The Jewish Final Solution to the World's Problem - From Biblical to Secular History V

[0:00] Please turn to the book of Matthew, chapter 27. And in Matthew chapter 27, we'll be looking at verses 1 through 10.

[0:22] Now when morning came, all the chief priests and elders of the people conferred together against Jesus to put him to death.

[0:39] And they bound him and led him away and delivered him to Pilate the governor. Then when Judas, who had betrayed him, saw that he had been condemned, he felt remorse and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.

[1:11] But they said, What is that to us? See to that yourself. And he threw the pieces of silver into the temple sanctuary and departed.

[1:25] And he went away and hanged himself. The chief priests took the pieces of silver and said, It is not lawful to put them into the temple treasury.

[1:39] Since it is the price of blood. And they conferred together and with the money bought the potter's field as a burial place for strangers.

[1:57] For this reason that field has been called the field of blood to this day. Then that which was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled.

[2:10] And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of the one whose price had been set by the sons of Israel.

[2:21] And they gave them for the potter's field as the Lord directed me. I think it goes without saying that in connection with the passage that we just read, all of the principles there that are involved are of the Jewish faith.

[2:43] There are no Gentiles there or no reason to read Gentiles into it. And I just wanted to make that statement for the record. Because later on, we are going to hear from an author whose book I really respect and admire.

[2:57] And it's very well researched. It's called Europe and the Jews. It is the pressure of Christendom over 1900 years. The author is Malcolm Hay. And he is of the opinion, and I think if we had an opportunity to talk with him about this, he would probably view it a little differently.

[3:15] He is of the opinion that the Jews were not responsible for the crucifixion of Christ. And that as a result, they have been unjustly persecuted for a death that they were not responsible for committing.

[3:30] And frankly, that simply will not hold water. Because it was the Jews. And there's no question about that. However, we need to add quickly. It was not only the Jews.

[3:42] There were numerous other principles that were involved as well. And we will identify them near the conclusion of the message. And what I have to relate to you now, I feel very strongly about, and I kind of have mixed feelings about it also, because I fear that it might be somewhat hard to follow.

[4:04] And if it is, I apologize for that. I tried to organize and simplify it as much as I could so it would be as coherent as possible.

[4:14] But there are some very, very critical foundational issues involved here. And I would just beg your, shall I say, extra contemplation or extra attention.

[4:32] I hope you didn't get to bed too late last night. So if you will crank up your ability to focus your attention as much as possible, I can promise you this. You will have something of real value that will enable you to connect a lot of dots that might otherwise not make a whole lot of sense to you.

[4:51] So for part five of our biblical to secular history, and this is where we're at. We're going from biblical history, which we've already considered from the New Testament and the book of Acts.

[5:05] But we are now beyond that because the Bible was complete in its writing and its compiling after about 100 A.D.

[5:17] So that means we are approximately 1900 years after the conclusion of the Bible. So the Bible doesn't say anything about the Crusades, which took place in the 11th and 12th centuries.

[5:33] It doesn't say anything about all of those events that transpired during hundreds of years, during which time the Jewish people were unmercifully persecuted by different factions, but by none so much as by that which was labeled Christianity.

[5:57] And this is not opinion. This is fact. It's information readily available in any encyclopedia you want to consult.

[6:09] It is all laid there open and bare for anyone to see. And it's historically very verifiable. So, dear today, we continue the tragedy of persecution of the Jewish people by those who were Christians Christians, or at the least professing Christians from the earliest second and third centuries after Christ up to and including the present.

[6:39] However, in our present day, it is Christians who are being persecuted, particularly in the Mideast and Africa.

[6:49] But they are not being persecuted and murdered by the thousands at the hands of Jews, so it is not a reverse thing at all, but at the hands of radical Muslims under the banner of Islam.

[7:03] The countries of Iraq and Syria, as well as Somalia, Eritrea, Sudan, and other African nations have been killing fields for Muslims killing Christians.

[7:19] Most of these, called Christians, are Roman Catholic in religion. This means many of those Catholics are not true believers, but no doubt some of them are.

[7:33] Because in Roman Catholicism, as well as in Protestantism, there are always those who are officially adherents to the faith and nothing more, while there are also, in those same groups, believers who are genuine, possessing a true salvation relationship with Jesus Christ.

[7:55] However, the radical Muslims have no interest in distinguishing between true Christians and those who are merely official Christians, since they regard as equal all who are not Muslims to be infidels and subject to persecution or death or both.

