Unpacking the New Anti-Jewish Theology: What You Need to Know

Can you believe that there's people out there that hate Jewish people? Really?

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Go to strivingforeternity .org Welcome to another edition of The Rap Report.

I am your host Andrew Rapoport And we are here to give you biblical interpretations and applications for the

Christian life I am the executive director of Striving for Eternity and the Christian podcast community of which this podcast is a proud member

I am joined today by two friends. Well, I call them friends. We'll see if they agree to that An article that I I had seen and then heard a this referenced on a podcast but Is John Harris from Conversations that matter on a article.

He's got out on his sub stack called the new anti -jewish theology and So I asked if he would come on so we could talk about it and he said hey we got to have

Charles Haddon Spurgeon Oh, wait, sorry, Joseph Spurgeon and so These are two men if you regular listeners here

You have heard both of them before But I'll start with John let you just quickly introduce yourself and then

Joe Joseph if you wouldn't mind introducing yourself for folks that may be new Yeah, thanks for having me

Andrew. I you've been talking to for two weeks about possibly coming on and this is a topic that I did tackle on my own

YouTube channel and on my sub stack and There's always loose ends anytime you tackle something even if you're comprehensive

And then questions people have and further clarification, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to dive into some of that and explain more

What the issues are like I think more clarity is important in this discussion So if people want to see that article or my initial presentation, they can go to John Harris media .com

subscribe to whatever I got there YouTube is probably the main one and And and I'm part of the law firm with of Spurgeon and Harris, you know when

Jews need help we go Spurgeon and Harris is your man, so No, I'm just kidding. But some people think that some people think that Joseph yes,

I'm Joseph Spurgeon. Hi. Oh I need to help by the bit more than that. So I'm a pastor

I'm a pastor in Southern, Indiana Presbyterian so I'm outnumbered here today only for three more years

What's 50 years you in heaven you'll be a Baptist forever I thought you guys were about to join me

Chat group yesterday saying that's what John was on having me on that's the in gathering. Yeah gathering you guys become

Presbyterians but yes, so I'm a Presbyterian and You know back in like 2015 -16

I really started thinking about the oil you might call the Jewish question and became Jew pilled if you will in the sense of Judy, I don't like the term

Judeo Christian, you know like as if they're the same thing and so I started to think through that issue, you know,

I've had people like II Michael Jones on my podcast and have Moved away from dispensationalism as I grew up from but And so I My perspective might be slightly different than than yours, but I've noticed just that It's one thing to say, you know

Judaism as it is now is not Christian doesn't honor God and in a sense

We pray for its demise it's one thing to oppose that and then it's another to just kind of make your identity and everything in to how much you're opposed to Jews and and then you start blurring the distinction between okay the religion the ethnicity and then and then

You start looking for basically a one bad guy for us to fight all the time when scripture says that you know

Our warfare is not with flesh and blood It's with the spiritual forces of darkness.

Of course, they use they use a flesh and blood people But so I've been just concerned as long with John and seeing people begin to I think he says adopt a new religion it's like a new religion in which sin and The world and the flesh those of our enemies are replaced with one thing the

Jew And so it's the only thing you become to talk about and and I think a lot of people are just grifting off of that Because of the anger of young men and a lot of the situations around us, so I Probably only gave away the whole podcast.

Sorry. That's my introduction of me Well, that's a good point to do it to the way to start because I you hit on something and you and I didn't talk about this but I was talking with my bride about this not too long ago with Why has this become so popular in Christian circles?

And I you know You think of the some of the names in Christian circles and when I'm saying that I'm not including Candace Owen because she's not

Christian If that's a shocker to anyone I She's now

Roman Catholic. So that would tell me she was never Christian Understand the gospel, but I I would throw it to her

Carson. I don't know where you know, I'm not including them But you think about you know people within that would be within Christian circles

Men like a Joel Webben, right and there's many others That started

I think really got some popularity on Speaking about masculinity and Where you had a lot of people that?

were hungry for that wanted to hear and this is why you like guys like Andrew Tate and others have become so popular because there's men who want to Hear that they're not to blame for everything in society

And and so I think that you have people that started talking about that and they got an audience and Now it's like, okay.

Well, we got to keep that audience But now they're there it's like so many of them are just now just shifting where the focus is

Instead of on masculinity. It's it's starting to turn into well, we we got to blame a group it's so it's kind of funny because I think that They started out by grabbing a bunch of people that were upset because they're getting blamed for everything and what do they do?

They turn into blaming others for everything You know but you called it

John a in the title of your your very very short article,

I Don't know what the word count is on it. But the new Anti -jewish theology, so you're you're kind of referring this as a theology

Okay, you know unpack this let me yeah, yeah, so I didn't get into Politics in a deep way

I dabbled because you have to but I'm my primary concern is the theology this is also kind of where my concerns with social justice started and Social justice is similar in a way like if you think back to how this came into the church

It wasn't because of pastors or podcasters in the church It wasn't pastors who were going on a podcast and saying, you know what?

I'm gonna just Start coming up with this idea and pitch it to you. It has already marinated they had already been marinating most of the time in Institutions of higher education and then it got into the seminaries then it got into the churches this it follows a different trajectory

Which is actually much quicker. It's not There is an academic form of this But this is more

Podcasters who are not Christians. I think that's where it starts and not just podcasters.

