Response to a critic of my Christian pro-Israeli stance

Romans chapter 7 to be continued next week, God willing.

Introduction

My plans for this week’s exploration of Romans chapter 7 were derailed by some very interesting criticisms levelled at me by an opponent of Zionism. I had already begun to write on Romans, and was looking forward to continuing, but these negative comments seemed to merit some kind of a response. After all, it does say in the Bible somewhere “Do not let your good be evil spoken of,” and it seemed necessary to try and clear up some misconceptions.

This took more time than I expected, and so it seemed advisable to postpone further discussions of Romans and write about some issues pertaining to Israel, National Socialism, Middle Eastern history, and elementary faith in God.

Someone had commented that the USA was just a colony of Israel. I remarked that Hitler also thought that the Jews controlled America, and wondered what other aspects of Hitler’s thought this person might agree with.

This led to a lengthy critical response. I tried to make my answer self-explanatory, so there is really no need to refer to the original comments. If anyone should want to look at them for some odd reason they can be found in the two replies to the first comment in this note:

Greetings Prodigal,

Many thanks for your interesting and substantive comments. I welcome interactions with people whose views are different from mine, and am glad to have the opportunity to make some further observations.

First, you stated that America was controlled by the Jews and I asked in what other areas you agreed with Hitler. You claimed that I would have been more honest to openly call you a Nazi and an antisemite, and that I was guileful and less than straightforward in not doing so. But, I did not call you a Nazi because I do not believe you are a Nazi. I might be wrong, and welcome correction from you, but I suspect you don’t believe that the blonde, blue-eyed Aryans are the master race, and more likely than not you don’t think Germany is destined to rule the world. If you do believe those things, then I can call you a Nazi.

However, while I did not think you to be a Nazi, I did note a curious congruence between Hitler’s views and yours on a very significant subject – the idea of America being controlled by Jews. So, I wondered in what other areas you share Hitler’s ideas, and still welcome clarification from you on that. You never did answer that question in your lengthy comments.

Also, I did not specifically call you an antisemite because that quickly degenerates into a lot of tricky and inconclusive definitions and qualifications that lead nowhere. Someone can disapprove of American aid to Israel without being an antisemite and whether or not you are an antisemite was not my question.

Then you accuse me of defaming you by linking you to Hitler – but noting that you and Hitler agreed on the significant point of Jewish control of America is not at all defamation. It is a plain and simple statement of fact. I did not expect you to be silenced by my question, though when it comes to scurrying for cover I notice that you did not answer me and raised many other points instead. I did not ask if you were German, or if you were antisemitic, or if you were an admirer of Hitler or National Socialism, I only asked which other views of Hitler you shared. And, you will admit, the idea that America is controlled by the Jews is one that some people agree with, but others think is a paranoid fantasy on the part of people seriously divorced from reality.

As to Zionism being one of the great evils of history, that is another idea of yours that parallels Hitler. But why is it evil that the Jews should want to return to their ancient homeland? Why is it evil that the Jews should not want to be helpless in the hands of foreigners, but have their own homeland and their own state? If the French and the Japanese and the Poles have their own national home is that evil?

And what if the Jews did displace the Palestinians? Are you aware that that sort of displacement has happened countless times in history all over the world? Darwin thought the replacement of the inferior North American savages by the superior European white race was a sign of evolution in action. If you are a Darwinist then you should logically believe that Palestine or any other territory on earth belongs to anyone who is strong enough to take it, and if the weak get pushed out that is the way of nature. That is not my view as a Christian but it is logical and consistent with a thoroughly Darwinian world view.

But maybe you don’t believe in Darwinism. If you believe in God, then Palestine belongs to whomever God chooses to give it.

Are you aware that the Palestinian Muslim Arabs have not been there since the beginning of time, but themselves seized the land by armed conquest? I suppose you will also deny that Palestine was of no great interest to the Arabs until the Jews started to rebuild it – and that many “Palestinians” actually moved into the country from neighboring Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt after World War I to take advantage of the higher standards of living brought about by the British and the Jews, and hence have no claim on the land at all.

You also should be aware that a compromise was proposed by the United Nations (international law, anyone?). The Jews accepted this compromise but the Arab leadership rejected it and attempted to slaughter the Jews instead. They were even bragging about it. They lost, because they were corrupt, dishonest, cowardly, and incompetent. I am glad they failed.