[8:15] And here are some principles that are very, very important that we need to understand and have firmly fixed in mind. All religious persecution, no matter by whom, upon whom, is always driven by the twin engines of ignorance and arrogance.

[8:40] And ignorance and arrogance are the invariable products of corruption. Now, there is a pattern here. Ignorance and arrogance.

[8:51] Where do they come from? How do ignorance and arrogance originate? They are products of corruption, morally and spiritually.

[9:03] Ignorance means not knowing, not understanding, not perceiving what the truth actually is. Persecution of others ensues when this ignorance is acted upon, usually by a majority upon a minority.

[9:24] Arrogance is the attitude of superiority possessed by those engaging in the persecution. Corruption of corruption. Corruption of any entity, whether a religious body, a government body, or any other social institution, always occurs when the focus of that body does not center upon the creator and sustainer of everything, but instead upon the creature.

[9:55] This misplaced focus permeates the whole of humanity on every level. It is a massive infusion of humanism, a la Romans 1, where man worships and serves the creature rather than the creator.

[10:15] As God created our first parents, their focus was upon their creator, who was the center of their lives.

[10:26] When they utilized the will or volition that God gave them to make moral choices, they rebelled against their creator and transferred the focus of their lives from God to themselves.

[10:44] This rebellion, or fall, resulted in a full-scale self-centeredness. This drive for making oneself the center of one's world rather than the creator, was passed on automatically to their offspring, and the children of Adam and Eve became what Adam and Eve were.

[11:09] You and I have become infected with this same self-centered focus, as has every other human being who ever lived, with the only exception being Jesus Christ, who avoided the sin nature via the virgin birth.

[11:26] We have made the observation, which should be intuitively obvious, that the greatest single consequence of the moral and spiritual fall of humanity, via our first parents, is self-centeredness, and it is systematically pervasive throughout.

[11:47] Systematically and systemically. And by the way, to just inject something here, it is this self-centeredness that lies at the root of almost every conflict between people, including marriage, family, work, you name it.

[12:10] There is an inherent, ingrained, self-centered disposition lurking within the heart of every single one of us.

[12:21] And if anyone is so audacious as to say, not me, I don't have one of those. Yes, you do. And on top of it, you are self-deceived, as well as self-centered.

[12:32] Scriptures make that very clear. Moral and spiritual corruption feeds self-centeredness, and self-centeredness feeds corruption.

[12:45] They feed off each other, and the result is what we are today. In case you hadn't noticed, this is essentially what is wrong with society, here and abroad, all over the world.

[12:59] It's like this. It is called the corruption of humanity. We all live and dwell in it. There is no escaping it. It merely increases with our population in every part of the globe.

[13:15] But please don't expect the U.S. government or the United Nations to give any credence to this concept whatever, because corruption, ignorance, and arrogance would never allow it.

[13:29] All of the aforementioned is precisely what has paved the way for the persecution of the Jewish people and others throughout human history.

[13:41] But wait. Doesn't this corruption also include the Jews themselves who have been on the receiving end of the persecution? Indeed, it does.

[13:54] While there are no truly innocent parties among the persecuted or the persecutors, the persecutors are predominant and culpable of the greater evils perpetuated upon those that persecute.

[14:08] In fact, it was for this colossal and pervasive moral mess that necessitated the father sending his son to provide redemption for this utterly undeserving humanity.

[14:26] It was this very ugly thing that required him to rectify the condition described. And it was the Jewish people who are historically charged with orchestrating this ugly thing when they recruited Judas of Iscariot, an apostle of the Son of God, to betray the Son.

[14:54] Adding to that, they maneuvered the Roman authorities who ruled over them, Pontius Pilate in particular, to actually carry out their dirty work with the actual physical crucifixion.

[15:08] But were they actually Jews who did this? What was meant?

[15:19] What is meant? When it is said the Jews were guilty of deicide. They actually killed God who came in the flesh in the person of the God-man, Jesus Christ.

[15:34] Now, generally speaking, this is the official charge that has been laid at the feet of the Jewish people for the last 2,000 years.

[15:49] The general accusation has been one that it is the Jewish people who were responsible for the murdering of the Son of God.

[16:00] And the official charge was called deicide. That's the murder of the deity. And God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself. And Jews throughout the world, particularly in Europe, but in other places as well, have historically been referred to as the Christ killers.

[16:20] I remember having heard someone whom I knew years ago in growing up years talk about a couple of Jewish families that lived in the little community where they were reared.

[16:38] And they attended the local public school. And one of the taunts that was often delivered to those young Jewish children, no more than fourth or fifth grade of schools, with ridicules and barbs and tongue sticking out and all the rest, these Jewish children were mocked and criticized by their classmates and called the Christ killers.

