God Is With You
(Zechariah 8:23)
by Christine Egbert
I used to think that anti-Semitism started with the ravings of Adolf Hitler. Then, just over a decade ago, I learned that this malevolent hatred of God’s Chosen people has flamed for over two millennia. Best known in the Church Age as “Replacement Theology”, this unbiblical doctrine claims that the Christian Church has replaced Israel as God’s (New) Covenant people. Jews no longer are the “Chosen”.
First codified in the 4th Century by the Catholic Church, Replacement Theology was also embedded into the Greek Orthodox. Like a generational curse, this vile hatred has infected most mainstream Reformed Churches as well: Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Episcopal, Baptist, Assemblies of God, Church of God, Church of Christ, and 7th Day Adventist. Even more marginalized denominations like the Latter-Day Saints and the Jehovah’s Witnesses profess this same perversion.
Since Constantine and the Roman Catholic Church transformed Israel’s Torah-observant, Jewish Messiah, Jesus (Yeshua), into a Gentile who nailed His Father’s Torah to the cross, most Jewish people have never been told the TRUTH of the Gospel. They know only about a Torah-less Catholic Jesus, who supposedly “freed His followers from the Law”. In the name of this perverted version of Christ, Jews were mercilessly persecuted throughout the centuries in Crusades, Pogroms, and the Inquisition, which culminated in the Holocaust.
Marcion of Sinope
Marcion, who lived between 85 C.E. and 160 C.E., was first to rename the Hebrew Scriptures the “Old Testament”. Marcion, who Tertullian, Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus finally declared a heretic, and whom the Roman Church excommunicated around 144 C.E., taught that the deity who sent Jesus (Yeshua) into the world was a higher deity than the God of Judaism. Marcion considered himself a follower of the Apostle Paul, whom he saw as the only true apostle of Jesus Christ (Yeshua Messiah). This heretic taught that Jesus (Yeshua) came into the world to free mankind from the LORD (Yahweh), the wrathful “Old Testament” God of the Jews.
Quote From The Catholic Encyclopedia
“Marcionites heretical sect founded in A.D. 144 at Rome continued in the West for 300 years, but in the East some centuries longer, especially outside the Byzantine Empire. They rejected the writings of the Old Testament and taught that Christ was not the Son of the God of the Jews, but the Son of the good God, who was different from the God of the Ancient Covenant. They anticipated the more consistent dualism of Manichaeism and were finally absorbed by it. As they arose in the very infancy of Christianity and adopted from the beginning a strong ecclesiastical organization, parallel to that of the Catholic Church, they were perhaps the most dangerous foe Christianity has ever known.”
Echoes Of Marcion
Sadly, down through the centuries, far too much of Marcion’s heretical and anti-Semitic rhetoric still echoes throughout mainstream (and not-so-mainstream) Christianity. From Genesis through Malachi, the Hebrew Scriptures are pejoratively referred to as “Old”. Stand-alone “New” Testaments are presented to children making First Communion. Paul is quoted out of context to teach that God’s Torah is a curse.
Sadder still, far too many Christians see the LORD (Yahweh) as “wrathful”, in spite of John 3:16: “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.” His Son declared over and over that He came only to speak His Father’s words and do His Father’s will.
Anti-Semitism In Hebrew Roots
Even more distressing than learning about Marcion and other so-called Church Fathers (whose writings demonstrate not only their hatred of Jews but their ignorance of or disagreement with Scripture) was discovering a strain of Replacement Theology in Hebrew Roots. This latest malignant form of anti-Semitism, like earlier forms, denounces the Jewish people as a synagogue of Satan. Some go as far as denying their right of return to the Land, to Israel.
Ashkenazi Jews, who more than any other group were slaughtered during the Holocaust, make up 75% of today’s Jewish population. Within the Hebrew Roots move of God, the Enemy has planted tares, false teachers who teach that Ashkenazi Jews are not legitimate.
