A little late, but no less sincere, Happy New Year to you all. Christmas was a precious time with family celebrating the birth of the King as I hope it was for you too. Your patience during the writing hiatus has been greatly appreciated. However, it is time to roll up the sleeves and once again put the feathered quill to parchment (…or at least start poking & hoping on the keyboard). Prior to Christmas, and to the Hanukkah posts, was the first of a series titled, “The Land, the Seed and the Blessing” with an emphasis on the promised land for a chosen people. Feel free to review Part I before reading on.
The research for this series came from a capstone project paper for an online course completed at the Israel College of the Bible. In this course, we unpacked God’s promises to Abraham and his descendants (Genesis 12:3), which has been a frequent theme throughout this Romans 838 blog. In Part I, we ended with a focus on the land. That is a good segue as to why Israel was expelled from it!
Clear from Scripture is that God intended for Israel to possess the land of Canaan. He provides numerous verses from the book of Genesis (as well as in other books of the Bible) to demonstrate that the land was an everlasting gift to Israel (Genesis 12:1; 13:15, 13:17, 15:18-21). Yet, because Israel chose to live like the world in defiance of God, He drove them out of the land as He forewarned He would do if they were disobedient to His instructions. God has been chastising His Chosen People and will continue to do so until they are ready to recognize Yeshua as Messiah (Matthew 23:37-39) and fulfill their calling to be a light to the nations (Isaiah 42:6; 49:6).
When we look back through the history of the Jewish people, we must keep this altogether pivotal fact in mind: Their survival is nothing short of miraculous. The Jewish people, along with the State of Israel existing today, is a testimony to the existence of Yahweh who is sovereign and who acts in history. There is a story that has been passed down through generations of King Frederick the Great of Prussia (1740 -1786) who asked his physician for proof of the existence of God. His physician replied, “Your Majesty, the continued existence of the Jews.” By any historical measure, the Jewish people should have disappeared long ago….yet, as is stated throughout the Scriptures, and as you know is a favorite 2-word phrase of mine…..“but God.”
David Ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister of the State of Israel. said: “A Jew who does not believe in miracles is not a realist.” He uncompromisingly made that statement because miracles are the only possible explanation for the existence of the Jewish people. Renald Showers, in his book, “There Really is a Difference,” states that, “God linked His promise not to destroy the nation of Israel with His promises not to fail Israel or forget the Abrahamic Covenant which He swore to Israel’s ancestors.” This implies that the Abrahamic Covenant guarantees Israel’s permanent existence as a nation. Regardless of their sin and rebellion, God will chastise His people for their disobedience, but will not utterly destroy them (Jeremiah 30:11, Jeremiah 46:27-28; Amos 9:8, Romans 11:28) for they are the apple of His eye (Zechariah 2:8)
The current and next few installments of this series will highlight some of the major related events in Jewish history, following the first coming of Yeshua, that demonstrate God’s discipline of the Jewish people. Without a doubt, this Chosen People has been and continues to be chastised, but not utterly destroyed.
The Church began in the early 30s AD and was centered first in Jerusalem with a primarily Jewish membership. Unbelieving Jewish religious elite began to persecute the early Christians causing a dispersion of the Jewish believers. This dispersion resulted in the Gospel being taken to the Gentiles and by the end of the 1st century AD, the membership was predominantly non-Jewish. The Church began to change significantly.
Judaism was a threat to Roman authority. The year 70 AD marked a crisis in Jewish history when Roman general Titus besieged and sacked Jerusalem. On the 9th of Av on the Hebrew calendar (August-September for us), the second Temple was destroyed by the Romans as prophesied by Jesus (Luke 21:5-6). Approximately one million Jews were killed and most of the survivors were sold into slavery or scattered into the nations. However, a small remnant of Jewish people remained in the land throughout the dispersion. Although this was not the first dispersion of the Jewish people from the land (e.g., Egypt, Assyria, Babylon), it was the first to occur after the birth, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. Since that time, many Gentile nations have sought to establish dominion over the land (and the Jews).
Under the leadership of a false messiah, Shimon Bar Kokhba, the Jews revolted against Roman rule in what became known as the Bar Kokhba Rebellion (132-135 AD). This revolt resulted in the deaths of 500,000 Jews with additional thousands sold into slavery or taken into captivity. Judaism was no longer recognized as a legal religion. Israel as a nation appeared to be squashed. This was seen as a sign by many Christians (now predominantly Gentile) that Israel had been rejected by her God, and that the Church was now “the New Israel.” In other words, this birthed Supersessionism, also known as Replacement Theology, that continues to plague much of the Church today.