[17:07] Now, wouldn't that be something for these little children to grow up with? And where do children get concepts like that, that enables them to taunt other children and call them names like that?

[17:22] You are the ones who killed Jesus. Where did they get that? They didn't get it on their own. They got it from adults. And the adults got it from other adults.

[17:35] And on and on. But let me ask you this. Weren't the Jews instrumental? Our author seeks to exonerate the Jewish people as if they were not responsible for the crucifixion of Christ, when, in fact, they most certainly were.

[18:00] Now, the distinction that he makes, and it is a valid distinction, and I want to be honest with this because I can see exactly where he's coming from. His position is, and he makes that clear in his book, which I will not have time to read to you, but I have read the book.

[18:15] And the position that he takes is that the Jewish people, as a population, as a whole, they were not instrumental in that crucifixion.

[18:26] In fact, they knew little or nothing about it until it actually began happening. And that is true. It would not be fair at all to charge the entirety of the Jewish population in and around Jerusalem for the crucifixion of Jesus.

[18:43] That, most emphatically, was not the case. However, from the passage of Scripture that was read earlier in Matthew chapter 27, when the reference is in regarding the chief priests and the elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death, who were these chief priests and elders of the people?

[19:09] Were they Gentiles? No, of course not. They were Jews. And who was Judas? A Gentile? No. He was a Jew.

[19:20] The only Gentile that figured in the whole situation was Pontius Pilate, and he had no religious convictions at all regarding Judaism. He was a pagan, as were the Roman soldiers who actually carried out the physical crucifixion.

[19:33] Crucifixion. So, in the more than four decades that I have been here with you as your pastor, I have pointed out through the years that there is more than adequate blame to go around as regards the responsibility for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

[19:53] First of all, Judas, one of the twelve apostles, Judas Iscariot, betrayed Jesus. He was responsible. The Jewish leadership, consisting of the chief priests, the scribes, the Pharisees, the council, the elders, they were all Jews.

[20:12] They were the ones who hatched this conspiracy, and who recruited Judas to betray Jesus. They were all Jews, without exception, and they were all in on it.

[20:23] Pontius Pilate, a Gentile, was responsible. He was the one who was in the position of authority, and he tried to wash his hands of the entire sordid affair, saying, I have nothing to do with the death of this just man.

[20:37] See you to it yourselves. And it was the Jews in the crowd who cried out and said, His blood be upon us and upon our children. Crucify him! Crucify him!

[20:48] Those were not Gentiles who were saying that. Gentiles had nothing against Jesus. The Roman soldiers, they were culpable.

[21:02] They were the ones who drove the nails in his hands and feet. They were the ones who suspended him on the cross. And they were not Jews.

[21:13] They were pagan Gentiles, idolaters, worshippers of many gods. They were responsible. And do you know, Jesus himself was responsible?

[21:30] Don't you understand that? You must, or you don't have a nearly clear picture. When the Son of God agonized in the garden of Gethsemane, and prayed, and sweat as it were great drops of blood, and cried out, and they said, And what shall I say?

[21:51] What shall I say? Shall I say, Father, save me from this hour? But for this hour came I into the world.

[22:05] He wasn't about to try to opt out of it. And that's what he meant when he said, If there is any other way, let this cup pass from me. But if there is no other way, then not my will, but your will be done.

[22:27] On another occasion, Jesus said, No man takes my life from me. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again.

[22:41] Jesus himself has to bear some responsibility for his own death. Because he was willingly led to that cross. And he willingly died upon that cross.

[22:54] And yes, don't you think for one moment, he could not have called twelve legions of angels to his rescue. And there would have been no crucifixion. He could have responded to the taunt when they, If thou be the Christ, come down from the cross.

[23:07] Save yourself, and then we'll believe you. He could have done that. But because of a love that I cannot begin to understand or describe, he never considered coming down from that cross.

[23:21] He died on it. Jesus was responsible. And his father was responsible.

[23:33] Don't you understand that this is the very reason that God sent him? This was the very reason for Bethlehem, for the manger. This is what it was all about. It was that he might come to this end on that cross.

[23:47] The father sent the son to be the savior of the world. And Romans 4 and verse 25 says that Jesus Christ was delivered.

[24:04] He was delivered. That means, in the Greek it means literally, it means handed over. Given up to. He was delivered.

[24:16] For our offenses. Well, we know that Judas was responsible for delivering him. And we know that Pontius Pilate was responsible for delivering him to the Roman soldiers with the execution order to carry it out.