They teach that the Ashkenazi Jews are descendants of the Khazaria, a multi-ethnic people group from the region of Turkey, who converted to Judaism in 740 C.E. Therefore, they postulate, the Ashkenazi have “no right of return”, ignoring genetic testing which disproves the lie. But even if genetic testing didn’t disprove them, guess what? The Ashkenazi would still be biblically legitimate Jews, Jews commanded by God to return. Why?
Mount Sinai
Not everyone who came out of Egypt and stood at the base of Mount Sinai were physical descendants of Jacob. (Exodus 12:38). A mixed multitude became known as the nation of Israel.
Before Abram crossed over, he was a pagan. Abram left his land and his people to follow the LORD (Yahweh). Ruth, the grandmother of Israel’s King David, was a Moabitess, until she declared to Naomi, “Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.”
Were most Ashkenazi Jews descended from Khazaria, converting in mass in 740 C.E. (and there is NO historical proof that they are), they would still be biblically Jewish! They would still have a right to return. It doesn’t matter that most Jews have not yet recognized Jesus (Yeshua) as Israel’s Messiah, for Scripture declares that one day they will.
Romans 11:12 – “…now if through their (Israel’s) slipping away, salvation came to the nations (Gentiles)… how much more their restoration… if their casting away (Israel/Jews) is reconciliation of the world, what will their (Israel/Jews) restoration be but life from the dead. That was a hint as to WHEN the Resurrection of the dead will occur. In that day they will cry out, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD (Yahweh).” (Matthew 23:37-39 )
This prophecy will be fulfilled at Jesus’ (Yeshua’s) return to save those remaining from the nation of Israel. On THAT DAY, the LORD (Yahweh) will fight against those nations that came against Zion. (Zechariah 14:2)
On THAT DAY a fountain will open to the House of David and inhabitants of Jerusalem to cleanse them from sin. (Zechariah 13:1)
On That Day, the LORD (Yahweh) will be KING over all the earth (Zechariah 14:9).
Don’t boast against the natural branches!
The apostle Paul warned Gentiles (who are grafted into Israel’s cultivated Olive tree, grafted in AMONG them) NOT to boast against the (natural) branches.
Why?
The Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. (Romans 3:2) Grafted in branches do not bear the root; the Root bears the grafted in branches. Grafted in branches stand by faith. Paul warns us not to be high minded (arrogant and hateful to the natural branches), but to fear, for only “if” the grafted in branches continue in God’s kindness, will God continue to deal kindly with them. God is able to graft the natural branches back into their OWN Olive tree, and He will one day, when they come to faith in their Messiah.
Do not be ignorant of this mystery, for hardness, in part, has happened to Israel (who were Jews at the time Paul wrote this) until the fullness of the nations has come in. Then ALL the tribes of Israel (including Judah) will be saved.
How?
The Deliverer will come out of ZION, and He will turn away iniquity from Jacob.
Why?
God’s ELECTION and calling are irrevocable!
Zechariah 12:8-10
In that day shall the LORD (Yahweh) defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem (Jews); he that is feeble among them, on that day, shall be as David, and the house of David (Judah) shall be as God, as the angel of the LORD (Yahweh) before them.
“He who keeps Israel (the LORD – Yahweh), neither slumbers nor sleeps.” (Psalms 121:4) And one day, according to the prophet Zechariah, Jesus (Yeshua) will return and destroy every nation that’s attacked Jerusalem. (Zechariah 12:9)
When that day comes, I pray that all those reading this article will find themselves on the right side of this controversy. “It will be the Day of the LORD’s (Yahweh’s) vengeance, the year of recompense for the controversy of Zion.” (Isaiah 34: 8)
Zechariah 8:23 – Thus says the LORD of Hosts (Yahweh Tzevaot), “In those days, it will come to pass that ten men from every language of the nations will grasp the corner of the garment of a Jew (not a Christian, not someone from one of Israel’s other eleven tribes) saying, ‘Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.’”
