WND COMMENTARY
by Joseph FarahEmail | Archive
Joseph Farah is founder, editor and CEO of WND
I understand why Israel is increasingly hated by the rest of the world.
I really do.
I understand the growing anti-Semitism in America and around the globe.
If you are a Bible-believing Jew or Christian, it’s no mystery.
In fact, it is predicted.
What I don’t get is why some professing Christians reject Israel. For to reject the Jews and their nation state is to reject the very foundation of Christianity. Even to be lukewarm when it comes to the Jews and Israel is to fundamentally reject the olive tree that to which we grafted in as a wild branch, as Romans 11:24 explains.
What many of today’s Christians have witnessed with the rebirth of Israel in their own lifetimes is described in the Bible as a miracle surpassing the parting of the Red Sea, manna from heaven, the giving of the law on Mount Horeb and all the other works of God associated with the Exodus and the entering of the children of Israel into the Promised Land. That’s what we learn in Jeremiah 23:7-8.
Yet an evil doctrine known as Replacement Theology, every bit as ugly as Liberation Theology, has taken root in the church. I’m sorry to say it, but you’ve got to discard or allegorize much of the Bible to adopt either one of these views and still call yourself a Christian.
Meanwhile, Jewish children are being executed in cold blood on videotape in France. Some of the most well-known “Christians” in America are trying to find common ground with Muslims, who they claim worship the same god. Boycotts of Israel are being organized by people who claim to be Christians. The United Nations continues to approve more resolutions against Israel than against all the rest of the world’s nations combined. The world stands by as a nation sworn to annihilate Israel and the world’s Jews prepares to deploy nuclear weapons and delivery systems. And you know the world will condemn Israel if it lifts a finger to protect itself.
I have a problem with all this.
I have a problem because I see too many Christians on the wrong side or standing on the sidelines.
Anti-Semitism is virulent in our world today. It’s reaching proportions not seen since the Third Reich.
Where’s the church?
Obviously not reading the Bible.
The Word of God not only predicted the return of the Jews to Israel, it also predicts the way Jerusalem would become a burdensome stone to the whole world (Zechariah 12:3).
But it also predicts Israel will triumph over all the adversity and that people and nations will be judged on how they treated Israel (Micah 4) – the apple of God’s eye (Zechariah 2:8).
The world hates Israel because its prince hates Israel (John 16:11).
But what about the Christians?
Have they not read their Bible?
Nowhere in its pages does it suggest the “church” has replaced Israel’s promises. In fact, it states unequivocally the opposite. God doesn’t change His mind. He’s the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. Christians have their promise only because they have been adopted as the step-children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob through faith in the Jewish Messiah.
This is a Bible study that easily could be book length. But let me conclude with Isaiah 62:
“For Zion’s sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, and the salvation thereof as a lamp that burneth.”
(That means God is never going to give up on Israel.)
“And the Gentiles shall see thy righteousness, and all kings thy glory: and thou shalt be called by a new name, which the mouth of the LORD shall name.
“Thou shalt also be a crown of glory in the hand of the LORD, and a royal diadem in the hand of thy God.
“Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken; neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate: but thou shalt be called Hephzibah, and thy land Beulah: for the LORD delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be married.
“For as a young man marrieth a virgin, so shall thy sons marry thee: and as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee.
“I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, which shall never hold their peace day nor night: ye that make mention of the LORD, keep not silence,
“And give him no rest, till he establish, and till he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth.
“The LORD hath sworn by his right hand, and by the arm of his strength, Surely I will no more give thy corn to be meat for thine enemies; and the sons of the stranger shall not drink thy wine, for the which thou hast laboured:
“But they that have gathered it shall eat it, and praise the LORD; and they that have brought it together shall drink it in the courts of my holiness.
“Go through, go through the gates; prepare ye the way of the people; cast up, cast up the highway; gather out the stones; lift up a standard for the people.
“Behold, the LORD hath proclaimed unto the end of the world, Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salvation cometh; behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him.
“And they shall call them, The holy people, The redeemed of the LORD: and thou shalt be called, Sought out, A city not forsaken.”
(By the way, Christians, this hasn’t happened yet. And God doesn’t go back on His promises.)
“It Can’t Happen Here”… Oh Yes it CAN!
