The Judeo-Christian Conflict: Zionism vs. Jesus
By Charles E. Carlson
Charles On The Radio
Christian Zionism is a growing enigma to traditional Christians and to non-Christians alike, and it may come as a surprise that most of those inside its churches are very sure of what they believe, but they are not at all sure why they believe it. It is this author’s conclusion, based on personal observations at some 60 churches where Project Strait Gate has confronted and interviewed congregation and staff, that none of the dispensational or Judeo-Christians inside can open a New Testament and support what they believe from its pages. Most will not try. This paper is dedicated to the friends and families of some 60 million Americans who are in this dilemma.
The problem for Christ followers in Judeo-Christian churches is that their belief system varies depending on who is in the room, and what the subject is. If the subject is personal salvation for those who are present, Jesus Christ is the king, and His word is law, however many passages are avoided. But, whenever the subject is the state of Israel, or any news topic having to do with Zionism, or Jews in general, Jesus is left out in the street. There can be little or no room left for Him because political Zionists, secular American Jews or Israelis, have zero tolerance for Jesus. Israel and Jesus, mix like oil and water. For the most part, the words of Christ are unwelcome in Zionist circles, which may explain why His words are increasingly ignored and distorted by celebrity Judeo-Christians aspiring to a seat among the political Zionists. An increasing number now accept the insulting, irreverent, oxymoron “Christian-Zionist” (CZ) as their label, thinking it makes them instantly presentable to Jewish Zionists.
In the words of one visiting Pastor Art Preisinger, at an openly Christian-Zionist John Hagee meeting, “there was not a shred, a trace, a scintilla of Christianity in the proceedings.” We agree. Hagee’s Night To Honor Israel Speech in Washington DC is some 25 minutes long, and Jesus was not mentioned or quoted one time in it, not once. The same was true at his event in San Antonio on October 21, 2007. The purpose of this paper is to show why Jesus’ teachings are intentionally and pointedly left out. (2)Preisinger
Outright self-contradiction is a hallmark of Judeo-Christians. We Hold These Truths discusses Old Testament corruption in our 43-minute audio video presentation, which is centered on what is probably the most used passages of Judeo-Christianity’s doctrine, Genesis 12:3, the fractured root of political Israel’s claim to the Palestinian’s land.(3)Cause*
Judeo-Christianity’s favorite book, The Scofield Reference Bible was published by Oxford University Press, was written and repeatedly updated and each new edition takes on more radically Zionist political undertones, corrupting the understanding of Genesis 12:1-3, as well as Jesus’ own words, as recorded in the New Testament book of Matthew 25 which is our main theme in this paper.
Jesus is quoted in the 5th Chapter of Matthew: “love your neighbor… and even your enemy… that you may be fit for the kingdom on heaven.”*3 The Zionist version, as we shall see, sounds like, Love the state of Israel and God will give you earthly prosperity. Unfortunately, the Zionist version is the one used in Mac Hammond’s church and his magazine.
Mac Hammond of Minneapolis is a mega church celebrity pastor. Hammond is publisher of the materialistic sounding Winner’s Way Magazine. (5) He is pastor and founder of Living Word Christian Center in Brooklyn Heights, MN, is one of many celebrity Christians who has hitched their star to Israel, and is on the board of Christians United For Israel, and seems to be ready to saddle up and join the war on Islam. We will dissect his words to help to expose the Judeo Christian distortion about what Jesus said. First for Hammond’s zionized view of the world, we quote him in Winner’s Way, volume 3, 2007 and page 2.
“The global political scene today, the greatest enemy of all nations is radical fundamental Islam—or Islamofacism. As a militant group, they have made their strategy very clear to the world—to eliminate Satan and Great Satan, i.e., Israel and America, which is the equivalent of Judaism and Christianity.”
Hammond is no peacemaker; but Jesus is. Christian Zionists must twist and pervert Jesus’ own words because His words never support Christian Zionism’s militancy toward Muslims. Mac Hammond does us a rare favor by explaining his beliefs about the 25th chapter of the Book of Matthew to the point where it would be unrecognizable to the converted tax collector believed to have written it. Hammond:
“God has mandated us to bless Israel—and blessing Israel is a way to open up our lives (or country) to the blessing of God. In other words, God has promised to bless anyone who blesses Israel—Christian or not. That’s how important this is to God! He said in His Word, if you bless Israel, if you bless the seed of Abraham, then He would bless you. Blessing Israel is so significant to God that He does not require a person to be a Christian—to have a covenant with Him—in order to be blessed.”
Pastor Hammond’s story of Abraham’s blessings and curses is taken from the distorted Zionist version of the Book of Genesis 12:3 as found in the Oxford University Press owned Scofield Reference Bible, 1967 edition, page 19, explained in our audio-visual, the Cause of Our Conflict.*(2) Furthermore, Pastor Hammond represents that it pays dividends to bless Israel; maybe that is why the title, “Winner’s Way.” Mac Hammond states that those of other religions (or no faith at all) can also earn God’s blessing by favoring Israel, including we suppose, those who despise Jesus, which is the case with most Israelis who do not even believe he existed. This universal blessing is an amazing admission for Hammond, a born again Christian.
Judeo-Christians get around this problem of how non-Christians can earn heaven by telling you the “blessings” have nothing to do with heaven, but are earthly blessings about the “second coming” of Jesus “after the Rapture.” However the scripture Hammond picks to prove his point is all about heaven and hell; the tax collector Matthew says so, quoting Jesus! Hammond, as a Judeo-Christian, would normally swear that only by knowing Jesus can one be saved from damnation; so what value can there be for the pagans to earn earthly blessings if they are dammed for eternity for failing to follow Jesus’ words? It seems Hammond will say almost anything to rationalize honoring political Israel as a god. One might wonder from what source he receives his favors.