It's guys like Dave Smith or your Nick Fuentes or the guys who just put slop out there all the time like Stu Peters or Jake Shields and and the list just goes on with these guys who really focus so much on Jewish people being behind just about everything that goes wrong and And they use unequal weights and measures they

Can sometimes lie about these things and they wouldn't do this to other groups of people at least not to the same degree they do

With Jewish people and I think what's happened is there's also some Christians who can see there's a large audience

There's a market for this and also that maybe they may genuinely be convinced, but we're we're more the caboose

Not we as in us, but the Christians getting involved in this they're not driving that train They're the caboose in that train and social justice was similar in that way

And so what I wanted to do was pretty simple I wanted to put up some guardrails for Christians and and we need lines.

We need boundaries We need to know what theology says and so the first thing there's really five things

I guess I'll say the first thing I wanted to make sure that people knew is that this isn't just a covenant theology thing

I think even some Dispensationalist might think oh, those are just the covenant theologians Those are the people who believe in replacement theology quote -unquote, which by the way is not a pejorative necessarily

That is actually a word that's been used clinically throughout time. So people are sensitive to that now

Supercessionism, there's different varieties of supercessionism though, and not all of them. They're not like all quote -unquote anti -jewish or whatever

But there's sort of an over oversimplification there So I wanted to show people number one look look back at our

Reformed heritage and our early church heritage I'm not going to talk about any dispensationalist.

Let's just talk about the people who Before dispensationalism was even a system who talked about this issue and the issue ranges.

It's anywhere from a Sort of a soft restoration, which is an in -gathering. It could be an in -gathering to the church

It could be like Calvin thought a process that has yet to complete where Jewish people are being saved and in gathered to join the church all the way to There's land promises and there's several theologians in the early church and the

Reformed tradition that believed in the land promises to Irenaeus Victorinus Cyril of Alexandria Jerome all believe this you also see guys like Thomas Brightman William Gouge Jonathan Edwards Charles Spurgeon John Gill increase

Mather Martin Lloyd -Jones the list goes on they all believed in these land promises as well and that's not like a

Some kind of a crazy heretical thing for them to believe that Which is it's often framed that way if you believe in in the lines are very blurred.

It's it's either like Protestantism Zionism dispensationalism all usually not well -defined

People don't usually know what they're talking about online, but there's this this idea that this is all some kind of a heresy

Seeking to replace the church with Israel or something like that and they'll go to they own they know one one passage

Galatians 3, right? that's the only passage they know they usually take it and and twist it or use it inappropriately and it's like Okay Let's talk about that as well

So I wanted to just give people some basic understanding of the history and say it's not a heresy

It's actually within orthodoxy to think that there is a restoration coming of some variety Even though that ranged among our spiritual forefathers and then the real quick the

The other things I wanted people to be aware of this is more the where the meat is is that there is an emerging theology that I think is seeks to reconcile with this sort of anti Jewish crusade on the part of some of these both left -wing and now quote -unquote right -wing podcasters and That there's a few things components to this and not everyone believes all of them

But I see them starting to rise one is that Jesus isn't really Jewish or we hedge on that We can't we we have tolerance for people who say that that we should be very clear that what the confessions and creeds

Actually do say about this when they talk about it. Jesus is definitely Jewish if anyone was

Jewish. It was Jesus number two The second coming this is a little Less common, but I have seen people say things like Jesus returned in 70

AD Well, if that's the return of Christ, we have more confessional issues to deal with you could be a

Partial preterist and think that there's a lot of significance to that and everyone believes there was significance

But we're still waiting for the return of Christ The other thing is our ethics our

Christian ethics and our hermeneutics are being twisted by this certain passages are being twisted to paint

Jews as some ethnic Jews is like Like a new sin category they're just evil in a universal sense throughout all time because look at their over representation about industries and banking practices and so forth and They'll take verses like first John's to first Thessalonians to Acts 2 and 3 or rather I should say

Revelation 2 and 3 and they'll twist these these verses versus about Gnostic heresy or versus about you know

Jews who are persecuting Christians directly or preventing the spread of the gospel and then they'll like take that Extrapolate it to a group that oftentimes they'll say aren't even

Jews because there are either so they're Khazars or Edomites, so it doesn't make any sense, but it changes our hermeneutic and I am concerned about that We do need to interpret

Scripture rightly And then whether you base this on the blessing the cursing dynamic the protection clause or not

We do have instructions in Scripture from Deuteronomy To not not hate you specific like it literally says that we have

Paul saying in Romans 11 do not boast against the branches there is a track record of people of the

Old Testament who Did those things and they got punished for it? And I think people need to be aware

Christians need to be aware like look Whether you think that's part of the protection clause or not

We do have these moral instructions and we need to be aware of them And that means to if you want to know what

I think about bless. This is just John Harris's opinion I think blessing Israel means we give them the gospel I don't think it necessarily means giving weapons and money, but it does mean we were neighborly and we

We certainly don't hate these people. We shouldn't do that. So We could go any direction.

I've probably talked too much, but that's what I was trying to article That's what I'm defining and I think there needs to be definition.

There needs to be clarity There needs to be boundaries and so far it's been so muddy Yeah, and I think the whole issue hit on one thing instead of as far as giving weapons and things like that.

I don't see anyone coming out the same way when we help in warfare with Israel as with say

Ukraine Where we just we gave them billions of dollars with nothing in return, right?

so it I we have to separate I think the issue between Israel as a nation

You know if we're gonna if you talk politics as a nation like any other nation versus you know

Israel as a religious, you know, Judaism is a religious system and People that are offspring you know of Israel the twelve tribes as an ethnicity and that's where I think this gets muddier than Because there's this different aspects when people say someone's

Jewish or an Israelite or you know You gotta end up. What do you mean by that?

