Judaism's Interaction & Relationships With Christianity
Vern Peterman · Nov 16, 2003
Church History, No. 20
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4826230291525

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Today we get a really fun subject. We're looking at Judaism's interaction and relationship with Christianity. And this one, as I was looking at it, I said, man, this isn't just, yeah, this is objective information, but on the other hand, this is something, this is near and dear to the Lord's heart, isn't it? You look at the Lord and His relationship with the Jews and see what the Lord has done and how He's been faithful at the same time. It's also a heart-rending thing in a sense because you see how those who in the name of Christianity did different things to the Jews or with the Jews.

It's one of those things that pulls you real hard both ways. It's an amazing thing. Let's take a look at it here. One of the things to recognize, we brought this up early. This is like two years ago when we were studying through Revelation. We brought this up early.

In Deuteronomy, there are a series of places in 26 through about the end of the book that tells in advance, through Moses, what's going to happen to Israel. So look at all these passages. It's like the last Few chapters, this is the last words Moses has to tell these people. And what does he do? He weaves throughout the entire last few chapters just bombs of this is going to happen to you, and this is going to happen, and this is going to happen. And so what we see is that is playing out.

Here we have this thing written 3,400 years ago, and we see it playing out now, and it's not quite done. And as a matter of fact, we'll all be gone, guaranteed, if you're a believer. We will all be gone before it's done. We'll all be off this place. And so this is an amazing thing to look at. We'll see this in evidence as we step through these next slides. One slide that you have there on your printout here is just a distinction.

Here's the broad history of Judaism. Here's at 1400 BC, here's Moses giving the Deuteronomy, the second giving of the law. So there's that event, you have that sort of a lion that you see in bricks, that's from Babylon. So they had the exile, there were the Jews in exile, and then coming up to the time of Christ, the crucifixion, and the Jews reckoning with that, and then right after that, 70 AD, Jews' rebellion against Rome. And actually it started before that, but 70 AD was the time when the Romans came in and they defeated Jerusalem.

And what's really strange, half a million Jews died of other Jews killing them in Jerusalem. Yes, other Jews killing them because the ones who were wanting to fight the Romans killed the ones who didn't want to. a terrifying, horrible, traumatic time. And then the Romans came in and burned the temple, and exactly how that fire got started is a matter of historical debate. But nonetheless, the Jews were scattered.

A great many of them were sent out of Israel at that point in time. And then, continuing into the church age up to the time 1948, when the Jews actually had their own nation, we'll go a little bit into how that got started and how that came about and up to the time now and then extending up to the time when we'll be gone see that up arrow just before the tribulation okay the tribulation is one of the things that Moses predicted prophesied is going to happen to them and so the church will be gone we'll all be gone when that takes place still yet to happen in Israel's future but many are convinced myself included it's very near and we'll see why in a minute here One of the things to take note of here is a key point.

Has God rejected his people? The answer to the question? No. It's a very critical point because I would say most of Christendom has decided contrary to this verse. Most of Christendom. I notice I use the word Christendom. Most of Christendom believes that this is not the case. As a matter of fact, some will even use the phrase, God hates the Jews.

Now, one of the things we're going to do, contrary to most of these topics where we've been kind of stepping out of this working all the way through history, this one we're going to step back into working through history. So if you've been with us all along, this will be familiar. But just to bring it to mind here, we'll start off with the first century. Helmut! Did he provide the Romans actually this first?

Yeah, what happened is they came into Jerusalem, they destroyed the temple. A great many of the Jews had actually killed themselves. The Romans went in and slaughtered many thousands more. And they basically got substantially, not entirely, but substantially booted out of their country. Obviously, everything had been centered around coming to the temple. There wasn't any temple to go to anymore. For Jews, you think of it, here for centuries, you've been having the ability to go to this temple and do the sacrifices, and now it's all gone. And not only that, a great many of the leaders are gone.