The Bar Kokhba uprising was quelled in 135 AD. Jews were barred from Jerusalem for several centuries. As the Romans ploughed over Jerusalem, they renamed the City ‘Aelia Capitolina’ and the land ‘Syria Palestina’ to eradicate the memory of the Jewish presence there. It is believed Roman Emperor Hadrian chose Palestina, because it refers to the Philistines, the long-time enemy of Israel. This was done to crush the national and religious spirit of the Jews. Over the next 19 centuries, the religious Jews in exile included the amidah in their daily devotions – which includes a heart-cry prayer to God for their restoration to their beloved Jerusalem.
Since the conquest of Jerusalem by the crushing armies of Rome, the Hebrew people have been forced to endure an existence based on the “goodwill” of the nations to which they had fled. Roman persecution of the Jews intensified and Jews were forbidden from practicing circumcision, reading the Torah, and celebrating their holy days.
I imagine that the Church was admiringly pure and beautiful in her early days. The leaders knew Jesus’ teachings well. James, the half-brother of Jesus, was over the church in Jerusalem. But it didn’t take long for all of that to change. Within a few hundred years, world power began to strategically look favorably on Christianity and the church became allied to ungodly kings and emperors. Pride and worldly prosperity choked out grace and mercy. One ruler in particular left an irreversible mark on the church and on the Jewish people.
The man was Constantine, the first Roman emperor to declare himself a Christian. He quickly began a hostile policy towards the Jews. In 315 AD, he published the Edict of Milan, which extended religious tolerance to Christians. The Jewish people lost many rights with this edict. Marriages were forbidden between Jews and Christians and eventually, the penalty for being Jewish was death.
With the establishment of Christianity as the ‘required‘ religion of the Roman Empire, the stage was set for the church to rise to power. The anti-Semitic sentiment and a desire to wash away undesired portions of Scripture using allegorical interpretation (e.g. spiritualized and symbolism vs. a literal interpretation), led to the church departing from the foundational teachings of the apostles as recorded in the Bible. These departures paved the way for the development of the church into what is now known as the Roman Catholic Church. Some of these practices were later adopted by many Protestant denominations as well.
At the Council of Nicea in 325 AD, presided by Constantine himself, an edict was declared called the “Venerable Day of the Sun” (aka, Sunday). Sabbath, or Saturday, worship and other Jewish observances became heretical to the Christian beliefs. Also, Christianity was now the official religion, and Jews could no longer have Roman citizenship.
The pagan world proved more hospitable to the Jew than did the Christian world. Persecution of the Jewish people on the part of the church coincided with its rise to power. Both have proven to be unrelenting. The Roman Catholic Church provided pathways to moral anesthesia for acts against the Jewish people. The clergy assumed roles of power and moved quickly to impose restrictions on the Jewish community which had fostered them.
Theodosius the Great, in 379 AD, permitted the destruction of synagogues if they served any type of religious purpose. Later in 391, the “Edict of Theodosius” declared that Christianity was to be the only legal religion in the Roman Empire. The Jewish people were seen as infidels who had been the instrument of the crucifixion of Christ. It was also during this reign that formal modes of social discrimination and rigid anti-Jewish measures were legally codified to facilitate enforcement and persecution. Anti-Semitism quickly spread to other parts of Europe.
In Spain, at the Third Council of Toledo in 589 AD, it was ordered that children born of marriage between Jews and Christians be baptized by force. A policy of forced conversion of all Jews was initiated. Jewish children over seven years of age were taken from their parents and given a Christian education. Thousands of Jews fled; thousands of others converted to save their own lives. By 613 AD, serious persecution began. Jews were given the options of either leaving Spain, converting to Christianity, or die.
As the power of the Roman Catholic Church continued to grow, the persecution against the Jewish people, their religion and customs intensified into the Middle Ages. That is where we will pick up in the next part of this series. As difficult as it is to read about the numerous events in history where the Jewish people have suffered, it is necessary to fully comprehend their supernatural existence which would be inexplicable apart from God. Our God, and His promise-keeping, are on full display throughout history. This, in turn, should fill us with the hope and confidence in the promises made to us through the New Covenant fulfilled by His Son, our Savior, Jesus the Messiah.
The dispossessions of the land are temporary judgments upon the generations of Israel who turned from God. Yet God keeps His promises and abundantly declares in His Word that their dispersion is temporary, and their regathering will occur. This regathering started (albeit as a trickle) after WWI. It ramped up upon declaration of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948 and has continued since then. Anti-Semitism has significantly ramped up again throughout the world following the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. No longer feeling safe, many Jews are leaving the countries where they live to make Aliyah to Israel. What a privilege it is for us to witness this regathering as prophesied in God’s Word. But let’s not be passive witnesses. Rather, let us pray for the Jewish people to recognize and accept Jesus as the Messiah. Let us pray for the peace for Jerusalem. Let us pray not to be deceived or fall into temptation. Let us evangelize and be watchmen on the wall while we eagerly await the Lord’s return.
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