I do not view Zionism as being evil, I view it as being one of the few positive achievements of modern history. And, if you view this as a great evil, it raises questions about your standards and values.

And, you oppose Zionism. You know of course that the Israelis have no intention of lying down and allowing themselves to be killed and they really do not care if you approve or not. And what business is it of yours? You are concerned about justice for the Palestinians? What if the Hamas and PA dictatorships are not justice for the Palestinians? What if justice for the Palestinians means giving up their insane dream of slaughtering all of the Jews, accepting that Israel will not go away, and working with the Jews in sincere acceptance and cooperation?

You say the Germans “have been brainwashed to believe that the persecution of Jews under National Socialism was somehow uniquely evil and never in all of history has there been comparable mass murder or ethnic cleansing.” Never in all of history has mass murder been organized and carried out on such an industrial scale, with such extraordinary manifestations of cruelty – and all of that against defenseless, harmless people who were not in any sense a threat to Germany. They were a threat to German racial purity, according to Hitler’s bizarre ideas of racial purity – which I assume you do not share, but I could be wrong.

Of course there have been hatred, murder, cruelty throughout all of recorded human history, from Cain’s murder of Abel down to the present day, but Auschwitz, Treblinka, the Einsatzgruppen, the full power of a modern industrialized state devoted to organized and methodical mass murder in the name of a contemptible and ridiculous pseudo-ideology (which did not materialize out of thin air but which was firmly rooted in 19th-century German pseudo-science and pseudo-philosophy) – that is unique.

When it comes to the Germans as a people being guilty of that crime, Hitler was never elected by a majority of the German people. Even in the last “free” election in the spring of 1933, when Hitler’s opponents were being murdered, arrested and tortured and the press was by no means free, the Nazis received less than 50% of the vote. Many Germans never supported or wanted Hitler. Others were deceived and did not have the faintest idea of what Hitler really was. But once he came into power they were oppressed by ruthless terror that very few of us would have the courage to stand up against.

So, I do not believe all Germans were guilty, and I certainly do not believe that Germans born after the war have any moral responsibility for things they knew nothing about. You may or may not be aware that the biblical teaching is, that when we stand before God after the resurrection from the dead to be judged for our lives, we will be judged for our own words, thoughts, and actions, not for what our parents or grandparents said or did.

You say my anti-German bigotry is clear from my substack posts. If you want to make a comment on any those posts showing where my bigotry is evident, I will be glad to answer. Personally I think that statement is completely false. I have no anti-German bigotry at all, have long had an interest in German history, and think that the terrible events of modern German history have a great deal of relevance for all of Western civilization.

I also have an interest in historical facts, and maintain that the terrors of Hitler, committed in the modern age by the leaders of one of Europe’s leading countries, are unique in the history of the world. Genghis Khan? The Mongols? The Huns? Sure, they killed a lot of people – but they did not have modern technology to help them do it, and they did not have photographs of their crimes as a permanent record.

You want to talk about Stalin? Lenin? Mao? Pol Pot? Fine. They were also evil, mass murdering monsters – but that does not deny the uniqueness of Nazi Germany, a country that was supposed to be one of the most advanced and modern countries in Western Europe.

Next, you refer to your assumption that I belong to “some kind of strange ‘dispensationalist’ school of Protestantism, i.e. Christians who are radical supporters of the present day state of Israel, whose population you believe are the genetic descendants of the Israelites in the time of Abraham and Moses.”

First of all, I do not care about dispensationalism, and do not consider myself a dispensationalist, except for the obvious fact that God’s dealing with the Jews under the Old Covenant of Mosaic law is very different from God’s dealings with the entire world under the New Covenant of Christ. These are plain and obvious differences that are elaborated on and explained at length in the New Testament, and are not of my private interpretation.

Secondly, I do believe, also in agreement with many biblical teachings, that God’s sovereign rule over the world is active and real. Thus the survival of the Jewish people over the past four thousand years (using a traditional date of 2000 BC for Abraham) is due to the direct providence of God. God revealed himself to the Jewish people – not because of their moral superiority. There are many passages in the Old Testament bearing witness to the sinfulness of the Jews (I refer you to the first chapter of Isaiah for one example).

