Theological amnesia: When the Church forgets Israel

Amnesia is a medical term describing someone who has a partial or total loss of memory. It is derived from a Greek word meaning “to forget.” Those familiar with the Hebrew Bible will recall the classic illustration of this in the life of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon recorded for all posterity in the fourth chapter of Daniel’s prophecy. He temporarily forgot who he was, completely losing his sense of reason and identity, unaware of his royal status. Those with amnesia suffer from a loss of memory about who they are and what they have done.

While the overwhelming majority of Christian evangelicals are solidly supportive of the State of Israel and defenders of the Jewish people, there is a small but growing number of our tribe who have developed a case of theological amnesia when it comes to God’s present and future plans and purposes for the Jewish people. This is especially troubling in a day when antisemitism is on the rise all over the world in a magnitude which has not been witnessed since the days of the Nazi Holocaust. Adherents to this ideology are moved by a theological framework known as “replacement theology” which teaches that God has rejected the Jewish people due to their unbelief in Yeshua as the Jewish Messiah, He has replaced them with the church, and has revoked His covenant promises to them in the sacred scriptures. Advocates of this theological amnesia suffer from a forgetfulness of the plain teaching of the Bible, specifically as it relates to God’s everlasting promises to His chosen people, Israel.

The end result of this toxic theological concept is that its adherents see no future purpose for Israel in God’s economy and view the present and future Jewish state as having no more Biblical significance than any of the other almost 195 countries in the world today. And worse, it sometimes results in a latent and not so subtle form of antisemitism. After all, if God has, in fact, outright rejected the Jewish people and revoked His covenant promises to them, the logical end result is that they enjoy no special place or purpose in the unfolding of eschatological truth yet to be played out and fulfilled. When the church forgets Israel it lapses into a rationale that justifies the belief that if God Himself has rejected the Jewish people and set them aside we have no reason to come to their defense ourselves. In certain cases antisemitism is even seen as the adopted child of replacement theology.

One of, if not, the most repeated commands in the Torah (the Pentateuch also known as the first five books of the Bible) is the call to “remember.” Time and again throughout the pages of the Bible God calls on His covenant people to remember what great things He has done for them. When, upon the death of Moses, Joshua led the people through the Jordan River into the Promised Land their first stop was at a place called Gilgal. Here they built an altar and from time to time during the conquest of the land they would return to Gilgal in order to recommit their lives and to remember “so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty, that you may fear the Lord your God forever” (Joshua 4:24). Later, King David, the great shepherd, Psalmist and King declared, “If I forget you, oh Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill! Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you” (Psalm 139:5-6). For twenty centuries in exile from their promised land the Jewish people, displaced around the world in thousands of often hostile locales, still celebrated their Passover Seder each year to remember what God had done for them and with the eye of faith they looked forward to celebrating it again “next year in Jerusalem.” Attached to the doorpost of virtually every Jewish home is a mezuzah which they touch each time they enter and leave their dwelling as a reminder of God’s promises to them.

Amnesia is not an option for the Jewish people. One of the primary reasons the State of Israel miraculously exists today is because these chosen people have long memories and refuse to forget. Theological amnesia should not be an option for Bible believing evangelicals today as well. Tragic things can happen when the church lapses into a state of forgetfulness regarding God’s promises and purposes for Israel and the Jewish people.

Replacement Theology is a like a stool with three wobbly legs, three false premises that are flatly rejected in sacred scripture. It propagates the narrative that the people of Israel have been rejected, the purposes of Israel have been replaced, and the promises to Israel have been revoked.

PREMISE #1–THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL HAVE BEEN REJECTED

The first of these false premises is that God has rejected the Jewish people in this age of grace. It argues that this outright rejection by God is a result of the Jews’ rejection of Jesus of Nazareth as the long awaited and promised Messiah foretold by so many of their own prophets.

