, Ishmael and Isaac, built the first mosque, which is the Kaaba in Mecca.

You might have seen that on your TV recently, them circling the Kaaba. This is the first mosque in their thinking, in their theology.

And from Abraham and Ishmael would come a Muslim nation. Now, the

Bible focuses more on Isaac. God changes Abraham's name to Abraham after Ishmael's birth in anticipation of Isaac's birth and the fulfillment of the covenant through him.

Muslims, however, do not believe that this happened. There was no name change. And they focus more significantly on Ishmael.

He is more of the religious significance is attributed to him in the Qur 'an. Now, on this view, there is no land promise for Israel, no future salvation through a

Messiah, by which all people would be blessed. It's just the promise to basically have a

Muslim nation, universal, where everyone's going to become Muslim. And this started with Abraham.

So that's their interpretation of it. And that's why they disagree with Jewish people about who are religious, who think that there is a legitimacy to their claim to the

Holy Land. Now, moving back to the Bible and from the Qur 'an, as the book of Genesis unfolds, we find the

Abrahamic covenant is further narrowed from Isaac to Jacob. Genesis 28, 13 through 15 talks about this.

Remember the story? Jacob deceives Isaac and receives the blessing from him instead of his brother

Esau. And then he has to flee because Esau is after him. And so he goes to Paddam Aram, which is in Syria from Beersheba, which is southern

Israel, modern Syria. I mean, it wasn't called that at the time. On his way, he stops at a place called Luz, which is 12 miles north of Jerusalem.

And he has a dream. And in that dream, God reveals and applies to him the land, nation, and blessing that he promised to Abraham.

He tells Jacob, Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land, for I will not leave you until I have done what

I have promised you. And so Jacob renames the place Bethel. He returns to it later in Genesis 35.

And at that point, God appears to Jacob again, renames him Israel. So that's his new name. And promised to give the land of Abraham to his descendants, who constitute now the 12 tribes of Israel.

So that's why sometimes people want to go back and say it's to Abraham, though. Well, yes, but it is applied then to Isaac and then to Jacob.

This is the line that God is choosing and saying will fulfill that particular promise.

Now, of course, a famine strikes the land. And what happens? Israel's sons have to move to Egypt. And they buy grain, and they are enslaved for 400 years, just like the

Bible predicted, actually, in Genesis 15, 13. God said this was going to happen, so it happens. And in Exodus 2, 24,

God heard the groaning of the Israelites, and he remembered what? What did he remember at that time?

His covenant with who? With Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So this is the solidification of the fact that this promise is to this particular group that is in Egypt.

God brings them out of Egypt, and throughout Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, the land promise is reiterated multiple times and applied to the nation of Israel.

So there's really no other contender here. It's this group of people. It's this ethnic group at the point that we're at now.

Now, there's some theologians who today will say that this was fulfilled, the land promise at least, at the time of Joshua when he was conquering

Canaan. Others will say, actually, no, that was a partial fulfillment. It was really fulfilled during the reign of King Solomon, when

King Solomon owned a vast amount of land. And even if he didn't directly command all the region that God had promised to Abraham, at the very least, those countries were paying tribute to him.

So this is the fulfillment, and there is nothing left for the land promises. So I want to just talk about that for a moment, because there's this passage in Leviticus that makes that interpretation very inconvenient.

Leviticus 26, 40 through 45. This is before the spies enter the land of Canaan.

And God tells Moses that he will eventually punish the nation of Israel for their disobedience by exiling them to the land of their enemies, where they will subsequently repent of their sin and return to enjoy the blessings of the

Abrahamic covenant. So here's what he writes. This is in Leviticus 26, starting at verse 40.

This is kind of a long section, but I want to read it. If they confess their iniquity, meaning Israel, and the iniquity of their forefathers, in their unfaithfulness which they committed against me, and also in their acting with hostility against me,

I will also, I was, I also was acting with hostility against them, to bring them into the land of their enemies, or if their uncircumcised heart becomes humbled, so that they then make amends for their iniquity.

Then I will remember my covenant with Jacob, and I will remember my covenant with Isaac, and my covenant with Abraham as well, and I will remember the land, for the land will be abandoned by them, and will make up for its

Sabbaths, while it is made desolate without them. They, meanwhile, will be making amends for their iniquity, because they rejected my ordinances, and their soul abhorred my statutes.

Yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them, nor will I abhor them, as to destroy them, breaking my covenant with them, for I am the

Lord their God. But I will remember for them the covenant with their ancestors, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt, in the sight of the nations, that I might be their

God. I am the Lord." Now, why is this passage so important? This passage is so important, because it reveals that neither the conquest of Canaan under Joshua, nor the expansion of the kingdom under Solomon, can be the final fulfillment of the land promises to Abraham, in the

Abrahamic covenant. Joshua 21, 45, describes Israel possessing all the land, even though they never reached the borders of the

Euphrates. Yet it states, "...not one of the good promises which the Lord had made to the house of Israel failed.

All came to pass." So, how does this make sense? Similarly, under Solomon's reign, while the full extent of the borders promised to Abraham were never reached,

Israel did exact tribute from the nations that lived within the area. So, 2 Chronicles 9, 26 says this, "...Solomon

was the ruler over all the kings from the Euphrates River, even to the land of the Philistines, and as far as the border of Egypt."

So, you have these circumstances where they're in the land, and it seems like this is at least a partial fulfillment.

They've really done a good job with taking care of the enemies that are there, and with Solomon's reign being a high point, the nations around him are serving him.

And so, this looks like this could be it. Now, the problem is, what we just previously read never happened, though, yet.

They have not gone into captivity. There is this prediction that that is actually going to happen first, before they come back into the land.

But this hasn't happened yet. This event is still to come, so it can't be the final fulfillment.

Now, there are some theologians who think it was, but I think this presents a problem for them.

Now, let me present some other issues here. God promised Abraham, Moses, and Joshua possession, not just control, possession of the land from the river of Egypt to the

Euphrates. So, just because Solomon controlled this area doesn't mean that he actually—and

I don't even think he controlled the whole area, but he controlled most of it—that doesn't mean that he actually possessed it. So, that was the promise.

Second, the historical scenario that we just talked about—rebellion, captivity, repentance, and return—had not taken place.

Third, the Abrahamic covenant is described in Genesis 13, 15 as an everlasting covenant, using the term olam, which is the same one in Genesis 9, 16 that's used to describe the

Noahic covenant. So, it's an everlasting covenant. As long as you see the rainbow, God's not going to flood the earth.

That's his sign. He'll never do it. It's the same kind of language here, so that's another thing to realize.

And fourth, the Abrahamic covenant is a singular promise to institute a land, nation, and blessing together. It's not a separate promise.

They don't come in like increments. They're all going to be together at some point.

So, if you lose the land, but these other promises, that doesn't make sense. These all have to come together somehow. At least that's a common -sense reading of the covenant.

Furthermore, God tells Joshua in Joshua 13, 1 that very much of the land remains to be possessed.

Now, I'm going to recruit someone from church history here to explain this better, John Calvin. He commented on the seeming discrepancy between Joshua 21, 43, where the

Lord gave Israel all the land which he had sworn to give the fathers, and they possessed it and lived in it, and Joshua 13, 1, where the whole land is not under Israelite possession.

So, here's what Calvin says. Calvin says, in order to remove this appearance of contradiction, it is necessary to distinguish between the certain, clear, and steadfast faithfulness of God in keeping his promises, and the effeminacy and sluggishness of the people, in consequence of which the benefit of the divine goodness in a manner slipped through their hands, wherefore, although they did not rout them all as to make their possession clear, yet the truth of God came visibly forth and was realized, in as much as they might have obtained what was remaining without any difficulty.

Had they been pleased to avail themselves of the victories offered by them? So, this is in John Calvin's commentary on Joshua.

What is he saying? He's saying that God promised and enabled Israel to possess the land, but they only occupied a portion of it.

Their achievement was a fulfillment, and they were authorized to completely fulfill the promise, but it was not a final fulfillment of the

Abrahamic Covenant due to their own weakness, which is, I think, pretty typical of John Calvin to say that it's human frailty and sin that's preventing us from enjoying what

God has given us. So, this is, I think, a good explanation for why you see these different verses.

Now, throughout the rest of the Old Testament, Israel never fully realizes the complete fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant, and if you know the history, what happens?

931 BC, the kingdom was divided between the ten northern tribes and the Judeans and Benjamites in the south, and Assyria captures the northern kingdom, 722, and the

Babylonian kingdom is captured in 586, and so the kingdom is just fracturing.

Then, something happens that gives a glimmer of hope, though. 538 BC, Ezra and Nehemiah return with some of the

Judean exiles. They rebuild the temple and the walls around Jerusalem, but they were also eventually conquered by Rome in 63

BC, and under Roman occupation is where they were when Christ came. So, that's the whole

Old Testament summarized, essentially, right there. They are given this promise. They seem to almost reach that point, but they never quite do.

