Can you believe that there's people out there that hate Jewish people?

Really?

Welcome to the Rap Report with your host, Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application.

This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast community.

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Welcome to another edition of the Rappaport.

I am your host, Andrew Rapaport, and we are here to give you biblical interpretations and applications for the Christian life.

I am the executive director of Striving Fraternity and the Christian Podcast community of which this podcast is a proud member.

I am joined today by two friends.

Well, I call them friends.

We'll see if they agree to that.

But.

An article that I, that I had seen and then heard a.

This referenced on a podcast, but is John Harris from Conversations that Matter on a article he's got out on his sub stack called the New Anti Jewish Theology.

And so I asked if he would come on so we could talk about it and he said, hey, we gotta have Charles Haddon Spurgeon.

Oh, wait, sorry, Joseph Spurgeon.

And so these are two men.

If you regular listeners here, you have heard both of them before, but I'll start with John.

Let you just quickly introduce yourself.

And then Joe, if Joseph, if you wouldn't mind introducing yourself for folks that may be new.

Yeah, thanks for having me, Andrew.

You've been talking for two weeks about possibly coming on.

And this is a topic that I did tackle on my own YouTube channel and on my sub stack.

And there's always loose ends anytime you tackle something, even if you're comprehensive, and then questions people have and further clarification.

So I thought this would be a good opportunity to dive into some of that and explain more what the issues are like.

I think more clarity is important in this discussion.

So if people want to see that article or my initial presentation, then go to john harrismedia.com subscribe to whatever I got there.

YouTube's probably the main one.

And.

And I'm part of the law firm with.

Of Spurgeon and Harris.

You know, when Jews need help, we go, spurgeon and Harris is your man.

So.

No, I'm just kidding.

But some people think that.

Some people think that.

Joseph.

Yes.

Joseph Spurgeon.

Hi.

Oh, I need to tell probably a little bit more than that.

So I'm a pastor.

I'm a pastor in Southern Indiana Presbyterian.

So I'm outnumbered here today only for.

A few more years.

I mean, what's 50 years?

You'll in heaven, you'll be a Baptist forever.

Oh, I thought you guys were about to join me a chat group yesterday saying that's what John was on.

Having me on the.

That's the end gathering.

Yeah, the end gathering.

You guys become Presbyterians.

But.

Yes, so I'm a Presbyterian.

And you know, back in like 2015, 16, I really started thinking about what you might call the Jewish question and became Jew pilled, if you will, in the sense of.

Judy, I don't like the term Judeo Christian, you know, like, as if they're the same thing.

And so I started to, to think through that issue.

You know, I've had people like E. Michael Jones on my podcast and have moved away from dispensationalism as I grew up from.

But.

And so I, My, my perspective might be slightly different than, than yours, but I've noticed just that it's one thing to say, you know, Judaism as it is now is not Christian, doesn't honor God, and in a sense we pray for its demise.

It's one thing to oppose that, and then it's another to just kind of make your identity and everything into how much you're opposed to Jews.

And, and then you start blurring the distinction between, okay, the religion, the ethnicity, and then, and then you start looking for basically a one bad guy for us to fight all the time.

When scripture says that, you know, our warfare is not with flesh and blood, it's with the spiritual forces of darkness.

Of course they use, they use flesh and blood people, but.

So I've been just concerned along with John and seeing people begin to, I think he says, adopt a new religion.

It's like a new religion in which sin and the world and the flesh, those of our enemies, are replaced with one thing, the Jew.

And so it's the only thing you become to talk about.

And, and I think a lot of people were just grifting off of that because of the anger of young men at a lot of the situations around us.

So I've, I probably already gave away the whole podcast.

Sorry, that's supposed to be the introduction of me.

Well, it's.

That's a good point to.

Way to start because I.

You hit on something and you.

And I didn't talk about this, but I was talking with my bride about this not too long ago with why has this become so popular in Christian circles?

And I, you know, you think of the, some of the names in Christian circles and when I'm saying that I'm not including Candace Owen because she's not Christian, if that's a shocker to anyone.

I, she's now Roman Catholic, so that would tell me she was never Christian, didn't understand the gospel.

But I, I'm, I would throw Tucker Carlson, I don't where, you know, I'm not including them.

But you think about, you know, people within that would be, within Christian circles, men like a Joel webbing.

Right.

And, and there's many others that started, I think really got some popularity on speaking about masculinity and where you had a lot of people that were hungry for that wanted to hear.

And this is why guys like Andrew Tate and others have become so popular, because there's want to hear that they're not to blame for everything in society.

And, and so I think that you have people that started talking about that and they got an audience and now it's like, okay, well we got to keep that audience.

But now they're, they're, it's like so many of them are just now just shifting where the focus is instead of on masculinity.

It's, it's starting to turn into, well, we, we got to blame a group.

So it's kind of funny because I think that they started out by grabbing a bunch of people that were upset because they're getting blamed for everything.

And what do they do?

They turn into blaming others for everything.

You know, but you called it John A in in the title of your, your very, very short article.

I, I, I don't know what the word count is on it, but the New anti Jewish Theology.

So you were, you're kind of referring to this as a theology.

You know, unpack this.

Let me.

Yeah, yeah.

So I didn't get into politics in, in a deep way.

I dabbled because you have to, but I'm, my primary concern is the theology.

This is also kind of where my concerns with social justice started.

And social justice is similar in a way.

Like, if you think back to how this came into the church, it wasn't because of pastors or podcasters in the church.

It wasn't pastors who were going on a podcast and saying, you know what, I'm gonna just start coming up with this idea and pitch it to you.

It has already marinated.

They had already been marinating most of the time in institutions of higher education.

And then it got into the seminaries, then it got into the churches.

This, it follows a different trajectory, which is actually much quicker.

It's not, there is an academic form of this, but this is more podcasters who are not Christians.

I think that's where it starts.