Moreover, we read in the Bible that God in his anger destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah at the hands of the Assyrians and the Babylonians. In the same way, God also destroyed Israel at the hand of the Romans in the two rebellions of 70 AD and 132 AD, and scattered the Jewish people in his wrath throughout the world. For the past two thousand years the Jews suffered greatly in exile, yet God preserved them, and brought them back to the land in the twentieth century, as he had promised in many biblical prophecies.

Thus, I believe the modern Zionist movement is the hand of God, who established the Jews in the land, and gave them victory in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973 against those who would destroy them.

As to Christians who say God had nothing to do with this; that God had nothing to with the survival of the Jewish people, and with the historic events of the 20^th and 21^st centuries, I have to ask them - do you even believe in God at all? Do you believe God just saves sinners and then sits back idly watching without intervening in the affairs of men?

I believe God has established the state of Israel, and all human efforts against it will fail – but this does not mean the Israelis are never wrong, never make mistakes, and have carte blanche to do whatever they like. Even in the period of the Old Testament, when God was directly working with the Jewish people to prepare the way for the Messiah, Jesus Christ, there were sinful and wicked Jewish kings. They angered God by their immorality and injustice, and I believe God is displeased with many evidences of unbelief, sin and immorality in modern Israel today.

All of Israel’s policies are not right. Not all Israelis are nice guys. The great majority of them are not Christians. They do not believe in turning the other cheek and - like many other people everywhere else in the world – they will not respond kindly to those who are openly trying to destroy them.

But, there will be a day of judgment. Then everyone, Israelis and Arabs, Jews and Gentiles, Germans too, will be held account individually for what they have done. But in the mean time, working with sinful and fallen human material as he does, God has brought the Jews back to their homeland as he promised that he would do, and he will keep them there in spite of all the world until his purposes are established.

Many Christians agree with this. As to those Christians who do not, they have the right to believe as they like, but I sincerely have to wonder if their God is just an abstraction, a theological concept that has little or no relevance to the real world.

Then you say that the belief today’s Jews are the genetic descendants of the Israelites in the time of Abraham and Moses is mistaken. I believe you are wrong. There is a clear line from Abraham to Moses, and a clear line from Moses to the conquest, and thence to the Jewish kingdoms. There is some debate about the ten tribes of the northern Kingdom of Israel who were lost in the Assyrian conquest and deportation in the 8^th century BC, but I have never been interested in that. I assume they vanished, but maybe I am wrong.

However, in the southern kingdom with the two remaining tribes of Judah and Benjamin, there is a clear historical descent through the Babylonian exile and return, and the subsequent dispersion by the Romans. From thence, the historical existence of Jewish communities in the Roman empire and their expansion into more northern and eastern parts of Europe in later centuries is also a matter of simple historical fact.

As to some genetic studies allegedly showing the contrary, there have been many fake pseudo-scientific studies in various areas that made a brief splash but were later revealed to have been false.

This from the Guardian:

Tens of thousands of bogus research papers are being published in journals in an international scandal that is worsening every year, scientists have warned. Medical research is being compromised, drug development hindered and promising academic research jeopardised thanks to a global wave of sham science that is sweeping laboratories and universities.

Last year the annual number of papers retracted by research journals topped 10,000 for the first time. Most analysts believe the figure is only the tip of an iceberg of scientific fraud.

“The situation has become appalling,” said Professor Dorothy Bishop of Oxford University. “The level of publishing of fraudulent papers is creating serious problems for science. In many fields it is becoming difficult to build up a cumulative approach to a subject, because we lack a solid foundation of trustworthy findings. And it’s getting worse and worse.”

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/feb/03/the-situation-has-become-appalling-fake-scientific-papers-push-research-credibility-to-crisis-point

Secondly, Judaism has never been a matter of racial purity. Moses married an Ethiopian, Jews have intermarried with natives of their host nations, and (I am not a scientist and might be wrong”) I do not think there is any specifically “Jewish” gene. But, I do not care about any bogus studies that deny the clear and obvious and well documented history of the Jewish people over the past two thousand years.

So, if you want to talk about a general grasp of historical truth, the facts are not on your side.

