How can that be? – Such will probably be most folks’ reaction to the title of this essay. Aren’t they the States passing laws to ban transgender mutilations and abortions, to crack down on crime, to acknowledge God in some way in public schools, etc.? That is true, and for those good things they should be praised. But unfortunately that is not all they are doing.
They are also granting special privileges to the Jewish people, privileges that they would not consider giving to Christians, Hindus, Muslims, or any other religious group. South Dakota is the latest State to do this. Gov. Kristi Noem issued the following statement upon signing an antisemitism law:
Ensuring the Security of God’s Chosen People
By: Governor Kristi Noem
March 8, 2024
When I was growing up, my dad would always gather our family together and we would pray for Israel. It was instilled in me from a very young age that the Jews were Gods [sic] chosen people, that Israel was the Holy Land, and that we should always pray for them.
I brought those fundamental ideals with me when I was in the State Legislature, when I served in Congress, and now as Governor of South Dakota. Supporting the State of Israel and our Jewish community has always been extremely important to me. It’s important to support Israel for spiritual, historical, and national security reasons. I am continuing to stand with the Jewish people by signing historic legislation to protect them from antisemitism.
. . . I was very proud to sign HB 1076, a very important bill to combat antisemitism. This bill defines antisemitism and makes it easier to prove when discriminatory conduct is motivated by antisemitism. It is an impactful piece of legislation that will ensure the safety of Jewish people and strengthen South Dakota’s anti-discrimination laws.
. . . I hope that more states across our great nation will follow this example that we are setting here in South Dakota. It is more important now than ever for our nation’s leaders to stand up and fight against antisemitism. We must always work to ensure the security of God’s chosen people.
HB 1076 uses the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which includes these points:
– Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.
– Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group, or even for acts committed by non-Jews.
– Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust).
– Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.
– Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.
– Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
– Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
– Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.
– Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
– Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.
Many of those lines seem incompatible with notions of free speech, religious freedom, academic freedom, etc., that the peoples of the States have grown accustomed to. Nevertheless, laws favoring Jewish people have now been passed in 38 States, the majority of them of the Red variety.
They are no doubt well-intentioned, believing they are standing up for a persecuted group of people, but as Gov. Noem shows, they are basing their view on a false theology – dispensationalism – which proclaims the Jewish people, and not the Orthodox Church, as God’s chosen people.
And this has opened the door for the Red States to welcome Antichrist when he comes, for he will likewise be a great benefactor of the Jewish people. An Orthodox archpriest, Fr. Boris Molchanoff, notes:
‘According to the teaching of the holy Fathers, the Devil, raising up Antichrist, will strive to vest his advent with all the signs of the coming of the Son of God on earth . . . . As the Lord was pleased to reveal Himself to all men as the Messiah in His triumphal entry into Jerusalem and its temple, so also will the Antichrist reveal himself as the false messiah of the Jews, the monarch of the whole world, in the triumphal ceremony of his entrance into Jerusalem and his enthronement in the temple which, by that time, will have been restored’ (Antichrist, St. John of Kronstadt Press, Liberty, Tenn., p. 3). St. Ephraim the Syrian (+4th century) says that he will ‘valu[e] the Jewish people in particular’ (p. 5).
Fr. Boris notes further:
The initial phase of this plan [of the Antichrist to attain worldwide power—W.G.] will be the achieving of popularity among the Jews. The Antichrist will put forth every effort to induce the Jews to acknowledge him as their promised messiah. He will be successful in establishing a Jewish realm and will undertake also the restoration of the Temple of Solomon, realizing a dream the Jews have cherished for thousands of years. Then, “compelled by the people, he shall be proclaimed king. And the Jewish people shall love him much, and he shall reach Jerusalem and raise up their Temple” (Lenten Triodion, loc. cit.) (Antichrist, p. 6).
How are the Red States, who are terribly concerned with showering favors upon the Jewish people, going to defend themselves against the wiles of Antichrist, who will be doing exactly what the Red States themselves are doing right now? Will they not applaud him and befriend him? They will be helpless.
The monks of Holy Trinity Monastery in New York note also that Antichrist will decree that the Jewish customs be kept by all: ‘The triumph of Judaism will be great, for there will be the command to celebrate the Jewish sabbath and follow the Jewish law’ (Apostasy and Antichrist, Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville, NY, 1992, p. 40).