There's going to be an exile. There's going to be a return. Okay, so that happens, at least, but then they never actually occupy the land after that, and this is the point we're at still today.

At this point, Christ enters the scene. They are still wanting to occupy the land, to have the nation, to have the blessing, and they believe the

Messiah is going to be one to usher this in because of other prophecies we'll talk about. So, Jesus comes into this world, and he comes in under a list of expectations that the

Jews have for him, if he is the true Messiah. It is important to understand, I think, what was going on in their minds, so let's dive into that a little.

Not only were the Jews looking for liberation from Rome and the fulfillment of the promise made to Abraham that they would occupy the promised land, but they also expected the

Messiah to usher in the kingdom, and you see this when they shot at Hosanna. Hosanna is basically, save us, during Jesus's triumphal entry,

Matthew 21. They expect him to come in and throw off Rome. In 2nd Samuel 7, 12 through 16,

God had reiterated his promise to provide a permanent land for Israel and peace from her enemies, but he also revealed that David's dynasty would be established forever.

So, these are the verses going through their minds. They're saying, wait a minute, there's a Davidic covenant here too, that there's going to be an everlasting dynasty, and it's good.

The seed of David's throne is what we're looking for, and a lot of people thought that's got to be Jesus.

He's going to be the one. Psalm 89, 3 through 4, says, I have sworn to David my servant.

I will establish your seed forever and build up your throne to all generations. So, this is what the Jews are looking for.

It's intrinsic to their identity at this point, and what does the New Testament open with?

What's the first verse in the New Testament, at least as we have it chronicled in our canon? Matthew 1, 1.

What does it say? The record of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the

Son of David, the Son of Abraham. That's how the whole New Testament opens up. What's that saying?

This is the person. This is the one that you've been waiting for. This is the fulfillment of the prophecy to David.

This is significant. Pay attention, Jews. So, the angel Gabriel comes right after this.

I mean, we're still very early on in the story, and the angel Gabriel tells Mary in Luke 1, 32 through 33, that the

Lord God will give him a throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom will have no end.

Jesus hasn't even grown up yet. This is very early in the story. Mary then declares that God has given help to Israel, his servant, in remembrance of what?

His mercy as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and his descendants forever. She's referencing the

Abrahamic Covenant. Zechariah also identifies Jesus as the Messiah and the fulfillment of the

Abrahamic Covenant. That's in Luke chapter 1. He's very early. Nathanael tells Jesus in John 1, 49, you are the king of Israel.

Pilate nails a sign, right? And what does it say? Jesus the Nazarene, the king of the Jews. That's in John 19.

And then later on in the New Testament, I'm only giving you a few references. There's many, but Paul says God has raised up David to be their king from the descendants of this nation.

Sorry, from the descendants of this man. According to promise, God has brought to Israel a Savior, Jesus, and that Jesus was born of a descendant of David, according to the flesh.

So this just keeps, throughout the whole New Testament, you keep seeing this over and over. Jesus is the promised

Jewish Messiah. Revelation 5 .5, what is the title for him? He's a lion of the tribe of Judah. Literally where we get the term

Jews. So people say Jesus might not be a Jew. It's like literally the term Judea.

Judea is where we get Jews. So it's like, if anyone's a Jewish person, it is Jesus. Now, New Testament writers go to great lengths to demonstrate this.

However, the Jews also expected something else to happen when the Messiah came. So even if they believed in all the genealogical things and all the things that Jesus was trying to tell them, they also had this other expectation that kind of got in their way.

They thought a kingdom was going to emerge from this, and it was very specific what that would look like. The coming kingdom would be a time of peace, when the law will go forth from Zion and the word of the

Lord from Jerusalem. Never again will they learn war, and the wolf will dwell with the lamb.

That's Isaiah 2 -4 and Isaiah 11 -6. It would be marked by prosperity, where the youth will die at the age of 100.

Isaiah 65 -20, where people will say this desolate land has become like the Garden of Eden, is equal to 36 -35.

It would also be a time of spiritual renewal, when God would pour out his Spirit on mankind,

Joel 2 -28, and institute a new covenant by writing his law in the hearts of the Israelites, so that they would know him,

Jeremiah 31. The Messiah would build a new temple, Zechariah 6. God's presence would fill it,

Ezekiel 43. Sacrifices would be made, Jeremiah 33. I mean, I'm just giving you tons of prophecies here.

It would be a time of reunion, as Israel and Judah were brought back together from the nations where they've been scattered. Ezekiel 37, that's the

Valley of Dry Bones. God would rule over the entire world, Zechariah 14. Since the time of Solomon, there's been all this development.

The prophets have given some more expectations about what this is actually going to look like when the

Messiah comes. They're thinking, all right, when the Messiah comes, we're really going to not just overthrow

Rome. We're going to institute this amazing kingdom, and it's going to have all these features. Maybe that's

Jesus. Maybe he's the guy that can do this. So, the religious Jews today are still looking for the coming

Messiah. In fact, I was at the Wailing Wall on Shabbat, which is crazy.

It's just this huge crowd. If you're claustrophobic, you don't want to go. They all want to go get to this wall.

What are they doing at the wall? They're praying. They're asking God that he would come back, the

Messiah would return. I stood there, and I looked at all the people. I obviously didn't kiss the wall or do anything like that, but I wanted to be part of it in the sense of understanding what was happening by just being in the crowd.

I turned around, and I just have this sense of, look at all these people that are stuck. They're stuck 2 ,000 years ago, in my mind.

Jesus came, but they're still at the place they were when Christ first came. They're still looking for the overthrow of their oppressors.

In this case, it's the Dome of the Rock. It's Muslims. It's the people surrounding them. They still have this expectation that I'm just reading to you about.

In fact, I just saw a video the other day of IDF soldiers singing, and this is a translation, I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the

Messiah, and though he tarry, I will wait daily for his coming. These are soldiers. They're not all necessarily religious

Jews. This is just kind of in the water of the people who live there that they think the Messiah is going to come, and when he comes, their enemies won't be bothering them anymore.

So what happens, though, in the Church Age? The Messiah does come, and he sets up the

New Covenant. Now, this is where things start to get a little tricky for some theologians.

What does the New Covenant mean, and how does that relate to the Abrahamic Covenant and the Davidic Covenant that came before it?

Well, the problem modern religious Jews have is the same problem many of their forebears 2 ,000 years ago had during Christ's first coming.

So just as Leviticus 26 said there would be a period of rebellion and exile before the Restoration, we talked about that, right?

They said this was going to happen. There's also going to be other expectations.

There needed to be a final atoning sacrifice for sin. There needed to be a restoration in that sense.

Israel was going to have a general rejection of the Messiah and the extension of the gospel message to the Gentiles in the institution of the

Church as the manifestation of God's spiritual kingdom. So this is the birth of the Church, the birth of Christianity.

So Isaiah 53 foretells of the suffering servant who's going to come, says he's despised and forsaken, he's pierced through for our transgressions, he's crushed for our iniquities, and yet he would not open his mouth.

Modern, more Talmudic interpretations say this is Israel that's being described here, but if you look at the pronouns, if you look at the language, this is a person that's being described here.

It matches what Jesus eventually fulfilled. Psalm 22 describes the same figure whose hands and feet are pierced, whose garments are divided by casting lots, and who cries,

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Daniel 9 26 predicted with remarkable precision the exact year the

Messiah would be cut off, 69 prophetic weeks or 173 ,880 days from Artaxerxes decree in 445

BC, which is the year AD 33. This is just sort of like tip -of -the -iceberg stuff, but there's all these

Old Testament passages that point to there's a suffering servant coming too. This isn't just a conquering king, there's actually something else also going on.

So in John 12 34, the crowd says, we have heard out of the law that the

Christ is to remain forever. How can you say the Son of Man must be lifted up when Jesus is explaining you're gonna have to die?

You're saying, how is this possible? Because they understood correctly that there were these promises the kingdom was gonna last forever.

The Davidic kingdom should keep going. How can you say you're gonna die? They did not understand what the prophets taught about Jesus, though.

The disciples on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24 21 likewise said, but we were hoping that it was he who was going to redeem

Israel. They're talking about Jesus. We really hoped this, but it didn't happen. Then they assumed Jesus must not have been the

Messiah because they're still under Roman occupation. But one day during the Restoration, they will.

And here's what Zechariah 12 10 says. This is Old Testament passage here, okay? It's kind of mind -blowing that this is in the

Old Testament. This is before Christ. And I will pour out on the house of David, on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the

Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on me whom they have pierced. And they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn.

This promise is then echoed in the New Testament, Romans 11, when Paul states all Israel will be saved because the gifts and callings of God are irrevocable.

So there is this whole fulfillment of prophecy that needed to take place before the

Restoration of the kingdom. And this is the hang -up for the Jews at Christ's time. So this brings us to the present question.

Christians have been wondering this since Acts chapter 1 verse 6, where the disciples ask,

Lord is it at this time you are restoring the kingdom to Israel? It's an important passage in all this, by the way.