So but let me ask you know, it's fun. I'll start with you because I wanted to curious and both of you What do you see as the danger

I mean So you get these people that are hating on Israel there. I mean, I actually had someone that told me that someone had

Someone said that the that the Jewish people disappeared in 70 ad and Yet they're in control of everything today.

And so this guy was asked me. How could that be? I said, well, it's very simple See in 70 ad We built time machines the

Jewish people. So we all left to go into the future so we can figure out how to run everything Right.

I mean, it's it's about as good of a response is what they're actually saying with this, but it has it's gone

Dangerous and I'll I guess I'll just say where I've seen it. I think I've spoken to John about this. I had a pastor

I don't I did not remember him, but he had said that I was in in his church many years ago speaking and He sent it.

He sent an email to let me know that his church would no longer use our materials that striving for eternity or recommend it because I Can't be saved

Because I'm an enemy of Christ because I'm Jewish and You know,

I probably should have saved that email just for the humor sake but I just I like was like, yeah delete I'm not even gonna be

I didn't want to be tempted to respond to that because I knew any response just wasn't good Wasn't gonna go over well anyway, so but that's where I see a danger when you have people and I'm I'm not thinking he's the norm

But he's following people that have gotten him to think this way and He may not be alone to think that Jewish bill cannot even be saved

But it goes back to what you just said John like, okay, Jesus is Jewish or right

That's should it be debatable, but it seems to be debated now, but Joseph, what do you see as the dangers with this?

You know, I think there's lots of dangers one is we're not to be tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine and so we are to always have our doctrine in line with what

Scripture says and what God has said and so One of the dangers is replacing

Christianity itself Again, sin is now embodied in one group of people

I mean, I think we can all agree that People I would I mean we might not agree but the people groups have particular sins.

I think they're that they may be susceptible to And you know families just as families do and different locations do and so we yeah sin gets embodied in people but I don't think there's one particular people group that has the

It gets to be the definition of sin and then what then once you start doing that we start to see our problem is

Not sin, but Jews and if we can just get rid of Jews, we can solve all our problems and You know, you brought some stuff up about how

They it gets muddy. I think it gets muddy because we have both equivocation going on and the moat and Bailey So equivocation is the word

Jew obviously can have multiple meaning it can mean someone who was an ethnic Jew Who would be like yourself who doesn't believe in Judaism and So But it could also mean a religious

Jew and sometimes when we speak of Jew, we can we can mean Specifically an Israelite and by that I mean somebody who lives in Israel right now

Or we can speak of in the scripture term somebody who's from Judah So there's all these different ways to define it and that's where bad actors

Come in and then they perform the moat and Bailey so they'll talk about the Jews are the problem and all this stuff and being enemies and When you press them, well,

I'm referring to Judaism. I'm referring to the fact that it denies Jesus and you know that the the

Talmud says Jesus is boiling and and Excrement and so I'm referring to that.

Well, then how come you're using that to talk about this dude who says he believes in Jesus Because he's not following Judaism.

He just seems to be an ethnic Jew and so there's like the moat and Bailey wipe but we talk about in such a way that we're

It leads you to believe what are we talking about? Which which part of Jew and then again you have the whole foolishness of the

Khazars and you know Jews were ending at 70 AD which Then who rebelled in about 30 years after 70

AD and was destroyed when they destroyed is Jerusalem the second time and then even after that what about all the

Jews that were in the dysphoria who were We're living in Rome and got cast out of Rome at different times and in different hands

And then and so this is the history there is just so screwed up So one of the dangers as you you really fundamentally alter

Christianity another danger is just foolish thinking that Leads you in all kind of conspiracy theories and I think it really moves you away from What the

Apostle Paul says the purpose of his teaching and instruction was? The purpose is love

You know, even if Jews Secular Jews end up being an enemy of of the

Hey, man, one second. Yeah interrupted by my little daughter here I was just enjoying seeing her in the background and she was trying to get to your books.

No, she's starting young She likes her daddy but even if ethnic

Jews sometimes operate as Some of them operate as enemies right to to America or to Christians There's a fundamental difference between how

God's people fight their enemies and the wicked fight I don't remember who said it but the devil has soldiers and the devil hates his soldiers

And he will seek to destroy his own soldiers even as he Will use them to attack others

Christians we have a God who loves his soldiers and who teaches us also to love our enemies So that even when we fight our enemies and must resist them we're always doing it for their good

We're always doing it out of love. In other words, we're not overcoming evil with evil

We're overcoming evil with good. And so even if every Jew were just absolutely evil It would still not behoove us to be filled with hatred and malice towards them

Because that's not what God calls us to we if we have to oppose

Communists and leftist we oppose them because of our love our love for our own people But even our love for them we oppose them and want to see them rescued out of danger and so any kind of Jew that we would like the the

Jews that are enslaved to Judaism the false teachings with that our

Opposition to that is out of love love for Christ love for God's people and then love for them to see them rescued out of it and I think the danger is

Young men who feel I don't even know how young they are, too I feel like that might be even a bad thing to say because some of these guys are like they're 30s and 40s

They're not really young but they've been they've been divorced. They've had problems and they feel

And there's a lot of real problems as well in our culture that's been aimed at white men and so it's really easy then to just Be bitter and angry and now you're looking for somebody to be bitter and angry with and then what you have is somebody like an

Absalom who can sit in the gates and say oh if I was king If I was king for the day, then all your problems would be solved

Just listen to me and I'll tell you who all the bad people are and then we do if you followed me If Nick Fuentes was president for a day or Joe Webb and was president for a day then the world would be made right and and There's a fundamentally difference between that and David King David because if you go back before David also brought to himself a lot of dissatisfied people you can you can read a lot of his soldiers his mighty men were once people that Saul hunted down and were dissatisfied and They were not always the best

David had to deal with the joab, but there's a fundamental difference between how David Took those people and pointed them to Jesus and led them, you know

Point them to God and led them in the truth versus Absalom who just led them in a rebellion and to the destruction

So those are the things if I had to summarize sin foolish thinking conspiracy thinking and move away from love

As our as our practice and a following after people who will actually end up costing you

Grifters Absalom's lead you in a rebellion What do you think John, what do you see as as some of the dangers?