The Jews had two court systems. We could go into that, but we don't have time. The Jews had two court systems up until that time. In 70 AD, one of those court systems completely died out. There were a whole bunch of things that changed. Sadducees died out. So there were a lot of things that changed. This was a very radical event in Jewish history.

This is something you have a chart in the back of today's packet on. You've got a full page chart on, that's why we have it marked as a special. And the idea here is to show the reactions of Jews to the gospel. This starts in the New Testament era, obviously, because of the personalities and scripture references that we have. The truth is, people do the very same thing today. They react to the gospel, and you'll have Jews that are at the far left end there, that are rabidly against the gospel and in the direction of law, you will have on the far right end, grace.

And then you will have those who are Christians but calling for legalism. See that? Basically what happens is Christians are either growing towards law or they're growing towards grace. See that? Now, you can take the time to look at that. One of the things I want to point out, look at this fascinating connection. You see that? Here's Saul, way on the far end, and what happens to this guy? Now, he's on the end of grace. Isn't that amazing? Phenomenal, phenomenal transition. Anyway, you can look at that more as you have the opportunity. Something else, we had brought this up several months back.

The Lord had prepared for the gospel in three major ways. One is the Roman system. of roads and politics. The next thing is the Greek language and culture. And finally, and this is the one we want to emphasize here this morning, the spread of Jewish culture throughout the empire gave people a background for understanding the gospel. And therefore, as you read through the letters of the apostles, they'll make reference to things in the Old Testament, even to those where the audience and the target of the letter was to Gentiles.

Why? Because of this thing, this one point here. It was the Jews spreading, even though it wasn't the gospel, it was spreading a background for their gospel so that people understood a great many things. Ben? Yes, we'll talk about that in a bit here. The Septuagint was one reason. That's the Greek version of the Old Testament. That was one of the tools that happened.

The Jews established synagogues in various places, and by the way, it was the Pharisees that were the ones who headed up the establishing of synagogues. And they went around into various, both major and minor cities in the Roman Empire, basically telling the Old Testament story.

And it's amazing. Some of those Old Testament stories even showed up in the first century in places like China and India. So, amazing. This is kind of an artist's depiction of the Roman victory over Jerusalem. This was obviously a huge major event and radically changed the picture for the Jews. Okay, stepping into the end of the first century and into the time just before Constantine, we've shown this picture before, this map that shows Christianity in the year 100.

The red dots are the places where we know there are established churches. The areas where Christianity had influence was in the area shown in orange. By the way, just so you get an idea, the district where the seven cities were, there are some estimates there may have been as many as 500 churches by this time in that area. but many of them might have been small towns, small gatherings, but large distribution, not just in the places where we have letters in the major cities, but in an awful lot of the smaller communities in the area. One other thing to note, and the reason we bring it up here, is at the very left end is Rome. Rome, by 100, was the largest church of in the Roman Empire. It was also, though it had some Jews, it had substantially Gentile populations.

So think about this. You start off, here you have the gospel introduced to the world, and for almost a decade it was only Jews that were Christians. The earth-shaking change came when, Acts? About 10 and 11, right in there. when the Gentiles were brought in. And now, here, from that time until the end of that century, the beginning of the next, things so radically changed that Christendom has spread mostly into the Gentile areas, and the largest church, Rome, is largely Gentile. In a lot of places, yeah.

One thing that makes it difficult to even put the record together is, and we'll see here in a little bit, both the Islamic forces and the forces of Christendom went and destroyed synagogues and any evidence of Judaism any place they could. And we'll see that in a bit here. Yeah, oh yeah, the Arabs moved in within, I think it was four years after the death of Muhammad, they'd taken Jerusalem. And check me on that, but I think it's about the right time.

One question that comes up, and we brought it up before, but here it shows up historically, is the question, does the church replace Israel? And the idea that the church replaces Israel in God's program was first presented by Justin Martyr. He was in the second century, right after the time of the apostles. He presented that idea even though he believed in a literal millennium. He spoke saying pretty clearly that the church replaces Israel.