Jesus answers, it is not for you to know the times or the epochs which the Father has fixed by his own authority.

Jesus talked about the kingdom of God for his entire ministry as a in your midst, that when one enters upon being born again,

John 3, he could have corrected their Old Testament assumptions at that time, right? He could have said to him, you're asking about the kingdom.

I already told you the kingdom's spiritual and it's just in our midst. You receive it by faith. He could have just said that, but he didn't say that, which is interesting.

The kingdom is in our midst. The kingdom is being born again that gets you in the kingdom, but there's something else also going on, or else they wouldn't have asked that question, and he wouldn't have answered it the way that he answered it.

It's not just a present spirituality, because there is going to be a full realization of the kingdom, and as they said in Acts 7, it is going to be the kingdom to Israel.

So the new covenant fulfilled as an aspect of the Abrahamic covenant, but it was not the final fulfillment of that, and under the new covenant,

Jesus is the seed by which all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Acts 3 25, Paul describes this as the gospel itself in Galatians 3.

It was not a new concept, because in 1 Chronicles 16 and Psalm 105, we also have descriptions of this singular seed of Israel in the

Old Testament as distinct from the sons of Jacob, his chosen ones, and that salvation of the

Gentiles was prophesied by Moses, David, and Isaiah. So all of this stuff is already said in the

Old Testament. The Gentiles are gonna come in. Jesus himself told the Pharisees that if you believe

Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. So this brings us to the role of the church in the new covenant.

What the Jewish leaders failed to see at Christ's time was what Paul called the mystery, which was that believing

Gentiles would be added to the Jewish religion on the basis of faith without needing to become proselytes and keep

Jewish ceremonial laws. Instead, the dividing wall of commandments contained in ordinances,

Ephesians 2, is broken down and there is no spiritual separation between believing

Jews and Gentiles. This fulfills the promise God made to Abraham that through his seed, all the earth would be blessed.

And Paul explains that it is through Christ that this promise is realized, writing that in Christ, the blessing of Abraham might come to the

Gentiles, Galatians 3 .14. So Galatians actually is probably the book that talks the most about this, but so does

Romans, so does Ephesians. Under the new covenant, believers' bodies become the temple of the

Holy Spirit, 1 Corinthians 6, which is also the sign of the new covenant and symbolized by baptism,

Ezekiel 36, 2 Corinthians 1, Matthew 28. The Passover meal gains new significance, symbolizing

Christ's atonement, 1 Corinthians 5. Gentiles believers are considered Abraham's descendants, heirs according to the promise,

Galatians 3, and without becoming Jewish proselytes. They can enter this. Paul also says a

Jew is one inwardly who is circumcised of the heart by the Spirit, Romans 2, and that Israel, the

Israel of God, is composed of both Jews and Gentiles, Galatians 6. So there's all these spiritual connections to the church as being the new

Israel. Gentiles who believe are now spiritual Jews. But Paul also reminds us that ethnic

Jews are not rejected in this arrangement because a remnant of believing Jews still exists, and so does the promise of restoration.

That's his argument in Romans 9. He says there's there's always been a remnant. It's always been the case. So the idea of a spiritual remnant wouldn't have been a new concept because Isaiah talks about this in Isaiah 10.

Micah talks about it in Micah 7. They talked about this with stories like Elijah, where the 7 ,000 faithful Israelites illustrated this.

That's the example Paul brings up, to talk about the remnant. The prophet Micah talks about how

God passes over the rebellious act of the remnant of his possession, and he would ultimately rule with a scepter, perform miracles, humble nations, and forgive

Israel all their sins because of the unchanging love to Abraham which he swore to Israel's forefathers from the days of old,

Micah 7. So Paul says, look, there's a spiritual remnant. They've always been the spiritual descendants of Abraham because they actually believe the promise and obey

God. Gentiles can now become part of this, but this has always been the case. These spiritual

Jews, who are also ethnic Jews, retain their ethnic identity and heritage. Paul asks, God has not rejected his people, has he?

May it never be, for I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew.

It's in Romans 11. Does Paul continue the Jewish practice of circumcision? Check this out.

This is kind of interesting. Acts 16 .2, Paul continues circumcision.

He takes vows, I think it's a Nazarite vow, in Acts 18 .18, and he participates in temple purification rites in Acts 21, which includes sacrifices in the temple.

This is after he writes Galatians. He's sacrificing in the temple, but he insisted that such observations were not required for salvation.

That's the difference. The ceremonial distinctions of the Mosaic law were completely fulfilled in Christ, such as animal sacrifices for forgiveness,

Hebrews 10, and dietary restrictions, Acts 10, that barred Gentiles from participating in the covenant community.

So there's a change that happens, but there's also still a significance to ethnic

Israel. So this means spiritual Israel, which is composed of the remnant of ethnic Israel, along with Gentile believers, are partakers of salvation and members of the church, this new entity.

It also means that God has a special plan for ethnic Israel yet to be completed. In Romans 11 .25,

Paul spoke of ethnic Israel as under a partial hardening until the fullness of the

Gentiles, which are conversions, has come in. After which, he says that all

Israel will be saved, Romans 11 .26. Jesus also predicted in the Olivet Discourse, which is

Luke 21 .24, that Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the time of the

Gentiles are fulfilled. And after the triumphal entry during his famous woe to the Pharisees teaching,

Jesus states that the house of Jerusalem will be left desolate and that the religious establishment in Jerusalem will no longer see him until they proclaimed, blessed is he who comes in the name of the

Lord. This is after the triumphal entry. It's not talking about that. He's saying something else. Now, I'm not talking about Revelation.

I'm just talking about what Paul said, what Jesus said, that there is a time of the Gentiles that's going to be fulfilled and there's an in -gathering of Israel coming and that Jesus is coming back.

And when he comes back, they're going to welcome him, blessed is he who comes in the name of the

Lord. So this is pretty broadly accepted in church history that this is, in some form or fashion, these things have to take place.

This has to happen. And that's where we're gonna pick up after you have some pizza. We're gonna talk about how the early church fathers and then the

Reformers and English Puritans and Anglicans took these passages and how it's been interpreted throughout time.

And then we're gonna end with just talking about the threats to this coming from some of the new anti -Jewish ideology and theology online.

Let's talk about what the church has believed about this. And that's a big, that's 2 ,000 years of history, church history.

So there's so much that could be said and there's so many people that I could have quoted that I didn't, but I wanted to give you significant figures that I think contributed to this.

So let's start with this. The consensus in early church, the early church, was to take these promises that we've been talking about in a literal fashion as referring to a future national spiritual restoration.

So Justin Martyr, who 100 to 165, that's pretty early, believed God would gather the people of the

Jews in Jerusalem where they would repent of their rejection of Christ. That's in the first apology.

Now Tertullian, 155 to 240, also early, said God will favor with his acceptance and blessing the circumcision also even the race of Abraham by which, which by and by is to acknowledge him against Marcion.

Now for this reason he said that Christians, Tertullian said this, rejoice at the restoration of Israel because the whole of our hope is intimately united with the remaining expectation of Israel.

Origen came a little later, 185 to 253. He stated, when the fullness of the

Gentiles has come in and Israel comes to salvation at the end of time, then it will be that the people which, although it existed long ago, will come at the last and complete the fullness of the

Lord's portion and inheritance. Cyril of Jerusalem, 313 to 386.

John Chrysostom, 347 to 407. And Jerome, 347 to 420. And Augustine, 354 to 430.

Just giving you an idea of when these people all lived. This is more getting into the patristic era we call it.

Among others, believed in a future mass conversion of Jews as promised. So all these people believed in some form of a restoration.

Now some early church fathers also expressed a belief in the restoration of the land promises as well to ethnic

Israel or the creation of a third temple. There's a lot of talk now about a third temple being built in Jerusalem.

It might surprise you that there was some talk. It wasn't like a big thing because of the historical conditions, but there was some talk here and there, even in the early church about this.

So unlike the majority of church fathers, Irenaeus of Lyon, 130 to 202, applied the ingathering to all saved people.

So he thought the ingathering was going to be Jews, it's going to be Gentiles. But he also believed that the

Lord would construct the temple in Jerusalem where the Antichrist would eventually sit. This isn't against heresies.

Now there's sort of a practical reason for this. It's just it's not like he was really motivated to do anything to bring in the third temple.

It's just he's reading these prophecies and he's saying, well there's got to be a temple for the Antichrist. That's part of the story.

So there's got to be one. So that's really all he's saying there.

Victorinus of Patau, 230 to 304, he wrote the first full commentary on Revelation.

It's the first commentary that we know of. He also believed there would be a third temple. Jerome believed that in the latter days

God would gather the called remnant from the people of Judah to Jerusalem. Cyril of Alexandria likewise thought that the entire multitude of the

Diaspora of Israel will possess the region of the nations as a sign of blessing from God. So for most of church history, despite periods of persecution, there was a general political tolerance of Jews that was not afforded to pagans.