But the practices and faith of the Orthodox Church he will attempt to stamp out:
Antichrist will be an obstinate enemy of Christ. He will disparage all of Christ’s actions and teaching, and criticize miracles, and will attempt to ruin God’s Law; he will renounce baptism, anointing with holy oil, Communion and the remaining sacraments. The holy martyr Hippolytus in his discourse about the end of the world says: “During the time of Antichrist the offering of the bloodless sacrifice to God shall be halted; God’s churches will be demolished, shall be turned into dens of robbers and indecent stables; psalm chanting shall not be heard, for every rank and all church splendor shall become extinct.” . . . Antichrist will command all to be circumcised and to worship on Saturdays. Being accepted by the Jews as the Messiah, he himself will accept everything that is Jewish . . . (Archimandrite Panteleimon, Ray of Light: Instructions in Piety and the State of the World at the End of Time, Michael Hilko translator, Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville, NY, 1996, p. 57).
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All of these things – the rejection of the Holy Mysteries (sacraments) and the other miraculous aspects of Orthodox life, the embrace of Jewish customs – are quite in line with the beliefs of many Red State Protestants. Not to pick on John Hagee, but he is typical of this part of Red State religion:
John Hagee, the founder of Christians United for Israel, is perhaps the most famous Christian Zionist alive today. He is also an enthusiastic Judaizer. He has embraced Jewish symbols, including prayer shawls, anointing oils, and Hebrew-language singing (his church’s choir ventures into Jewish folk music, including “Hava Nagila”).
Hagee is also an avid supporter of Israel. Rejecting what he calls “replacement theology” that teaches Christianity and Judaism are opposed, with the church superseding the Jews in God’s plans in the first century, he insists, “The only theology God ever created was Judaism.” The State of Israel, still in covenant with God, deserves full Christian support, Hagee believes.
So central is Christian support for Israel that Hagee regards it as a decisive issue for salvation. “Israel is not a ‘take it or leave it’ subject,” Hagee wrote in 2002. “It is a life and death matter – eternal life!”
When he founded Christians United for Israel in 2006, he identified “Christian antisemitism” – by which he meant replacement theology and a general Christian hesitancy to embrace Judaized Christian teachings – as one of the leading threats to Israel’s security.
But for Hagee, as for most Pentecostal Judaizers, politics are a consequence of a more fundamental reevaluation of the Christian faith as deeply tied to Jewish history.
“Jesus was a rabbi,” Hagee insists in his 2007 book, In Defense of Israel, “and the basis of His teaching was consistent with Hebrew scriptures, or the Torah.”
The extent to which this logic will permeate the fastest growing segment of Christianity will influence the future of Jewish-Christian relations, and Israel and the United States, in coming years (Jerusalem Post).
Even Red State Protestant figures who show more level-headedness than Mr. Hagee, like Pastor Doug Wilson of Idaho, have shown Judaizing tendencies.
And there is also the case of the Texas Protestant rancher who sent five red heifers to Israel to help re-establish the Jewish temple:
Byron Stinson has always been a man of strong faith.
And recently that faith came into play for a mission. Jewish faith leaders he knew needed a red heifer to replicate a ceremony depicted in the Bible.
“I felt like it was my duty as a Texan to go out and look around Texas and see if I could find some completely red, pure red cows that fulfill the requirements of the red heifer and, if I could, then try to ship them here to Israel,” Stinson told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Stinson, of Glen Rose, didn’t just find one heifer. He found five.
Those five, perfectly unblemished red heifers landed in Israel in September 2022, a feat that cost around $500,000 when you factor in the first-class plane tickets for rabbis to come examine the heifers and the American Airlines trip to Israel.
They’re now being taken care of at a secure location, and Stinson and others hope to hold the ceremony they’ll be used for during Passover in 2024. Stinson runs a nonprofit called Boneh Israel that helps build up and revive Biblical sites.
The goal of the whole ceremony is unity, Stinson said in a video interview from Israel Wednesday.
“Why search for a cow?” an excerpt from Boneh Israel’s website reads. “These Red Heifers can bring world peace! The bible teaches us, that the key for building the Third Temple (the House of Prayer for All the Nations) is purifying us with the red heifer in Jerusalem.”
We do not support mindless criticism of Jewish people or violence against them or etc. Here at the South, we’ve always gotten along well with Jewish folks, with some even serving in high office (e. g., Judah Benjamin, who served in the Louisiana State Legislature, then as US Senator from Louisiana, and also AG, Sec. of War, and Sec. of State for the Confederacy). But the Red States of today have gone well beyond showing Christian neighborliness to well-meaning Jewish people. They have descended into satanically inspired prelest/plani/delusion that will only make the enthronement of Antichrist easier. They are, in fact, already doing – voluntarily – some of the things that Antichrist will command all men to do (keeping the Jewish laws, denouncing practices of the Orthodox Church, etc.).
Will they repent before it is too late? Will they be united to the true Israel, the Orthodox Church? One can only hope and pray.
