Is God Jewish?

The Evangelical Preoccupation with Israel

• Is there more than one true religion? 

• The modern Evangelical preoccupation with ethnicity reveals our first preoccupation - the flesh. 

• How do we show true affection for Jews?

• Jesus is the True Israel.

• “Here I stand, I can do no other.”

By Brad Ward, Director, Armor of Truth

What a wild ride!  Over the past several weeks, we’ve been charged with everything from antisemitism to hate speech and inciting violence. Our ongoing coverage of the expanding war in the Middle East and our, dare I say, Biblical position that the modern U.N.-established nation-state of Israel is apostate, antichrist, and has no prophetic significance in this age has caused a stir.

As it turns out, challenging American evangelicals with the question, “Do you stand with Israel or Jesus?” reaps a sort of resentment typically reserved for flag-burning hooligans. Or worse. You’d think we burned a cross out front of the local First Baptist Church.

Most of our critics, Dispensational Zionism to be exact, esteem modern politics and foreign policy as the lens through which Scripture must be interpreted. We believe that arrangement to be upside-down and quite dangerous. 

IS THERE MORE THAN ONE TRUE RELIGION?

An element of progressive sanctification is the process of identifying and tearing down our idols. We believe asking questions is an effective way to expose idols that might be hidden under layers of cultural programming.

Question: Do you believe there is more than one true religion? 

Be careful, Judaism is Christless, and modern Israel is NOT following Moses. 

God has chosen the symbol of an olive tree to represent His people. One olive tree. Not two or three special trees, and not an anointed grove. One tree. 

“There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.” (Ephesians 4:4-5)

Like all trees, this tree has branches, roots that feed the branches, and a husbandman/vine-dresser, or gardener who tends to the tree guiding its growth. Jesus said,

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener…I am the vine, you are the branches” (John 15:1,5).

Abraham and his descendants, The Jews, were the first branches to sprout. However, as a nation, Jacob/Israel rejected their Messiah, and those branches were cut out of the tree.

“Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away” (John 15:2). 

Israel is not the root. Gentiles are not the root. These hard Scriptural facts are irrefutable. Still, the truth of the matter will attract the ire of evangelicals who portray support for Israel in all their endeavors as a measure of true faith. But why are so many professing Christians proclaiming spiritual solidarity with a Christless religion? 

The Judaism of modern Israel is actually more similar to Islam than Christianity. Modern Rabbinic Judaism is not the same religion of Old Testament Israel. As a nation, Israel is not following Moses. Jesus said that the Jewish leaders departed from the law of Moses and began observing their own doctrine instead. Since the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D. Judaism swerved further and further away from the truth embracing erroneous traditions and today, modern Judaism is properly understood as a heresy of the faith expressed in the Old Testament. 

The true faith of the Old Testament is fulfilled in the Savior, the Christ of the New Testament. There are no ancient hidden truths here. It's actually very simple. If a religion denies the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, that religion is false. Period. If one chooses to stand in spiritual solidarity with modern Israel (supporting them in all they do) that person is standing with and proclaiming the spirit of antichrist.

Like America, modern Israel is a hodgepodge of religious persuasions such as Orthodox Judaism, and more severe distortions of God's word like ultra-orthodox Third-Temple Judaism, Talmudic Judaism, Hasidim, and Kabbalistic mysticism. Add to that the presence of the New Age religion of love and light, self-exaltation, personal godhood and various Christians heresies. Some are extremely legalistic while others are doctrinally “far out.” At the same time, there remains a small body of ethnic Jews in the world who have received their Messiah and have been grafted back into the vine/tree by grace through faith in Christ. Inevitably, there may even be a very small “remnant” of Jews in the world today who represent an unbroken line all the way back to the apostles and first-century “original” Christians.  

Doug Wilson writes, 

“Jews are high performance people and so when they are bad they are really bad and when they are good they are really good, but just like the rest of us they all need Christ.”

Therefore, the burden of proof is on our critics to demonstrate (from the Scriptures) how it is a faithful act to stand in spiritual solidarity with a religion that rejects the death, burial and resurrection of Christ and to co-sign the sin and open rebellion of a nation that has more in common with John’s “spirit of antichrist” than Christ. Yom Kippur can save no one.

THE MODERN EVANGELICAL PREOCCUPATION WITH ETHNICITY?

Exalting modern Israel to a spiritual status they do not represent in this age hinders the Christian’s ability to examine himself rightly. To continue the challenge of self examination and to dig deeper in search of idols buried within, we ask more questions: 

Is God Jewish? 

Is The Holy Spirit Jewish? 

Was the Son Jewish before the foundation of the world? 

The modern Evangelical preoccupation with ethnicity exposes our first preoccupation - the flesh. Our Bible is Jewish, and our Savior is Jewish. All true, and praise God! But who is it that is “able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy?” (Jude 24) Is it the Apostle Paul? Rabbi Chaim Richman? Bibi Netanyahu, perhaps? 

“Therefore bear fruits in keeping with repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father..." (Luke 3:8a)

Reverberating from the halls of Evangelical-dom today, we hear the proclamation “without Israel there would be no Christianity” True, in a sense. But without God there would be no Israel. 