One of the things Joseph briefly touched on that I want to expand on a little is there's

How would you expect love to be? Promoted if we were to love others, what is the what's the best thing we can do for them?

Well, we've been loved by Christ Introducing people to Christ is probably the most loving thing that I can do to someone who doesn't know

Christ and That's actually specifically what Paul says Was or actually

I should say Peter because if that actually in Acts 3 Peter says That God blessed and he's talking to Jewish people that God blessed them with the with repentance essentially

So that's what I want to bless Israel with and that's not people. I'm not talking about the modern state

I'm just talking about you know, your Jewish neighbor people who are Jewish who are alive today and need Christ Some of them are

Christians ethnic Jews but there's many who are religious Jews and secular Jews and following even in other religions who need

Christ and One of the things that's inspired me and even studying this issue is looking at the restoration movement

Which we only they didn't know they were part of that movement. We look back and we say those are the restorationists in Anglican a little bit

Presbyterian and then definitely Puritan circles Some somewhat there's some also some

German pietism in there and some Dutch reforms but after the Reformation and I explain this in the paper because of you know, a series of events leads to the

Reformation and the Catholic Church is Especially the Franciscans and the

Dominicans. They're kind of anti -jewish There's there's sort of it ebbs and flows the relationship that the church has but by and large they're pretty tolerated compared to pre -christian pagan religions and There's there is a you know, a sort of a stress on conversion at times, but it's like, you know

Inquisition stuff so you get to the Reformation and people start reading scripture for themselves more and they start seeing things

They start recovering a more I guess for lack of a better term literal way of looking at some of these

Passages and one of the things that gets rediscovered in a sense because you see this in the early church a bit but it gets it definitely gets emphasized as you know, we have a responsibility to evangelize these people and one of the cool stories this

I don't know if you knew this Andrew, but there were some German pietists who actually started this organization in London called the

London Society for Promoting Christianity and In among the Jews, sorry, that's the full title

Anyway, one of the guys who worked for them Alexander McCall who lived in the early 1800s.

He writes this book called the old paths a Comparison of the principles of the doctrines of modern

Judaism with the religion of Moses and the prophets And he says in the beginning of the book he's like I'm not gonna do what some of those previous guys did who were just invective and like Jews wouldn't really even listen to them like they were

Maybe behaving similar to some of the ways some people online behave he goes I really want to show them where their

Talmud is wrong, and I'm gonna use their scripture. I'm gonna show him And so he does this and what emerges from it and he takes credit for it essentially is reform

Judaism So he says look you got the Talmud's all wrong

And so you have a bunch of Jews that say oh snap Alexander McCall is right, but we're still

Jewish. What are we gonna do? I guess we'll ditch the Talmud and say I perform Judaism to this day this form of Judaism that couldn't contend with the

Apologetics of Christians who were bent on trying to reach them. Where's our

Alexander McCall's today? That's what I want to know if the if the Jewish people are such a problem and they're causing all these issues

I would expect Christians, especially pastors to be promoting more heavily

Evangelism among the Jews That's what I don't see though. That is missing from this equation.

I hardly see lip service to that it is constant just Berating this group of people in some of the most careless ways for all the problems

I have no problem by the way with pointing out. Hey secular Jews and American society.

They vote Democrat. They've been involved in liberal and communist Projects and things like I have no problem pointing that out.

I think you should do it Honestly, you know talk realize when they immigrated here and the movements that predated them that they're joining rather than starting

You know be honest about what we're talking about, but I have no problem with someone pointing. I'm not afraid of facts

No one's afraid of facts. I For example influence in Hollywood Jewish directors and much of their influence secular

Jews. We're talking about mostly here It's not been great. We can admit that but at the same time we don't make we don't universalize that and Then just make it kind of our battering ram for every issue every every issue is this

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SFE without Especially without then saying we need to go reach these people who's gonna go let's do the raise the hand in church

Who's gonna go reach these people? so I I don't want to maybe harp any more about that, but I feel like that is so neglected and it should be it's sort of a

Metric it's a barometer for the health of the church on this issue Like even if everything else being said was right, which

I don't think it is But even if it was that missing elements says that we should be careful

Something is dangerous in a sense is happening here because we we need to care about the people that don't know

Christ You know you You didn't mention son earlier about what it means to bless

Israel, right? I think this is something we have to kind of dig into a bit because You think about the

Tucker Carlson interview with well, he did one with Ted Cruz and they did one with Mike Huckabee and I've actually saw he seemed like he was a lot harder on those two guys then then

You know some of the really radical people he has on but he honed in on this issue and I now

I'm gonna say this as someone who is you know of a Jewish descent and Even me in Joseph's mind even worse a dispensationalist

But I I Do not think that and this is where I'm gonna disagree with with Huckabee and and with Cruz I don't think there is a command to bless

Israel I've tried to look at the passage. They they had I don't think it's the it not at least in the way that they've used it

But this I'll go ahead. Sorry. Yeah, this is where they they hone in on. All right, they really hone in like they somehow because I mean that's what

Cruz would base is like we have to bless Israel because it's a command from God, so So my question for you is do you think it's actually a command if so?