And not just podcasters, it's guys like Dave Smith or Nick Fuentes or, or the guys who just put slop out there all the time, like Stu Peters or Jake Shields.

And the list just goes on with the.

These guys who really focus so much on Jewish people being behind just about everything that goes wrong.

And, and they use unequal weights and measures.

They can sometimes lie about these things.

And they wouldn't do this to other groups of people, at least not to the same degree they do with Jewish people.

And I think what's happened is there's also some Christians who can see there's a large audience, there's a market for this, and also that maybe they may genuinely be convinced, but where we're more the caboose.

Not we as in us, but the Christians getting involved in this.

They're not driving that train, they're the caboose in that train.

And social justice was similar in that way.

And so what I wanted to do was pretty simple.

I wanted to put up some guardrails for Christians.

And we need lines, we need boundaries, we need to know what theology says.

And so the first thing, there's really five things, I guess I'll say the first thing I wanted to make sure that people knew is that this isn't just a covenant theology thing.

I think even some dispensationalists might think, oh, those are just the covenant theologians.

Those are the people who believe in replacement theology, quote, unquote.

Which by the way, is not a pejorative necessarily.

That is actually a word that's been used clinically throughout time.

Some people are sensitive to that now, supersessionism.

There's different varieties of supersessionism, though, and not all of them.

They're not like all quote, unquote, anti Jewish or whatever.

But there's sort of an over oversimplification there.

So I wanted to show people, number one, look, look back at our Reformed heritage and our early church heritage.

I'm not going to talk about any dispensationalists.

Let's just talk about the people who, before dispensationalism was even a system who talked about this issue.

And the issue ranges.

It's anywhere from a sort of a soft restoration, which is an ingathering.

It could be an in gathering to the church.

It could be like Calvin thought, a process that has yet to complete where Jewish people are being saved and ingathered to join the church all the way to.

There's land promises and there's Several theologians in the early church, in the Reformed tradition that believe in the land promises too.

Irenaeus, Victorinus, Cyril of Alexandria, Jerome, all believe this.

You also see guys like Thomas Brightman, William Gouge, Jonathan Edwards, Charles Spurgeon, John Gill, Increase Mather, Martin Lloyd Jones, the list goes on.

They all believed in these land promises as well.

And that's not like a, some kind of a crazy heretical thing for them to believe that which is.

It's often framed that way.

If you believe in.

The lines are very blurred.

It's either like Protestantism, Zionism, dispensationalism, all usually not well defined.

People don't usually know what they're talking about online.

But there's this, this idea that this is all some kind of a heresy, seeking to replace the church with Israel or something like that.

And they'll go to, they, they know one, one passage, Galatians three.

Right.

That's the only passage they know.

They usually take it and, and twist it or use it inappropriately and it's like, okay, let's talk about that as well.

So I wanted to just give people some basic understanding of the history and say it's not a heresy.

It's actually within orthodoxy to think that there is a restoration coming of some variety, even though that ranged among our spiritual forefathers.

And then the.

Real quick, the other things I wanted people to be aware of, this is more where the meat is, is that there is an emerging theology that I think seeks to reconcile with this sort of anti Jewish crusade on the part of some of these both left wing and now quote unquote right wing podcasters.

And that there, there's a few things, components to this and not everyone believes all of them, but I, I see them starting to rise.

One is that Jesus isn't really Jewish or we hedge on that.

We can, we, we have tolerance for people who say that, that we should be very clear that what the confessions and creeds actually do say about this when they talk about it, Jesus is definitely Jewish.

If anyone was Jewish, it was Jesus number two, the second coming.

This is a little less common, but I have seen people say things like Jesus returned in 70 AD.

Well, if that's the return of Christ, we have more confessional issues to deal with.

You could be a partial preterist and think that there's a lot of significance to that and everyone believes there was significance, but we're still waiting for the return of Christ.

The other thing is our ethics, our Christian ethics and our hermeneutics are being twisted by this, certain passages are being twisted.

To paint Jews as some ethnic Jews is like, like a new sin category.

They're just evil in a universal sense throughout all time because look at their over representation about industries and banking practices and so forth.

And they'll take verses like First John 2, First Thessalonians 2, Acts 2 and 3, or rather I should say Revelation 2 and 3.

And they'll twist these, these verses, verses about Gnostic heresy or, or verses about, you know, Jews who are persecuting Christians directly or preventing the spread of the Gospel.

And then they'll like take that, extrapolate it to a group that oftentimes they'll say aren't even Jews because they're either, they're Khazars or Edomites.

So it doesn't make any sense, but it changes our hermeneutic and I am concerned about that.

We do need to interpret scripture rightly.

And then whether you base this on the blessing, a cursing dynamic, the protection clause or not, we do have instructions in Scripture from Deuteronomy to not, not hate you.

Specific.

Like it literally says that we have Paul saying in Romans 11, do not boast against the branches.

There is a track record of people of the Old Testament who did those things and they got punished for it.

And I think people need to be aware.

Christians need to be aware.

Like look, whether you think that's part of the protection clause or not, we do have these moral instructions and we need to be aware of them.

And that means to.

If you want to know what I think about blessed, this is just John Harris's opinion.

I think blessing Israel means we give them the Gospel.

I don't think it necessarily means giving weapons and money, but it does mean we're neighborly and we, we certainly don't hate these people.

We shouldn't do that.

So we could go any direction.

I probably talk too much, but that's what I was trying to article.

That's what I'm defining.

And I think there needs to be definition, there needs to be clarity, there needs to be boundaries.

And so far it's been so muddy.

Yeah.

And I think the whole issue just hit on one thing you said.

As far as giving weapons and things like that, I don't see anyone coming out the same way when we help in warfare with Israel as with say Ukraine where we just.

We gave them billions of dollars with nothing in return.

Right.

So it I, we have to separate.

I think the issue between Israel as a nation, you know, if we're going to, if you Talk politics as a nation, like any other nation, versus, you know, Israel as a religious, you know, Judaism as a religious system and people that are offspring, you know, of Israel, the 12 tribes as an ethnicity.