–Walt Garlington is an Orthodox Christian living in Dixieland. His writings have appeared on several web sites, and he maintains a site of his own, Confiteri: A Southern Perspective.
An excellent book to read related to this topic is “Surprised by Christ” by Rev. A. James Bernstein, an Orthodox Priest who grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family. Here, he autobiographically describes his spiritual journey for Truth and the amazing fulfillment of his Orthodox Jewish roots in becoming an Orthodox Christian. I learned a lot about the theology of my own faith in these pages, and I highly recommend this book to everyone.
The answer to the question is simple. Every Protestant denomination exists because of a misinterpretation of one or more key original scriptural phrases into English, and because of the dogma of “selective Theology”, where one focuses on the misinterpretation that fits a “twisted theological narrative”, and ignores dozens of other scriptural references that clearly oppose this “twisted interpretation”…
In this case of the so-called “Evangelical phenomenon” showing blind support for Israel, the root cause is a combination of stepping upon 3 “theological banana peels”:
1) A misinterpretation of the dogma/teaching surrounding “salvation by faith alone” combined with
2) A misinterpretation of the dogma/teaching/understanding surrounding “the Rapture”…combined with
3) A twisted understanding that “human intervention” can possibly accelerate the building of the 3d Temple in Jerusalem that will somehow in turn accelerate the 2nd Coming of Christ (and the Rapture)
So in a twisted way, it makes “twisted, logical sense” that if you feel you are “already saved” that “there is no reason to wait for the Lord”, and you “have the power” to accelerate the 2nd Coming, and the Rapture…
Of course, this “twisted selective Theology” ignores the clear Scriptural reference that “Nobody knows the hour of the 2nd Coming…”
I agree with you Marcos, but it’s even simpler than your three points. Protestants believe that the Holy Spirit has inspired Holy Scripture (which the Orthodox also believe) and also inspires the interpretation of the Scriptures. If the Holy Spirit is God, also called the Spirit of Truth, how is it possible for the Holy Spirit to inspire different interpretations of Holy Scripture? The answer is: it does NOT do so. There is only one correct and God-inspired interpretation of Scripture, and that can only be found in the original Church that was instituted by Christ and His Apostles. This true Christian mindset/understanding, which was handed down and taught orally, as well as by Holy Scriptures, was explained by the Holy Fathers and Holy Synods, who all agreed with one another, evidence that their interpretations were (and still are) correct because the Holy Spirit cannot disagree with Himself. This original Church is the Orthodox Church. Our job is to hold on to these teachings, despite black sheep like Elpidophoros. People like him existed in every era and do not define Orthodoxy.
Red state, blue state are just terms to distract us from the fact that we’re ruled by a uniparty that absolutely hates our Lord and hates us.
If holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel
is antisemitism, then criticising those actions is not.
Judah Benjamin was thought to be the genius of the Confederate States. David Yulee from Florida, Jew who converted to the Episcopal church, also served as CSA Sec. of the Navy. Over 10,000 Jewish men served in the Confederate military.
A Must Read:
How to Understand the Jews as Being a Chosen People An Orthodox Analysis Orthodox Wisdom
Religion
Are the Jews, even in light of Christ’s death and resurrection, still in some way the chosen people of God? If so, how should we understand them and their role in God’s providence? Who are the true Jews and what role do Jews and Judaism have in the prophesied rise of Antichrist?
Note from Metropolitan Vitaly (+,2006) Chief Hierarch of ROCOR, 1986-2001:”The author of the following article lives in Russia. We received it some years back. The whole tone of the article in composes, discrete, and sober. Its ideas are profound, clear, and in complete agreement with the teaching of the Orthodox Church and the Holy Fathers.”
This article is found in Orthodox Life, Vol. 41, No. 4, Jul-Aug 1991. Orthodox Life is the journal of Holy Trinity Monastery and Seminary in Jordanville, NY, USA.
-READ the article here:
https://orthodoxlifemagazines.blogspot.com/
-FIND an Orthodox parish and monastery near you:
https://orthodoxyinamerica.org/
_______
Quotes from this article:
If the Old Testament is understood as a foreshadowing, then one sees that the true Jews of the Old Testament are a foreshadowing of Christians, since all true Jews of the Old Testament are a foreshadowing of Christians, since all true Jews of the Old Testament lived spiritually in expectation of Christ the Savior, the Messiah. On the other hand, their enemies in the Old Testament are a foreshadowing of contemporary Judaism, that is, those who either consciously or unconsciously confess the Jewish religion, the very foundation of this religion being a rejection of Christ [Once one accepts the Christian Gospel, traditional Judaism loses its validity]. The Jewish religion which accepts Christ is the Christian religion.