What is that and and if it's not what is it? What does it mean to bless Israel? I well,

I've been talking for a while. Do you want to take that first Joseph? And yeah, we'll probably slightly disagree.

So that might be fun so I Do think it's a command

But I think that it's fulfilled in Jesus most importantly who is the true

Israel and then the church and so I don't see it as a I Don't see it as a command for as Ted Cruz.

You have to approve everything that the state in Israel does because he even if it was a say there's to say it was a command for What we would call

Israel as separate from the church as Jews I still don't think blessing means agreeing at every single thing and supporting every single thing they ever do but I think it's mostly fulfilled in Christ and and that Those who curse the church

God will judge Those who bless the church will be blessed Big and and so that's where I take it as it is fulfilled in Christ Obviously when it comes to Jews, then they are our neighbors in a sense

John Calvin and a Good Samaritan says That Jesus meant to teach us there that every single person is a neighbor that anybody can be our neighbor obviously, we have different duties depending on their connection to us and you know, you have more responsibility to those who are closer, but Jew, it can be our neighbor and And so we're commanded to love our neighbor as ourself

And I already agree with you the greatest way to love our neighbor whether a Jew black white Mexican or whatever is to proclaim the gospel of the

Lord Jesus to them and then and then I think So I would

I would just argue that's what we do We proclaim the gospel to them and that is blessing those blessing somebody by teaching them the the gospel

Obviously if they refuse Jesus they are not blessing Israel and they are cursing Jesus and so There'll be major problems for the person, you know, the

Apostle Paul in 1st Corinthians What's he in with a curse on those who?

Those who do not love Jesus And then Maranatha come quickly to judge quickly, but he also has a blessing for those who love

Jesus So I think it's related to the hinge point. It's Jesus. What do you do with Jesus? That's blessing and cursing so Yeah, that's good.

I I'm open to that Interpretation and I think it's within orthodoxy. I tend to think there is a

Principle I don't actually think it's a command. It's more of a principle that agree with that Yeah, it's not really presented as a command.

Correct. That's why I had such issue with what Ted Cruz said Yeah Yeah, so it's a

I mean obviously you want to be blessed so I understand why people would think of it that way but Surveying the scripture and then looking at church history on this issue, you know pre modern state of Israel And and actually pre 1900s it it seems like there's actually not a lot said about this particular

Command so I did find some theologians who talk about it in different ways like Justin Martyr, for example

Thought it meant evangelizing Israel evangelizing Jews and there were some restorationists who thought that There's also some who thought that it did mean and this is going back to like the 1700s

Edward Bickerseth Steph thought this means helping them return to the land and he even says look

I'm not saying they have a right to the land. They're they're disobedient to God, but maybe in this process of Return things will come together.

And so we should assist in the in gathering and he saw that as partially the land promise Edward Nicholas is another guy who believed it was the land

And there was those who also thought a lot of Puritans thought this during the Whitehall Conference that good treatment of Jews treating them

Like neighbors, that's what it means to bless so You know you look at this and there's also people who believe like I think

Joseph Spurgeon would fit into this You know, it's not part of the blessing and cursing dynamic, but we have a duty to evangelize

Jews So origin John Christopherson even Martin Luther would be in that category So I think no matter how you come down on this

You can base it on base your evangelistic the efforts on That dynamic and say why we're following this principle or you don't have to but you're you're still doing the right thing

It's still I think a perfectly valid category The reason I'll just briefly say from Scripture.

I tend to lean towards I think it's still in effect is This it's not just in Genesis 12 3

It's also in Genesis 27 29 that it comes up numbers 24 9 and then you see an application of it in Obadiah 1 to eat them.

So the the best example, I think is actually Balaam, which is in numbers 24 they're not actually even in the land they're entering the land and And Balaam's paid to curse them and then instead

God blesses them and Is Balak I think right who told him to do it and he says no they're gonna be bigger than a gag the biggest king in The area they're gonna have the land and he even for tells of the

Messiah coming and it's it's this great prophecy And that and then it Genesis 12 threes promise

The protection clause is repeated again that hey those who bless you are gonna be blessed as you curse you're gonna be cursed I See these is like at this point.

We're talking about ethnic Israel. They're not in the land yet They haven't possessed the land. I Would see this as Jews all over the world now, could it be the church?