And that's where I think this gets muddier than.

Because there's this different aspects when people say someone's Jewish or an Israelite or, you know, you gotta end up.

What do you mean by that?

So, but let me ask Joseph.

I'll start with you because I wanted.

Curious, both of you.

What do you see as the danger?

I mean, if.

So you get these people that are hating on Israel there.

I mean, I, I actually had someone that told me that someone had.

Someone said that the, that the Jewish people disappeared in 70 AD and yet they're in control of everything today.

And so this guy was asking me how could that be?

I said, well, it's very simple.

See, in 70 A.D. we built time machines, the Jewish people, so we, we all left to go into the future so we could figure out how to run everything right.

I mean it's, it's about as good of a response as what they're actually saying with this.

But it has, it's gotten dangerous.

And I'll.

I guess I'll just say where I've seen it and I think I've spoken to John about this.

I had a pastor, I don't.

I did not remember him, but he had said that I was in, in his church many years ago speaking, and he, he sent it, he sent an email to let me know that his church would no longer use our materials at striving for eternity or recommend it because I can't be saved because I'm an enemy of Christ, because I'm Jewish.

And I, you know, I, I probably should have saved that email just for the humor's sake, but I just, I like was like, yeah, delete.

I'm not even gonna be.

I didn't want to be tempted to respond to that because I knew any response just wasn't.

Wasn't going to go over well anyway, so.

But that's where I see a danger when you have people and I'm, I'm not thinking he's the norm, but he's following people that have gotten him to think this way.

And he may not be alone to think that Jewish people cannot even be saved.

It goes back to what you just said, John.

Like, okay, Jesus is Jewish or.

Right.

That's.

Should it be debatable.

But it seems to be debated now.

But Joseph, what do you see as the dangers with this.

Yeah, I think there's lots of dangers.

One is we're not to be tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine.

And so we are to always have our doctrine in line with what scripture says and with what God has said.

And so one of the dangers is.

Is replacing Christianity itself.

Again.

Sin is now embodied in one group of people.

I mean, I think we can all agree that people.

I would.

I mean we might not agree, but people groups have particular sins.

I think they're.

That they may be susceptible to and you know, families, just as families do and different locations do.

And so we.

Yeah, sin gets embodied in people.

But I don't think there's one particular people group that has the, that gets the be the definition of sin.

And then then once you start doing that, we start to see our problem is not sin, but Jews.

And if we can just get rid of Jews, we can solve all our problems.

And you know, you brought some stuff up about how they.

It gets muddy.

I think it gets muddy because we have both equivocation going on and the Moten Bailey.

So equivocation is.

The word Jew obviously can have multiple meaning.

It can mean someone who is an ethnic Jew who would be like yourself, who doesn't believe in Judaism.

And so.

But it could also mean a religious Jew.

And sometimes when we speak of Jew, we can, we can mean specifically an Israelite.

And by that I mean somebody who lives in Israel right now or we can speak of in.

In scripture terms somebody who's from Judah.

So there's all these different ways to define it.

And that's where bad actors come in and then they perform the moon Bailey.

So they'll talk about the Jews are the problem and all this stuff and being enemies.

And when you press them.

Well, I'm referring to Judaism.

I'm referring to the fact that it, it denies Jesus.

And you know, the, the.

The Talmud says Jesus is boiling and, and excrement.

And so I'm referring to that.

Well then how come you're using that to talk about this dude who says he believes in Jesus because he's not following Judaism.

He just happens to be an ethnic Jew.

And so there's like the moon Bailey they talk about in such a way that we're.

It leads you to believe.

What are we talking about?

Which, which part of Jew.

And then again you have the whole foolishness of the Khazars and you know, Jews were ending at 70 AD which then who rebelled in about 30 years after 70 AD and was destroyed when they destroyed Jerusalem the second time and then even after that.

What about all the Jews that were in the dysphoria who were, were living in Rome and got cast out of Rome at different times and, and different hands?

And then, and so this is the history there is just so screwed up.

So one of the dangers is you, you really fundamentally alter Christianity.

Another danger is just foolish thinking that leads you in all kind of conspiracy theories.

And I think it really moves you away from what the Apostle Paul says the purpose of his teaching and instruction was.

The purpose is love.

You know, even if Jews, secular Jews end up being an enemy of, of the.

Hang on one second.

Got interrupted by my little daughter here.

I was just enjoying seeing her in the background.

She was trying to get to your books.

So she's starting young.

She likes her daddy.

But even if ethnic Jews sometimes operate as some of them operate as enemies, right?

To, to America or to Christians, there's a fundamental difference between how God's people fight their enemies and the wicked fight.

I don't remember who said it, but the devil has soldiers and the devil hates his soldiers.

And he will seek to destroy his own soldiers even as he will use them to attack others.

Christians, we have a God who loves his soldiers and who teaches us also to love our enemies so that even when we fight our enemies and must resist them, we're always doing it for their good.

We're always doing it out of love.

In other words, we're not overcoming evil with evil, we're overcoming evil with good.

And so even if every Jew were just absolutely evil, it would still not behoove us to be filled with hatred and malice towards them because that's not what God calls us to.

We, we, if, if we have to oppose, we oppose communists and leftists, we oppose them because of our love, our love for our own people, but all, even our love for them, we oppose them and want to see them rescued out of danger.

And so any kind of Jew that we would like, the, the Jews that are enslaved to Judaism, the, the, the, the false teachings with that, our opposition to that is out of love.

Love for Christ, love for God's people, and then love for them to see them rescued out of it.

And I think the danger is young men who feel, I don't even know how young they are too.

I feel like that might be even a bad thing to say because some of these guys are like their 30s and 40s.

They're not really young, but they've been, they've been divorced, they've had problems and they, they feel and There's a lot of real problems as well in our culture that's been aimed at white men.

And so it's really easy then to just be bitter and angry.