Repeatedly in the Bible God promised Israel the Land of Canaan as, in God’s words, “an everlasting possession.” Hear the Lord in His own words to Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation—“I will establish my covenant between you and me…for an everlasting covenant…to you I will give…all the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession” (Genesis 17:8). His covenant is still “everlasting” and the promise of the land is still an “everlasting possession.” Once Abraham arrived in the land God repeated this promise, “All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever” (Genesis 13:15). To Jacob God said, “I will give this land to you and your offspring as an everlasting possession” (Genesis 48:4). In the Lord’s covenant with David the Lord promised that He would “appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them…and they shall be moved no more” (2 Samuel 7:10).  God continues saying to David, “Your throne shall be established forever” (2 Samuel 7:16). Through the prophet Ezekiel God proclaims, “And they shall dwell in the land that I have given unto Jacob my servant..they shall dwell there forever” (Ezekiel 37:25). We could fill a book by repeating the promises from the Bible stating that the Jews have a relationship with their God “forever….as an everlasting possession.” Everlasting means everlasting. And, forever means forever. Except in the minds of the advocates of replacement theology.

While many of God’s promises to us in the Bible are conditioned by our own responses there are others which are strictly unconditional. One such promise is the one God gave to Noah to never again destroy the world by a flood. He placed a rainbow in the sky as a testimony to this unconditional promise. God’s covenant promises to the Jews regarding the land of Israel being “forever” and as an “everlasting possession” are unconditional ones as well. This covenant promise was never given on the basis of Israel’s conduct or character but was conditioned only upon the stated promises of God. Replacement theologians conveniently allegorize the text away from its original meaning but everlasting still means everlasting and forever still means forever, especially when, metaphorically speaking, these words emit from the lips of God Himself.

Replacement theology is built on the wobbly leg that God has rejected His people Israel.  But has He? Enter the Apostle Paul, a “Jew of Jews” trained at the feet of Rabbi Gamaliel, and a member of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish Supreme Court. In the years following his own conversion experience to Yeshua almost half of our New Testament flowed from his prolific pen. He left us the eleventh chapter of the Book of Romans to annihilate the premises of replacement theology.

His Spirit inspired defense of the faith begins with a rhetorical question—“Has God rejected His people?” (Romans 11:1).  This plain, yet pointed and poignant, question should move us to the edge of our seats as we lean in in anticipation of his answer. He does not disappoint.  Immediately, Paul, in the most definitive and emphatic way possible, blurts out—“BY NO MEANS!..God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew” (Romans 11:1-2). Just because some in the Christian world have developed a form of theological amnesia does not mean God has forgotten His people and His unconditional covenant promises to them.

We live in a world today where what men say has become more important than what God says.  Pick up the morning newspaper and you will find an opinion section but search as you will and you will never see a conviction section. In many minds today what men say and think has become far more important than what God is still saying to us through His word and by His Spirit today. At this point of the rejection of the Jews, the Bible could not be more plain or more explicit. Has God, as adherents of replacement theology contend, rejected His chosen people, the Jews? Again in the words of the great apostle, “BY NO MEANS!” Replacement theology doesn’t have a leg upon which to stand.

PREMISE #2–THE PURPOSES OF ISRAEL HAVE BEEN REPLACED

There is another leg to this stool. Replacement theology not only falsely teaches that God has rejected the Jewish people, it continues to suggest that the Jews have been replaced by the church in God’s eternal plan of the ages. It is one thing to be rejected and quite another to be told you have been replaced. This belief propagates the fallacy that God has retracted His promises as well as His future purposes for Israel and that they have been exclusively given to the church so that the church has now replaced Israel for all practical purposes. This reasoning removes Israel from any special role in God’s plan thus perpetrating the dangerous myth that Israel is no different and no more worthy of support than any other people groups on the planet.

Once again, enter the Apostle Paul. Continuing in Romans 11 he provides a word picture of the olive tree to reveal God’s own views on the relationship of Israel and the church. In scripture, the olive tree represents Israel herself. Building on this imagery, God gives a clear and strong word to the church—“If some of the branches were broken off and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree do not be arrogant about the branches. If you are, remember IT IS NOT YOU WHO SUPPORT THE ROOT BUT THE ROOT THAT SUPPORTS YOU” (Romans 11:17-18). This is a clear and present warning to anyone who in their spiritual “arrogance” (Paul’s word) thinks that God has rejected Israel and replaced her with the church. The branch does not replace the tree. In fact it is the root that supports the branches.

