mikeclevenger: Does the Church replace Israel? ...

mikeclevenger:

Does the Church replace Israel?

By virtue of the influence of American evangelicalism we say silly things like “Always side with Israel, no matter what Israel does always side with Israel. God will take care of America if we always side with Israel. They are God’s people.” [But] Jesus says they are a synagogue of Satan. And is there a reason then why American evangelicals are notoriously ineffective in their evangelism of Arabs?

[Jesus is] The full, final, ultimate expression of Judaism. You are Abraham’s seed.

(and my personal favorite part of this article) C’mon …Tear those pages out of your study Bibles.

Oh, come on. Stuff like this makes me livid. Did you actually read the linked article and still thought it was a good idea to post it?

There are real Jews who, you know, exist in the world today. It is important that Christians are careful about the way we talk about Judaism and the New Covenant and the Messiah, especially given the terrible history of the way the church treated Jews for centuries.

Yes, it is very problematic that evangelicals support the nation-state of Israel at all costs. Yes, the way Christians talk about and are evangelizing Arabs leaves much to be desired.

But that doesn’t excuse blatant Christian disrespect for one of the world’s oldest religions. “True Jews are those who follow Jesus as their Messiah.” Really? This person even claims that Jews and Christians don’t worship the same God. Where is he getting that from? Jesus clearly worshipped the same God the rest of the Jews did, as did Paul, let alone James. (I would make a bigger point about this, but I’m just angry he even brought it up).

Christianity is touchy on the subject of Judaism because we use the Hebrew Bible, we borrowed a lot of ideas from the temple cult and early Judaism, most of the early Christians were Jewish, and, finally, because of the awful history of Christian persecution of Jews. We ought to be careful on this subject (throwing around ‘a synagogue of Satan’ is a GREAT way to love people, I’m sure), and this article totally failed.

Here’s a controversial Bible passage that I kind of dislike (Paul is conflicted about Judaism too, clearly) but that might be useful:

But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, a wild olive shoot, were grafted in their place to share the rich root of the olive tree, do not vaunt yourselves over the branches. If you do vaunt yourselves, remember that it is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you. (Romans 11:17-18)

The root supports you. Since when does an apocalyptic text like Revelation that no one has any idea what it means trump that?