And now you're looking for somebody to be bitter and angry with.

And then what you have is somebody like an, an Absalom who can sit in the gates and say, oh, if I was king, if I was king for the day, then all your problems would be solved.

Just listen to me and I'll tell you who all the bad people are.

And then we, we do.

If you followed me, if, if Nick Fuentes was president for a day, or Joe Webbin was president for a day, then the world would be made right.

And there's a fundamentally difference between that and David, King David, because if you go back before, David also brought to himself a lot of dissatisfied people.

You, you can read a lot of his soldiers, his mighty men were once people that Saul hunted down and were dissatisfied.

And they were not always the best.

David had to deal with the Joab.

There's a fundamental difference between how David took those people and pointed them to Jesus and led them, you know, pointed them to God and led them in the truth versus Absalom, who just led them into rebellion and to the destruction.

So those are the things.

If I had to summarize sin, foolish thinking, conspiracy thinking to move away from love as our, as our, our practice and a following after people who will actually end up costing you grifters, Absaloms, lead you into rebellion.

What do you think, John?

What, what do you see as.

As some of the dangers?

One of the things Joseph briefly touched on, that I want to expand on a little, is there's.

How would you expect love to be promoted if we were to love others?

What is the, what's the best thing we can do for them?

Well, we've been loved by Christ.

Introducing people to Christ is probably the most loving thing that I can do to someone who doesn't know Christ.

And that's actually specifically what Paul says was.

Or actually I should say Peter, because it's that actually in Acts 3, Peter says that God blessed.

And he's talking to Jewish people, that God blessed them with the, with repentance, essentially.

So that's what I want to bless Israel with.

And that's not people.

I'm not talking about the modern state.

I'm just talking about, you know, your Jewish neighbor, people who are Jewish, who are alive today and need Christ.

Some of them are Christians, ethnic Jews, but there's many who are religious Jews and Secular Jews and following even in other religions who need Christ.

And one of the things that's inspired me in even studying this issue is looking at the restoration movement, which we only.

They didn't know they were part of that movement.

We look back and we say those are the restorationists in Anglican, a little bit Presbyterian and then definitely Puritan circles.

Some somewhat, there's some, also some German pietism in there and some Dutch Reformed.

But after the Reformation, and I explained this in the paper because of, you know, a series of events leads to the Reformation and the Catholic Church is, especially the Franciscans and the Dominicans, they're kind of anti Jewish.

There's, they're sort of, it ebbs and flows the relationship that the church has, but by and large they're pretty tolerated compared to pre Christian pagan religions.

And there's, there is a, you know, a sort of a stress on conversion at times, but it's like, you know, Inquisition stuff.

So you get to the Reformation and people start reading scripture for themselves more and they start seeing things, they start recovering a more, I guess, for lack of a better term, literal way of looking at some of these passages.

And one of the things that gets rediscovered in a sense, because you see this in the early church a bit, but it gets, it definitely gets emphasized is, you know, we have a responsibility to evangelize these people.

And one of the cool stories, this.

I don't know if you knew this Andrew, but there were some German pietists who actually started this organization in London called the London Society for Promoting Christianity and Among the Jews.

Sorry, that's the full title.

Anyway, one of the guys who worked for them, Alexander McCall who lived in the early 1800s, he writes this book called the Old Paths, A comparison of the principles of the doctrines of Modern Judaism with the religion of Moses and the prophets.

And, and he says in the beginning of the book, he's like, I'm not going to do what some of those previous guys did who were just invective and like Jews wouldn't really even listen to them.

Like they were maybe behaving similar to some of the ways some people online behave.

He goes, I really want to show them where their Talmud is wrong and I'm going to use their scripture, I'm going to show them.

And so he does this and what emerges from it and he takes credit for it essentially is Reformed Judaism.

So he says, look, you got the Talmud's all wrong.

And so you have a bunch of Jews that say, oh snap, Alexander McCall is right, but we're Still Jewish.

What are we going to do?

I guess we'll ditch the Talmud.

And so you have reformed Judaism to this day, this form of Judaism that couldn't contend with the apologetics of Christians who were bent on trying to reach them.

Where's our Alexander McCall's today?

That's what I want to know.

If the Jewish people are such a problem and they're causing all these issues, I would expect Christians, especially pastors, to be promoting more heavily evangelism among the Jews.

That's what I don't see, though, that is missing from this equation.

I hardly see lip service to that.

It is constant, just berating this group of people in some of the most careless ways.

For all the problems, I have no problem, by the way, with pointing out, hey, secular Jews in American society, they vote Democrat, they've been involved in liberal and communist projects and things like that.

I have no problem pointing that out.

I think you should do it honestly, you know, talk, realize when they immigrated here and the movements that predated them that they're joining rather than starting, you know, be honest about what we're talking about.

But I have no problem with someone pointing.

I'm not afraid of facts.

No one's afraid of facts.

I, I, for example, influence in Hollywood, Jewish directors and much of their influence, secular Jews, we're talking about mostly here.

It's not been great, we can admit that.

But at the same time, we don't make, we don't universalize that and then just make it kind of our battering ram for every issue.

Every, every issue is this.

Without, especially without then saying, we need to go reach these people.

Who's gonna go, let's do the raise the hand in church.

Who's gonna go reach these people?

So I, I don't want to maybe harp anymore about that, but I feel like that is so neglected and it should be.

It's sort of a, a metric.

It's a barometer for the health of the church on this issue.

Like, even if everything else being said was right, which I don't think it is, but even if it was, that missing element says that we should be careful.

Something dangerous, in a sense, is happening here because we, we need to care about the people that don't know Christ.

You know, you mention, you did mention something earlier about what it means to bless Israel.

Right?

I, I think this is something we have to kind of dig into a bit.

Because you think about the Tucker Carlson interview with, well, he did one with Ted Cruz and he did one with Mike Huckabee.

And I've actually saw.

He seemed like he was a lot harder on those two guys than.