And this might be because of Augustine. Augustine believed that Jewish people were living testaments to the legitimacy of the

Messiah and the Christian faith because in their Old Testament record they had prophecies that we've gone over that pointed to the

Messiah. He also believed that there was a confirmation of the partial hardening or the judgment essentially that God had them under in the fact that they were in the

Diaspora. And so if you think of in Europe the way that pagans were treated, pre -Christian pagans, very harshly.

Paganism is essentially eradicated and not so much for Jewish people. Religious Jews could keep their practices under a certain level of tolerance.

There was exceptions to this throughout time but it was nothing like the way that pre -Christian pagans were treated. After the fourth

Lateran Council, which is in 1215, and it did this is actually where you get like the idea of having a star to signify that you're a

Jew and there's banning things like usury and there's there's some there's a little bit of a crackdown.

But after that, hostility towards religious Jews began to increase particularly from the Dominicans and Franciscans that decide that modern

Jews are not compatible with European society. And so I'm not going to get deep into the

Catholic Church and the history of that. There were various times in specific regions where there was persecution and driving

Jews out of the land and things like that. But in general, like I said, compared to pre -Christian pagans, the

Jews were actually treated with a lot of charity and or at least tolerance,

I should say. And they were certainly not viewed as enemies the way the

Muslims were viewed as enemies. All right, let's talk about restorationism. So that was the early church in the patristic period.

The Catholic Church obviously develops and becomes more and more concentrated.

Papal authority becomes bigger. And then the Reformation happens, right?

So I actually skipped over Aquinas. This is more for Protestants. So we're skipping ahead.

While the Jewish conversions had always taken place, a movement to focus more attention on reaching Jews with the gospel increased during the

Reformation. So we're talking late 1400s, 1500s, into the early 1600s, right?

This is when the Reformation is sweeping across Europe. And you have people like Martin Busser, 1491 to 1551, and Theodore Beza, 1519 to 1605.

So medieval. They're emphasizing the promises to ethnic Israel in Romans 11.

The Geneva Bible gets published in 1560. You hear all this stuff online about like the Schofield Bible, right?

And I wonder sometimes why the Geneva Bible isn't targeted. Because the Geneva Bible reinforced this interpretation.

It made it popular. Because people bought it and then they saw the commentary on what it said about Romans 11. Soon major religious figures in England, such as Thomas Brightman, Sir Henry Finch, William Gouge, and John Milton, all came to believe in the future restoration of the

Jews in the Diaspora to the land of Canaan. In 1655, Oliver Cromwell, who's the

Lord Protector, right? If you know the history of England. He's the the great Puritan. He's a king.

He doesn't use the title. He basically functions as a king. And he decides to convene the

Whitehall Conference in 1655, which readmitted Jews to England and positioned the nation as a divine instrument of Israel's restoration.

So Jews were kicked out of England and they're readmitted under Oliver Cromwell a couple hundred years later.

Historian J .A. Vanderberg said that virtually all Dutch theologians of the 17th century also believe the whole of Israel indicated the fullness of the people of Israel according to the flesh.

So these are Dutch Reformed, not English Puritans. These are another group of Reformed. We have

Dutch Reformed churches actually all in this area because of the historic Dutch connection here. But that tradition was also impacted by this.

Theologians in that tradition, such as Jacobus Coleman, also believed that ethnic Jews would return to their land and rebuild

Jerusalem. That is a quote. They would rebuild Jerusalem. Pierre Jure, if I'm pronouncing that right, said that the kingdom of the converted

Jews who returned to the Holy Land would govern the world together with Christ. This is all

Reformation into emphasis on reaching Jews was so good that literally a new

Jewish group denomination formed, August Hermann Frank, also took an active role in evangelizing

Jews. The London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews, founded by German Jewish convert

Joseph Frey, embodied this focus on Jewish convergent. And in fact, one of the Society's missionaries,

Alexander McCall, believed he contributed to the emergence of Reform Judaism, which rejects the

Talmud's authority by refuting certain teachings in the Talmud. So in other words, the evangelism emphasis on reaching

Jews was so good that literally a new Jewish group denomination formed because they're like, we can't handle this guy.

They're so good at refuting our Talmudic teachings, we're gonna have to come up with a form of Judaism that rejects the

Talmud. So I thought that was kind of interesting. Now this focus on the prophetic significance of the ethnic

Jews and participation in Jewish evangelism led to what's called Restorationism. I didn't use the word

Zionism, using an earlier term, Restorationism, which expected a physical restoration of the

Jewish people to Palestine and it was popular among Anglo -American theologians from the 18th century to the present.

So church historian Ian Murray notes that from the first quarter of the 17th century, belief in a future conversion of the

Jews became commonplace among the English Puritans. So he's saying this is just what they believed. It wasn't a controversy, this was the common belief at the time.

John Newton, you know who John Newton is? He wrote Amazing Grace. John Newton believed that God was working through political circumstances to miraculously preserve the existence of Jewish people and bring about their salvation.

Major figures like Increase Mather, John Gill, Jonathan Edwards, J .C.

Ryle, Charles Spurgeon, and Martin Lloyd -Jones all taught that the Jewish people would one day return to the land of Canaan.

Jonathan Edwards said it is more evident that the Jews will return to their own land again because they never have yet possessed one quarter of that land, which was so often promised them.

Charles Spurgeon said there will be a political restoration of the Jews to their own land and to their own nationality and then secondly a spiritual restoration, a conversion in fact.

And then here's the Martin Lloyd -Jones slide here that I have up on the screen. To me, he says, and this is after obviously the state of Israel, the modern state exists, he says to me, 1967, the year that the

Jews occupied all of Jerusalem was very crucial. Now if you don't know the history, let me just sort of interject here.

1967 is the Six -Day War, Six -Day War, right? And this is, at the time,

Jordan actually controls part of Jerusalem. This has actually been a problem in that area to this day because the people there, once the

Jews took over, once Israel took over I should say, they didn't want to be citizens.

They can live there, but it's a different kind of categorization than citizenship. And so anyway, so the complexities of the

Middle East. But this is the time he's talking about. 1967, Israel now completely controls

Jerusalem other than I guess the Dome of the Rock, you know, is still under Jordanian control and there's things like that.

But they have this, the city boundaries are now controlled by them. And so he says, they fully occupied

Jerusalem. He goes, Luke 21, 43 is one of the most significant prophetic verses. Jerusalem, it reads, shall be trodden down of the

Gentiles until the time of the Gentiles is fulfilled. It seems to me that that took place in 1967, something crucially important that had not occurred in 2000 years.

Luke 21, 43 is one fixed point, but I am equally impressed by Romans 11, which speaks of a great spiritual return among the

Jews before the end of time. That was an interview in 1980, Martin Lloyd -Jones.

Now, it is important to recognize at this point that there is a popular teaching online that sees the ingathering or the restoration of the

Jews as taking place before the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD. I'm not kidding.

I see that all the time. It's a very popular view now. Now, while Protestant theologians have disagreed as to whether the ingathering represented an ongoing process yet to be completed, as John Calvin believed, or a future national event, as Charles Hodge believed, or whether it constituted a

Jewish return to the land, as Robert Lewis Dabney believed, or a gathering as a separate nation, as J .C.

Ryle believed, there are no clear Christian sources prior to the late 20th century that explicitly teach this view.

It literally does not exist. I couldn't find it anywhere, and I was looking hard for it. No one believed that, that the ingathering, what's being described here, took place before 70

AD, before the destruction of the Temple. The idea that the ingathering took place before 70 AD appears to be novel.

There is also a popular idea today that Christian Zionism, or the belief that the Jewish people have a biblically mandated claim to their ancient homeland in the

Middle East, is a heresy, since it assumes the promises to Abraham are not all absorbed in the

Church. Yet many prominent theologians have held to a future restoration that includes the land promise, and it does not follow that because those in Christ are one new spiritual man, that God has revoked his promises to ethnic

Israel. Such a conclusion would undermine Paul's entire argument in Romans 9 -11. If the

Abrahamic Covenant still relates to ethnic Jews, which I believe the Scripture teaches and Church history supports, it is important for us as mostly

Gentile believers to understand where our responsibilities lie, which now we're going to talk a little bit about what it means to bless and curse.

But I just want to sort of highlight as we leave this section that many of the men that I quoted are very much revered in the

Reformed Protestant tradition, and if you to believe that land promises are still in effect, you're going to be cutting off a large part of the people that we respect in our tradition.

And by the way, I'll just mention too, every single person that I've quoted so far is a covenantal theologian.

So I have not quoted one dispensationalist. I am going to quote two, though, in a moment. It might surprise you the way

I quote them. But let's talk about blessing and cursing Israel. In Genesis 12 -3, God tells

Abraham, I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you

I will curse. Now, this same language is repeated in Genesis 27 -29 when Isaac blesses

Jacob. He says, may people serve you and the nations bow down to you, be master of your brothers, and may your mother's son bow down to you, cursed be those who curse you and blessed be those who bless you.