So it's a contradictory idea, but nonetheless the seed was already planted. Justin Martyr, I might point out, before he became a believer, was a Greek philosopher. So the philosophical ideas that he brought into things had already begun to plant its seed, and that seed was carried out. One of the things to remember is that the growth of that idea is the thing that brought about a lot of anti-Semitism and earthly church thinking as the centuries rolled by, and we'll see here in a little bit.

The church was still under Roman persecution when there was the Council of Elvira. This was in southern Spain. It was around 306. The dating of it is a little hard to figure because some of the evidence is a little sketchy for dating purposes, but it was prior to Rome declaring Christianity legal and then the official religion. Interesting, do you see there?

Christian landlords were not to allow Jews to bless their crops or they would face expulsion from the church. Here's another one. Parents who allowed their children to intermarry with Jews were barred from the church for five years thereafter. You're kicked out because your kids got married to a Jew. Or, eating with Jews barred one from the Lord's table. Those are some of the rules that were implemented basically to strongly discourage social interaction with the Jews.

Yes? If they became believers, then this was an exemption. The phrase that you find, in fact, I looked at this document, I was reading through it, the phrase that you find that keeps showing up in this document and in documents around that time is Jews and heretics. They lumped them together. Jews and heretics were all lumped in the same batch, if you will. Yes, and if they became a believer, then it was okay, but anything outside of that, then this was their consequence. Quite often, but we will find some examples where actually the Jews extended some almost unbelievable hospitality and friendliness, and we'll see that in a little bit. Yeah, really amazing. Yes.

It was moving in the direction of Catholicism. It had not shifted there entirely, but it had shifted in that direction. And quite unfortunately, by this time, the Lord's Table and baptism were beginning to be looked at not as symbols, but as significant aspects to our salvation. Nancy? It was not officially Catholic, because the Catholic Church had not totally been formed, but the church was shifting in that direction already. Because this is church leaders coming up with this.

Shifting into the time now when Christianity is declared not only the legal religion, but eventually the only religion, what happened at that point in time, and we've shown this slide before, is there was a Code of Constantine 315. This is only about three years after he declared Christianity legal, and then the next year the only official religion. Then he starts coming up with things that limit the rights of Jews, and then specifically the Council of Messiah forbids Jews from owning Christian slaves and from converting others to Judaism. So this has the official seal of approval of Constantine and the Roman Empire. So now as you see this pendulum beginning to swing with the church aligning itself militarily and politically with power, look what happens. Bad scene.

Another thing that happened during that time, John Chrysostom, who was a real popular teacher. By the way, we have many, many of his writings. You can get them on the internet, you can buy them in print. A great many of his writings. Unfortunately, some of the things that he said as he was making Bible commentaries were pretty negative towards the Jews. Now, that was not just his idea, he was also reflecting ideas that were common. Augustine made statements that were not particularly supportive of the Jews. He didn't just start the whole movement, but he was a part of the movement of the time.

One of the things I wanted to point out, and this is kind of reflecting what Doug was commenting on here, and Ben as well, the Hebrew Old Testament had obviously come from centuries before Christ, completed about four centuries before Christ, and it had been continually copied by the Jews about 200 BC. See this line at the bottom? Let me get the pointer here so that I can make sure we're on the same page right there. At 200 BC, the Jews translated the Greek Old Testament. That was centered in Alexandria, northern Egypt, where there was a large colony of Jews, even though it was outside of Israel.

They had kind of lost track of reading Hebrew, and so these 70 scholars, that's the meaning of the name Septuagint, is 70. These 70 scholars then translated the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek. But then what happened, you notice this Greek Old Testament translated by the Jews, quoted in the New Testament, copied by Christians. What did the New Testament authors do, rather than doing their own translation every time?