[24:32] Judas delivered him. Pontius Pilate delivered him. But they didn't deliver him for our offenses. They just delivered him to be crucified.

[24:43] But it was God the Father who delivered the Son for, because of, on behalf of, our offenses. All of these were responsible for the death of Jesus Christ.

[25:01] Oh, I did leave out one important person. You. Me. We were all responsible.

[25:13] We all had a hand in it. It was our self-centeredness, our sin, our waywardness, our rebellion, that necessitated the death of Jesus Christ to balance the books of heaven, balance the scales of divine justice.

[25:31] That's exactly what he did when God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself. Amazing. Amazing. Now, I want to share with you some comments from this book, because it's very penetrating, and you really, really will benefit from knowing this information.

[25:51] I can't tell you there's anything pleasant about it, because there isn't. There isn't. But it's needful, and we need to understand it. And I tell you, in appreciating this content, understanding this content, it will go a long way toward helping you understand why the Jewish people, as a whole, are repelled by the cross that represents Christianity.

[26:20] why they are repelled and find our faith so unappealing and threatening and damaging.

[26:33] We have given them the right to fear Christians. Christians have given them the right to be suspicious of Christians.

[26:45] Christians have given Jews the right to want nothing to do with Christianity. And I'd be the first to tell you, it is, it has created an enormous misunderstanding in the minds and hearts of the Jewish people that make them feel so negatively toward the gospel.

[27:09] But it is, it is a feeling that they have earned. It is a feeling that we have caused them to have over the centuries. And we ought not to be amazed at all that they find our Christian faith very repugnant.

[27:23] That they find Christ, their supposed Messiah, dying for the sins of the world. They find that a major turn off. Little wonder. Because they know what people believing that have done to them.

[27:39] And I would go so far as to say they would be fools if they didn't think otherwise. But, they are in error. They don't understand the whole package.

[27:53] And very often, we Christians who have access to the whole package don't have opportunity to explain it or deliver it to them. So they go on with their fear and their bias and their aloofness from Christianity.

[28:07] And I don't have any difficulty at all understanding that. Let me share this with you. Although the popular tradition that the Jews crucified Christ goes back to the beginnings of the Christian church, no justification can be found in the New Testament.

[28:28] St. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all took special care to impress upon their readers the fact that the Jewish people, their own people, were not responsible for and were for the most part ignorant of the events which led up to the apprehension, the trial, and the condemnation of Christ.

[28:46] St. Matthew's account of what happened does not provide any opportunity for people to differ about his meaning. He states quite clearly in his 26th chapter that the Jews, he puts quotation marks around that, had nothing to do with the plot against Christ.

[29:05] He explains who the conspirators were and why they had to do their work in secret. Well, that statement needs qualification because it is partly right and it is partly wrong.

[29:19] He says that Matthew states quite clearly in the 26th chapter that the Jews had nothing to do with the plot against Christ. He does not! He does not make such a statement at all!

[29:31] He does make it quite clear that it was the religious establishment of the Jews. Chief priests, scribes, Pharisees, elders, shakers and movers, the religious hierarchy.

[29:46] They feared the common people. What do I mean by the common people? I mean the average, ordinary, everyday Jew of which there were thousands, tens of thousands.

[29:58] because with them Jesus of Nazareth was a really popular figure. We are told in Scripture that the common people heard him gladly but these were not the common people.

[30:11] These were the shakers and movers. So they were the ones who were really instrumental but what were these? They were Jews! Call them what they were.

[30:24] I don't know that anybody was into political correctness back when this book was written but it was 1992 and political correctness hadn't arrived on the scene. They were what they were. Who were the chief priests?

[30:35] Jews. Who were the elders? Jews. Who were the scribes and Pharisees? Jews. They were all Jews. So to say that the Jews had nothing to do with the crucifixion of Christ is not true at all.

[30:47] But if you want to clarify it and say the average Jew, the average ordinary citizen in and around Jerusalem, no, he wasn't responsible.

[31:00] He had nothing to do with it. And to say that they did and to paint the whole of Judaism with a broad brush is not fair.

[31:11] It's not right. It's like, it's like, all right, we've got we've got 100 we've got 100 people who fill the seats of the Senate in the United States Congress.

[31:28] And we've got 435 who fill the seats of the House of Representatives. So between these 535 individuals, they are all legislators.

[31:40] They make laws and pass laws. And these laws are to be enacted and carried out by the American people. And some of us are of the opinion that over our 230 plus years of history, they haven't always made good laws.

