“One day as Father and I were returning from our walk we found the Grote Markt cordoned off by a double ring of police and soldiers. A truck was parked in front of the fish mart; into the back were climbing men, women, and children, all wearing the yellow star… ‘Father! Those poor people!’ I cried… ‘Those poor people,’ Father echoed. But to my surprise I saw that he was looking at the soldiers now forming into ranks to march away. “I pity the poor Germans, Corrie. They have touched the apple of God’s eye.”
― Corrie ten Boom
To “touch” someone indicates how one “brushes up against” or “how a person handles another”—either with kindness or disrespect. It was not only the Nazis, many civilizations have disgraced and humiliated the Jewish people during various wars, the Great Depression, and economic downturns. And up until today, too few churches have given the Jewish people the respect that is due to them. It is correct that there were times when Israel needed punishing for her sins against God, but it is God’s responsibility to respond to disobedience. God never gave any authority to anyone to punish His Chosen People. That was His task. His command was to bless and not curse the children of Israel.
In the coming day of Messiah, there will be a public judgment of sheep and goat nations (Isaiah 58:10; Matthew 25:40; Joel 3:2, 3:12; Isaiah 58;7). God’s controversy with the nations of the world who have “touched” His People wrongly when they closed their hearts and humiliated the Jews—may well be an embarrassing day for many countries. At the roll call of nations will be those who “reached out” and clutched the hand of a Jewish person in distress and helped them. Also present will be those who afflicted the hand of the helpless one seeking a comforter or helper in their desperate situations.
“…Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings, From the wicked who do me violence, my deadly enemies who surround me. They close their hearts to pity; with their mouths they speak arrogantly. They have now surrounded our steps….” (Psalm 17:8).
The phrase, “Apple of My Eye” from the Scriptures, comes from a Hebrew expression that literally means “little man of the eye,” and it refers to the tiny reflection of one’s self that they can see in other people’s pupils. To be the apple of someone’s eye clearly means that they are being gazed upon and watched closely. Our very image (it is said) is dancing in the eyes of that person! A young Orthodox man in Israel told us one day, “You all poked God in the eye!” In a way he made it very clear that he was stating that Christians have slapped God in the face and broke God’s Heart when they turned away from His people and did not reach out to help them when they needed us the most, especially during WWII. As Jesus (Yeshua) has stood in the shadows of the centuries observing how gentiles touched His People, I’m sure there were many times when He had to look away in sorrow as those who were carrying His Name stabbed His People in the back and became accomplices in betrayal. Is it not a prophetic time in history when Christianity really needs a change of heart? We are in the season of “the restoration of all things” (Acts 3:21). God forbid the “Church” derail further and run the train totally off the track missing the blessing of its fullness because it did not acknowledge nor accept God’s Plans and Purposes for Israel in these latter days!
The Hardest Lash
I personally believe that the unyielding punishment (of undeserved sinful and ungodly actions) toward the Jewish people, by those who called themselves “Christians” must have been the worst blow endured by our Jewish Lord: the lashes of Christian anti-Semitism! Just what driving force did the Church follow to treat the Chosen People the way they have for so long? For all intents the historical Church seems to have been carrying a chip on its shoulder for centuries and the Jews were their victims. I learned years ago when I was very involved in the personal lives of Holocaust survivors from Europe and the Former Soviet Union that the one thing they did was to watch my eyes when I was with them. They saw that the eyes are the window of a person’s soul. According to a Yale University study, most people feel as if their self (otherwise known as their soul) exists in or near their eyes.
I have my own paraphrased rendition of the ‘apple of the eye’ from reading the New Living Translation, Contemporary English, Good News, Holman Christian Standard and International Bible versions. I have strong feelings for those who carried the Lord’s Name and reproached His Name to His People. As if God said. “…anyone who harms you harms my most precious possession, the pupil of my eye…whatever you do to Zion, you do to Me, My eyes…anyone who strikes you strikes what is most precious to Me…whoever injures you injures the pupil of My Eye.” What was done to the Jews Jesus considered it done unto Him! That’s pretty serious for those who did these things to the Jewish people.