Sure. Here's the thing though It's not applied that way specifically in the New Testament I can't find a verse that says that the best you can do is

Galatians says hey the the new Israel The church is the new Israel. However, the promise is given to the church seem a little bit different It seems like there's a number of passages in the

New Testament that say you might have good behavior But you're gonna be persecuted get ready for it, right like I don't see the same protection clause that there's the

There's there's protection in the sense of like a spiritual like God's always gonna be with you and things like that But there's also this like you could be behaving well and still be enduring a fiery trial

Whereas it seems like in the Old Testament Israel's treated a little differently Especially under the

Mosaic Covenant. So what is Andrew Rappaport doing? This might be the most brilliantly insane concept on the internet

Yeah, I'm talking about the apologetics live podcast. Okay. Here's the premise a live stream on Thursdays from 8 to 10 p .m

Eastern Standard Time where you can jump in and ask any Bible or theology question you have and Andrew Rappaport will answer it

But here listen, it gets even better. You can debate him live and he doesn't even know the topic There's been guys who have been prepared for weeks who come on the live stream and you get to watch

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You can join the fun at www .apologeticslive .com If you want to be part of the show or click the link in the description box of this episode as always apologetics live

It's part of the Christian podcast community. Oh That's why I tend to think I think

I think it's still in effect. I think and I would See parallels to that in Romans 11 to some extent

But Paul doesn't specifically even say in Romans 11 that this is the protection clause. I'm talking about so There there's many, you know

Interpretations that fit within orthodoxy on this topic but I don't think you have you can't be certain of what

Ted Cruz said what Ted Cruz said was the reason I support Israel the nation -state is because of This verse and then

Tucker goes after him and Ted Cruz clarifies. He's saying no, it's not it's not the government It's the Jewish people. So he's right about okay the

Jewish people. That's that that's good but he still thinks that It's somehow sending them

Having a partnership with them in a military way in trade that these are the ways that that that is done

I I don't Well while they're in disobedience, I'm not I'm not convinced of that.

I think You know, you do see blessings come down in the Old Testament for even

Who is it not Artaxerxes? Who's the first one that makes the decree, you know go back to the land

Why am I blanking which King am I talking about? You know who I'm talking about the Assyrian King who says, you know go back to the land and I'm Cyrus Cyrus.

Thank you Sorry, so Cyrus blesses them and Cyrus is blessed in return All right, you see the same thing with Pharaoh with Joseph and it's not 80 years until they repent

So they're going back to the land. They still haven't Ezra hasn't read the law. They haven't repented and It's that's viewed as a blessing that God does bless him for so I I don't think

Ted Cruz is crazy I just don't I don't think that we can know that for certain based on what

Scripture teaches I know what we can know for certain Blessing Jews is is called evangelizing

Jesus called blessing them or share the gospel message in Acts 3 and I know that it's prohibited to hate them or to boast against them.

So those things I do know and I don't I think that the main thing we should be thinking about as Americans with our foreign policy is

What is best for where we live? What makes sense for us strategically? we should bless the city where we live in no matter where we are in the world if we're a

Christian and And that means making good strategic decisions For our people and if that means an alliance with Israel in some form then sure, you know, that's how

I look at it Israel's a special place in many ways many of our biblical sites are preserved there

I've been to Muslim countries that don't preserve Christian sites. Well, I'm thankful that Israel does that I'm thankful that they allow that I should say

There's strategic reasons. I think that an alliance can be mutually beneficial But I don't justify it that way so that's my long answer

So Let me ask you know, we've we see that there's a danger I Really think of a key thing that seems to hinge for a lot of people is that issue of blessing?

But I'll start with you Joseph And then John I'll have you do that answer this as well and then wrap up with anything you you want from your article but I Guess the simple way of putting it

Joseph is how do you fix the situation? Right? I mean what? What can we do?

How should Christians be viewing? Both Israel and the situation where everyone's hating on Israel.

It's good question, you know, I think We have to think rightly we have to think truthfully.

I think there's a danger of like the Ted Cruz position Leads to the other the position that we're talking about today.

I think There have been some a lot of kind of famous You might celebrity

Christians that talk about Jews as if they are Going to get into heaven in some special way.

There's some way apart from Christ. I think And I think we've been hesitant to call out when they act wickedly, of course you know, we should we should be free to call anybody with that acts out wickedly for what they do and So, you know you should be able to notice the things that you notice

I mean the early life Part of Wikipedia if people still use Wikipedia, but Like so when

Jews do evil, yeah, they're doing evil that's to be opposed. I don't think it's their Ethnicity causing that I think it's the sinful nature of man that we have

That is in all men that causes evil and anybody that's that is in opposition to Christ is

Going to find themselves committing evil and it's gonna be difficult and bad for the land But I think we

I think we should be able to speak the truth We don't have to become, you know blind. We don't have to be afraid of the the

ADLF and those kind of things but So speaking truthfully about it

I think we can even honestly speak through I would like to at some point ask John's opinion because as he's done history about you know,

John Christendom and Martin Luther obviously are pointed to as guys that wrote pretty harshly even

John Calvin pretty harshly against Jews and And you know, I've read those works.

I think I would agree with what they're saying maybe not always the tone but even You know,

I I get there what they're saying What what I don't see Calvin doing or Luther or John Christendom is making

Jews the thing They were writing about a real problem and they're dealing with it, but it's not when it comes at the end of the day what we know

Martin Luther for is not his opposition to Jews But his love for faith

I can and the proclamation of the faith and and and of course He did oppose

Jews when it was necessary. So we should be able to do that but so speaking truthfully that way is important and then also coming back what the scripture teach and And Again I would argue that the scriptures teach that all men are born with a sinful nature and the cure for that is the gospel of the

Lord Jesus and So we need to proclaim that we need to live that out. We also need to be taught that our doctrine serves a purpose which is love this is what the

Apostle Paul tells Timothy and it's the difference between a godly pastor and false teachers

False teachers speak about the law about things they don't know and they bind people up and it's all related to what serve their own purposes for their own gain and and So any truth where it's whether it's truths about Jews Truths about the patriarchy which

I you know, I have that podcast and believe in or truths about civil government They are all as a from a

Christian must serve the purpose of love and people can grab onto those truths and twist them to serve their own purposes and So I think we we be reminded.

