Originally published in "The Lord's Coming Herald & Wesleyan Bible Prophecy Advocate," Summer Edition 1993
The Christian Gospel Versus AntiSemitism
Modern dispensational Bible prophecy
theorists exonerate unbelieving racial Jewry to the status of a chosen
electorate, with special privileges and promises guaranteed to them solely on
the basis or their racial decent. Such doctrine, however, is totally at variance
with the plainest teaching of the New Testament, and is held at the expense of
misconstruing the entire salvation history message of the Bible.
A careful reading of Romans 9-11 and Galatians 3-4, wherein
the student opens himself up to "hear" what the texts themselves actually say,
not what the preconceptions and prejudices of Darbyism only want them to read,
reveals that all distinctions between Jews and Gentiles based on racial
considerations alone are now obsolete. "There is no difference," the
Bible says (Romans 10:12), and that settles the issue, once and for all.
There are no longer "Jews and Gentiles" there are only
"believers and unbelievers" in the present messiahship and saviorhood of Jesus
Christ. Unbelieving racial Jews remain under the wrath of God, as do all sinners
(John 3:36; Matthew 23:37-39). The option open to them is the same that is
available to all men: "repent and believe the Gospel." Some first
century racial Jews did just that, and they were called Christians. What does
the dispensationalists do with the first disciples of Jesus Christ, who
recognized Him to be the promised "Messiah" of all Israel? They must either
allow that these racial Jews were "misled," or at least "premature" in their
consignment of the messiahship to Jesus of Nazareth, or admit that they
themselves are wrong, and on the side of Christianity's earliest opponents, the
Judaizers.
Paul says that his unbelieving countrymen, who would not
accept Jesus as their present Messiah, were "going about to establish their
own righteousness, [and] have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of
God" (Romans 10:3). Such, he says, are not the true Israel (Romans 9:6), are
not the present heirs of the promises to Abraham (Romans 9:7-8; Galatians 3:7-8,
14-16, 26-29), and, in fact, are not even "Jews" at all (Romans 2:28-29).
Jesus himself, put it even stronger: he said that "those
who say they are Jews" (i.e., certain unbelieving Israelites), "but are
not" (i.e., not true Jews who accept the Messiah, i.e., Christians), are "blasphemers," "liars," and "of the synagogue of Satan" (Revelation
2:9; 3:9; cf. with John 8:44).
Modern Christians must be careful not to deny the true Gospel
of Jesus Christ by appeasement to the reproach of carnal men, who decry "anti-Semitism!" at the least condemnation of Jewish racial exclusiveness.
The Christian believes that the truth of the Christian Gospel judges men's
actions and motivations. And in the truth of the Christian Gospel, Jesus of
Nazareth is now (not will become someday after he has returned to "set up" his
imagined "millennial kingdom"!) the Messiah of all Israel. So what, then, if
some racial Jews do not accept Jesus as their Messiah now? Does that mean that
Jesus is somehow not (objectively) the Messiah yet, just because some refuse to
believe? "What if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith
of God without effect? God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar" (Romans 3:3-4a).
The fact is that many racial Jews in the past, as well as
numbers in the present, do accept Jesus as their promised Messiah. And this is
exactly how the Scripture has said it should be: "Even so at this present
time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace" (Romans
11:5). The "remnant" of Old Testament Israel is all racial Jews who make up the
New Testament Church. The "remnant" is never referred to as unbelieving racial
Jews, as many modern dispensational Bible prophecy theorists are erroneously
teaching. God does not have two "remnants": that is, a remnant of unbelieving
racial Jews, and another remnant of believing Jews who make up the Church.
Unbelieving racial Jews are not a true "remnant" at all. They are, rather, the
natural branches who have been "broken off" of the olive tree, in order that the
wild branches, the Gentiles, might be grafted in (Romans 11:17). And even these,
if they abide not still in unbelief, shall be grafted in again (Romans 11:23).
Whether racial Jews accept Jesus or not is a "predestination"
question, that Wesleyan-Arminians must believe is left open to free moral
agency. It is not for us to know the times and seasons which the Father has put
in his own power (Acts 1:6-7). Our responsibility is to witness to all, both
Jews and Gentiles alike, of the "great salvation" that is freely available and
incumbent upon all today (Acts 1:8). "He that believeth [the messianic gospel
of the kingdom] and is baptized shall be saved, He that believeth not shall be
damned" (Mark 16:16).
Racial Jews who die without the knowledge of Christ are lost,
just as every sinner is lost. Paul's heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel
was that "they might be saved" (Romans 9:1-3; 10:1). God's wonderful plan
for the Jew, therefore, is not the restoration of Judaism in Darbyism's imagined
"millennial kingdom," but rather that they might get saved from their sins and
know the joys of "scriptural holiness" today!
Beware, then, of what many term "anti-Semitism." It may be
nothing more or less than a smokescreen for hiding racial bigotry. Jews may be
"racial bigots," just as well as may anyone else--something too many moderns
too willingly forget! He that takes the sword, shall perish by the sword.
War-mongering, by whatever party, Jew or Arab, is certainly the wrong approach
to peace and truth in modern times. Someone must begin to lead the way to God.
In going about to establish his own righteousness, the modern Jew does not, he
cannot, submit to the righteousness of God. The answer, then, is to turn inward
to repent of personal and national sin, and "die out," as it were, to human
pride and self-sufficiency. Only then can a true reconciliation between Jacob
and Esau again take place.
Racial discrimination, of any sort, roots in human pride and
self-righteousness, the very thing that Christianity came to save men from. The
truth of the Gospel, with its glorious provision for "heart purity and perfect
love," however, condemns carnal pride and self-righteousness. The Bible does not
justify the racial Jew in his stubborn disbelief in the present messiahship of
Jesus Christ (as modern dispensational Bible prophecy theorists, by their
doctrine, do).
The New Testament is not "anti-Semitic," either, but it is
truthful to the human condition. Sinners, who resent its intrusion upon their
self-delusions, may call it "anti-Semitic" if they will. The Christian Gospel
that condemns all pride of race, of face, of place, and grace, however, is still
the truth-reality that will judge us all "in the last day." No man, not
even the Jew himself, can boast in who he is, or in what he has, for God has
concluded both Jews and Gentiles alike in unbelief, that, through the Christian
Gospel, he may have mercy upon us all (Romans 11:32).
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