Do You Know What Hurts Me?
If you love the Jewish Savior - Pray for His Jewish Brethren
The purpose of this teaching is to expose Satan’s strategies and lies, many of which have become imbedded in the doctrines and traditions of corporate Christianity. It is important to note that these teachings are not intended as an indictment against any individual, race, or religious group.
Throughout the centuries, there has always been a righteous remnant after Yahveh’ God’s own heart. These believers have prayed for Israel and blessed the Jewish people with the love of their Messiah. Through their loving obedience, many lost sheep of the house of Israel have been drawn into the kingdom of their long-awaited Messiah. The Almighty will certainly be faithful to this remnant and will bestow on them His blessings as promised in Genesis 12:3.
To truly love Yahveh, we must be willing to open our hearts to know what hurts Him. For almost two thousand years, Messiah’s blood has been trampled, as His brethren, the Jews, have been persecuted, tortured, driven out of countries, and killed in the name of Jesus Christ. Many Christians have believed the lie that the Jews were “Christ-killers.” Consequently, much of Israel’s history has been written in the blood of Yahshua’s (Jesus’s) slaughtered brethren.
With Yahveh’s truth as our plumb line, let’s examine the foundation and walls of the religious system men have built throughout Christian history. We begin with a brief overview of several famous church fathers—men who are respected as some of the great pillars of the church. It is a grievous paradox that these same men are infamous to the Jewish people. Keeping in mind that the Savior died to make Jewish and Gentile believers into one new man, how is it possible that the same “church fathers” are famous and beloved to Christians, yet dreaded and infamous to Jews? Remember that while Messiah died to tear down the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile, Satan lives to resurrect it.
May the following accounts serve as the flint knife of circumcision to cut away any ignorance, pride, hostility, and indifference you may have toward the Jews. And may the pain of circumcision sensitize your heart to our heavenly Father’s deep sorrow over the tragic treatment of His chosen people throughout church history.
The Darkness of Men’s Doctrines
Beginning with Origen (185–254 c.e.), an erroneous foundation of biblical interpretation was laid through an allegorical view of Old Testament prophecy.1 According to Origen’s interpretation, Israel was rejected by the Almighty and His covenant with them nullified because of their rejection of Messiah. This lie bred another lie that is still advanced today—that the church is now “true Israel” and has replaced the Jewish nation in God’s sight. According to this deceptive theology, all of Israel’s promises, prophetic blessings, and covenants now belong solely to the church.
Noted author, Hal Lindsey states: The consequences of this doctrine were subtle at first. The most serious consequence was that the protections provided by the clear Scriptural warnings of God against those who would harm His covenant people were snatched away. A feeling of contempt naturally followed, since, in the eyes of those who held this view, the Jews were clinging to a hope that now belonged only to the Church… . The Church leaders saw no justification for the Jews to remain a distinct people, since in their view, their hopes belonged exclusively to the church forever. … when the church began to see itself as God’s true Israel, the inheritor of the covenant promises made to Israel, then in the eyes of the Church, the Israelites ceased to have any legitimate purpose or right to exist as a people.2
Mr. Lindsey continues: These prophetic views were a complete departure from the original teachings of the Apostolic Fathers of the Church, whose period extended from 33 C.E. to shortly after 100 C.E. … the early Christians … recognize the Jews as a chosen people with whom God will yet fulfill His promises.
These views also promoted a compassion for the Jews because the Christians saw them as a demonstration of God’s faithfulness to His Word. And most important, the early believers held that God would judge anyone who unjustly harmed a Jew in accordance with His promise of protection to him in the Abrahamic covenant. “I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse.” (Genesis 12:3 — emphasis in source)3
Infamous Words of the Famous Fathers
The apostle Paul’s warnings to the Gentiles were disregarded by those who promoted these new, anti-Israel interpretations of Scripture. The Serpent’s egg had indeed hatched into a new breed of so-called doctrine.
