Posted on February 19, 2014 by Jerusalem Connection
By SUSAN MICHAEL, ICEJ-USA —
A disturbing study guide entitled “Zionism Unsettled” has been published by an arm of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) The publication is filled with distorted facts and a historical narrative so extreme that some Jewish groups are calling it “hate speech.” It vilifies Israel and Zionism while ignoring Palestinian terrorism, calls for the annihilation of the Jewish State, and absconds Arab leaders of their culpability in the plight of the Palestinian people. The study guide proves that the PCUSA has aligned itself with the most radical of positions by equating Zionism with racism, comparing it to centuries of Christian anti-Semitism, and calling for a rethinking of the Holocaust to include the plight of the Palestinians.
The Chapter on “Evangelicals and Christian Zionism” skews the facts to portray Christians who support Israel as dangerous and a threat to Middle-East peace. The chapter is taken largely from the writings of Dr. Gary Burge, an evangelical Presbyterian and Professor of New Testament at Wheaton College, who admits to holding a form of Replacement Theology in spite of the fact that it was the root of centuries of Christian anti-Semitism.
Replacement Theology teaches that God abandoned the Jewish people, has broken His promises to them, and has chosen a new people, the Church. The danger with this theology is that it implies that the Jewish people have been rejected and discarded due to their sin and failures. It is fertile ground for the proliferation of anti-Semitism and should be guarded against.
The Apostle Paul said in Romans 11 that God is not finished with the Jewish people and that their calling is irrevocable. In Hebrews 6, he cites God’s faithfulness to the Abrahamic Covenant to encourage beleaguered Christians to keep their faith, knowing they serve a faithful God.
Nevertheless, Burge goes so far as to say that the New Testament teaching spiritualizes and universalizes the Old Testament land promises to the Jewish people by treating them as spiritual metaphor. While it is true that in Galatians 3:29 the Apostle Paul said that Christians do enjoy the blessings of Abraham as spiritual heirs, he did not claim that they “replaced” the natural heirs nor inherit the land. This would require a rewriting of scripture since the land promise to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was “everlasting” and is confirmed forty-six times throughout the books of the Old Testament.
Psalm 105 says that God does not break covenant, nor alter the word that has gone out of His mouth, therefore, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob would receive the promises made to them. It is because of these scriptures that the disciples asked Jesus if He was going to “restore the kingdom to Israel now” in Acts 1:6. He simply said the time was not for them to know, clearly indicating that it would happen in God’s timing. In Luke 21, Jesus said that Jerusalem would once again be under Jewish sovereignty and put it in an eschatological context.
Burge attempts then to diminish the reach of Christian Zionism by limiting it as dispensational and dual covenant in theology. While dispensationalism is a theology favorable towards Israel, only one in every ten Christians is a dispensationalist. A much larger number of Christians, from a wide-variety of denominations and theological persuasions, supported the restoration of the Jews to their homeland; including John and Charles Wesley, Robert Murray MacCheynne, Bishop Ryle of Liverpool, Charles Spurgeon, the Puritans, Professor Jacob Janeway of the Scottish National Church, Martin Luther King and many others.
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Christian Zionist Hall of Fame Men like Charles Wesley believed in the restoration of Israel and even wrote wonderful hymns about it. Learn more › |
Christian Zionism is also not “dual covenant.” Mainstream Christian Zionists are found in all the historical and contemporary church movements, including the Presbyterian Church, and they most certainly believe that Jesus’ finished work on the cross is their only grounds of salvation. While the basis for Christian Zionism is found in the Abrahamic Covenant, in which God announced to Abraham His plan to create a people through whom He would carry out His plan to redeem the world, the Abrahamic covenant needed the Mosaic Covenant, the Davidic Covenant and the New Covenant to bring about that great salvation.
Israel’s role, as the vehicle of God’s redemptive plan, does not make her better than any other people groups but rather more accountable to God. The Jewish people are chosen for the blessing of the nations, including the Palestinian people. However, this study construes the chosenness of the Jewish people to be a form of racism that esteems them higher than other peoples, and therefore, not held to the same standard of accountability.
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An Everlasting Covenant The Abrahamic Covenant has greatly influenced the course of human history, as it was the watershed moment in God’s decision to save the world from sin (Galatians 3:8). Learn more › |
The PCUSA may wish that Christians that support Israel and the Jewish people are a fringe group, but the fact is that some 70% of Americans are favorable towards Israel. There are a number of reasons why Americans support Israel: personal experience while touring Israel, admiration for Israeli technology and innovation, or appreciation for the only democracy in the Middle East. Bible-believing Christians support Israel because of their reading of the scriptures. In short, God has brought the Jewish people back to their homeland in fulfillment of His promises to Abraham and millions of Christians want to bless and help them.
Conversely, the PCUSA has aligned itself with extreme and radical groups such as Sabeel. Founded by Naim Ateek, Sabeel propagates Palestinian Liberation Theology that disregards any portion of scripture that disagrees with Ateek’s anti-Semitic views. Hence, right out of the Sabeel playbook, this study guide calls for churches to stop using hymns and liturgy that use the biblical terms: exodus, covenant, return, blossoming of the desert, Zion and Israel.