[31:56] And sometimes they've taken some pretty ridiculous positions. but we would be quick to add but you can't blame and hold responsible the whole population of America for what happens in the leadership.

[32:12] And that's true in any country. The leadership, the shakers and movers who make the decisions, that's one thing. But the whole population in general may not be in sympathy with what they do at all and should not be painted by the same brush.

[32:30] Now if you want to say that regarding the Jews, I would be the first to vote for it. In fact, it was the leadership of Israel, the Jewish leadership, that was afraid to arrest, confront, and arrest Jesus anywhere, anytime in the daylight hours because they knew how the average person felt and they would likely revolt and rebel and there'd be a riot right on the scene.

[32:57] That's why they connived with Judas to take him at two or three o'clock in the morning while the whole city slept. And they would have the whole dastardly business taken care of by Pontius Pilate before the average Jewish person even got out of bed in the morning because they feared the Jewish population.

[33:17] So on that count, no, of course not. The average Jewish person was not responsible for the crucifixion of Christ and would not have agreed to it.

[33:29] But that still doesn't absolve all of those who were in positions of authority and power and they were to a person.

[33:43] Jewish. There could have been no such thing as a non-Jewish chief priest or a non-Jewish elder or a non-Jewish Pharisee or a non-Jewish Sadducee.

[33:55] That would have been a contradiction in terms. So they were all Jews and that needs to be clarified. These men were engaged in an enterprise which they knew would not meet with public approval.

[34:10] They had no mandate from the Jewish people for what they were about to do. They did not represent the two or three million Jews who at that time lived in Palestine or another million who lived in Egypt or the millions more who were scattered all over the Roman Empire.

[34:26] At least three quarters of all these people lived and died without ever even hearing the name of Christ. The conspirators did not even represent the wishes of the Jewish population in and around Jerusalem and I think we've already covered that adequately.

[34:50] I'm going to see if I can wrap this up as quickly as possible because I do want to allow some time for Q&A this morning if we can. Oh, I do want to say this about about Chrysostom, John Chrysostom and how influential he was.

[35:13] John Chrysostom, I think he lived around the second, third century, fourth century at the latest. He was called the Golden Mouth. He was obviously a man of great oratorical ability and had the power of swaying multitudes and he delivered a series of invectives against the Jewish people and threatened them with persecution which actually became a fact later on and Augustine who lived in the fourth century was one who took the position and Augustine was a very, very brilliant man probably one of the most revered church fathers if you want to think in terms of church fathers as anyone.

[36:00] Martin Luther who would be born a thousand years after Augustine was a member of the Augustinian order. He was an Augustinian monk and it was named in honor and favor of Augustine, one of the church fathers.

[36:13] and these men were real shakers and influencers in the world as it existed at the time and here's something I want to just explain as briefly as I can but it's very, very important that you understand this.

[36:27] For the most part, especially beginning like the second century up through actually even up to the present time the, well no, I won't say that but I'd say up through the Renaissance maybe the age of enlightenment you have no appreciation nor do I of how much raw power and influence was possessed by the Roman Catholic Church because it was under their leadership and the church authorities that for all practical purposes church and state were blended together so like the church was the state and the state was the church and the Pope had incredible power and sway and this by the way is all documented as well this is not, I don't want you to think that I'm bad-mouthing Catholicism or that I'm giving you my opinion these are not my opinions these are facts and all you have to do to verify it is go online you can find it anywhere it's in any encyclopedia and all you have to do is look at the various popes who came to the chair of what they called the chair of Peter in leading the Roman Catholic Church as far back as the second century and some of these some of these popes were very corrupt and very dishonest people and they were power brokers manipulators schemers and what not