As they said here, somebody's already done it. So quite often what you'll find is the New Testament quotes of the Old Testament are not from the Hebrew Old Testament, but from the Greek translation. Hence, that's one of the reasons that you'll see a quote in the New Testament, and you'll see something in the Old Testament, and you'll look at it, and you'll say, well, those don't exactly match up. That's why. It's already been translated by somebody else, and it's not directly out of the Hebrew. Then, what happens? Look at this. Quote in the New Testament. From there on, it was copied by Christians.

The Jews just kind of backed off from it. They said, whoa, Christians have gotten hold of this thing. We don't want to get tied in with that. The Christians kind of took over the Septuagint, and then the Jews just sort of went hands off at that point in time.

Hal? I think what you say is, if you look at it word for word, you say, well, it's not word for word. But the flip side of that is it's communicating the same message. That you have the message coming through even if the words may vary slightly. We run into the same issue like looking at the Gospels where you look at two different accounts and slight variations in the wording but the same message is coming across.

That's the quick answer. The other thing to look at though Here's the Latin Old Testament. It was translated by Jerome. This was completed in 405. What he did is he first made a Latin copy translated out of the Septuagint, and he didn't like it. So he started over. Imagine, he completed the whole thing, and he said, no, I don't like that. He started over. When he started over, he got the help of a rabbi. a rabbi sat there and worked alongside him every step of the way, so he made sure he got it right. So here's again an answer in part to what Doug is referring to, and here's a place where a rabbi showed great kindness and extended that kindness here to a Christian, and real interesting.

Yes? That was again from the Hebrew Old Testament? Yes, from the Hebrew Old Testament, yes. To Latin? To Latin. Josiah? Right. It's from the Hebrew text. Jerome first translated it all from the Septuagint, the Greek version, and he didn't like it. He set it all aside once he was done and started over with the Hebrew and got assistance from a rabbi in doing so. The Vulgate is based on the Latin Old Testament? The Vulgate is the Latin Old Testament plus the Latin New Testament. but the translation that was used and is in the Vulgate is from the Hebrew.

Somebody else had a question too? Doug? The Old Testament is all written in Hebrew except for portions of Daniel and Ezra are written in Aramaic. And there's a historical and cultural reason for that in that they're written during a time when the Aramaic influence came out of the Babylonian and Persian exile.

One of the things to point out here, look at this, the Hebrew Old Testament was copied by the Jews around 500 AD. The Masoretes, who were a Jewish group, continued on the copying until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The best copy of the Hebrew Old Testament that we had was from these guys, the Jews. So if you think about it here, here's again instances that Jews were very influential, and not only that, to let Christians have it and to help them with the translation was actually very kind on their part, especially, as you'll see here shortly, considering some of the treatment they got. Notice here, this was translated by the Jews, and even this, the Latin Vulgate, was done with the assistance of a rabbi. Each one of those major translations, Jews either did it or had a major part in it. Step into the next section.

This is 590, remember, was the time when you actually had the first Pope, the guy who was really called Pope and acted as Pope. The Catholic Church then was really stepping into place and acting more in the role of the modern Roman Catholic Church. From there, here you find a beginning example of forced conversions. Here's an example, one of the first ones, from 612 to 621 there was a Spanish king, he was actually Visigoth, one of the invading groups that came in.

He told the Jews to either convert to Roman Catholic Christianity or be exiled. Convert or leave. This is a coin here from that king. Some Jews remained, hung around, but in 694 they were dispossessed and made slaves. Dispossessed means you can't own anything, you no longer have any rights here, and made slaves. So that was the transaction.

Now, this was but an introduction, because what took place for centuries thereafter, and we'll see more examples of it, in a great many instances, the Jews would be gathered into cathedrals and church buildings. They'd just bring them in, like if they brought them in here, they'd just bring them in here, and they'd have people at the doors with swords, and they'd say, okay, you're going to convert now, or that's the end of you.