Despite all the warnings and admonitions in the Bible. “Christendom” throughout the centuries has engaged in persecuting God’s chosen in His name. The demon seed of Antisemitism lives on; and is on the increase in Europe, aided by multiculturalism, and an abysmal failure to recognize the dangers posed by unfettered Muslim immigration. Islam has, at their core, always sought to annihilate Israel. America is NOT innocent in this attitude:
American attitudes towards Jews
Antisemitism in the United States was also indicated by national public opinion polls taken from the mid nineteen thirties to the late nineteen forties. The results showed that over half the American population saw Jews as greedy and dishonest. These polls also found that many Americans believed that Jews were too powerful in the United States. Similar polls were also taken, one of which posed that 35–40 percent of the population was prepared to accept an anti-Jewish campaign.
In a 1938 poll, approximately 60 percent of the respondents held a low opinion of Jews, labeling them “greedy,” “dishonest,” and “pushy.”[24] 41 percent of respondents agreed that Jews had “too much power in the United States,” and this figure rose to 58 percent by 1945. In 1939 a Roper poll found that only thirty-nine percent of Americans felt that Jews should be treated like other people. Fifty-three percent believed that “Jews are different and should be restricted” and ten percent believed that Jews should be deported.[25] Several surveys taken from 1940 to 1946 found that Jews were seen as a greater threat to the welfare of the United States than any other national, religious, or racial group.[26]
– Courtesy of Wikipedia –
“Antisemitism in the United States”
KKK: Nazi salute and Holocaust denial
“History of the Jews in the United States”
In the mid-1600s, Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch Director-General of the colony of New Amsterdam, sought to bolster the position of the Dutch Reformed Church by trying to reduce religious competition from denominations such as Jews, Lutherans, Catholics and Quakers. He stated that the Jews were “deceitful”, “very repugnant”, and “hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ”. He warned in a subsequent letter that in “giving them liberty we cannot (then) refuse the Lutherans and Papists”. However, religious plurality was already a legal-cultural tradition in New Amsterdam and in the Netherlands. His superiors at the Dutch West India Company in Amsterdam overruled him in all matters of intolerance.
In 1939 a Roper poll found that only thirty-nine percent of Americans felt that Jews should be treated like other people. Fifty-three percent believed that “Jews are different and should be restricted” and ten percent believed that Jews should be deported.[30] Several surveys taken from 1940 to 1946 found that Jews were seen as a greater threat to the welfare of the United States than any other national, religious, or racial group. [4] It has been estimated that 190,000 – 200,000 Jews could have been saved during the Second World War had it not been for bureaucratic obstacles to immigration deliberately created by Breckinridge Long and others.
In a speech at an America First rally on September 11, 1941 in Des Moines, Iowa entitled “Who Are the War Agitators?”, Charles Lindbergh claimed that three groups had been “pressing this country toward war”: the Roosevelt Administration, the British, and the Jews – and complained about what he insisted was the Jews’ “large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government.” [32] The antisemitism of Lindbergh is one of the subjects of the novel The Plot Against America (2004) by Philip Roth.
Unofficial antisemitism was also widespread in the first half of the century. For example, to limit the growing number of Jewish students between 1919-1950s a number of private liberal arts universities and medical and dental schools employed Numerus clausus. These included Harvard University, Columbia University, Cornell University, and Boston University[citation needed]. In 1925 Yale University, which already had such admissions preferences as “character”, “solidity”, and “physical characteristics” added a program of legacy preference admission spots for children of Yale alumni, in an explicit attempt to put the brakes on the rising percentage of Jews in the student body. This was soon copied by other Ivy League and other schools[citation needed], and admissions of Jews were kept down to 10% through the 1950s. Such policies were for the most part discarded during the early 1960s.
Some cults also support conspiracy theories regarding Jews as dominating and taking over the world. These cults are often vitriolic and severely anti-semitic. For instance, the Necedah Shrine Cult from the 1950s on to the mid-1980s, has Mary Ann Van Hoof receiving antisemitic “visions” from the Virgin Mary telling her that the Rothschilds, a prominent Jewish banking family, are “mongrel yids(Jews)” bent on dominating the entire world economy through international banking. Most of the worlds problems, from poverty to world wars, are the cause of International Banking Jews and their “satanic secret society,” according to Van Hoof.[5]
American antisemitism underwent a modest revival in the late twentieth century. The Nation of Islam under Louis Farrakhan claimed that Jews were responsible for slavery, economic exploitation of black labor, selling alcohol and drugs in their communities, and unfair domination of the economy. Jesse Jackson issued his infamous “Hymietown” remarks during the 1984 Presidential primary campaign.
According to ADL surveys begun in 1964, African-Americans are “significantly more likely” than white Americans to hold antisemitic beliefs, although there is a strong correlation between education level and the rejection of anti-Semitic stereotypes.[33]
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