“The theological anti-Judaism of the Church fathers, repeated endlessly in medieval and Renaissance-Reformation preaching, was the far greater culprit…but because the Church’s preaching…had long shaped the popular mind, a new phenomenon was able to come to birth: modern anti-Semitism…deploring Christian anti-Semitism…is ineffective unless it is implemented from the pulpit and in church publications and educational materials. Christians need to be aware of their almost total ignorance of …the violence perpetrated against Jews by fellow Christians. Visitors to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and other exhibits from the Nazi period usually say: “Why has no one told us of these things?” (Gerald Sloyan)
Experience of living in Israel tells us that many of the hard feelings between Jews and Christians is a result of the decision by the “Church” to call the Jewish Scriptures the “Old” Testament. I had an Orthodox Jewish man stop by my office one day and said to me, “Sharon! Why didn’t the Christians follow the Judaism of Jesus?” Good question. Someone once said Christianity is Judaism for the gentiles! I wonder also, why did countless names, locations, and pronouns get translated into gentile terminology, and why wasn’t there a clearer understanding of “who’s who” in the New Testament (are we talking to Jews or Gentiles in the passages?). When Christians stand together in Church and sing “Our God Reigns” it really troubles me, because it is made crystal clear in God’s Word that He identifies Himself with the Jewish people and calls Himself the “God of Israel” (not the God of the Gentiles). People sing the song because they like the melody and believe deep down God has replaced Israel with Christianity. Replacement Theology is a deceiving spirit and a doctrine of demons (I Timothy 4:1,2). Can this curse which remains upon the Church ever be reversed? Only if tough decisions are made! Along with the command of the Lord in Genesis 12:3 “I will bless those who bless My People” came the decision to make a choice—one becomes a blessing or a curse. The Lord said,“choose blessing” (Deuteronomy 30:19).
“I have heard many Christians, and even some messianic Jews, express the idea that “we do not have anything to learn from the Jews or their dead legalistic religion, but they have everything to learn from us.” (David Lazarus) Further David Lazarus says that this elitist and exclusive attitude has not only denied fair and honest access to the true gospel of Jesus Christ for our Jewish brothers and sisters, but it has stripped the Church of much of her own rich heritage as heirs to the faith of our father Abraham.
Research tells me that Luther, and Augustine before him, looked at the state of the Jewish people – scattered, powerless, and in a seemingly eternal exile – and drew their theological conclusions based on what they saw and understood from the Bible. They, and many other Christian theologians before and after them, taught that the church had replaced Israel as the future recipient of the covenantal promises of the Bible. For Luther, the idea that the flesh and blood descendants of the Nation of Israel would one day return to the Land of Israel and take possession of it was so far-fetched that he could sarcastically pledge to convert to Judaism if it ever were to happen. It was easy to say that the Jews no longer have any kind of special covenantal relationship to the God of the Bible. The reality of the Jewish predicament in his time was enough to support his theology—but not now, not today with the resurrection of the Jewish people, the return to their homeland and the development of one of the most beautiful nations in the world.
Rather than humbly deal with the implications of this theological derailment, most Church leaders just ignore the major heresy in Christendom. Thank God CFI is involved in bringing Pastors from the nations together on our new Pastor’s for Israel Forum. You can listen to Pastoral testimonies of how, as spiritual leaders, they separated from Replacement Theology and came out of the Church’s heretical teaching. (www.cfijerusalem.org). Christianity has been intent on replacing Judaism by making its own particular message universal, in spite of, Jesus’ words, “Salvation is of the Jews.” (John 4:22). Rather than argue that the Church has replaced Israel, they argue that there is no Israel at all.