And that happened, unfortunately, numerous times. Sometimes the gospel was given to them in Latin. Why they would convert, or even if they knew what they were converting to, I don't know. It's beyond me. But, unfortunately, it happened numerous times in subsequent centuries. And we'll see other things that happened there as well.

The Crusades. We pointed out before that the early Crusades came this northern route through Constantinople and over what is now modern Turkey down towards the Holy Land. And then subsequent Crusades came out of southern Italy and then across via ship and then up through Egypt. The last Crusade, the seventh one, and by the way we'll go more into the history of the Crusades, the seventh one came up through here and that's basically how the Crusades died out.

They didn't succeed in the last one there. One of the things we'll point out here, though, is when they first came down, let's take a look at it, when they first came down, it was started in 1095, Pope Urban II called for the Christians, I put that in quotes, to take back the Holy Land. So they launched these crusades, and they continued these crusades until about 1248 was the last one, which after that things kind of died out because it was unsuccessful.

Basically, by July 5, 1099, they captured Jerusalem, but in the process, because a lot of times they didn't know who was who, I mean, it was a strange foreign land, they'd never been there, they just slaughtered everybody. If you were a Christian, they couldn't tell you from anybody else, they'd slaughter the Christians, they'd slaughter the Muslims, they'd slaughter the Jews. But just to make sure they did their job well, they traveled through the Rhine Valley and killed 12,000 Jews on the way.

Anyway, the story goes on, but that's kind of a miserable introduction. This is the first crusade that I just introduced you to there. We'll go through the detail more in a subsequent study here. Here is an example, and this is after the Crusades started a series of expulsions of the Jews. This went from about the end of the 1200s into just about the time of the discovery of America.

Look at the sequence of expulsions there. one after the next, after the next, after the next. The Jews were kicked out of this place, then that place, then the next one, then the other one, then the next. Get out of here, get out of here, get out of here, get out of here. The typical expulsion was something like this.

You have until tomorrow morning to be out of the country. Not the end of the year or 30 days. Tomorrow morning you're to be out. So that was the usual pattern. Yes. Some of them, you know, these are the expulsions. This isn't to gather them in a cathedral and make them convert or die. So, yes.

What happened is along with these, they were frequently denied the ownership of land, particularly. And that's one of the things that tended to force them into banking. hence a lot of the reputations that Jews have now. Because they couldn't own property, that was the one way that they could own wealth, and they could make it more transportable that way, and safer. So this pattern and the rules of not being able to own land increasingly push them towards things like inventing, business, services, and banking being one of those.

Then as you step into the Reformation period, We brought up these reformers before and one of the key points that we brought up is that although the reformers had some things that were new, notice these things on the left hand column, there were things that were unchanged and one of the things that they did leave unchanged, by and large, was this teaching of the allegorical interpretation of scripture, particularly that the church replaces Israel. That remained with most of the reformers. When Charlemagne got into power, he took over eastern lands, it was Saxony. He told the Saxons, either you become Christians, or we won't kill you. Very kind Christian thing to say. Unfortunately, that's the story. It's amazing, you know how heartfelt those folks took Christianity when they took it by the sword, right?

And unfortunately that story repeats itself Helmut, again and again. Oh yeah, anybody. Yes, the whole thing was carried on in the new world. One of the things, Martin Luther even wrote a book on the Jews and their lies. My thought was, why waste your time on it? And certainly there are many good things that you could say that he did.

This is unfortunately the flip side, the back side of it. and it even provided support during the Nazi regime because they could point to this, say, see, even your church founder agrees with us. Now the flip side of that, John Fox, author of Fox's Book of Martyrs, none of you have heard of that? By the way, that entire book is on the CD that we handed out earlier. Fox's Book of Martyrs, boy, reading that on the screen, anyway, Fox's Book of Martyrs gave repeated accounts of the Jews actually more objective.

I would say one feature that was substantial is that he continued in his writings to offer hope about the Jews as they would believe. And so it was in contrast to Martin Luther. So we mustn't think that it was a uniform, Martin Luther's perspective was a uniform perspective, but in fact that there were a number of Christians who We are simply looking for the Jews to be saved by believing.