Now, the blessing and the cursing dynamic here is thus applied on a national level and is specifically applied to Esau in the book of Obadiah, where the nation that came from Esau, which is

Edom, is cursed for its treatment of the nation of Israel. So the

Spirit of God also applies this promise in some other ways into ethnic Israel in Numbers 24.

You remember that story? Balaam is told he needs to curse Israel by Balak, the king of Moab.

He's a sorcerer and he's like, go curse these people. They're coming into Canaan. This is our land. Get rid of them.

And what does he do? He doesn't curse them. Instead, God speaks through Balaam and blesses the nation of Israel.

And Balak's like, that's like the opposite of what I paid you to do here. What are you doing?

So he proclaims that they will defeat their enemies, prosper and possess a kingdom with a king higher than Agag the

Amalekite, who's like the greatest king in that area. The grammatical idea here is that God will favor those who favor

Israel. It's a general statement. And punish those who maliciously harm Israel. That's really the sense you get from Scripture. It's not that detailed and it's not complicated.

It's just very simple and very straightforward. And Balaam is probably the best example we have of what that looks like.

Now, knowing how this applies first requires understanding whether it is currently in effect. And if so, whether it refers to ethnic

Israel, the church or the modern nation state. There's little discussion of this before the Reformation. Renaeus believed that this promise never applied to Jacob directly, but instead to the future millennial kingdom.

Methodius in 311 AD thought it applied directly to Christ. Yet it is difficult to make sense of the way this promise was applied to the national

Israel in Numbers 24 .9 under Balaam under these interpretations. Balaam's not talking about Christ there directly.

What he says has significance in the prophecy concerning Christ, but he doesn't treat the blessing and cursing as Christ or a future millennial kingdom.

He's talking about actual ethnic Jews who are coming into the area. So what does this mean?

And this is where I've been presenting to you. This is what the Scripture says. This is what church history has taught us.

I'm going to go out on a limb and I'm going to present to you some of my own beliefs here. So I want to let you know that I'm going to survey some beliefs, but I'm going to zone in on what

I think it means to bless Israel today, according to the best sources

I know. So it's important to remember that the early church was primarily composed of ethnic

Jews under Roman occupation. We understand the situation that they're going through. It makes sense why this didn't come up as much.

They lived at a time when many of their fellow countrymen attempted to revolt against the Romans and they were punished for it in 70

AD, and then in the Bar Kokhba revolt of 132 to 135 or 6. And the conditions for practically realizing a literal

Davidic kingdom were not present, nor was there a feeling of blessing among Jews that they were oppressed and living as strangers in other regions.

So in other words, you start the book of Acts and what does it say in the beginning? It's Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, to the ends of the earth.

That's where the church expands. This is the growth of the church. And as the church is growing, these persecutions happen and the ethnic

Jews are basically defeated. They're scattered more. And those aren't conditions where you're thinking like, oh, there's going to be a restoration happening.

People are going to come back to Jerusalem. And this does drive some interpretation. The Jews are basically being treated as they are under judgment at this point.

And the church is spreading. This motivates kind of the way the early church treats this question of blessing and cursing to some extent.

The church spreads. Jesus and Paul, obviously, their primary calling, Jesus says, was to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

Paul said the gospel was first to the Jew. Paul is very concentrated on evangelizing

Jews, going to synagogues. You see this reflected in the early church somewhat.

Justin Martyr, 100 to 165 AD, very early, he writes dialogue with Trifo. It's this basically

Jewish apologetics exchange between him and Trifo. And he's convincing him that Christianity is true.

So there's this emphasis. We got to evangelize Jews. But as the church grows and Jews were not converting in large numbers, and it seems like they're under judgment, attitude starts to change.

Figures like Origen and John Chrysostom express frustration. Martin Luther obviously becomes the most famous example much later on in church history.

Early on, he encourages Jewish evangelism. And then he writes that Jesus Christ was born a

Jew. So he's getting into the prophecies and everything, and he wants to convert them through this.

But when they resist, and after he also suffered a personal loss from the death of his daughter, Magdala, people need to realize that, too.

There's a lot of conditions. Like his daughter dies in 1542. They're afraid the Turks are going to come in, and they think the

Jews are trading with the Turks. So they view them suspiciously. And then 1543, he just writes on the

Jews and their lies. Which, by the way, side tidbit, that is his least circulated tract.

It was least popular. People didn't really read it. It was not made popular until kind of late 1800s and the

German Volk movement, which later inspired some of the Nazi stuff. But it wasn't his big work.

Days before his death, February 18, 1546, Martin Luther included a call to treat

Jews with Christian love and to pray for them so that they might become converted and receive the Lord. That's his last parting gift to this study of what

Martin Luther thinks about the Jews, which admittedly varied. And you look at what Martin Luther said about the

Pope or about just pretty much anything, the Anabaptists. He pretty much, there's a

George Strait song called, I Hate Everything. And I think Martin Luther was probably what he was thinking of.

So I love Martin Luther, by the way. So I'm not trying to knock him. He had his temper, though.

As the Reformation spread, so does this literal interpretation of biblical texts, right?

Because the logic they're applying to justification by faith and ecclesiology and all these other areas starts to be applied now to prophecies.

And so there's this new kind of way. It's not new, it's just old. But the Reformation, remember, is trying to go back.

That's the whole point. We're trying to go back to the purity of the beginning. Rome got off track. And so one of the areas that you start to see develop in this is an optimism that ethnic

Jews would be restored to both their Messiah and their historical homeland. Interpretations that apply the blessing and cursing dynamic, or what's called the

Protection Clause in the Abrahamic Covenant, to the way Christian countries treated ethnic Jews accompanied this optimism beginning around the 17th century.

The Puritans had these pamphlets that supported Oliver Cromwell's readmission of the Jews to England after they were expelled in 1290.

You have Edward Nicholas, the Secretary of State to Charles I. He believed

England was under judgment for expelling the Jews. You have Puritan Hugh Broughton and John Harrison.

They tied this blessing specifically to evangelism. So the way you bless Israel is evangelizing Jewish people.

And eventually we get to this point, Edward Bickerstath, who lives from 1786 to 1850.

So we're talking like early 1800s now. We get to this point that this influential Anglican is influencing the

British government towards a favorable view of Jewish settlement in Palestine. I'm not going to get deep into this history, but this becomes more and more of a movement.

And then eventually we have the Balfour Declaration. And eventually the opportunity for Jews to return emerges.

It's incredible that at the time England is starting to go this direction and these developments are happening theologically, there was really no thought that they would ever, why would they ever have control of that region to be able to pull this off?

And then, of course, they get control of it after the defeat of the Turks in World War I. So before that, we probably wouldn't have even known about the

Balfour Declaration. It would have just been a little side note in history. Maybe no one would even talk about it.

But it becomes important because all of a sudden the circumstances align and England's the one in charge and they're the ones talking about this.

And persecutions arise in Europe and everything kind of comes together for, yes, there's the return that can happen.

The Turks are also admitting Jews to come before England gets in on this.

Not in the large numbers, but there were Jews already starting to settle back into the

Palestinian region. And it was basically, I think, who was it that talks about this?

Mark Twain, when he visited Israel, which was, I don't know what year that was. I was going to say late 1800s.

He basically said, look, it's like a desolate wasteland here. There's nothing here. And so that's kind of the circumstances these

Jewish people from the Diaspora come in to join Jewish people who are already there and then a more numerous array of Arabs.

So anyway, like I said, I don't want to get too deep into it. I probably went deeper than I needed to. But Edward Bickersteth, kind of an important first influence on the

British government to kind of go a direction here. He argues Jews did not have a valid claim to the

Holy Land, given their own general unbelief, though, which is interesting. So they don't have a claim to this yet, but Christian nations should still nonetheless help them return to the region in fulfillment of the prophecy that they would experience spiritual restoration in the process and that the

Christian nations who helped them accomplish this would prosper. This is what he said. Any aid that we can nationally render to their peaceful return without injustice to others,

God will bring down blessings on the country rendering such aid. So that's what

Edward Bickersteth says. Now, there were varied reasons in the 19th and 20th centuries that the

Diaspora Jews were permitted to immigrate to Palestine, including this application of the Protection Clause, sympathy toward persecuted

Jews, and the desires to reduce local Jewish populations by sending them to Palestine.

Under the Turks and then the British, Jews in Europe joined Jews who had remained in the land, and it culminates in what?

The modern state of Israel, 1948. And there's a lot of history that I would love to just go over right now, but it's really not pertinent to the theological emphasis here.

So what does this mean? This is where my opinion starts coming in. Protestant theologians like John Calvin and Matthew Henry interpret the

Protection Clause as applying to the Church, since the children of Abraham, by faith, constitute the Israel of God, which we talked about.

However, the New Testament writers do not apply this language to the Church directly. Instead, the Church is promised ultimate victory over hell,

Matthew 16, 18. The gates of hell won't prevail. But she endures persecution despite faithful conduct until Christ returns.