The root of this olive tree represents the unconditional covenant God made with Israel, His purpose for them. The olive tree with its broken branches is Israel, the Jewish people. The wild branches grafted into the tree represent the fellowship of believers known as the church. When a branch is grafted into a tree it becomes one with something much larger than itself sharing the same root with the trunk of the tree. Note again, it is not the branches that support the root. But it is the root that supports the branches. The church is not substituted for Israel but supplements her by being grafted into her trunk and finding life there. As Paul warns there can emerge an arrogance, a type of spiritual superiority, within the ranks of those who believe they have replaced Israel in God’s economy.

There is one more false premise being propagated by advocates of replacement theology. For them, it is not enough to believe that God has rejected the Jewish people and replaced them with the church, but, they contend that God has also revoked His promises which He had previously given to them.

PREMISE #3–THE PROMISES TO ISRAEL HAVE BEEN REVOKED

The final leg on this stool called replacement theology, like the previous two, can not bear up under the weight of scripture. This last leg is the teaching that God has actually revoked His covenant promises which He repeatedly had made to Israel. To advocate that God has taken back His unconditional promises to His chosen people is the most arrogant of all its false claims. It is one thing to teach that God has out right rejected His own people upon whom “He has set His love” (Deuteronomy 7:7) contending that He has swept them away and replaced them with the church, but replacement theology is not finished yet. It logically concludes that if we believe the Jews are rejected and replaced then it must follow that God’s exclusive promises to them have been summarily revoked. 

The main issue with this concept is that it is an attack not only on the trustworthiness of God but on scripture itself. Since replacement theologians insist that these unconditional promises God gave to the Jews are actually conditional and based upon their behavior and therefore revocable, it brings us to ask if God Himself, through His infallible word, the Bible, might have an opinion on this. Again, enter the Apostle Paul. He has a direct and specific word from the sacred text at this very point.

Has God revoked His promises to His people, the Jews? Paul could not be more explicit when He emphatically states—“THE GIFTS AND CALLING OF GOD ARE IRREVOCABLE” (Romans 11:29). God’s gifts and His special calling to the Jewish people are irrevocable, especially when it deals with ownership of the land of Israel. This “calling” is not determined by their own obedience or performance. These precious promises are bestowed upon them as an “everlasting possession.”

Promises made are always appreciated. But the promises that are kept are what mean the most. It is one thing for someone to make a promise and quite another to keep it. We all, in one way or another, can attest to the validity of this truth. The Bible is replete with promises God has made to the Jews….and to us…and He has a perfect record of not just making promises but keeping them. Whether we keep our own promises or not is based on the content of our character.  An unrepentant, repeated, thief may appear in court before a judge and promise to never steal again. But his untrustworthiness, based on his past years of recurring behavior, does not attest to his sincerity. How can we trust God with His unconditional promises made to us throughout the Bible? Because of His character and the fact that the Bible declares that it is “impossible for God to lie” (Hebrews 6:18). His word is His bond and when He makes these unconditional promises to Israel “everlasting” means just what He says. And, “forever” means just that—forever!

Baseball, known as “America’s pastime,” provides many real life lessons. In baseball terminology, “Three strikes and you are out!” Replacement theology steps up to the plate to bat saying God has rejected the Jews. When confronted with the Word of God the umpire yells, “No…Strike one.” Next, it digs in a little more and insists that God has replaced His chosen people. The umpire’s call is “Not so…Strike two.” Finally, it swings for the fence with the insistence that God has revoked His promises to Israel and the Umpire of the Universe, with a raised right arm, shouts, “Strike three, you are out!” When placed along side the teachings of the Bible replacement theology strikes out and does not have a single leg upon which to stand.