Really believing, not converting under the threat of the sword. I have not read it. I have read some quotes from it, but not read the whole thing. Yes, he did have some. He did have some, but the primary thing that he drew from is the idea that God rejected the Jews, which of course that doesn't square up with Romans, plus a lot of other things, but very specifically that passage. And unfortunately from that basis, which was something that had really been carried on among many Christians for centuries, he continued that idea along.

The other thing to point out here, remember we went through how these different groups kind of branched off, how you get the different denominations, and we've handed out this in a larger handout. The Anabaptist group, remember they're different in one respect. They didn't seek political alliance, and so they were persecuted by not only the Catholic Church, but by the Lutherans and the Reform groups, even to the point of death. We mentioned some 4,000 or 5,000 of them died during the Reformation. Now, here's the interesting impact.

They had neither the means nor the mind to persecute the Jews, so more often they were kind to the Jews, but powerless to protect them. That was real interesting. Here was an example where Christians were being biblical in their treatment of the Jews, and were oftentimes very kind. But they simply couldn't carry out any political or military campaign to defend them. So they could be personally kind, but do nothing at a high level.

Okay, step into the time. Remember 1648 was the Peace of Westphalia. That was the signing of the documents that ended the Thirty Years' War. This is the war between the Reformed and the Lutherans and the Catholics and going back and forth. People were fighting so long they forgot what they were fighting about. At that point in time, we got 1648, so I call it the post-Westphalian. It's after the Peace of Westphalia.

The expulsion and admittance of Jews. Now you've got more of this expulsion stuff going on. Now, the Jews arrived in New Amsterdam, which is now New York, 1654. Here comes a boatload of Jews. Peter Stuyvesant, the governor tried to oust the Jews. Why not? They were doing it back in Europe all the time. But a great many of the people in America said, that's not what we're about here. We're not going to oust them and we're not going to carry on the same kind of hatred that they're doing over there. So he was basically overwhelmed by shouts of rejection of that idea. And it didn't get put into effect.

The Jews were also readmitted to England by Oliver Cromwell in 1655. A question came up, I was going over this with Josiah a few days ago. Let me see if I can back up real quick. See this? Expulsion of the Jews from England? Several centuries went by before they were allowed. So now we step back into here. 1655, finally they're readmitted back into England. Isn't that something? Several centuries, you're not allowed here. Now readmitted back. And then at the same time, Jews were expelled from Vienna 1670, just not too much later. So this here and then there and then there and then somewhere else pattern just continued centuries long.

Then, here's the other thing that happened in the area of the understanding of the church. You finally find people like Isaac Watts, and Doug had given us an introduction to Isaac Watts, that was introducing dispensational ideas here. So you begin to see that including the idea that these Jews are not rejected. And you see that established.

Finally, with Darby, it begins to become well espoused, well explained. And Darby, unlike Watts, Watts was great and he wrote a lot of hymns, but he basically stayed put. Darby didn't. Darby went across the oceans, writing, speaking, had lots of contact. Therefore, his impact was greater and he established this dispensational understanding significantly. And we'll see the impact here shortly. The impact was huge. This is a pattern that we also showed a couple years back. Look at this. Look at the number of Jews in Jerusalem. This is, by the way, just in Jerusalem, not in Israel altogether. But just in Jerusalem, 1844. See that bar? Massive growth in the number of Jews.

Huge. If you look at percentages, the numbers are just very large in terms of growth from one period to the next. And this last figure is over half a decade old, so it's likely higher than my guess. Look also at this comparison, and you've got it on page four of your handout.

Jews, Muslims, and Christians in Jerusalem. Look at the population count. And basically, even back in 1844, there were more Jews than Muslims or Christians by either group. But look how the proportion shifts. When I studied at the University of Pennsylvania in 1964-1970, the whole faculty in engineering was practically Jewish. Yes, yes. And they all were Jewish. A part of this migration, yeah, a part of this migration.