Than, you know, some of the really radical people he.

He has on.

But he honed in on this issue.

And I.

Now, I'm going to say this as someone who is, you know, of a Jewish descent and even made in Joseph's mind, even worse, a dispensationalist, but I, I do not think that.

And this is where I'm going to disagree with, with Huckabee and, and with Cruz.

I don't think there is a command to bless Israel.

I've.

I've tried to look at the passage they.

They had.

I don't think it's the.

Not at least in the way that they've used it, but this is the.

Oh, go ahead.

Sorry.

Yeah, this is where they, they hone in on.

All right.

They.

They really hone in like they somehow.

Because, I mean, that's what Cruz basically is like.

We have to bless Israel because it's a command from God.

So.

So my question for you is, do you think it's actually a command?

If so, what is that?

And, and if it's not, what is, what does it mean to bless Israel?

Well, I've been talking for a while.

Do you want to take that first, Joseph?

And yeah, we'll probably slightly disagree, so that might be fun.

Yeah.

So I do think it's a command, but I think that it's fulfilled in Jesus, most importantly, who is the true Israel and then the church.

And so I don't see it as a. I don't see it as a command.

For as Ted Cruz, you have to approve everything that the, the state in Israel does.

Because he.

Even if it was to say this, to say it was a command for what we would call Israel as separate from the church as Jews.

I still don't think blessing means agreeing at every single thing and supporting every single thing they ever do.

But I think it's mostly fulfilled in Christ and that those who curse the church, God will judge.

Those who bless the church will be blessed.

And so that's where I take it, as it is fulfilled in Christ.

Obviously, when it comes to Jews, then they are our neighbors in a sense.

John Calvin in A Good Samaritan, says that Jesus meant to teach us there that every single person is.

Is a neighbor, that anybody can be our neighbor.

Obviously, we have different duties depending on their connection to us.

And, you know, you have more responsibility to those who are closer.

But a Jew can be our neighbor.

And, and so we're commanded to love our neighbor as ourself.

And I already agree with you.

The greatest way to love our neighbor, whether a Jew, black, white, Mexican or whatever, is to proclaim the gospel of the Lord Jesus to them.

And then, and then I think so I would, I would just argue that's what we do.

We proclaim the gospel to them and that is blessing.

That's blessing somebody by teaching them the, the gospel.

And obviously if they refuse Jesus, they are not blessing Israel and they are cursing Jesus.

And so there'll be major problems for the person.

You know, the APostle Paul in First Corinthians, what's he in with a curse on those who, those who do not love Jesus and then Maranatha come quickly to judge quickly, but he also has a blessing for those who love Jesus.

So, so I think that's related to the hinge point.

It's Jesus.

What do you do with Jesus?

That's blessing and cursing.

So,.

Yeah, that's good.

I, I'm open to that interpretation and I think it's within orthodoxy.

I tend to think there is a principle.

I don't actually think it's a command.

It's more of a principle that I can agree with that.

Yeah, well, that's not really presented as a command.

Correct.

That's why I had such issue with what Ted Cruz said.

Yeah, yeah.

So it's a. I mean, obviously you want to be blessed, so I understand why people would think of it that way.

But surveying the scripture and then looking at church history on this issue, you know, pre modern state of Israel and, and actually pre 1900s, seems like there's actually not a lot said about this particular command.

So I did find some theologians who talk about it in different ways.

Like Justin Martyr, for example, thought it meant evangelizing Israel, evangelizing Jews.

And there were some restorationists who thought that.

There's also some who thought that it did mean.

And this is going back to like the 1700s.

Edward Bickerseth Steph thought this means helping them return to the land.

And he even says, look, I'm not saying they have a right to the land.

They're, they're disobedient to God, but maybe in this process of return things will come together.

And so we should assist in the, in gathering.

And he saw that as partially the land promise.

Edward Nicholas is another guy who believed it was the land.

And there was those who also thought a lot of Puritans thought this during the Whitehall Conference, that good treatment of Jews, treating them like neighbors.

That's what it means to bless.

So, you know, you look at this and there's also people who believe, like, I think Joseph Spurgeon would fit into this.

You know, it's not part of the blessing and cursing dynamic, but we have a duty to evangelize Jews.

So Origen, John Chrysostom, even Martin Luther would be in that category.

So I think no matter how you come down on this, you can base it on, base your evangelistic efforts on that dynamic and say, we're following this principle or you don't have to, but you're still doing the right thing.

It's still, I think, a perfectly valid category.

The reason I'll just briefly say from Scripture, I tend to lean towards, I think it's still in effect is this, it's not just in Genesis 12:3.

It's also in Genesis 27, 29 that it comes up numbers 24, 9.

And then you see an application of it in Obadiah 1 to Edom.

So the, the best example, I think is actually Balaam, which is in numbers 24.

They're not actually even in the land, they're entering the land and, and Balaam's paid to curse them.

And then instead God blesses them.

And is Baylock, I think, right, who told him to do it?

And then he says, no, they're going to be bigger than Agag, the biggest king in the area.

They're gonna have the land.

And he even foretells of the Messiah coming.

And it's, it's this great prophecy and that, and then it Genesis 12:3's promise, the protection clause is repeated again that, hey, those who bless you are going to be blessed.

Those who curse you're gonna be cursed.

I, I see these as like, at this point, we're talking about ethnic Israel.

They're not in the land yet.

They haven't possessed the land.

I, I, I would see this as Jews all over the world.

Now, could it be the church?

Sure.

Here's the thing, though.

It's not applied that way specifically in the New Testament.

I can't find a verse that says that the best you can do is Galatians says, hey, the, the New Israel.

The church is the New Israel.

However, the promises given to the church seem a little bit different.

It seems like there's a number of passages in the New Testament that say, you might have good behavior, but you're going to be persecuted.

Get ready for it.

Right.

Like, I don't see the same protection clause.

There's the, there's, there's protection in the Sense of, like a spiritual, like, God's always going to be with you and things like that.