What is our what is our goal? it's love and it's clean with a clean conscience and sincere faith like That comes from the

Word of God and that's going to teach us To love our enemies. You can't disregard

Jesus's commands if you're a follower of Jesus and Of course love for enemy doesn't mean letting them do whatever the heck they want to do

There's all kinds of ways that that gets twisted But love is action, but it's also comes from a heart that does genuinely love

And that's very hard to do with our enemies. It's probably the hardest commandment Jesus gives us and yet He enables us to do it because we were his enemies and he loves us and so if Jesus can love me and God can love me and forgive my sins and my wickedness and Jesus can die for me

There's nothing that a Jew has done to me That I haven't already spit in God's face and done to him

So then I should be able to forgive I should build a love. I should be able to proclaim the gospel and and and Truthfully stand for the truth manfully stand for the truth

Amen, so you want me to hop in there Andrew? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that was great I think Joseph has a good pastoral sensibility about all this which is like why

I like hearing him talk about it and why I think people who get into this who are

Christians, especially well, even if they're not should listen to what he has to say because there is a heart matter here that Oftentimes, I mean like he said oftentimes there and I found this to be the case myself

I'm not saying because I don't know everyone's heart. It's every time but oftentimes there's a brokenness of some kind a sin problem in the past element of shame just a lack of stability and I don't know.

There's there's a lot of guys who have Questions about things going wrong in their life who end up in this place and it doesn't help them any and so we love people

Even people who don't like us, you know, we we love them and and so that's nothing else would motivate you to Talk about this subject because you get punished online pretty quickly for bringing it up in this environment

I'll talk briefly about John Christopherson and Martin Luther since Joseph brought it up. So I have this book here

This is a book I read in I think 2017 or 2018. We're gonna give the title folks since this is

It's called John Christopherson and the Jews rhetoric and reality in the late 4th century by Robert L. Wilkin.

It's a great book I don't remember all of it. I was I was doing a class at the time

I think it was my Holocaust class. Actually, I did a graduate program studies in Holocaust and my final was on Martin Luther and You know trying to answer the question to what extent did he inspire the

Nazi Party were his views connected because that's the claim you Often hear anyway, I looked at a John Christopherson to and I read this book and let me just read for you

This is in the introduction And it talked it says John Christopherson's writings on the Jews have been called the most horrible and violent denunciations of Judaism To be found in the writings of a

Christian theologian This judgment is based on a series of sermons preached in the city of Antioch Where John was a presbyter at the end of the 4th century

These sermons ate and all and delivered over the course of two years were directed at listen to this

Christians in his congregation who are participating in Jewish festivals and taking part in other

Jewish Observations, so this is what I want to say the context of John Christopherson is

Christians in your flock who are being tempted to Participate in Jewish religious rituals, and so he takes aim at Judaism.

That's what's going on there If you can certainly like Joseph was saying you can switch out what a

Jew means, is it religious is it ethnic? What are we talking about and people who hate ethnic Jews can certainly take a passage from Christopherson and say see

This is part of the Christian tradition as they do but If you look at what he's saying in context and his concern for his flock

He's got a particular situation and I think if any of us were in a similar situation

We would be doing something similar as far as not saying we'd use all the same language But we would be trying to show people where the lines are with this that Judaism Especially at the time he's writing and it's developing.

This is Participating in that is this is not Christianity. You're you are now participating in a different kind of religion and now

Here are the lines. Here's what you can do. Here's what you shouldn't do. Here's what's unwise Like that's what a good pastor does for his congregation.

It doesn't want them converting. So That's John Chrysostom It was like the roots movement of his day is what he was dealing with.

That's exactly what I was thinking It would be like addressing the Hebrew roots. Yeah Yeah, great.

Great point Joseph. So Martin Luther is a little bit similar to that Martin Luther starts out with a lot of optimism and he talks about Jewish evangelism and he encourages that he even talks about a

Future restoration of the Jews He actually writes a book called that Jesus Christ was born a

Jew today. He would be called online He would be people would say he's Jesus juking everyone for reminding them that Christ is a

Jew, but he wrote a whole book on it And then what happens is a few things There's tension with the

Turks and there's suspicion that you know The Jewish people are trading with them and that's not a good thing because remember the

Jews aren't the biggest villain at that time The Muslims specifically the Turks are the biggest villain at that time.

So and this is most of medieval Europe They're very worried about this religion that has taken over half of their domain

So Martin Luther is looking at the Jews suspiciously everyone is I mean most people from what

I understand because of that Asking where their loyalties are then his daughter also dies the in 1542, which is devastating to him and he

Tries to evangelize the Jews and they don't repent. So these these are the three main things that come together in 1543

He publishes on the Jews in their lives. This is the least circulated from what

I understand Pamphlet that he ever made people didn't read it It wasn't really known until aspects of it were resurrected in the late 1800s for the

German bulk movement But his critiques are also along the lines of religion Conversion is an option in Martin Luther's scheme

They can avoid all the things that he thinks should happen to them if they remain in their false religion

If they just convert to Christianity Also, one of the interesting thing is before Martin Luther died days before he died

He preaches a sermon and in that sermon He says he talks about the necessity of treating

Jews with Christian love to pray for them So that they might become converted and receive the Lord So you see throughout his life even after publishing on the

Jews in their lives and let's face it Martin Luther had things to say about Anabaptists the Pope. I think there's an old

George Strait song called. I hate everything I think that's about Martin Luther, you know, you can just cherry anything

He could probably be you know, just swearing at a gnat in his off That's just kind of his temperament which is part.