That's a little bit different than what's said about Israel. So the Church behaves well. Persecution still happens despite good

The Abrahamic Covenant is a very different kind of guarantee. It's saying that the nations that treat you poorly are going to be treated poorly by God, and if they treat you well, they're going to be treated well by God.

Throughout the Old Testament, we see examples of this. Pagan leaders such as Abimelech, Pharaoh, and Cyrus explicitly receive blessings for their treatment of Israel, even in exile.

So even when they're under judgment, there's still somehow, at times, this benefit they get for treating them well.

Think of Cyrus. His decree allows a return to Jerusalem in 538 to 537, and this blossoms into a national repentance under Ezra, but that's not until 457.

So that's 80 years. He's blessed for how he treats them while they're under judgment, and it's 80 years later that they actually return spiritually.

So without knowing exactly how God is working in current circumstances, here's the John Harris opinion, but recognizing the possibility that he could be setting events in a sequence that will culminate in a full restoration for ethnic

Israel as well as the Church's final spiritual victory, here are my practical conclusions. In both

Genesis 12 and Numbers 24, the promise to bless and curse is applied to Abraham and then to Israel before settlement in Canaan.

So they're not actually in the land in those passages. They're not there. The promise to bless them is still in effect.

They don't have to be in the land for that to be activated. How many Jews are in Israel right now in that region, and how many are outside of Israel?

Probably it's about an equal number. Yeah, well, that's tipping.

There's more people moving to Israel, but to bless Israel today, is that narrowed down to just this piece of land and the

Jews living there? No, because they weren't in the land when these passages applied in Genesis 12 and Numbers 24.

So blessing Israel means, I think, witnessing to your Jewish neighbor. It's not doing something for Israel necessarily.

It doesn't have to be, is what I'm saying. You can fulfill this promise by just being a good neighbor and sharing

Christ with the Jewish people that you actually know in your life. And we actually do have some of them in our communities, especially being as close to New York City as we are.

So that's where I'm getting that from. At the very least, blessing Israel would include evangelism, right?

Since the way God blesses both Israel and Gentiles who are grafted into Israel's spiritual root is through what

Peter in Acts 3 .25 calls, turning every one of you from your wickedness. So Peter says in Acts 3,

God blessed you. Well, how did he do it? Oh, by turning you from your wickedness. Well, it seems like that's part of blessing.

So that would be part of it. I think that's pretty much, you can't argue against that. Evangelism is going to be part of this.

Prayer and evangelism are the main ways Christians can bless Israel today because it is in connection to their

Messiah that they will ultimately receive their available blessings. The larger Westminster Catechism encourages believers to pray that the kingdom of sin and Satan may be destroyed, the gospel propagated through the world, the

Jews called, and the fullness of the Gentiles brought in. Many of our

Protestant forebears emphasize this ministry. Matthew Henry said this, Jews should be brought to believe in the

Christ, the true Messiah, whom they crucified and be incorporated into the Christian church and become one sheepfold with the

Gentiles under Christ, the great shepherd. Spurgeon believed that Christians do not attach sufficient importance to the restoration of the

Jews. And he said that those who work among the seed of Israel shall not have the honor of having helped to gather together the ancient nation to which our

Lord himself belonged. So there is good reason, I think, to pray this way.

There's good reason to seek the restoration in the terms of spiritual restoration in turning to Christ.

And this is what Paul did in Romans 10 .1. He talks about this, the Jewish people would be saved with an eye toward the prophetic significance of Romans 11, where the fullness of the

Gentiles comes in and Israel is saved. Paul says he's working towards that in Romans 10. In 1649,

John Owen preached to the House of Commons in England, and he mentioned the millions of prayers on behalf of bringing home

God's ancient people to be one fold with the fullness of the Gentiles, raising up the tabernacle of David and building it as in the days of old.

1649. I don't think there's anything in requiring Christians or Christian -influenced countries to support the modern state of Israel politically in order to receive blessings.

It is unknown whether or not the state of Israel's success is leading to a spiritual restoration.

Now, I have my own thoughts on this, but they're not driven by a Bible verse necessarily. They're driven by more just what

I see as circumstances, which we can talk about maybe in the Q &A, but I'm trying to give some broader advice here.

It is impressive that the modern state of Israel exists in the first place and has been victorious against overwhelming odds numerous times in seemingly miraculous ways.

It is natural for Christians to have an affinity for the country that protects biblical sites, shares a respect for a common historical and biblical heritage, and is also possibly strategic to maintain an alliance that offers stable benefits in regional dominance.

But it is not known whether or not this will, like the 80 -year process that brought about repentance during the return from the

Babylonian captivity, whether this will also bring about the same repentance because it hasn't happened yet. Now, I have not mentioned any dispensational theologians yet, and I told you

I was going to mention two, so I'm going to mention two right now. Charles Ryrie, he wrote or produced the

Ryrie Study Bible, which has notes that are dispensational in it, and J. Vernon McGee, who apparently was dispensational even though I think he was a

Presbyterian. He had a show through the Bible. So here's something that they both said. Charles Ryrie says that the modern state of Israel could be leading to a future fulfillment of prophecy, but he says the present situation, and I think this is like 1967 or so when he says this, he says it is a political and or a racial or religious phenomenon, not a spiritual one.

Charles Ryrie says, look, at this point, I can't say that this is a spiritual thing, but it is political. Something's happening there.

J. Vernon McGee also claimed that Israel had never returned to the land because they had not returned to God.

So in other words, yeah, they could be physically there, but there has to be a spiritual thing for it to be an actual return in the fulfillment of the prophecies.

Now, here's where this is ironic. Some Christians, like the ones I just quoted, agree with some ultra -Orthodox

Jews in a way. Now, they have a different conception of this, but ultra -Orthodox Jews in Israel today, which make up about 15 % of the population, they will, a lot of them, refuse to serve in the

IDF because they believe that the Israeli government has not actually repented and isn't really a legitimate government, even though they're living there, because they think that it needs to be more religious and it's just too secular.

So it's funny enough, there are Jews who think this too, that like the restoration really isn't going to happen until like, you know,

Netanyahu and all the other politicians, they got to get their act together, start honoring God. And once they do that, maybe cancel the gay march in Tel Aviv or something.

I don't know, like that would like go a long way to making this actually what it should be.

Americans, this is what I believe, right? Americans' primary concern should be the protection, preservation, and stewardship of their own country.

And if you're a Christian, this applies to whatever country you live in. Seek the welfare of the city that you live in.

I think only if an alliance with Israel fits into this can it be thought of as prudent under a

Christian framework, especially without a divine assurance that God has ordained the current government to lead a restoration under the

Abrahamic covenant. So that's the practical kind of political application. And I can, in the

Q &A, if we want to talk about that more, we can, because I am someone who thinks an alliance with Israel is actually prudent and strategic if it's the right kind of alliance.

And I think it would be foolish to just break that up. But as far as thinking this is the restoration, this is the fulfillment,

I want to be careful because we just talked about the number of the prophecies. There is a spiritual kind of awakening that has to happen.

It's not the end gathering until you actually see them look on the Messiah whom they pierced.

That's when you know that this is really happening. I'm going to just talk about this a little bit more and then we're going to end with the online stuff.

What is being challenged online and why is this a threat to our orthodoxy? What is clear and expressly forbidden under the protection clause is hating

Jewish people. So we're going to start to get into it a little. Deuteronomy 37, God says that he will inflict all these curses on your enemies and on those who hate you who persecute you.

Now that's pretty clear. You hate Jews, you're making yourself an enemy of God.

I just don't want to do that. I don't know about you. Romans 11, 18 through 20, Paul says do not be arrogant towards the branches.

But if you are arrogant, those are the Jews, remember that it is not you who supports the root, but the root supports you.

And you will say then branches were broken off so that I might be crafted and I'm quite right. They were broken off for their unbelief, but you stand for your faith.

Do not be conceited, but fear. And Paul goes on in verse 28 to say that even unbelieving

Jews, he are beloved by God for the sake of their fathers. And his context is pretty clear.

Talking about unbelieving Jews there. And I don't know, you know, if that doesn't work with your theology, you got to like match your theology to what the

Bible teaches because that's what it says. This is the only nation that the Bible treats this way. Now, in other words, hating, being arrogant towards, persecuting

Jews is forbidden. It's forbidden in scripture. Yet currently on social media, even among self -proclaiming

Christians, I cannot think of a group more rhetorically provoked, lied about, and subjected to unequal weights and measures than Jewish people today.

And it's like very, that came very suddenly. Like a few years ago, I would have been like, of course, white males are the ones most maligned all the time.

It's like white, straight males, right? They're the enemies, especially if you're a Christian and live in the South and maybe have a German heritage, that could be the worst thing you could be.

Well, now, if I just look at what I'm seeing online,

I mean, it's crazy. I think liberals still hate white males, especially Christian white males, but it's, they know who their political enemy is, but it's, the rhetoric against Jews is off the charts.

