The Jew, Christianity and the "War on Terror"

It is a little-known fact that Christianity, at its very outset, was Jewish.  Rather than belabor that point, I merely sight chapter 15 in the Book of Acts of the New Testament, as being about a small group of Jewish believers in Yeshua (Jesus) getting together to discuss the plausibility of the notion that a Gentile can come to believe in Yeshua without first becoming a Jew.

Whereas in the First Century A.D., it was a mystery that a Gentile could believe in Yeshua, Today, in the 21st Century, it is a mystery that a Jew CAN believe in Yeshua.  To date, I have not yet found an adjective that can adequately describe the nature of this irony!

Today, we are engaged in what has popularly been dubbed a “war on terror.”  Because this war is a struggle between Islam and the West with its potpourri of divergent belief systems, I believe that it is safe to say rather axiomatically that...

Until the human race collectively comes to a consensus about who God is, what He is like and what He expects from us, we shall forever be at war.¹

As I see it there are three possible ways by which we can come to this consensus²: 

     1. We humans willingly debate the issue rationally and dispassionately 

     2. A dictatorial entity imposes its view upon everyone else, or

     3. The truth is irrefutably and universally evident.

It is unlikely that we humans will agree on anything.  I find that this substantiates the reality of the doctrine of sin.  We, humans, are too arrogant and biased to relinquish our points of view despite the evidence.  The afore-mentioned axiom would concur that this reality is to our detriment because it inhibits consensus thus perpetuating the atmosphere conducive to promulgating war.  

Sadly, even if the truth should be irrefutably made evident to everyone, in the present state the world is in, many would still reject it.  In reality, I’m pretty well convinced that this objective truth already exists today.  The writer of the Book of Proverbs wrote: “Wisdom shouts in the street, She lifts her voice in the square;”  (Prov. 1:20).

Even though the voice of Wisdom speaks in the streets today, her voice is drowned out by any rabble of foolishness. Whether such foolishness comes in the form of peer pressure, vogue thinking, tradition, individuals assumed to be experts, any other of a myriad of influences on thought processes or just plain unwillingness of people to put in the effort to think critically, wisdom has historically as well as contemporarily been lacking on the human stage.

Sadly these days, there seem to be only two remaining alternatives for the human race: continued war or the imposition of a world-view upon the masses by a dictator or group of self-appointed dictatorial elitists.  The former alternative is destructive at face value.  The latter alternative may or may not be consistent with objective truth.  In all probability, it will not be objectively truthful, and its foundation will be a lie.³  

Feeding heavily into this “gemish” of confusion over the nature of God, what He might be like and what He expects from us, is the fideistic rejection by the Jewish people of the Messiahship of  Yeshua.  As a whole, the Jewish community defines Jews as Individuals who are the children of Jewish mothers but who do not believe in Yeshua.  To much of the Jewish community, the contention that Yeshua is not the Messiah is an axiom in itself.  This “axiom” however, is built upon a paradigm which places it directly at odds with Christianity.  The Jewish rejection of Yeshua as the Messiah is a direct refutation of Christianity which claims, to the contrary, that He is the Messiah.  The rabbis seem to be oblivious to the fact that their “faith stance” is, in reality, an affront to Christianity and the modern western Church does not perceive this either.  Not wanting to “offend” much of the church relegates “Judaism” to being 'just another religion' and makes up some canard that “one ought not to evangelize Jews because they have some alternative means of receiving salvation.”

This clash between Christianity and Judaism, rather than being confronted, is ignored.  Each side seeks its comfort zone.  It’s not comfortable to confront.  It’s not comfortable to challenge one’s culture and opinions as they stand up in concurrence with or contrary to Biblical truth.  Ironically, this pursuit of comfort produces exactly the opposite effect. Ignoring the debate for the sake of “comfort” sadly serves to contribute to the lack of consensus on the nature of God. This lack of consensus, in turn, carries with it its already noted horrific consequences.  Instead of finding comfort, the one who pursues comfort unwittingly foments war and the inevitable accompanying threat to personal safety which is the utter antithesis of comfort.  