[38:03] I mean they were not decent people at all and yet they were in the positions of power and then the next pope that would come along would be a rather decent guy and he would ease the pressure that had been applied to the Jews and give them some liberties that they hadn't enjoyed before and it would seesaw back and forth like that so the Jews never knew where they stood depending on who the next pope was and how lenient he was or how strict he was because some imposed all kinds of fines on them some encouraged people to burn down the synagogues and actually murder the Jews and give them an option of being baptized of being Jews who were baptized into the Roman Catholic Church and thus would no longer be practicing Judaism it was either that or your life was either that or will drive you out of the country and you will not be permitted to take any of your possessions with you other than what you have on your back this was all over Europe for hundreds of years and the Jew really never knew who who to who to be afraid of who to run from where do you think the wandering Jew got his name because they would be expelled from one country but they couldn't go to the country adjacent to them because they wouldn't accept them either and they wandered many times all over Europe just like vagabonds trying to find a place to settle and when they did find a place in some place that was relatively welcoming they would begin building up some reserve and some structure and some stability and that would go on for two or three generations and then bang it would hit them again there would be another pogrom and persecution and they never knew when it was coming or what direction it was coming from you just can't imagine living like this the Jewish people lived like this for hundreds of years ostracized outcast reviled ridiculed berated besmirched murdered cheated everything you can imagine and it was all under the misunderstanding on the part of the persecutors that the Jewish people were under the curse of God and it was their responsibility to wreak God's vengeance on them by abusing them mistreating them burning down their synagogues and all the rest of it this went on as I said for hundreds and hundreds of years and if you want to really get into this check out the Spanish Inquisition in the 1400s the torture the treatment unbelievable unbelievable and it went on generation after generation after generation and you know what almost without exception it was done in the name of God and under the Christian cross and this includes the Crusades it's not pleasant stuff to think about but understanding this is the only thing that will give you an appreciation for why the Jewish people are so gun shy of Christians and things

[41:39] Christian this nation the United States of America has afforded a kind of openness and freedom and acceptance to the Jewish people that no other country in the world has none no other country in the world only the United States and we were at times very very reluctant there was a time I think I mentioned this before there was a time when the United States government could have bought the lives of a Jew for ten dollars you see when it became apparent that others weren't interested in accepting the Jew that they were considered persona non grata everywhere do you not then understand how that made it so much easier for Hitler to do what he did where were the protests where were the outcries there weren't any or if there were they were very weak and Hitler and Eichmann were emboldened by the silence of so many in the world that it made it easier for them to do what they did

[43:24] Martin Luther and like Augustine Martin Luther was a man who had to have been absolute genius just like Augustine but he was dead wrong he said some of the most vile derogatory non-Christian like unimaginable things to and about the Jewish people and they are in writing and you can get them today you can find them and they were so vile and so heinous and so unloving that in the 1990s not all that long ago the 1990s the world federation of Lutheran churches went on record with a public international apology to the

[44:32] Jewish people for the bad mouthing of Martin Luther and there are few people who have given such contributions in writing theology etc.

[44:49] as Martin Luther he was sure genius in so many areas but you know it seems like people who have the greatest ability and the greatest gifts all have a dark side and Martin Luther had a dark side and so did Augustine and all I can say is through his misunderstanding and misinterpretation of scripture which we feel very very strongly about they were able to come to that position that is adhered to to this day by most of those who are called Christians and talking about replacement theology this is still the position of the Lutheran church I don't care what Lutheran group you belong to and there are about a half a dozen but it doesn't make any difference they all they all endorse the same thing all of the Lutherans and all of the

[45:49] Presbyterians well not all of the Presbyterians because there's the Bible Presbyterians and they don't but by and large the Presbyterian church as a whole the Lutheran church as a whole the Episcopal church as a whole and most definitely the Roman Catholic church they all embrace this idea that the Jew no longer God's chosen people they used to be but when they crucified Jesus God wrote off the whole nation of Israel doesn't have anything to do with them they are under the curse of God and God has since turned to this thing called the New Testament church and we have replaced Israel this is called replacement theology and it smells to high heaven but you need to understand this remains today as the majority opinion of most of the Christian church we are known as dispensationalists and a dispensationalist among other things it's a group of people that make a clear cut distinction a difference between the Jewish people kingdom age day of

[47:10] Israel all the rest as opposed to the day of grace the time of the body of Christ which meshes together Jew and Gentile into one body making one new man so therefore there is no longer any Jew or Gentile bond or free male or female you are all children of God by faith in Jesus Christ this is our position and you need to understand it is the minority position among Christians and yet there is nothing the Bible makes clearer than this and all I can say is I still don't understand how they miss it but you know something I missed it for the first 15 years that I was a Christian I didn't see it either but I see it now and I'm going to make a lot of noise about it you haven't heard anything yet what is our attitude to be toward the Jew how are we to regard the Jew we are to regard the Jew as we would regard any other human being they are a human being created in the image and likeness of God they have worth they have value they have dignity we have no right to impinge our beliefs upon them we have no right to try to override their volition we have no right to demand that they become

[48:31] Christians we love them we encourage them to come to faith in Christ just as we would encourage anyone to come to faith in Christ but we would not do so at the expense of their volition we will not threaten them we will not conjole them we will not intimidate them we will not persecute them and we will not denigrate them in any way they are worthy as a human being of our love and our respect the same as we would give to anyone else that should be our attitude toward the Jew and that should also be our attitude toward the Muslim after all somebody has to be in a position to love people and God has deemed it to be the body of Christ yeah have you something you would like to add or a question that you might want to ask anyone feel free okay