“It’s time to call this new approach by mainline Israel haters what it is: the denial of Jewish identity and Jewish history—the new theological anti-Semitism.” (Rabbi Pesach Wolicki). Did the “Church” fall into willful ignorance to avoid becoming informed about Israel so as not to have to make undesirable decisions that truth might bring to light? (2 Peter 3:5; Job 21:14; Zechariah. 7:11,12; Matthew 13:15; Romans 1:28) anti-Semitism contradicts the teachings of the Apostles of Jesus (John 4:22). Timothy was warned about guarding what was committed to him, and to avoid profane and idle babbling such as lies and myths which permeated Christian communities throughout Europe and the world. I believe that many strayed concerning the faith and their fathers inherited many lies. Growing up with the lies, they carried them on to their children for generations. (Jeremiah 16:19). I believe hundreds of thousands, if not more, professing Christians simply give mental assent to the reality of the Living Messiah. Born into “Christian” communities, they attended Christian churches. Farming communities such as the one where I lived in the Midwest of America, after WWII, simply did not talk about Jews. I had no idea what a Jew was while growing up, and there were certainly none (that I knew of) living among us. If there were, they were camouflaged living under the pretense of being Christians with no talk of a Jewish past. Some were baptized; some kept anything Jewish a total secret and pretended that the world they had emerged from was gone forever. I believe this is why many Christians have come home to rest. We found our roots and feel at home.
Some of us may be surprised that the Great Commission is not owned by Christianity alone. Israel also has a Great Commission. It is to become a light to the nations. (Isaiah 42:6; 49:6; 52:10; 60:3; John 8:12). When Jewish people recite the “Shema” “Hear O Israel, the Lord Thy God is One,” they are declaring to God “we accept your Kingdom ‘One God Divine.’” You are God of this world and of the next world. The Bible is their anchor. The name of God is past, present and future, YHVH. If you ask most Christians today what “God” they serve, there will be a pause before answering because many are not certain, as they never think about it. We are taught to exalt Jesus, sing to Jesus, love Jesus, and worship Jesus which is all perfectly correct, but a study of God’s Word reveals to us that Jesus said He came to exalt the Father, and when He returns to set up the Kingdom, Jesus turns the earthly Kingdom over to the Father, that God is “all in all.” (1 Corinthians 15:24). We hear few sermons teaching congregations what to expect in the Coming Kingdom on earth according to the Bible, but there is no excuse for not teaching about the wrong done to Jewish people in the Name of the Lord Jesus to millions of believers! The Church indeed poked God in His Eye, and Jesus tells us that once you do that, you have as much as done it unto Him! There will be many shocked Christians who still hold to Christian Anti-Semitism and Replacement Theology that may or may not know that to enter into God’s Kingdom one must enter the through the Gates of Heaven or the Gates of the Coming Kingdom on earth. I find it interesting and revealing that the Bible tells us clearly that above each of the twelve gates is the name of a Jewish prophet or apostle right above the door frame. One has to pass under it to enter while crossing the threshold. (Revelation 21:12) It is not a matter to be fooled around with. It is not to be taken lightly. It would be hard to visualize even one anti-Semitic guest allowed into God’s Kingdom as the Bible clearly warns us “…outside are the dogs and anyone who believes a lie” (Revelation 22:15). Perhaps we know of people who might fit this category; to warn them, encourage them to reexamine, and rethink their attitudes toward Jewish people. No, not one. Not even “one” will be allowed into the Kingdom with wrong feelings toward the Jewish people. Since we are in the time period of the “restoration of all things” (Acts 3:21), God forbid that the Church be too proud to admit it has been seriously wrong and to ask forgiveness of the Jewish people. Before he died in 1892, Charles Spurgeon said “I think we do not attach sufficient importance to the …Jews. We do not think enough of it…if there is anything promised in the Bible it is this…the day shall yet come when the Jews, who were the first Apostles to the Gentiles, the first missionaries to us…shall be gathered in again. Until that shall be, the fullness of the Churchs’ glory can never come.”
Even as Poppa Ten Boon once said, “I pity those poor people…(I add) I pity poor Christians among us…who have touched (wrongly) the “apple of God’s Eye.” Thank you to everyone who loves the Jewish people and who helps CFI to get these messages out to Christians around the world. Your prayers and support bring you a blessing that is within the partnership in ministry which we have. God bless each of you!
Sharon Sanders