And especially since Charlie Kirk's assassination, like something, it was almost like the George Floyd moment.

It was like, everyone just said, go. And, and I'm a little amazed to see how fast.

Now, there are obviously, I think, legitimate reasons to oppose

Jewish people in justified ways when they do public evil, obviously, right? Just like any other group.

But that is not what I'm referring to here. And I do not care how popular hatred for Jews becomes. I do not want to battle my conscience before God.

This is, I think, the lesson of Haman, right? From the book of Esther. He, and this is while Jews were in the

Assyrian empire in captivity under judgment. These are the ones who would not return, right? So they're not exactly doing what

God told them they should be doing. And yet Haman thinks that he can get them killed.

And you read the book of Esther, he tries destroying them. And what happens, he's the one that gets destroyed.

And this serves as a warning today for what it means to curse Israel. So this is,

I think, a pretty clear thing. Like if you're, you're nebulous on what it means to bless, you know, at the very least it's evangelism.

It's, but, but it's pretty obvious what it means to curse and to hate and all of like, that's pretty clear.

Don't do that. So who are the real Jews? And I'll, let me mention one last thing here. Just for people who come from this local area, if you go to Sullivan County, Rockland County, parts of New Jersey, there's big

Hasidic communities. And I don't wanna get into super detail on this, but if you know anyone who lives in those areas where they have moved in, there is a lot of resentment.

And I don't think that, that's not what I'm talking about here. Things like using loopholes to claim your house as a, like a,

I don't know, spiritual dwelling. So you can get a tax exemption or taking over the school board, even though your kids don't go to school and like making the property values go up.

These, these are actually all, I think, legitimate things, whether it's Jews or any group to be concerned about, you love your local area and you don't want it changed.

So it's not like anti -Semitic or anything to oppose a group of people that might want to change your community, but to hate them because they're

Jews, that would be wrong, right? To, to let that become like, well, they're all just this way.

Like this is like every Jewish person and we can just all treat them in terrible ways that we wouldn't treat anyone else or lie about them or you just use unequal weights and measures.

That's obviously a sin. That's wrong. So who are the real Jews? Let's talk about this because this is one of the big facets of the online conversation.

In light of the recent war with Israel and Gaza, there has been all of a sudden this big push to say the

Jews that are living in Israel aren't really Jews or they have less of a Jewish connection to the land than do their

Palestinian neighbors that are in Gaza or the West Bank. And some people will quote

DNA tests. So I just want to be very brief about this because it's about theology, but I need to deal with it because we have to understand, well, who's

God talking about when he talks about Jews? There, there are DNA studies that have been done. These studies are not establishing lineage through Isaac.

That's not the point. So you understand what's going on here, right? The seed of Abraham, Abraham's descendants, his offspring, right?

Isaac, Jacob, there's a line here. Who are your fathers? Who are your mothers? Right? We have genealogies and Matthew proving

Jesus is the Messiah. That's not what these DNA tests aren't looking for that information.

Okay. It's important for me to say this. They're, they're looking for something else. They are connecting the bronze and iron age populations from three to 4 ,000 years ago, which would have included

Canaanites, Philistines, and various Semitic groups, not just Jews, right? They're trying to find, connect modern people groups with those groups.

So there, there's an increasing popularity to say, well, look, if you're Ashkenazi or something, right?

You have some European blood in you and therefore you must be less connected. Well, less connected to who?

That's what you have to ask. Like less connected to what? Oftentimes in some of these studies of Palestinian Christians seem like they're the most connected to these ancient civilizations.

You're not just talking about Jews though. You're talking about other groups that lived in the land. It's a regional thing.

That's not talking about the seed of Abraham. That's not talking, I should say, about who Isaac's descendants are,

Jacob's descendants who are in that lineage. You could be not in that lineage and be very connected to people who've dwelled in that land 3 ,000 years ago, if that makes sense.

The claim the Jews are making about prophecy really doesn't have anything to do with this. Although, obviously, lineage matters and it's going to be reflected in DNA.

There's also kind of more crazy theories here that Eastern European Khazars or Edomites are the real

Jews of today. Like they say they're Jews, but they're actually not. They're just, they're just Europeans or they're just Edomites.

This is a worthwhile discussion and the reason I think is because we got to know who the Jews are. If there's going to be promises and stuff, who does that apply to?

Now, if we don't have any Jews today, if they just don't exist, what would that do to our scripture? What would it do to our theology if they're not around anymore?

It would mean that Paul was wrong in Romans 11 because there would be no pending fullness of the Gentiles or salvation for Israel.

Jews would have died under a partial hardening. The prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel would also be wrong to associate the salvation with a future kingdom.

There would be no valley of dry bones, no in -gathering to Jerusalem. This would challenge the accuracy of scripture.

You know, at least some of those prophecies, regardless of your theology, you're going to have to grapple with that.

Many of the theories today about Jewish identity, including ideas that modern Jews are imposters who are

Europeans, do not exist before the 19th century and they were not popularized until after World War II.

They just don't exist. The Khazar theory was first proposed by Ernest Rennan, a higher critic who challenged

Orthodox Christian teaching. The Edomite theories are found in British Israelism, Black Hebrew Israelism, White Identitarian circles.

I encountered this with the Black Hebrew Israelites in the city. They see a Jewish person and they say, you're an

Edomite. Where are the real Jews? Africans. Throughout church history, no one questioned who the

Jews were. You ever notice that? No one's asking these questions. Martin Luther doesn't ask this question.

He knows who the Jews are. Everyone knows who the Jews are. It was never a mystery. They are denoted by ancestry and custom.

A genetic study of the Kohens and Levites, they claim at least that they trace back to Aaron.

Both of them trace back to a Y -chromosomal Aaron. That's what the scientists call it 3 ,000 years ago.

Maybe it's actually Aaron. Half of the Ashkenazi ancestry comes from the

Levantine region, according to studies. Sephardic Jews, who make up half of Israel's population, are more closely tied to the

Levant, with most studies showing 50 to 70 percent Levantine ancestry. They are connected to the land.

These are Middle Eastern peoples. Being in the line of Isaac, it is really the genetic question, if you want to know.

It's important to remember that while genealogical lines are tremendously important, Israel was fully monolithic, either.

The mixed multitude that left Egypt, you got Caleb, Rahab, Doeg, the Edomite, Ruth, Uriah, the

Hittite. This all shows that there was a practice of assimilation into Israel's bloodline.

This is true for most populations today. We're at war with Iran right now. What do most Iranians claim to be?

Persian. That's on their money. That's a big source of pride.

Now, are they actually Persian, though? Because 20 to 40 percent of even the quote -unquote

Persians, their ancestry, is Turkic admixture. It means they're Turks, too.

So are they not Persian anymore, right? The incredible thing about Jews, to me, is how they've held on to their identity by maintaining close cultural connections despite 2 ,000 years outside the land, in captivity in these various countries.

In fact, there was one study I was reading. I didn't put it here, but it basically said that, look, the

Jewish, even this is Ashkenazis, they have more in common with each other genetically, even ones from different countries in Europe, than they do the surrounding regions of the countries that they're from.

So they've kept, even though they've intermarried and stuff, they've also kept some boundaries that have retained their culture and some of their genetics.

The Jews that Paul was concerned about evangelizing were kinsmen, according to the flesh, but they also kept a religious element in their zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.

So Paul was talking about branches who are broken off, who had forsaken their Messiah, like modern Jews do, thus the difficulty of recognizing modern

Jews has always had a religious component that makes it complicated, right? What is a Jew? Is it religious?

Is it ethnic, right? There's always the discussion, but it was never a major problem, really, until recently. So there's some,

I recommend, there's a friend of mine, Razib Khan, he has a website where he just writes article after article on this question of genetics, and he thinks the people making these, he's like one of the best genetic guys

I know on this, and he thinks people making these claims are just nuts. All right, so let's conclude everything that we've been talking about, and let me give you a warning here.

So we have been on a journey here. We have seen that throughout the this reflection on biblical covenants, church history, and practical ethics, it is reasonable to conclude that God's plan for the

Jewish people includes a restoration and fulfillment of God's promises to Abraham. The nature of this restoration has been conceived of in various ways by Christian theologians, but there's broad agreement that it will happen, and Christians bear a responsibility in extending evangelistic kindness and withholding hatred from Jews.

Part of the reason this must be said is because, in addition to reinforcing essential doctrines such as the truth of Messiah is the line of the tribe of Judah, there is a developing attack online that undermines these doctrines.

So let's talk about that. What's the attack online? What are we seeing online, and why is it bad theologically?

There are four emerging elements that Christians who adopt online anti -Jewish ideology seem to start embracing.

I've noticed this because I've spent way too much time on the internet watching videos and listening to people, and it almost kills me how much time

I've spent going down these rabbit holes to find out what people are saying, and there's really four elements here.