It was so amazing how they all kind of said goodbye to Americans. Now remember, If you look back on the first page, remember Moses telling him in Deuteronomy, after all this being scattered, you're going to be brought back. There it is. 3,400 years ago, Moses said you're going to be scattered and brought back. There's the numbers, folks. Huge numbers. Miraculous.

In spite of the horrible treatment, even among those who are among Christendom, In spite of the horrible treatment, these people still survive and still gathering in Jerusalem by huge numbers. Yes? Yes. Yes. I don't have a specific number or statistic on that. Margaret? Okay. How many Jews are there in the world? Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Yeah, most yeah, United States has most of the Jews and part of it is because what we saw just earlier, the very earliest and first attempt to reject them got bounced right out of there, Stuyvesant I guess got a very clear message, you're not doing that here. And as a result, the Jews could come here freely and it was very clear, you know, they're not going to get bounced out of here. So those that are leaving here, as Helmut alluded to, are leaving not because they're told to get out, but because they're deciding to go to Israel. Yes, Gail? This has been a problem, and we'll go into that just right now. That's a very good question. Let's take a look at that right now.

The key events of the 19th and 20th century that kind of turned the corner, and this is obviously not the full extent of the 19th and the 20th, but there was a point there. Sir Robert Anderson, a British scholar, wrote The Coming Prince in 1884. And by the way, this is just Highlights, there's obviously other details. 1870, the Lord Cometh by James Brooks was another one that was impacting people.

1897 was the first Zionist conference. It was originally not planned here, but they at the last minute had to change to Basel. And the president was Theodor Herzl. And what happened is they, every year, continued to have this congress Then they made it every two years, and then more recently it's still going on every four years. So they're continuing on this Congress. By the way, the UN has officially determined that Zionism is racism, just so you know.

But anyway, in 1909 the Schofield Reference Bible was published. really was well-received. Today you walk into a Christian bookstore and you have to see the Bibles and you get this whole wall full of an amazing, overwhelming array of Bibles. In those days it was more unusual and so this was the one everybody, you want to study Bible? This is it! This is what's there. So that began to establish things. Schofield reference Bible is of course written by Schofield. was friends for the first couple of decades, particularly of the last century. He was friends with Lewis Barry Schaefer, who founded Dallas Theological Seminary, and so the connection there.

In 1916, Chaim Weissman develops cordite for the British. What happened? The British were making propellants for their munitions out of wood, and they were cutting the forest down, and the forests were just getting all chopped out, and they said, what are we going to do? We're going to run out of wood here pretty quick fighting this war.

So Chaim Weizmann came to them and he says, I've got a solution for you, but let's make a deal. He says, since you folks, the British, now have control over Israel, I want you to make a deal that Israel will become a nation. And the British said, where do we sign? Because they were in trouble. They were running out of resources. And it was like, we're going to lose this thing just because we only had wood left. So, they made the deal.

In 1948, Israel became a nation. One of the things that provided massive public support had been the influence of the Schofield Reference Bible and Dallas Theological Seminary and schools of that background there was a huge support for the Jews recognizing them not as being replaced by the church but as being God's chosen people set aside for a time and so those dispensational people, those people who had dispensational persuasions were very supportive of Israel becoming a nation. Add to that the massive outpouring of worldwide sympathy for the Holocaust that had taken place during the Nazi regime. And so, you see the huge influence here. Israel becomes a nation.

Of course, as soon as they do that, they have to go fight off the Arabs with Cessnas and some pretty minimal equipment. Nonetheless, they beat them soundly. Weissman, see this guy here? Weissman became the first president. He was the guy that had made the deal that came up with answer for the British. That's how it came about. Now, one of the questions I get asked from time to time, and I thought I'd give you, here's two answers.