When the church forgets Israel and God’s unconditional promises to the Jewish people it can lead to an arrogant sense of superiority which can lend itself to antisemitism. Antisemitism is a hatred for the Jewish people simply because they are Jews. Sadly, the church has a rather blemished record of this down through the centuries. As the years unfolded and the church began to separate herself from Judaism, some of the early church leaders began to label Jews as “Christ killers.” This advanced the notion that God had abandoned them for good. These antisemitic attitudes became more institutionalized by theologians and church councils which ultimately resulted in Jews being forced into ghettos, enhancing the idea that their wanderings were a sign of divine rejection. This hostility toward the Jews then became magnified during the time of the Crusaders as they set out on their quest to “cleanse” the world of the perceived enemies of Christ. En route from Europe to free the Holy Land they decimated one Jewish community after another along the way. A few centuries later the reformers added fuel to the fire. This blatant antisemitism reached its zenith when the church helped place Hitler into power and His Third Reich began its orchestrated elimination of one third of the world’s Jewish population. 

At this writing antisemitism is on the rise across the world in a way not witnessed since the days of the Nazi Holocaust. Replacement theology is founded upon the premise and presumption that ignores God’s enduring promises to Israel. It’s real danger lies in the potential of future fueling of the fires of antisemitism. When the church openly teaches God’s rejection of the Jews, His replacement of them with the church, and His revocation of the promises previously given to them, the potential of a creeping disdain for the State of Israel arises and, in many cases, for the Jewish people themselves. “Never again” has been the continuous cry of the Jews since the Holocaust but now this cry is being drowned out by the current and alarming rise of antisemitism all over the world. It is time for Bible believing evangelicals to be bold, not silent, and to heed the admonition of the prophet, “For Zion’s sake we will not be silent…for Jerusalem’s sake we will not be quiet” (Isaiah 62:1). It is time to proclaim from every pulpit the truth that replacement theology is in diametric opposition to the clear teachings of the Bible and to make the cry, “Never Again,” our own.

If replacement theology is an affront to God’s Word, antisemitism is an affront to God’s own heart. Repeatedly, in the Bible God proclaims His love for the Jewish people. During the wilderness wanderings, in their journey from Egypt to Canaan, Moses reminded the Jewish people, “It was not because you were more in number…that THE LORD SET HIS LOVE on you and is keeping the oath…that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and has redeemed you” (Deuteronomy 7:7-8). Later, during the time of their captivity in Babylon, Jeremiah reminded them of the words of the Lord Himself, “Yes, I HAVE LOVED YOU WITH AN EVERLASTING LOVE” (Jeremiah 31:3). Despite their rebellion and, at times, their near apostasy, God never stopped loving the Jews with what He called, “an everlasting love.” 

Antisemitism is a wicked and vile sin because it is directed at a people whom God loves and to whom He has given precious and everlasting promises. Scripture forbids antisemitism on many fronts, not the least of which are that God’s covenant with the Jews still stands and His love for them still endures. The words of Genesis 12:3 still ring true, “I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you.” Never forget—antisemites hate what God loves!

There is a final word for our evangelical friends. If God were to break His covenant promises to Israel how can we have any confidence or trust that He would not break His promises to us received by faith through the new covenant? Silence, in the face of replacement theology and its adopted child, antisemitism, is not golden. There is a cure for replacement theology. We must take God at His word and know that what He promises He will perform. “Never again” should be our own cry. Never again will we, the church, stand by in silence as we watch demonic antisemitic forces seek the destruction of a people God loves with “an everlasting love.”

And, a closing word to all our Jewish friends. While a small segment of the Christian faith today may have fallen victim to this theological amnesia, the vast majority of almost 700 million evangelicals across the world have not. Or, to quote the words of the Apostle Paul…”By no means!” We are with you. We have long memories. And we are not suffering from the sickness of amnesia with its accompanying forgetfulness. We remember. We are here. We are with you. We are wise enough to realize that if the “Saturday people” can be destroyed then the “Sunday people” are next on this demonic agenda. As Naomi once said to Ruth we say to you, “Your people shall be our people…and your God our God” (Ruth 1:16). We have your back. We are not going away…not now…not ever! Am Yisrael Chai is our cry…as well as yours. The people of Israel live!