I love Martin Luther, but he's I feel like he'd be a hard friend to have Um But at the end of his life, he never gave up with evangelizing them

And I think that's something that people should take into account when they're thinking of Martin Luther His critiques are about religious

Judaism not Jews ethnically, you know, he's not DNA stuff and Hitler stuff, right?

this is There this is a false religion and we still need to convert them. That's the the main thing.

So So John just to wrap up What do you think

I mean, what is the solution how should we view Israel Anything from your article, you know, you said you want to wrap some things up Let's give you my opinion.

So my so Martin Louis Jones thought 1967 hey, this is

Jesus talked about this Jesus said the time of the Gentiles That Israel would be underfoot or Jerusalem So the time of the

Gentiles is complete and then presumably there's a return to Jewish control Martin Louis Jones says hey,

I think this is happening. Jordan just lost a war Israel now controls Jerusalem of course they don't control

Jerusalem because the Dome of the Rock the main central point that they religious of religious significance is still controlled by Jordan, but he thought that there's something significant about this and I actually quoted two dispensationalists who disagreed with them.

Those are the only two I quoted in my paper who Who did I quote? I think I have it on the Slides here.

I quoted J. Vernon McGee and Charles Ryrie. Both of them were saying look we can't say this is the in -gathering it is

There haven't returned to God yet. So What do you do if the in -gathering that we're thinking is gonna happen is gonna be a return to Christianity a return to Christ looking on him those him who they had pierced and repenting and mourning so Without that happening.

Can you say this is the in -gathering? And so here's my opinion I don't think you can I don't think you can positively say this is the in -gathering or this is a legitimate

Return to the land necessarily now looking back at the first return

Took 80 years to get to the point of repentance. I think we should always be hoping for their repentance

But I don't know could they be scattered again? And then like who knows? I mean my druthers

This is just like my opinion. I tend to think historical circumstances are Incredible think about just a few things

England starts going down this path other countries aren't going down this path like England is but England starts going down this path of We should love the

Jews and they should they should go back to their their ancestral homeland Well, they couldn't do anything about that.

Oh, they win World War one We would have never heard about the Balfour Declaration But we win

World War one and all of a sudden guess who controls that area Oh Britain the one country that was saying Jews Should return

Okay Then they immediately everyone's like well, they're gonna lose they're gonna you know, everyone backs away 1948 they win then was the 1956 the 1967 the 1973

The infants in I can't even say the word infantada or whatever. It's yeah, and then what's happened now?

I'm amazed. I mean, I'm truly amazed that they have held on this little bitty country Overwhelmed so I look at that and I say

I Suspect I don't believe things are happenstance. God. God is allowing this in his

Providence There's something that seems significant about this what that is leading to I don't know but and I'm not gonna try to Try to force it into something

I'm just gonna leave it open -ended and say Lord, I want you to to convert the

Jewish people many of them half of them now are in this ancestral homeland and I I hope that you're doing something to pursue to prick their hearts so that they will look on The one that they pierced and convert and that's my heart.

Yeah, and I agree with you I mean I it is saying it seems odd feel think for me to say especially as being both

Jewish and dispensational, but 1948 I don't know with that. It was fulfillment of prophecy

I won't know till after the prophecy is fulfilled when Christ comes back. We'll find out but Israel could be wiped out and you know be run by Muslims and a thousand years from now, you know

Come back even as a dispensationalist. We have to be careful not to read our

Bible through the lens of the newspaper Because it's a really bad way to read the

Bible and so I folks that you know, there's been lots of just lots of discussion in podcasts and in you know by Christian pastors about Israel it has been a

Struggle for for some, you know I'll encourage folks to go back when on my apologetics live podcast

There's some some time ago maybe a year ago with my co -hosts who are both covenantal both would be a

Thought they walking into it that when we talked about Israel, they were said figured

Okay, we're gonna they were gonna very much disagree with me and we sat down They were like wow, we're in complete agreement with your views on Israel And I think that we do need to take a little bit of time to hear people out

But we do need to figure out that as as Joseph said We got to figure out what people mean when they say

Israel and Jewish because I think a lot of what's happening is people are talking past one another and We're not gonna get anywhere if we do that so John Joseph, I appreciate you guys appreciate your your ministries appreciate what you guys are doing even if one's a

Presbyterian no So, you know you heard that we're gonna baptize an extra baby this week, yeah

You're talking about your family's Precondition to sins and I was just gonna go like so with the name like Spurgeon.

Are you preconditioned to have a cigar? Just you know, just wondering So, you know,

I appreciate you guys coming on this is a needful topic I will have John's article list

Linked in the podcast. So go read it It's a thorough document.

He also had in his in a recent episode of Conversations that matter.

I think it was a sermon that you did somewhere sounded like it a presentation present a church

Yeah, just look, you know, if you want to come to back tonight, we're trying to resurrect this evening service thing

I said, I'll I'll answer any of your questions to that the best of my ability about this topic

And you know, I one thing I'll say real quick Andrew, too. I don't like the term

I'm using. That's good. Really? I anti -jewish theology or ideology

I just don't know what to call it right because I am anti like Judaism in a sense, right?

Like all of us are like we believe in Christ. So we're rejecting the first coming of Christ We don't agree with but I just don't know what else to call it

I didn't want to give that caveat if people have a critique of my title. Give me a better one. Yeah.

Yeah. No, I think we agree I think rabbinic Judaism is anathema to to the biblical

Judaism and to the gospel so 100 % yeah