As to the “vile Talmud,” I know little about it, and have not read much of it. I do believe that it is a false book, full of rabbinical fictions that have nothing whatever to do with Moses, David, Abraham or Solomon. If there are some negative comments about Gentiles in the Talmud, as I believe there are, you must remember that a few negative comments are only to be expected in light of the terrible cruelties and sufferings that the Jews had experienced in many countries for many centuries. If some Jewish comments about Gentiles in the Talmud bother you and centuries of massacres and pogroms do not, you need to adjust your moral compass. The rabbis said some bad things in the Talmud – but the gentiles did many bad things and that is far worse in my view.

You refer to “many respected Jewish researchers and intellectuals” who support your confused and misguided ideas – “respected” because they agree with you. But there are many Jews who are thoroughgoing secularists. They do not believe in the Bible, they do not accept the historic mission of the Jews, they want desperately to be accepted by the world and are basing their scholarship on the false values of the lost and unbelieving world.

They want Israel to be no different from Belgium or Holland, and are not above falsifying the historical record to achieve that end.

Then you refer to someone’s support of Israel as representing “baseless and self-indulgent ‘biblical exegesis’” that you think is similar to my notions. May I ask what sort of knowledge of the Bible you have? Saying that God promised the land to Abraham and to his descendants, and that he scattered them from the land in his wrath but preserved them and brought them back to the land again in his mercy is “baseless exegesis” seems to me to be an entirely arbitrary assertion on your part that shows no knowledge whatsoever of biblical teaching. What is your understanding of the Bible? That it is only myths, falsified history and legends?

As to my sniffing around on Substack, I understood that this was a proper place for commenting. It is a social media platform after all where many people of all sorts express their opinions. And, you gave me a very lengthy answer.

As to Elie Wiesel, I have no ambition to be like Elie Wiesel. But I do have an interest in Israel and in the Middle East, and find that many people do not know what they are talking about in those areas. Naturally, I don’t answer every comment on those subjects that comes along – if I did, I could spend many hours every day talking about the Middle East on Substack, which I have no desire to do. But, it is a subject that interests me.

You are curious to know who I am. If you are really interested I suggest you look in my archive and read “Why I believe there is a God,” “Jesus Christ, Light of the World,” and “Isaac Newton, theism, atheism and science.”

As to investing a lot of time and effort in my voluminous posts, some of them have been quite long, but not all of them – my initial comment to you was somewhat less than voluminous, and some of the comments to which I have been responding have been lengthy as well.

As to pseudo-historical Zionist propaganda I believe the contrary side is pseudo-historical anti-Zionist propaganda about the poor, helpless innocent little Arab lambs who were peacefully living in rustic and rural harmony until the evil Israelis came out of nowhere as agents of European colonialism and other such gross misrepresentations and facts. I suspect you will say that it is pseudo-historical Zionist propaganda and not plain historical fact, that after the Six Day War the Israelis publicly offered to negotiate the status of the newly occupied territories and were met with the famous three noes of the Arab League – “No peace, no recognition, and no negotiation.”

I have presented many plain and well-known facts which remain facts in spite of your hand-waving assertions.

I do assert that the Jews were right to return to the land, and that if the Arabs wanted to slay the cursed infidel Jews, they were under no obligation to lie down and allow that to happen. If the Arabs had accepted the UN compromise solution of partition in 1948, these problems would not have arisen. You say “Why should the Arabs accept a compromise over their own land?” But it was not their land. It had been ruled by the Turks for maybe 400 years without a peep of Palestinian nationalism. There was never at any time a real Palestinian nation.

And, one more fact that I know you will dislike: when the UN voted to accept partition in 1947, the Jews of Palestine planned and prepared, and when the British pulled out the Jews hit the ground running with a fully functional state that was able to stand the strains and stresses of war and has survived to this day. The Palestinians, on the other hand, did nothing whatever to prepare for statehood except to form armed criminal gangs that ran around looting, raping, and killing Arabs as well as Jews. Their sole plan was to slaughter all of the Jews first and worry about a government later.