It is time that the PCUSA wakes up and realizes that holding radical and anti-Semitic positions, such as reflected in this study guide, will only guarantee their continued membership decline, because most Americans not only shun hate speech, but admire and stand with the people of Israel.
– By Susan Michael
Susan Michael is US Director for International Christian Embassy Jerusalem and creator of www.IsraelAnswers.com.
http://www.thejerusalemconnection.us/blog/2014/02/19/a-response-to-zionism-unsettled.html
8 Comments. Leave new
From its relatively recent meeting with Hezbollah to this theological abomination, the elite of the PC(USA) has continued to move toward the same posture that fueled the Holocaust and align themselves with those who would gladly murder every Jew in the world…followed quickly by every Christian who will not “covert” to the Religion of Peace.
It is a relief to Christians around the world, as expressed in the writings of the evangelical statesman the late John Stott, that the majority are no longer persuaded by movements like the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem. As historic Psalm singers Presbyterians have understood that the theology and doxology of the essential hymnbook of the church is for us today. This does not make us antisemitic. Nor do we believe that the church has replaced Israel. For us there has only ever been one church in the old and new testaments. This is why we baptise infants because the covenant with Abraham included babies. We believe that those of us who are Gentiles are honoured to have been grafted into the new Israel of God which Christ has established. This is not replacement but fulfiment through Jesus as Messiah.
As Christain believers, criticism of the secular state of Israel in its behaviour is a moral imperative. We simply stand in the prophetic tradition . To do otherwise would be to dishonour the King of the Kingdom.
“Conversely, the PCUSA has aligned itself with extreme and radical groups such as Sabeel. ”
There is nothing that could be further from the truth. Such a claim is either born out of supreme ignorance or malicious hate speech and libelous character assassination. Shame on the Layman for even publishing such trash. The PC(USA) has always made clear that its support for Israel and for Jews everywhere is unwavering. That an advisory board to the General Assembly makes remarks that either are, or can be perceived to be anti-Semitic has no bearing on that fact.
Folks who try to say otherwise are just malicious gossips whose aim is to injure the Church of Christ.
The meeting between representatives of GMAC and Hezbollah is established fact. The staff members who did so were ultimately either fired or “allowed to resign” once the news became public knowledge.
For a church that cannot even manage its own membership effectively to presume to offer guidance to a nation on how it is to conduct its affairs with neighbors who have sworn to eradicate it is the height of self-righteous arrogance.
Breaking news from what Israel and Jewish citizens must contend with from their “neighbors” who practice the “religion of peace:” Palestinians in the village of Abu Dis, which lies just outside of the Jerusalem municipal boundaries, staged a procession over the weekend to mark the 45th anniversary of the founding of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Marxist faction and a member organization of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Dozens of Palestinians were seen brandishing AK-47 and M16 semiautomatic rifles as well as hand grenades and pistols while clad in military gear, according to Israel Radio. A number of shots were fired in the air during the festivities. ” The Jerusalem Post, February 23, 2014
Anti-semitism! Holocaust! Catering to Jewish supremacist theology is a dubious path to understanding. I congratulate the Presbyterian Church for this study. Like it or not the New Testament is replacement theology. No more racism.
My extended family members attend 6 Presbyterian churches in the Midwest. All these families have been appalled at the anti Semitic sermons given in their churches, let only the outrageous anti semitic political policies which the General Assembly has no business being involved in. My very dear Jewish friend, a female, died last wk at age 93. Her body bore her tattoos. She was an Auschwitz survivor. Every member of her extended family was shot or incinerated. Yet, she belived in God. She was spared death in the concentration camp because she was attractive and was raped by the German soldiers and made to cook for them. The PCUSA has no moral authority whatsoever telling the The Jewish people that they do not need a Jewish state where they will always be safe. May God Bless the State of Israel and the Jewish People.
We Jews have nothing left to prove where pacificism is concerned. Even the Native Americans have their Battle Of Little Big Horn, among other retalliations. Even the Buddhists and Hindus have their manifold revenge attacks against the far-more-numerous Muslim slaughters committed against them in India. Come to think of it, the ONLY religious and/or ethnic group which I, as a proud Zionist, am willing to credit as being consistantly in the Jews’s league of forgiveness is/are the Amish. I would be willing to discuss Israeli issues with the genuine Amish (NOT the always-anti-Semitic Quaker cult which calls itself the “AFSC”).
ALL the peoples of the world should considerate themselves lucky that we Jews, who are always hunted like the American buffalo (that is when we aren’t – even worse – being driven like sheep into slaughter-houses), have not taken a mathmetically rational justice to the rest of the planet by offing ONE THIRD of the the rest of the world.
Again – We Jews Have Nothing Left To Prove. We Are The True Pacifists. … and the younger Jews I know are getting ready to give up on the search for peace and just let loose with their pent-up ANGER.