Chrysostom was praised as one of the most dynamic preachers of truth and divine love; even his name means “golden-mouthed.” Because of his eloquent preaching, he was revered as one of the notable church fathers. Unfortunately and paradoxically, his exemplary compassion and sensitivity were not demonstrated in his attitudes toward the Jews. Chrysostom wrote: The synagogue is worse than a brothel … it is the den of scoundrels … the temple of demons devoted to idolatrous cults … the cavern of devils. [It is] a criminal assembly of Jews … a place of meeting for the assassins of Christ … a dwelling of iniquity, the refuge of devils, gulf and abyss of perdition. As for the Jewish people themselves Chrysostom commented, “I would say the same things about their souls.” And so, “As for me, I hate the synagogue … I hate the Jews for the same reason.”4
Thus billows the voice of a respected church father and pillar of historical Christianity who preached, “It is incumbent on all Christians to hate the Jews.”5 Dr. Michael L. Brown comments: What happened to Christian love? “For many centuries the Jews listened to the echo of those three words of St. John Chrysostom, the Golden-Mouthed: ‘God hates you.’” And thus, “the popular Christian doctrine has always been that anyone, whether pagan or Christian, who has at any time persecuted, tortured or massacred Jews has acted as an instrument of Divine wrath.”6
St. Jerome attempted to prove that the Jews are incapable of understanding the Scriptures and that they should be assigned a place with the base and illiterate. It is nonsensical that the very ones through whom the Scriptures were written should be considered incapable of comprehending them. St. Jerome’s teachings were aimed at the severe persecution of the Jews, forcing them to confess the faith of Christianity.
St. Augustine (354-425 C.E.) built on Origen’s allegorical method of interpretation. Through Augustine’s teaching came a strong theology that would become part of the man-made structure of organized Christianity over the next thousand years. This teaching strengthened the erroneous doctrine that the Christian church was now the inheritor of Israel’s promises. Augustine accused the Jew of being the image of Judas Iscariot, who was forever guilty and spiritually ignorant.
These distorted views of Scripture were completely opposed to the original teachings of the Hebrew fathers of the faith (see Ephesians 2-3 and Romans 9-11). The ancient Serpent’s strategy had succeeded in breeding doctrinal misinterpretations that would perpetuate his venomous lies in the centuries to come.
Raul Hillberg, a noted scholar of the Holocaust, summarizes the essence of Satan’s diabolical strategy to infect the church with anti-Semitism as follows: Since the fourth century after Christ there have been three anti-Jewish policies: (forced) conversion, expulsion, annihilation. The second appeared as an alternative to the first, and the third emerged as an alternative to the second. … The missionaries of Christianity had said in effect: You have no right to live among us. The Nazis at last decreed: You have no right to live. The process began with the attempt to drive the Jews into Christianity. The development was continued in order to force the victims into exile. It was finished when the Jews were driven to their deaths. The German Nazis, then, did not discard the past; they built upon it. They did not begin a development; they completed it.7
David cried out in his psalm: Do you rulers indeed speak justly? Do you judge uprightly among men? No, in your heart you devise injustice, and your hands mete out violence on the earth. Even from birth the wicked go astray … they are wayward and speak lies. Their venom is like the venom of a snake … (Psalm 58:1-4 — emphasis added)
References
1 For an in-depth and sobering study, see Dr. Michael Brown’s book, Our Hands Are Stained With Blood, and Hal Lindsey’s book, The Road to Holocaust.
2 Hal Lindsey, The Road to Holocaust (New York: Bantam Books, 1989), pp. 8-9.
3 Ibid., pp. 10-11.
4 Michael L. Brown, Our Hands Are Stained with Blood (Shippensburg, PA: Destiny Image Publishers, 1992), pp. 10-11. Dr. Brown, in his work cited here, is quoting from the following: Raul Hillberg, The Destruction of the European Jews—one volume edition (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1985), pp. 7ff. and 27-28.
5 Erwin W. Lutzer, Hitler’s Cross (Chicago: Moody Press, 1995), p. 87.
6 Michael L. Brown, Our Hands Are Stained with Blood (Shippensburg, PA: Destiny Image Publishers, 1992), pp. 10-11.
7 Raul Hillberg, op. cit., p. 7ff.