[49:39] Lynette has a question back here I was at a funeral a long time ago and there was a man in front of me and we got to talking because it was a long line and somehow I don't know if it was his name he told me his name or something and somehow I discovered he was Jewish and I said oh and he was an elderly man and I said oh that's that's wonderful that's awesome you're one of God's chosen people and he said no no no no no don't don't think that that's what got us all into this trouble that we're what we've always been in nope I don't want you to think that yeah yeah that does not surprise me there are a lot of Jewish people who take that position and they say things like hey it's stuff like that that's got us in so much trouble calling us God's chosen people you know because they really understands the biblical record regarding that takes great delight not offense but delight in there being

[50:44] God's chosen people and they've gotten such a bad rap for this you know in essence in essence I guess we could say they have paid a dear price for being God's chosen people and we look at this with our thinking and our convoluted thinking and our lack of understanding and we say why would God allow his so-called chosen people to suffer that kind of persecution why doesn't he put an end to it why doesn't he stop the pogroms why doesn't he stop the persecution if they're God's chosen people hey is that any way to take care of your friends where is God when this kind of stuff happens and what these people are asking without actually realizing it they are asking God to override the volition that he has given to the people who persecute the Jews so that they won't be able to do that just change their mind just change their will

[51:48] God just make them so that they don't hate the Jew but do you see what that does to the free moral agency that God has given to every human being and he did that with a risk knowing full well what was going to come but he decided to do it anyway and I made this point in times past and listen there is so much connected to this and writing on this God has given us free moral agency the ability to make choices and he does not override that and you know sometimes the choices we make get really really ugly and we hurt each other terribly and we just expect God to just make it all go away it doesn't work that way and the free moral choices that we have and the exercise of our will to sometimes do evil things is part of the price that is paid for granting free moral agency to people what was the alternative

[52:56] I've heard people say well if God knows everything and he knew how all of this was going to turn out why did he make people like that why didn't he make us so we wouldn't be able to do terrible things to each other okay he could have done that he could have done that and all he would have would be a bunch of little puppets and robots pre-programmed running around doing nice things for each other with no will no volition no power of choice where everybody is just pre-programmed and you can't help but do the right thing would you really want an existence like that I can't think of anything that would bore you out of your skull more in about the first 15 minutes we all have the power of choice and that becomes the basis for our accountability that's the basis on which God holds us responsible because he doesn't make us do the right thing and he doesn't make us do the wrong thing he gives us the power of choice but we are accountable for the choices we make that is amazing but listen this is so basic so elemental you would be amazed how many Christians don't even have a clue as to how this works it's amazing you all know why the world is the way it is that's why this is it this is why we've got the kind of world we've got this is it human volition and people acting it out and if you take that human volition and you encapsulate it in self centeredness what do you get you get what we've got that's what you get it's not that hard to understand once you connect the dots someone else with a question or comment okay

[54:53] Pam over here I heard on the radio the other day that replacement theology is the ultimate identity theft well that's a pretty good way of putting it and you know something and I listen I don't want to bad mouth anybody but some some of the most respected Bible teachers are replacement theologians and I've learned a lot from these people but like I said we've all got blind spots and yeah Marv Wiseman's got blind spots too I know I do I'm looking for them and if you if you see one let me know because I want to root it out some of the best-known Bible teachers on radio and TV are replacement theologians you probably won't hear them teaching on it but they are there was there someone else Brian Byron you mentioned about the shakers and the movers I've got some friends that are Hebrew and I've worked for many over the years and so forth and status is a very important thing in the

[55:57] Jewish well maybe not all but in many Jewish circles there's different status levels within the synagogue that they may be at and they may be attempting to through influence and financial status or whatever be going trying to get to the next synagogue because that synagogue has a higher status within the Jewish community and so forth it's really interesting the little intricacies of that yeah the Jew has his peculiarities but there's one thing that the Jew has in common with all of the rest of us and he cannot escape it and that is he is a human being and he cannot escape it and they are just like the rest of us yeah Joe if we take a scripture from the Old Testament that was spoken directly to the Jews for the Jews only and then apply it to us the church now isn't that a type of displacement theology aren't we kind of isn't that an element of displacement theology saying now what he was saying to the