"...for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham.” (Luke 3:8b) 

The origins of our faith have come THROUGH the Jews, but are not FROM the Jews. Now, that statement is not antisemitic in the slightest. No one has or ever will replace Israel. But if we truly love Jews and modern Israel and rightly understand their current condition as apostate and antichrist, then we ought to be sparked with a zeal for evangelizing the Jews like a lost brother. 

“Your house is being left to you desolate” (Matt 23:38) is not a blessing, it is a judgment from the mouth of The Messiah, Himself that stands to this very day (Romans 11:8). 

HOW DO WE SHOW TRUE AFFECTION FOR JEWS?

Little brothers often idolize older brothers. But loving an older brother well does not mean supporting him in apostasy and co-signing his sin as he falls further and further toward Hell. 

Loving a big brother well means caring first for his eternal soul and doing everything you can to prevent him from suffering in the eternal misery of Hell. It means evangelizing him, praying for him to repent, and receive the Messiah. It means praying for the Lord to bless him so that he might turn and say "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord" (Romans 11:23). Clearly, that has not happened (yet) to modern Israel. 

Therefore, when we choose to proclaim to the all the world that we "stand with Israel'' in unequivocal support of all they do; When we make a show of spiritual solidarity with the modern nation of Israel as they stand in open and obvious rejection of Christ, we do a severe disservice to the church Christ bought with His blood. When we co-sign (support) the sin of modern Israel as they blaspheme God, promote Third-Temple heresy, revile Christ, and attack Christians in Jerusalem we stain the gospel and support the mockery of Jesus Christ’s sacrifice. 

Our actions and public positions will either adorn the gospel and present a Christlike image of the church, or detract from the gospel and make the church look as confused as the rest of the world. 

“demonstrating all good faith so that they will adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in everything. For the grace of God has appeared to all men, instructing us that denying ungodliness and worldly desires, we should live sensibly, righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us that He might redeem us from all lawlessness, and purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good works. These things, speak and exhort and reprove with all authority. Let no one disregard you” (Titus 2:9-10).  

In search of idols, let’s ask a couple more questions: 

How many ways are there to salvation? 

When was the plan of salvation created? 

“...even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will.” (Ephesians 1:4-5)

JESUS IS THE TRUE ISRAEL

Jesus is the true Israel because He is the true Son of God (Matt. 2:13–14). Christians stand on the promised salvation of God in the Messiah who has come. True believers in the Old Testament were saved in the same way as true believers in the New Testament — by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. God has ONE People, ONE Church, ONE body of believers who were elected, called, and justified in ONE Savior. 

“There is neither Jew nor Greek…for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28)

Therefore, our critics are required to refute this (with Scripture) and demonstrate that God has two people and that there is more than one true religion, which means our critics would have to demonstrate that salvation is possible through some other means than the blood of Jesus Christ. 

Being true Israel, God’s ONE People comes only by the covenant of Grace and does not come as a result of ethnicity or national origin. True Israel is faithful Israel because they have faith in the only faithful Jew who has ever lived—Jesus the Messiah. Jesus is the only faithful Israelite because He fulfilled all of the Father's righteous laws for Israel. As the only faithful Israelite, Jesus is the true Israel because He is the true Son of God (Matt. 2:13–14). All who are saved by faith alone are United with Jesus Christ and are the true Israel of God (Gal. 6:16). 

There is one vine/tree called “The People of God.” 

“I urge you to walk in a manner worthy of your calling…eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift.” —Ephesians 4:1-8

While the rest of the world courts the macabre on October 31st, celebrating Halloween, Dia De Los Muertos (The Day of The Dead), the Samhain (pagan harvest ritual), etc. Protestants, typically of Reformed tradition, recognize October 31 as Reformation Day, which commemorates the day in 1517 when a passionate Augustinian monk nailed his "95 Theses" to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. 

Martin Luther challenged certain practices of the Roman Catholic Church, including the doctrine of the Mother Church and tradition as the infallible interpreter of Scripture. Luther's act and the subsequent events that followed are considered the spark that ignited the Protestant Reformation. 

The protest was a major religious, political, and cultural upheaval that began as a movement to reform the Roman Catholic Church eventually led to the establishment of Protestant denominations. On this day, Protestants remember the struggle of the Reformers to return the faith to its true source, the martyrs who died to make God's word available to all people in the common language, and the origins of key theological principles such as the supremacy and sufficiency of Scripture and salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, and “not by works, so that no man can boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).

Therefore, in honor of Reformation Day, and as a response to our critics, let us here apply the words of Martin Luther, who, under tremendous pressure from the church to recant his writings on the sufficiency and supremacy of Scripture, said. 

“Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. Here I stand, I can do no other. God help me. Amen.”

We pray that the recent body of work we’ve produced on the identity of Israel, modern Israel, and Christians is received in the spirit in which it was intended: as our effort to challenge our brothers and sisters in Christ all over the world to question what you think you know, what you have always believed to be true, and to find the bedrock of all truth in God’s word so that you will know not only what you believe, but exactly why you believe it. 

Most of all, we pray that this work is a blessing to all who encounter it; that it would glorify the Lord, magnify the name of Christ, bring believers closer to Christ, and help Christians everywhere (Jewish and non-Jewish) to know their true identity as God’s ONE People.