But there's also this, like, you could be behaving well and still be enduring a fiery trial.

Whereas it seems like in the Old Testament, Israel's treated a little differently, especially under the Mosaic covenant.

So that's why I tend to think.

I think it's still in effect.

I think, and I would see parallels to that in Romans 11 to some extent, but Paul doesn't specifically even say in Romans 11 that this is the protection clause I'm talking about.

So there.

There's many, you know, interpretations that fit within orthodoxy on this topic, but I don't think you have.

You can't be certain of what Ted Cruz said.

What Ted Cruz said was the reason I support Israel, the nation state, is because of this verse.

And then Tucker goes after him, and Ted Cruz clarifies.

He's saying, no, it's not.

It's not the government.

It's the Jewish people.

So he's right about, okay, the Jewish people.

That's.

That's good.

But he still thinks that it's somehow sending them, having a partnership with them in a military way and trade, that these are the ways that.

That.

That is done.

I. I don't.

While they're in disobedience, I'm not.

I'm not convinced of that.

I think, you know, you do see blessings come down in the Old Testament for even.

Who is it not Artaxerxes, who's the first one that makes the decree, you know, go back to the land?

Why am I blanking?

Which king am I talking about?

You know who I'm talking about?

The Assyrian king who says, you know, go back to the land.

And Cyrus, Cyrus.

Thank you, Cyrus.

So Cyrus blesses them, and Cyrus is blessed in return.

All right.

You see, the same thing with Pharaoh, with Joseph.

And it's not 80 years until they repent.

So they're going back to the land.

They still haven't.

Ezra hasn't read the law.

They haven't repented.

And it's.

That's viewed as a blessing that God does bless him for.

So I don't think Ted Cruz is crazy.

I just don't.

I don't think that we can know that for certain based on what Scripture teaches.

I know what we can know for certain.

Blessing Jews is.

Is called evangelizing Jesus, called blessing them or share the gospel message in Acts 3.

And I know that it's prohibited to hate them or to boast against them.

So those things I Do know and I don't.

I think that the main thing we should be thinking about as Americans with our foreign policy is what is best for where we live, what makes sense for us strategically.

We should bless the city where we live in, no matter where we are in the world.

If we're a Christian and that means making good strategic decisions for our people, and if that means an alliance with Israel in some form, then sure, that's how I look at it.

Israel is a special place in many ways.

Many of our biblical sites are preserved there.

I've been to Muslim countries that don't preserve Christian sites.

Well, I'm thankful that Israel does that.

I'm thankful that they allow that.

I should say there's strategic reasons.

I think that an alliance can be mutually beneficial, but I don't justify it that way.

So that's my long answer.

So let me ask, you know, we've, we see that there's a danger.

I really think a key thing that seems to hinge for a lot of people is that issue of blessing.

But I'll start with you, Joseph, and, and then, John, I'll have you do that, answer this as well, and then wrap up with anything you, you want from your article.

But I, I guess the simple way of putting it, Joseph, is how do you fix the situation?

Right?

I mean, what, what can we do?

How should Christians be viewing both Israel and the situation where everyone's hating on Israel?

It's a good question.

You know, I think we have to think rightly, we have to think truthfully.

I think there's a danger of like the Ted Cruz position leads to the other, the position that we're talking about today.

I think there have been some, a lot of, kind of famous, you might celebrity Christians that talk about Jews as if they are going to get into heaven in some special way.

There's some way apart from Christ, I think.

And I think we've been hesitant to call out when they act wickedly.

Of course, you know, we should, we should be free to call anybody that acts out wickedly for what they do.

And so, you know, you should be able to notice the things that you notice.

I mean, the early life part of Wikipedia, if people still use Wikipedia.

But like, so when Jews do evil, yeah, they're doing evil, that's to be opposed.

I don't think it's their ethnicity causing that.

I think it's the sinful nature of man that we have that is in all men that causes evil.

And anybody that's, that is in opposition to Christ is going to find themselves committing evil and it's going to be difficult and bad for the land.

But I think we, I think we should be able to speak to the truth.

We don't have to become, you know, blind.

We don't have to be afraid of the, the ADLF and those kind of things.

But so speaking truthfully about it, I think we can even honestly speak through.

I would like to at some point ask John's opinion because as he's done history about, you know, John Chrysostom and Martin Luther obviously are pointed to as guys that wrote pretty harshly, even John Calvin pretty harshly against Jews.

And, and you know, I've read those works.

I think I agree with what they're saying.

Maybe not always the tone, but even, you know, I, I get their, what they're saying.

What, what I don't see Calvin doing or Luther or John Chrysostom is making Jews the thing they were writing about a real problem and they're dealing with it.

But it's not when it comes at the end of the day, what we know Martin Luther for is not his opposition to Jews, but his love for faith like, and the proclamation of the faith.

And of course he did oppose Jews when it was necessary, so we should be able to do that.

But so speaking truthfully that way is important.

And then also coming back, what does Scripture teach?

And again I would argue that the scriptures teach that all men are born with a sinful nature.

And the, the cure for that is the gospel of the Lord Jesus.

And so we need to proclaim that we need to live that out.

We also need to be taught that our doctrine serves a purpose which is love.

This is what the apostle Paul tells Timothy and it's the difference between a godly pastor and false teachers.

False teachers speak about the law, about things they don't know, and they bind people up and it's all really to what serve their own purposes for their own gain.

And, and so any truth where it's, whether it's truths about Jews, truths about the patriarchy which you know, I have that podcast and believe in, or truths about civil government, they are all as a, from a Christian must serve the purpose of love.

And people can grab onto those truths and twist them to serve their own purposes.

And so I think we, we be reminded what is our, what is our goal.

It's love and it's clean with a clean conscience and sincere faith.

Like that comes from the word of God and that's going to teach us to love our enemies.

You can't Disregard Jesus's commands if you're a follower of Jesus.