[57:03] Jew back in the Old Testament that's for us now you know we're just we're taking well I wouldn't call it replacement theology but I would certainly call it misappropriated theology there's no question about that and and by the way there were for many many years there were Christians who bought into this and there's some who still do and let me just give you one example and I realize we're already out of time but one example has to do with the Jewish Sabbath the Jewish Sabbath is sundown Friday to sundown Saturday it always has been and and it always will be that is the last day of the week and Sunday is the first day of the week and when when Christianity began in its earliest ages it was believed by many that the Sabbath and some believe that it was one of the popes that changed the Sabbath I don't think that that's ever been established as far as the scriptures are concerned the Sabbath is still

[58:04] Friday and Saturday but some are of the opinion that everything that the Jews were responsible for keeping or not doing on the Sabbath was transferred to the Christian community except it's on Sunday instead of Saturday and everything that the Jews were restricted from doing on Saturday the Christians are now restricted from doing on Sunday and that is pure baloney but it was held in great esteem for probably a hundred years you know some of the first purveyors of that were the pilgrims in the 1600s they're very legalistic and they even fine people for not going to church and they fine people for not keeping the Sabbath in the way that they thought that the Sabbath should be kept and I don't know if you're aware of it or not but here in the United

[59:04] States until just recently within the last probably 20 years or so we had what was referred to as the blue laws where all the businesses had to be closed on Sunday because it was considered non-Christian and ungodly to do business on Sunday and if you go down south down where we call the Bible Belt you'll still find a lot of people sympathetic to that that it is an ungodly thing to do business conduct any business on Sunday and that's just a carryover from a misunderstanding of what was imposed upon the Jews on the Sabbath it's an amazing thing I tell you you can't beat people for interest for confusion for forever it is just remarkable we'll take one more if there is one otherwise we'll dismiss okay in the back Marvis and this will be our last comment or question regarding our own volition and so forth you just got me thinking and I was thinking about how we are individually responsible for ourselves however

[60:13] I think about some of the little ones that I work with and often what kids do is what they're around and what they see they emulate their parents or teachers or their whatever so to me that gives us great responsibility as far as our actions and what we do when others are just watching us and we don't even know that and I even think about this related to the Kids Hope program that we're in in the opposite direction Pam was just telling me today how some of the staff at Northwestern is saying what a difference us being there just an hour a week is making in some of these kids so just kind of a boost for Kids Hope it really is only an hour a week and it really does turn out to be a blessing it sure does and it is a very responsible thing to do

[61:18] I couldn't agree more that is so powerful and you know kids you know any normal kid there is one thing that any normal kid wants more than anything else in the world you know what it is they want to be grown up they want to be big like big people they want to be grown up because and I've often been tempted to tell these little ones don't don't grow up it's a trap they want to grow up and anytime they get a chance to act grown up they'll take it I don't care if it's wearing mom's shoes and going around the house in an old dress that's too big for them or whatever playing house but they want to grow up they want to be big because they think they think that when you grow up and be an adult then you can do anything you want to do see what

[62:27] I mean when I say it's a trap because that's not true but that's the way kids are and it is incredible the influence the positive the potential for positive influence that we have on kids and it is tragic how much negative influence they are getting most of you probably seen the South Pacific and the story about during World War II and the girl played by Mitzi Gaynor the part you know and she fell in love with this guy only to discover that he had two children from a former marriage his wife had died and his two children were of mixed blood they were Asian and she was turned off because of superstition because of ignorance and arrogance and

[63:30] I think it was what's his name was it was it was that took the and he sang the song that Richard Rogers and Hart made and it was it was really remarkable because the song was the song was about children are not born to be prejudiced they have to be taught and they are taught by adults who to hate and why to hate them children aren't naturally haters they have to be taught to hate and I thought that was really significant because that was the theme of the movie there as it ended and also it came from Rogers and Hammerstein a couple of Jews who knew what it meant to be hated wow it's for a mess like this that Jesus Christ died isn't that something that is amazing would you stand please father we know that there is real deficiency with this message that has been delivered because we are so unknowing we ourselves are really also ignorant in a lot of ways about a lot of things and we want to treasure every opportunity to be enlightened because there's certainly no joy in ignorance ignorance is not bliss ignorance is blindness and we want to see with all of the potential that you've given us thank you most of all for a savior who loves a humanity that behaves like this we don't begin to understand that but we are so glad that your love so greatly transcends our love and we are recipients of it we trust that you will take this information and use it now for us to build upon it with additional understanding and appreciation for who you are and what you've made us in

[65:36] Christ and the obligations we have to each other including the Jew in Christ's name we pray amen