There is another element of irony that accompanies this issue.  Even though Judaism, the religion, fundamentally challenges the claims of Christianity, ironically, when one dismisses Judaism as a religion, the survival of the Jewish people as a people nevertheless, affirms the claim to the divine origin of the Bible and therefore the veracity of the Bible’s claim that, in fact, Yeshua IS the Messiah of the Jewish people.⁴

Interestingly, popular perception confuses the religion with the people.  Most Jews are not actual practitioners of Judaism.  And where the religion invalidates the "Gospel," the mere existence of the Jewish people on the world stage does validate the Gospel because the Gospel is found only in the Bible and the Bible has promised that the Jewish people would survive history.⁵  Hence, the replacement of Judaism with genuine collective personal relationships with God, in conjunction with the survival of the Jewish people in history, lend strong evidence that the Bible is the very Word of the creator God of the universe. And since that's the case, the Bible is also the sole accurate source for understanding the nature of the Gospel.

It is safe to say therefore that according to the Bible, peace will never come to this planet until either the Jewish people, are destroyed, (as is the contention of many anti-Semitic groups) which will never happen⁶,  they en-mass, receive Yeshua as their Messiah which will happen⁷ one day, or BIBLICAL Christianity is determined to be utterly false which, also, will never happen⁸.  In spite of the inevitability of the universal salvation of the Jewish people at a specific time in the future, it behooves the Church Invisible, nevertheless, to “pave the way” as it were, by prioritizing prayer for and love motivated evangelism to the Jewish people.  Even if they do not believe now, the evangelist will have planted a “seed” that will bear fruit on “that day.”  Furthermore, there’s a double investment in this endeavor.  It’s part of the war on terror.  Jewish validation of the Messiah-ship of Yeshua invalidates Islam.

1.    ZecharIah 14:9 confirms that the day of peace reigning upon the earth will be marked by universal understanding of God’s nature. - “And the Lord will be king over all the earth; in that day the Lord will be the only one, and His name the only one.”

2.    The Bible mentions all three of these mechanisms.  Although there are several references to each mechanism, the following are one or two references to each.

a.  Rational debate - "’Come now, and let us reason together,’ Says the LORD, ‘Though your sins are as scarlet, They will be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They will be like wool.’”  (Isa 1:18)

b. The masses have the value of the dictator imposed on them – “Then I saw another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb and he spoke as a dragon. He exercises all the authority of the first beast in his presence And he makes the earth and those who dwell in it to worship the first beast, whose fatal wound was healed.  And he deceives those who dwell on the earth because of the signs which it was given him to perform in the presence of the beast, telling those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast who had the wound of the sword and has come to life.” Rev. 13:11-14)

c. Everyone witnesses the truth - "I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn.” (Zech. 12:10)

3. Scripture would not argue that the foundation of this dictatorship will probably be a lie.  I use the word “probably” only for the sake of argument.  Scripture argues irrefutably that the final dictator is fundamentally a liar. – “And he deceives those who dwell on the earth because of the signs which it was given him to perform in the presence of the beast, telling those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast who had the wound of the sword and has come to life.” (Rev. 13:14)

4.The fact that the Jewish people have survived two millennia of exile from there homeland endured wave after wave of intolerable persecutions including attempted genocide, and returned to their original homeland to speak the same language they’d spoken two millennia earlier, is a testimony to the predictive nature of the prophecies inherent in the Bible.

5-6. As the prophet Jeremiah declared: “’Thus says the LORD, Who gives the sun for light by day And the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, Who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar; The LORD of hosts is His name:  If this fixed order departs From before Me," declares the LORD, "Then the offspring of Israel also will cease From being a nation before Me forever.’ Thus says the LORD, ‘If the heavens above can be measured And the foundations of the earth searched out below, Then I will also cast off all the offspring of Israel For all that they have done,’ declares the LORD.                    (Jer 31:35-37)

7. “and so all Israel will be saved; just as it is written, ‘THE DELIVERER WILL COME FROM ZION, HE WILL REMOVE UNGODLINESS FROM JACOB.’ THIS IS MY COVENANT WITH THEM, WHEN I TAKE AWAY THEIR SINS."   (Rom. 11:26-27)

8. Looking into the future, the Book of Revelation gives the following as an account: “And they sang the song of Moses, the bond-servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, " Great and marvelous are Your works, O Lord God, the Almighty; Righteous and true are Your ways, King of the nations!” (Rev. 15:3)