So here's the first one. There is a belief that Jews presently represent a universal evil, with some going so far as to claim they are without any hope of restoration.

Some refer to this as a permanent supersessionism. We see this reinforced in reinterpretations of passages such as 1

John 2, 1 Thessalonians 2, and Revelation 2 through 3. They claim that the spirit of Antichrist is unique to Judaism, Jews are the enemies of mankind in some universal cultural sense, and that the synagogue of Satan encompasses all non -Christian

Jews. Some voices claim the term Jews is also used in an exclusive negative sense in Scripture, such as in John's writings.

This approach to Scripture threatens our hermeneutic, though, more than it does anything else, because if you can just make Scripture say what you want it to say to fit your political agenda, why can't you do that with anything?

So let me just briefly go over why these arguments are flawed. So 1 John is the first one.

1 John is writing to false teachers who were previously part of the Christian community but were never truly believers. 1

John 2 .19 says that. They went out from us, right? These false teachers denied the incarnation. They denied that Jesus is the

Christ, but they still claimed to follow him as Christians. So they're false Christians, essentially.

They're saying, hey, I follow Jesus, but they actually don't. They are able to deceive the believers precisely because they claimed to be believers themselves.

While it is true that Judaizers threaten the gospel, these are protagnostic false teachers, and that's what

John is talking about, and they have a unique deception that John wants us to be aware of. So the spirit of Antichrist is a false

Christ who cannot save, and many religious cults commit the same kinds of Christological errors that those of 1

John's day did. And he's writing to Asia Minor, right? And there's no indication these are religious

Jews. Of course, all kinds of different groups deny that Jesus is the Christ, but the specific group in context he's talking about are committing

Christological errors because the spirit of Antichrist is not denying Christ.

Buddhists, I guess, are they spirit of Antichrist? The spirit of Antichrist is a false Christ. That's what it is.

It's trying to introduce a Christ that's not really Christ, changing who he is. Jehovah's Witnesses, right?

Those kind of people. Now, let's talk about 1 Thessalonians 2. 1 Thessalonians 2, 15 through 16 claims that the Jews who killed the

Lord Jesus Christ and the prophets and drove us out are not pleasing to God, but hostile to all men, hindering us from speaking to the

Gentiles so that they may be saved. Verse 16 continues by foreshadowing how they will be judged in 70

AD, most likely. However, in verse 14, Paul tells the Thessalonian Christian Gentiles that they also endured the same sufferings at the hands of their own countrymen, even as they did from the

Jews. So, he's just finished telling them, hey, look, I'm talking about the Jews doing this. Your own countrymen did the same thing.

He's saying Gentiles do this, Jews do this. In other words, Paul is talking about a specific group of Jews who prevented the spread of the gospel and were punished for it, just as Gentiles in Thessalonica prevented the spread of the gospel.

It is in this sense that they are hostile to all men. They're preventing the good news from going forward.

That's why they're hostile. It's not because of their banking practices. That's not what he's talking about. I mean, maybe that's bad, but that's not what he's talking about.

It's not because of Hollywood. It's not because of industries where they're overrepresented. It's because they're preventing the gospel.

These specific Jews and Gentiles do the same thing. That's 1 Thessalonians 2. Revelation 2 and 3,

John writes about the synagogue of Satan persecuting the church of Smyrna in Philadelphia. He attacks them by claiming that they say they are

Jews, but they are not. This is best understood as a denial of religious Jews' spiritual legitimacy as evidenced by the fact that they are attacking the true

Jewish religion, which is Christianity. So John is encouraging these churches under persecution from Jews that Satan is the one ultimately motivating these circumstances.

It is not a universal statement that all ethnic Jews are being used by Satan to persecute the church.

So Jews that are preventing the gospel from being spread, Jews that are specifically persecuting the church, and then you have

Gnostics. These aren't proving that, in a universal sense, Jews are the ultimate enemy or something like that, or they've all been behind a conspiracy for centuries and the

Bible's talking about that. That's not what he's talking about. Also, the term Jew is used in various ways throughout

John's writings to describe unbelieving Jewish leaders, unbelieving Jews, believing Jews, and Jesus himself.

John says that salvation is from the Jews. So the claim that Jews is always used in a negative sense is just dumb.

Anyone who says that and that is said is just not reading their Bible. Now, there are plenty of passages refuting the

Judaizer heresy and demonstrating that Christianity is the fulfillment of Jewish prophecies. So we have scripture on this already, and we can go to those places when we're trying to evangelize

Jews or refute false teachings that come from religious Jews. We already have those passages. We shouldn't have to take passages that aren't about that to distort them and turn them into something that they're not, with a bad motivation,

I might add, to use them as cudgels against ethnic Jews. Now, this brings us to the second concerning element.

That's the first concerning element, the way scripture is being used to make Jews as this sort of universal, almost sin category, like they're the ultimate evil.

The second element is that there seems to be a lack of Jewish evangelism. I don't know if you notice this.

If you're online a lot, there's a lot of talk, even from Christians, about the threat Jews pose, and there's very little talk about, okay, how do we reach them then?

Like, if there's such a problem spiritually, what options do we have? I mean, you can vote and you can evangelize.

I don't know what else to tell you. Like, what do you expect? Do you want another holocaust? What do you want? I've had, this might shock some of you, but I have had conversations with people online, people that say

Christ is king and say they're Christian nationalists, even, and stuff like that, that'll say things like, yeah, the holocaust was justified, even the children and stuff.

And that's just like the Canaanites, right? And I'm like, how? How did we get to this point?

But you start marinating in this stuff, you start reinforcing it, and there's just layers and layers and layers, and it's hard to peel back that onion.

Because once you try to refute one thing, they're going over here, and once you refute that, they're going, it's, I've just, yeah,

I've realized there's a lot of people that just don't want to be convinced. Like, they're very committed. So John Chrysostom and Martin Luther, who are known as pretty anti -Jewish people in church history, they never actually completely gave up working with Jews to try to convert them to Christ.

That should tell you something. Like, that needs to be part of this. Converting is, if there's a problem, then the gospel is going to be part of that solution.

I'm not saying the gospel is the universal answer to every single problem. Obviously, we have governments for a reason, we have, you know, there's practical considerations here, but it's like, guys, like, that's got to be part of the formula here.

And that's what we can do. That's what we're called to do. That's what we're told to do. I think it's a revealing thing that that focus seems to be absent.

Let's go to the third element here, which is the fact that not everyone engaged in the first two elements engages in this one, but it is one of the elements of anti -Jewish ideology among Christians.

So it's this shift. Jesus isn't Jewish. The shift that says Jesus himself is not the

Jewish Messiah, or he's not Jewish, or we can redefine Jewish, or we're open to him not being

Jewish. Not everyone believes in that, but I'm starting to see that. I saw a prominent pastor not too long ago basically just blatantly say that.

And online, I just was like, okay, is someone going to correct him? It was in this panel thing. No. It's like, this is just basic confessional

Christianity, though. The creeds, the Nicene Creed, the Apostles' Creed, believe that Christ is born of the

Virgin Mary, so he's roots in this Jewish identity. The Belgic Confession says Christ is the fruit of the loins of David, according to the flesh, a branch of David, a shoot of the root of Jesse, sprung from the tribe of Judah, descended from the

Jews, according to the flesh, and the seed of Abraham. The Second Helvetic Confession reiterates this, as does the

Westminster Confession of Faith. All of these creeds and confessions also consistently affirm a future second coming, bodily resurrection, and final judgment yet to occur.

So, the idea that Jesus isn't the Messiah, or Jesus has already returned, which is another view that's out there.

There's nothing left for the Jews, because he returned and he judged them in 70 AD, and it's all over. I'm sorry, the confessions and creeds just don't say this.

The fourth element of this recent anti -Jewish push involves a chipping away at the authority of the Old Testament, whether it is in the denial of the authority of the

Hebrew Old Testament, which Jesus would have honored, or teaching that Old Testament ethics are somehow in conflict with the

New Testament, such as claiming the Jews were bloodthirsty and administered group punishment, but the

New Testament teaches judging individuals and being kind, or complete denials of the ongoing authority of the

Old Testament, which has not quite taken place yet, but if history is our guide, I think I expect to see this soon, people starting to go in on the

Old Testament. I actually have a folder on my computer now of former Christians who have deconstructed because they claimed that Christianity was too

Jewish, so they had to go back to pre -Christian European pagan religions, that kind of thing.

So, where does this leave us? Well, we should remember that God told Moses in Deuteronomy 4, in latter days you will return to the

Lord your God and listen to his voice, for the Lord your God is a compassionate God. He will not fail you, or destroy you, nor forget you, or the covenant with your fathers which he swore to them.

And as Gentile believers, we ought to recognize what Paul argued in Romans 11, that the same

God who has not revoked his promises to Israel will not revoke his promises to us, for the gifts and the callings are irrevocable, he says in Romans 11 .29.

We need to stand with our Christian forefathers in defense of God's word, Christ's humanity, and our responsibility to bless