And of course, love for enemy doesn't mean letting them do whatever the heck they want to do.

There's all kinds of ways that that gets twisted, but love is action, but it also comes from a heart that does genuinely love, and that's very hard to do with our enemies.

It's probably the hardest commandment Jesus gives us, and yet he enables us to do it because we were his enemies and he loves us.

And so if Jesus can love me and God can love me and forgive my sins and my wickedness, and Jesus can die for me, there's nothing that a Jew has done to me that I haven't already spit in God's face and done to him.

So then I should be able to forgive, I should be able to love, I should be able to proclaim the gospel and, and, and truthfully stand for the truth.

Manfully stand for the truth.

Amen.

So you want me to hop in there, Andrew?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was great.

I, I think Joseph has a good pastoral sensibility about all this, which is like why I like hearing him talk about it and why I think people who get into this who are Christians especially, well, even if they're not, should listen to what he has to say.

Because there is a heart matter here that oftentimes, I mean, like you said, oftentimes they're his.

And I found this to be the case myself.

I'm not saying because I don't know everyone's heart.

It's every time.

But oftentimes there's a brokenness of some kind, a sin, problem in the past, element of shame, just a lack of stability.

And.

I don't know, there's a lot of guys who have questions about things going wrong in their life who end up in this place, and it doesn't help them any.

And so we love people, even people who don't like us.

You know, we, we love them.

And, and so that's.

Nothing else would motivate you to, to talk about this subject because you get punished online pretty quickly for bringing it up in this environment.

I'll talk briefly about John Chrisostom and Martin Luther, since Joseph brought it up.

So I have this book here.

This is a book I read in, I think, 2017 or 2018.

Well, you gotta give the title for folks, since this is.

It's called John Chrysostom and the Jews, Rhetoric and Reality in the late 4th century by Robert L. Wilkin.

It's a great book.

I don't Remember all of it.

I was doing a class at the time.

I think it was my Holocaust class, actually.

I did a graduate program, studies in Holocaust, and my final was on Martin Luther and trying to answer the question, to what extent did he inspire the Nazi party?

Were his views connected?

Because that's the.

The claim you often hear.

Anyway, I looked into John Chrysostom, too, and I read this book.

And let me just read for you.

This is in the introduction, and it talks.

It says, john Chrysostom's writings on the Jews have been called the most horrible and violent denunciations of Judaism to be found in the writings of a Christian theologian.

This judgment is based on a series of sermons preached in the city of Antioch, where John was a presbyter at the end of the fourth century.

These sermons, eight in all and delivered over the course of two years, were directed at.

Listen to this.

Christians in his congregation who are participating in Jewish festivals and taking part in other Jewish observations.

So this is what I want to say.

The context of John Chrysostom is Christians in your flock who are being tempted to participate in Jewish religious rituals.

And so he takes aim at Judaism.

That's what's going on there.

If you can certainly, like Joseph was saying, you can switch out what a Jew means.

Is it religious?

Is it ethnic?

What are we talking about?

And people who hate ethnic Jews can certainly take a passage from Chrysostom and say, see, this is part of the Christian tradition, as they do.

But if you look at what he's saying in context and his concern for his flock, he's got a particular situation.

And I think if any of us were in a similar situation, we would be doing something similar.

As far as not saying we'd use all the same language, but we would be trying to show people where the lines are with this, that Judaism, especially at the time he's writing and it's developing, this is participating in that is.

This is not Christianity.

You're.

You are now participating in a different kind of religion.

And now here are the lines.

Here's what you can do, here's what you shouldn't do.

Here's what's unwise.

Like, that's what a good pastor does for his congregation.

He doesn't want them.

Conversation, converting.

So that's John Chrysostom.

It was like the Hebrew roots movement of his day is what he was dealing with.

That's exactly what I was thinking.

It would be like addressing the Hebrew roots.

Yeah, yeah, great, great point, Joseph.

So Martin Luther is a little bit Similar to that, Martin Luther starts out with a lot of optimism and he talks about Jewish evangelism and he encourages it.

He even talks about a future restoration of the Jews.

He actually writes a book called that Jesus Christ was born a Jew.

Today he would be called online.

He would be.

People would say he's Jesus, juking everyone for reminding them that Christ is a Jew.

But he wrote a whole book on it.

And then what happens is a few things.

There's tension with the Turks and there's suspicion that, you know, the Jewish people are trading with them.

And that's not a good thing because, remember, the Jews aren't the biggest villain at that time.

The Muslims, specifically the Turks, are the biggest villain at that time.

So.

And this is most of medieval Europe.

They're very worried about this religion that has taken over half of their domain.

So Martin Luther is looking at the Jews suspiciously.

Everyone is.

I mean, most people, from what I understand, because of that, asking where their loyalties are.

Then his.

His daughter also dies the.

In 1542, which is devastating to him, and he tries to evangelize the Jews and they don't repent.

So these.

These are the three main things that come together.

In 1543, he publishes on the Jews and their lies.

This is the least circulated, from what I understand pamphlet that he ever made.

People didn't read it.

It wasn't really known until aspects of it were resurrected in the late 1800s for the German bulk movement.

But his critiques are also along the lines of religion.

Conversion is an option in Martin Luther's scheme.

They can avoid all the things that he thinks should happen to them if they remain in their false religion, if they just convert to Christianity.

Also, one of the interesting thing is before Martin Luther died, days before he died, he preaches a sermon.

And in that sermon he says he talks about the necessity of treating Jews with Christian love to pray for them so that they might become converted and receive the Lord.

So you see, throughout his life, even after publishing on the Jews and their lies, and let's face it, Martin Luther had things to say about Anabaptists, the Pope, I think there's an old George Straight song called I Hate Everything.

I think that's about Martin Luther.

You know, he.

You can just cherry anything.

He could probably be, you know, just swearing at a gnat in his office.

That's just kind of his temperament, which is part.

I love Martin Luther, but he's.