About my few books, six of those are one-chapter ebooks that were taken verbatim out of Hitler, the Holocaust and the Bible by the publisher, and are all really smaller parts of one other book. I am trying to have them taken down now, but I did not put them up and do not have access to the website. Those six one-chapter ebook excerpts are:

(1) The New Testament and the Jews

(2) In Defense of Martin Luther

(3) The Jewish People and Their Enemies

(4) The Christians in the Third Reich

(5) Hitler's Religious, Quasi-Religious and Anti-Religious Ideas

(6) The Problem of Christian Antisemitism

The self published book of poetry was something I published maybe 30 years ago. Since that time I neither read nor write poetry – and am doing nothing to promote that book.

So the actual number of specific books is much smaller, only five:

• Hitler, the Holocaust and the Bible

• A Horror of Great Darkness

• Against Feminism (an earlier edition Contra Feminism was dropped)

• Light in the Darkness of Postmodernism

• Questions and Observations

A sixth book, Where is the American Church?, was taken verbatim from several chapters of Light in the Darkness, so is just a part of another book.

So, not counting the poetry book, that is really only five books, which is not much compared to some. If you like, I will mail you a free copy of Light in the Darkness. It has some autobiography in the initial short chapters, but most of the book is social and biblical commentary from a theologically conservative perspective.

You are right, there is no great demand for them, however a very small number of self-published books do very well – or so I have read – and I am making no effort to promote myself right now (though I will offer a few free books in the next few weeks).

As to lengthy posts generating little engagement in terms of reader comments or restacks, believe it or not I am not overly concerned about statistics. I have more free subscribers and followers than I did when I started out, but am not seeking fame and fortune. What I have to say is not popular in the world, and it is not popular in many churches either.

I do not know how much response you will get if you ever get around to writing something. I am sure many people will not be interested in someone who believes that the Jews are controlling America – but of course some will be. Why not write an article giving us your candid views on Hitler?

About spending less time on the keyboard, I study New Testament Greek and Hebrew, and have a broad range of books on various subjects I try to work through. Substack is not #1 on my list of priorities, and I often bypass many articles. Moreover, I have long recognized the importance of exercise and enjoy walking and bike riding – but let us also not forget the importance of spiritual health and last things. Do you give much thought to the meaning of life? What do you think happens after death? I assume you believe there is a God, going by your closing comments, but what sort of a God is it? How can we know his will? What does he require of us? What if we all will have to stand before the Supreme Power of the universe after death, with every word and thought and action we have ever spoken or had or done brought forth into the clear and perfect light of truth?

Do you believe the universe and the intricacies of scientific and natural law came into being as the result of some sort of random explosion? Do you believe the thoughts of your mind and the emotions of your soul are merely questions of biology and chemistry and that soul and personality are just illusions?

And what do you think of Christ? Who was he, and what did he stand for?

Hopefully you think about these and related questions – that is part of the reason we are here on earth – to explore and understand them.

You say “As for the end of days, who will rule in Jerusalem, the Final Judgment, and all such things that we cannot know — despite what Joe Keysor pronounces in prophetic fashion — maybe it is advisable to let God be God and try for a change to have a childlike faith in Our Lord. Remember him? May God bless you and guide you always!”

There are of course many things we cannot know, but Christ said there will be a day of judgment where we will stand before God to be judged for our works. He also said those who are accepted by God will go to a place of blessedness and those who are rejected by God will go to a place of torment. And, Christ says that our ultimate eternal destiny is more important than wealth, power, or success on earth. You said “Let God be God” – and this means that he will judge, and that he does reign. Why don’t you let be God be God, if it is his will to give some territory to one nation and take it away from another? He has the power and the authority to do that.

As for a childlike faith in our Lord, Jesus said many things – do you believe them? Do you believe the four gospels give us an accurate picture of what Christ said and did? I do. I have a childlike faith that what God our heavenly father says is true, and that includes an eternity in heaven for the righteous and an eternity in hell for the wicked. And I have a childlike faith that God the father has revealed himself to us in the person and in the teachings of his Son Jesus Christ.

What do you believe? Do you believe in the Bible? Do you believe Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, the door and the power and the righteousness of God?

It is easy to knock other people, but what is your vision and understanding of truth?

I am doing little or nothing to promote my self published book, but will send a few free copies of Where is the American Church? and Light in the Darkness of Postmodernism to anyone who sends me a mailing address via messaging or email.