One answer here is, why didn't the Jews accept Jesus as the Messiah? This is the conservative answer, the conservative Jewish answer. This is for the Jew who believes that the Old Testament is inspired and who believes that the land and the temple matter. So this is the conservative Jews' answer to why they didn't accept the Messiah, and it looks to very specific things. The bottom line is, if you read into that, they were looking for the second coming, not the first one. That's the bottom line.

And the conservative Jews still are. Up until about the 1700s, virtually all Jews were conservative Jews. It's only been in the last couple centuries that you have a conformed Reformed and conservative Jewish groups that have started up that are varying degrees of more liberal But but this was the perspective of most Jews up until the last couple centuries Here is the and there's two pages. I won't go into it all here is the liberal Jewish response and I'll let you take a look at that on your own time But the bottom line there is just look at people were not expecting Messiah to die on a cross.

I They were looking for the second coming. Both conservative and Jewish perspectives at best are looking for the second coming, certainly not the first. Yes. Well, this is the way the more liberal Jews would say things, right? One might even say. Okay, let's bring it down to the bottom line here.

Romans 1.16. Here's Paul, a Jew, and remember this was the guy who was on one end of the spectrum, and then as he became a believer on the other end, what does he say? For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God, for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. But he got clobbered with a two-by-four over the head. Oh yeah, we'll go into that later. Yes, he certainly wasn't ashamed of it, but he paid for it. Any other questions? This is a full subject and a lot to it. Questions? Thoughts? Comments? Exasperations? Josiah?

I recently heard that a lot of groups that oppose dispensationalism... Yes, that oppose dispensationalism, okay. For example, the Preterists. Yes, the Preterists, okay. They claim that dispensationalists are not concerned with You think of it, and what Josiah brings up, There are those who are opposed to dispensationalism, so we'll say that dispensationalists, you know, like he said, are just kind of apathetic and waiting for the Jews to get it during the Tribulation. That is in fact not the case. It is historically false. And it's one of those things that's reasoned out without testing it with reality. And yeah, it's quite true. Yeah, Marilyn, you had a question.

Okay, you think about, what is Zion? Zion is the mount that is southern Jerusalem, okay? And so that has been, and you'll see the word Zion show up in both the Old and New Testaments. And so someone who believes that the Jews belong in Israel, that that's their land, the land God gave them, those are termed Zionists. And it's just, it's picking a term. Basically it's the idea that that's their land, God gave it to them, that's where they belong. So it's just a term that's going along with it. Yeah, Margaret? Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Right. Yeah, most of them do not. That's correct. Yeah, yeah. Yes. Right.

Yeah, the people that are in Israel now that want to be in that land are there not for spiritual or religious reasons. It's the minority. I would say less than 10% is the figure that I've seen. Yeah, less than 10% of them in Israel are actually religiously Jewish. The majority are agnostic or atheist even. Yeah. Other questions, thoughts? Okay, let's pray. Oh, I'm sorry, Gail? Yes? In that sense, yes. And certainly, I don't believe the Bible statement as well.

But you have to figure that the UN has a substantial number of Arab countries, and the UN also has other countries that are dependent upon the Arabs for oil. Much influence in that direction. Also, the Lord says in Zechariah that I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling for the whole world.

And what has happened is exactly that. Here's this place, a little tiny country. Size and population-wise, it's about like the San Francisco Bay Area, or you might even compare it to Denver area-wise, it's a little bit more in population. But the bottom line is, it's a little tiny area, and the whole world shakes and trembles over the things that happen there, exactly as the Lord said He'd do in Zechariah.

Let's pray. Lord, thank you. As we look at this, we see your faithfulness, we see your continuing love for the people that you have chosen through and beginning with your work and promise to Abraham. Lord, we thank you for your gracious love towards us, us who are not of that chosen, and yet you have extended grace beyond measure. Lord, what a marvelous thing. And Lord, we also look to your fulfillment of the rest of what you have indeed promised. And we give you thanks for it all. In Jesus' name, Amen.