I feel like he'd be a hard friend to have, but at the end of his life, he he never gave up with evangelizing them.

And I think that's something that people should take into account when they're thinking of Martin Luther.

His critiques are about religious Judaism, not Jews ethnically.

You know, he's not DNA stuff and Hitler stuff.

Right.

This is, this is a false religion and we still need to convert them.

That's the, the main thing.

So, so John, just to wrap up, what do you think?

I mean what is the solution?

How should we view Israel?

Anything from your article?

Like you said, you want to wrap some things up?

I'll give you my opinion.

So my.

So Martin Lloyd Jones thought 1967, hey, this is.

Jesus talked about this.

Jesus said the time of the gentiles, Israel will be underfoot or Jerusalem until the time of the gentiles is complete.

And then presumably there's a return to Jewish control.

Martin Luther and says, hey, I think this is happening.

Jordan just lost a war.

Israel now controls Jerusalem.

Of course they don't control all of Jerusalem because the Dome of the Rock, the main central point that they of religious significance is still controlled by Jordan.

But he thought that there's something significant about this.

And I actually quoted two dispensationalists who disagreed with him.

Those are the only two I quoted in my paper.

Who, who did I quote?

I think I have it on the slides here.

I quoted J. Vernon McGee and Charles Ryrie.

Both of them were saying, look, we can't say this is the end gathering.

It's they haven't returned to God yet.

So what do you do?

The in gathering that we are thinking is going to happen is going to be a return to Christianity, a return to Christ looking on him, those him who they had pierced and repenting and mourning.

So without that happening, can you say this is the end gathering?

And so here's my opinion.

I don't think you can.

I don't think you can positively say this is the end gathering or this is a legitimate return to the land necessarily.

Now looking back at the first return took 80 years to get to the point of repentance.

I think we should always be hoping for their repentance, but I don't know, could they be scattered again and then like, who knows?

I mean my, my druthers.

This is just like my opinion.

I, I tend to think historical circumstances are incredible.

Think about just a few things.

England starts going down this path.

Other countries aren't going down this path like England is, but England starts going down this path of we should love the Jews and they should, they should go Back to their, their ancestral homeland.

Well, they couldn't do anything about that.

Oh, they win World War I, we would have never heard about the Balfour Declaration.

But we win World War I and all of a sudden guess who controls that area?

Oh, Britain.

The one country that was saying Jews should return.

Okay.

Then they immediately everyone's like, well they're going to lose.

They're going to, you know, everyone backs away.

1948, They win.

Then was it 1956 then 1967, the 1973, the infant.

I can't even say the word infitata or whatever.

It's.

Yeah.

And then what's happened now I'm amazed, I'm, I'm truly amazed that they have held on this little bitty country.

Overwhelmed.

So I look at that and I say, I suspect I don't believe things are happenstance.

God.

God is allowing this in his providence.

There's something that seems significant about this.

What that is leading to I don't know but, and I'm not going to try to try to force it into something.

I'm just going to leave it open ended and say, lord, I want you to convert the Jewish people.

Many of them, half of them now are in this ancestral homeland and I hope that you're doing something to prick their hearts so that they will look on the one that they pierced and converted.

And that's my heart.

Yeah.

And I agree with you.

I mean I, this seems odd people think for me to say especially as being both Jewish and dispensational.

But 1948, I don't know if that it was fulfillment of prophecy.

I won't know till after the prophecy is fulfilled.

When Christ comes back, we'll find out.

But Israel could be wiped out and you know, be run by Muslims in a thousand years from now, you know, come back like even as a dispensationalist, you, we, we have to be careful not to read our Bible through the lens of the newspaper because it's a really bad way to read the Bible.

And so I, I folks, I, you know there's been lots of, just lots of discussion in podcasts and in, you know, by Christian pastors about Israel.

It has been a, A, a struggle for, for some, you know, I'll encourage folks to go back when on my Apologetics Live podcast.

This is some, some time ago, maybe a year ago with my co hosts who are both covenantal, both would be a thought they walking into it that when we talked about Israel they were figured okay, we're gonna, they were gonna very Much disagree with me.

And we sat down, they were like, wow, we're in complete agreement with your views on Israel.

And I, I think that we do need to take a little bit of time to hear people out, but we do need to figure out the.

As, as Joseph said, we got to figure out what people mean when they say Israel and Jewish.

Because I think a lot of what's happening is people are talking past one another and we're not going to get anywhere if, if we do that.

So, John, Joseph, I, I appreciate you guys, appreciate your, your, your ministries, appreciate what you guys are doing, even if one's a Presbyterian.

No.

So, you know, for that we're going.

To baptize an extra baby this week.

Yeah.

With it, you know, you're talking about, you know, families precondition to sins.

And I was just going to go like, so with a name like Spurgeon, are you preconditioned to have a cigar?

Just, you know, just wondering.

I will have one this evening.

So, you know, I, I appreciate you guys coming on.

This is a needful topic.

I will have John's article list linked in the podcast, so go read it.

It's a thorough document.

He also had in his.

In a recent episode of Conversations that Matter.

I think it was a sermon that you did somewhere.

Sounded like a presentation.

Present church.

Yeah.

Just said, look, you know, if you want to come back tonight, we're trying to resurrect this evening service thing.

I said, I'll, I'll answer any of your questions to the best of my ability about this topic.

And you know, one thing I'll say real quick, Andrew, too, I don't like the, the term I'm using, really.

I. Anti Jewish theology or ideology.

I just don't know what to call it.

Right.

Because I, I am anti, like Judaism in a sense.

Right.

Like all of us are like, we believe in Christ, so rejecting the first coming of Christ we don't agree with, but I just don't know what else to call it.

So I just, I did want to give that caveat.

If people have a critique of my title, give me a better one.

Yeah, yeah, no, I think we agree.

I think Rabbinic Judaism is anathema to, to the biblical Judaism and to the gospel.

So.

100.

Yeah.

And so with that, folks, that's a wrap.