Everlasting

God's Faithfulness to Israel

Stuart Cunliffe

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781532698156, 9781532698163
• eBook ISBN: 9781532698187
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

The Jews were God's chosen people. Are they still God's chosen people? We owe a tremendous debt to the Jews. The Bible patriarchs were Jews. The Old Testament prophets were Jews. Jesus is a Jew. The Jews wrote the Old Testament. The Jews (with the possible exception of two books) wrote the New Testament. The early Jewish apostles not only risked but gave their lives to bring the gospel to the gentiles. All the knowledge of God that we have has come to us, directly or indirectly, through the Jews. Do we have a debt that still needs to be repaid?This book, as it traces the Jews' past, present, and future, provides valuable insights into the Christian faith.One thing stands out in this remarkable story: the amazing faithfulness of God.

Chapter 1

Two thousand years of Christian anti-Semitism

Where did anti-Semitism have its beginnings, and how has it managed to propagate itself so successfully for so long? “Men are not born with hatred in their blood,” wrote Malcolm Hay. “The infection is usually acquired by contact; it may be injected deliberately or even unconsciously, by parents, or by teachers. Adults, unless protected by the vigor of their intelligence, or by a rare quality of goodness, seldom escape contagion. The disease may spread throughout the land like the plague, so that a class, a religion, a nation, will become the victim of popular hatred without anyone knowing exactly how it all began; and people will disagree, and even quarrel among themselves, about the real reason for its existence; and no one foresees the inevitable consequences.”1

In one of his books, Victor Schlatter suggests the bigot’s pride, greed, jealousy, selfishness, and supposed superiority arouse a demonic contempt against an ordered King of the universe. The King is out of the range of the bigots’ fury; the King’s foot soldiers are not.2 John Garr is equally forthright: “Although antisemitism has emerged from various situations and has had many manifestations, its underlying cause has always been the pagan heart’s hatred of Israel’s God, an antipathy which has been directed against the Jewish people because they represent God in the earth. This pathology seethes in the subconscious recesses of the Gentile mind and is ready to leap forth at any time and in any place, only to be excused by a plethora [of] excuses for distrusting and despising Jews.”3 At bottom, he says, there is an insidious force of the evil inclination in the human heart which “resents and hates the Jewish people because they represent a God who is foreign to their thinking—or lack thereof.”4

Hay quotes a remarkable description of anti-Semitism by Jacob Wassermann, the German novelist, who was himself of Jewish descent. He encountered it first when he served in the German Army. It was, he says, “a dull, rigid, almost inarticulate hatred that has permeated the national organism. The word ‘antisemitism’ does not suffice to describe it, for the term reveals neither the nature nor the source, neither the depth nor the aim, of that hatred. It contains elements of superstition and voluntary delusion, of fanatical terror, of priestly callousness, of the rancor of the wronged and betrayed, of ignorance, of falsehood, of lack of conscience, of justifiable self-defense and of religious bigotry. Greed and curiosity play their part here, blood lust, and the fear of being lured and being seduced, the love of mystery and deficient self-esteem. In its constituents and background, it is a peculiarly German phenomenon. It is a German hatred.”5

Hay disagrees that anti-Semitism is peculiarly German: it can flourish, and indeed grow vigorously, he points out, in countries where no Jews have lived for generations. The saying that every Jew carries anti-Semitism in his knapsack does not explain the ubiquity and the permanence of the infection. It would be near the truth to say, he suggests, that anti-Semitism is carried in the knapsack of every Christian.6

The first Christian church, based in Jerusalem, was Jewish. And it was no small group; no hole-in-the-corner outfit was this. According to the New Testament, there were about 120 people meeting together in the first chapter of Acts. About three thousand were added on the day of Pentecost when Peter preached. There were about five thousand male converts after the lame man was healed at the Beautiful Gate of the temple. By the time of Stephen’s martyrdom, the number of disciples had multiplied greatly in Jerusalem and a great many of the priests believed. What happened to this church?

The Jews looked forward to a Messiah who would be responsible for gathering the Jews and ushering in the messianic age. When Jesus came, the Jewish religious leaders rejected him as Messiah. Those Jews who did believe on him continued to live as Jews. For some time, they were considered a sect within Judaism.

The Jews, who were under Roman occupation, seemed to have a genius for falling out among themselves. The Pharisees argued against the Sadducees, and the Essenes against them both; the Zealots and the Sicarii pursued their own agendas. Roman regulation was met by violence from the Zealots, which led to further repression. In AD 66, provoked by the brutal conduct, among others, of Florus, Procurator of Judea, the whole of the Jews revolted. There was war until AD 70.

According to Eusebius of Caesarea, Jews who believed on Jesus moved to Pella in present-day Jordan during this time, possibly taking note of the instruction in Luke 21:20–21. Vespasian, sent to put down the revolt, was called to Rome to become emperor. He left behind his son Titus and four legions of soldiers. Titus decided to besiege Jerusalem. The siege lasted for several months. Starvation and disease ravaged the populace. Some mothers ate their children; bodies were piled in the streets. Then Roman soldiers breached the walls. They put men, women, and children to the sword and set fire to the temple.

Wrote historian Josephus: “No other city has ever endured such horrors, and no generation in history has fathered such wickedness. . . . As the flames shot into the air the Jews sent up a cry that matched the calamity and dashed to the rescue, with no thought now of saving their lives or husbanding their strength; for that which hitherto they had guarded so devotedly was disappearing before their eyes.”7 Some Jews committed suicide by jumping into the blazing temple. The air was filled with smoke and the shrieks of the dying. One million Jews are said to have died in the revolt and almost a million were sent into slavery, although these figures have been disputed.

The Jews now had a real problem. All the covenants that God made with Israel were sealed with blood. Animals were sacrificed for God’s covenant with Abraham (Gen 15:9–11). Moses sprinkled the book of the covenant and the people with blood to confirm God’s covenant at Sinai (Exod 24:6–8). Since the law taught that the shedding of blood brought atonement for the soul, without the temple and its sacrifices, how were they now to obtain atonement for sin? The Jewish people had brought daily offerings to the temple and the nation had gathered there before the Lord three times a year. Without blood sacrifice, they would not be able to k...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• 1 | Two thousand years of Christian anti-Semitism
• 2 | The ‘replacement’ heresy
• 3 | A ‘special treasure’ for himself
• 4 | ‘The apple of his eye’
• 5 | The significance of Passover
• 6 | Is Jesus the Jewish Messiah?
• 7 | One new man
• 8 | A glorious future
• 9 | In the twinkling of an eye
• 10 | The time of Jacob’s trouble
• 11 | So what should Gentiles do?
• 12 | The end of the story
• Bibliography