The first decree, the covenant with the Jewish people made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, is never revoked, and therefore, in remaining a “special, different” people, since they do not accept Christianity, they repudiated their being the chosen people of God.… Even those Jews who do not accept Christianity, being infected by the bacillus of anti-Christianity, manage to preserve their identity supported by the Old Testament covenant. For this reason the hope of the Jews for universal supremacy is not in vain. This people will be preserved through all times; they will not be exterminated nor will they disintegrate.
This Jewish materialistic approach openly and more subtly, under the appearance of various social theories and philosophical systems, encroaches upon the consciousness of Christians, breaking down Christian nations. In particular the penetration into the Christian consciousness of this Judaistic idea explains many heresies, the rise of Islam, the substitution of Christianity with humanism, altruism, Marxism, and separatist nationalism.
What common denominator do some people seek in order to equalize black and white, Christianity and Judaism? — Judaism being a deified materialistic philosophy of earthly justice, worldly good, earthly freedom, and worldly well-being. Just as the deification of one’s aspiration for all that which is worldly comes from Judaism, for the Christian that which is worldly is used only in so much as it is necessary in one’s striving for the spiritual. It therefore follows that those who strive to equalize Judaism and Christianity, black and white, using the worldly as a basis, allow the spirit of Judaism to conquer them. In other words, having exchanged Christian spiritual goals for worldly ones, those that call themselves Christians lose that which distinguishes them from Jews and thus seek a union with Judaism, [perhaps unconsciously] rejecting Christ. They become co-workers in preparing for the kingdom of Antichrist.
Doxa to Theo, John D
South Africa have had the courage to take the Israelis to task for their genocide of the Palestinian people of Gaza. The rest of the world is strangely quiet. I wonder why?
What genocide? They’re in a war.
The killing of 30,000 unarmed civilians constitutes a war? A war is between armies: soldiers in combat.
This is quite true. What you see in Ukraine is a war. The Ukrainians have an army in the field and have air defenses. The Russians may be winning, but they are not slaughtering defenseless Ukrainians. Gaza is not a war. It is a mass murder.
Yes indeed. And a cynical land grab.
I recently finished Donald M. Lewis’s “A Short History of Christian Zionism” (2021) and it substantially corroborates what is set forth above.
There is one major exception, as set forth in Chapter 8 of the above-referenced book, pp. 132-165. Christian Zionism and/or its precursor Restorationism preceded dispensationalism. The founder of dispensationalism, John Nelson Darby (1800-1882), was not a Christian Zionist. Darby held that God had two peoples; His earthly people, the Jews, and His Heavenly people, the Church. Per Darby, the Church age is simply a parenthesis or interruption between God’s dealings with Jews, running from the time when the Jews rejected Christ, to the time of the pre-tribulation rapture, when God will remove all true Christians from the earth.. Per Darby, then, and only then, after the rapture, will the Jews retake the Promised Land. Darby was down on Christian political activism as a whole, and there is no indication that he thought Christian could or should help Jews retake and keep the Promised Land before the rapture. Per Darby, in the eternal state, God would continue to have two peoples, the Church in Heaven, and the Jews on earth. Pretty wild stuff, huh? God has two brides? Hmm.
It was William E. Blackstone (1841-1935), America’s first quintessential Christian Zionist, who reconciled dispensationalism to an activist version of Christian Zionism, wherein Christians should aid Jews in retaking and keeping the Promised Land, even before the rapture. It was Blackstone’s version of dispensationalism that became very popular and ultimately prevailed.
All of this was even before Theodor Herzl (1860-1904) founded the rise of modern Jewish Zionism. Herzel was at least a non-religious, non-practicing Jew, and may have been an atheist. Jews had traditionallly taught that they had to wait for God to provide a Messiah to conduct them back to the Promised Land. Modern Jewish Zionism held that Jews shouldn’t wait for God to provide a Messiah, that they should take matters into their own hands. Hence, Jewish Zionism was initially met with great scepticism and resistance among Jews. It was not until after World War II that a solid majority of Jews worldwide favored Jewish Zionism.
The author of the above article does well to note the increasing syncretism perpetrated by Christian Zionists. Lewis’s above referenced book notes the most shocking development:
“These [i.e., Christian Zionist Pentecostalists & other renewalists] all have worked to place Israel, and symbolically Jerusalem, at the center of the renewalist imagination. [So much for Jesus Christ being at the center! Ross] This fascination with the Jews has also spawned interesting Judaizing groups, such as the Noahides, who have persuaded some evangelicals in the Phillipines to forsake their Christian profession and become affiliated with Judaism as ‘Sons of Noah.'” (Lewis, “A Short History of Christian Zionism” (p. 343; footnotes omitted).)
Thanks to the author for writing the article and to the publisher for publishing it.