We Hold These Truths must ask and answer, “Where in scripture does Hammond get the idea that blessing political Israel will bring God’s blessing on “us”? Typically, Hammond has learned to ignore almost everything Jesus left for instructions if it contradicts Christian-Zionism. All lean on Old Testament prophesy such as Genesis 12:3. Here we find the words that most Christ followers think God spoke to Abram 3000 years ago in a first person exchange:
“I will bless them who bless thee, and curse them who curse thee.”
Hammond applies these words not to Abram (later Abraham) and his immediate family, but to the present-day political Israel that came into existence some 3000 years after Abram’s death, and was created by the United Nations in 1948, at which time it chose “Israel” for a name. Hammond goes on to amplify:
“We need to be involved in blessing the nation and the people whom God has called the apple of His eye.”
“If we will get involved, I believe we will see amazing breakthroughs in our lives, homes, churches, ministries, and communities.”
“Even our nation as a whole will be blessed if our foreign policies line up with God’s desires for the nation of Israel.”
“I sincerely believe it’s time for us to make a decision to be proactive in this arena; for when we don’t actively bless Israel, we curse them by virtue of apathy.”
Hammond says he considers being apathetic toward Israel a sin. Just how proactive does he want us to be? Would we get greater blessings from God if we went out and killed someone we think might be an enemy of Israel? But what if we kill an entire family of Muslims? When Project Strait Gate had a vigil at Hammond’s church in Minneapolis one of the signs displayed was: Who Would Jesus Bomb? There was no answer. Here is Hammond’s confusing explanation of where Jesus fits in:
“We recognize the validity and veracity of Israel’s present-day covenant with God. We know the new and better covenant we have, ratified by Jesus’ shed blood, provides for us all the benefits of salvation, including experiencing the presence of God today…. Do you want the blessing of God in your life? Do you want change in your life today? Then bless Israel and the Jew. Acknowledge the present-day veracity of their covenant with God. Move toward them in solidarity. And bless Israel.”
Is this doublespeak? In the same breath Hammond acknowledges Jesus’ “new and better covenant” for “us” who have already experienced the “benefit of salvation, including experiencing the presence of God today”….But then Hammond goes on without a breath: “do we want God’s blessing in our life”? “Then bless Israel and the Jews.” Note he did not say anything about following Jesus’ teachings to be blessed.
So which way is it? Did Jesus give “us” a new covenant, or do we earn earthly blessings by supporting political Israel, knowing they kill innocent people every day? Mac Hammond wants blessings, the heavenly ones, and he wants the earthy blessings too, so he, like every Christian Zionist, must manufacture scripture to justify winning both ways. Let’s find out what Mac Hammond says he believes about Jesus and, “God’s blessing in our life.”
In Matthew Chapter 25, Jesus tells his closest followers about heaven and hell, as we will see later. First we will hear Mac Hammond’s, interpretation in Winner’s Way, page 5:
“In Matthew 25:31-33, the Bible reveals that part of the criteria in how the nations will be judged is how they treated Israel: ‘When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. And He will set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left’ (NKJV).”
“Many believe this passage is speaking of the point in time when the Church will have been ruptured, so these are not Christians that are being gathered before the Lord, but rather the nations of unbelievers who have remained on the earth.”…
“Many scholars agree that these verses reveal that the nations of people who go into the millennium are going to be selected on the basis of how they treated Israel as a nation and the Jew as an individual.” …
”Even our nation as a whole will be blessed if our foreign policies line up with God’s desires for the nation of Israel.” …
“I sincerely believe it’s time for us to make a decision to be proactive in this arena; for when we don’t actively bless Israel, we curse them by virtue of apathy.”
To find the source of Hammond’s strange interpretation of the much quoted sheep and goats’ parable, we go straight to the footnotes in the 1967 Edition of the Scofield Reference Bible, owned by Oxford University Press that explains Matthew 25 exactly as Pastor Hammond teaches it, page 1036-37*(4) (25:32) This judgment of individual Gentiles is to be distinguished from other judgments in Scripture…This time the judgment is “when the Son of man shall come in his glory,” i.e. the second coming of Christ after the tribulation. The subject of this judgment i.e. “all nations.” I.e. all the gentiles then living on earth. Three classes of individuals mentioned: (1) sheep, saved gentiles; (2) goats, unsaved gentiles and; (3) brethren, the people of Israel…the test of this judgment is the treatment by individual gentiles of those who Jesus calls “my brethren” living in the preceding tribulation period when Israel is fearfully persecuted ( Gen 12:3). …. The sheep are the Gentiles saved on earth during the period between the rapture and Christ’s second coming to earth.”
To repeat Pastor Hammond’s teaching:
“Many scholars agree that these verses reveal that the nations of people who go into the millennium are going to be selected on the basis of how they treated Israel as a nation and the Jew as an individual.”
Mac Hammond does not tell us he finds his fantasy about loving Israel in the Scofield footnotes, but it becomes crystal clear when we compare. Oxford’s/Scofield makes loving Israel part of man’s eternal security. Hammond even teaches that our nation can be cursed if we don’t do it, and if we bless Israel we will get material rewards. More confusing still, he teaches that Jesus’ lesson does not even apply to us, and amazingly, it did not even apply to the twelve people to whom he delivered the lesson two millenniums ago! Why bother to tell them? It was not for them, but about a future “end times?” Jesus did not say a word about the end times, it was written into footnotes in the Scofield Reference Bible about 1900 years after the death of Matthew.
It is a mistake to write off Mac Hammond as a fanatical charlatan because, if we do so, we do little or nothing for those who follow him. We must instead find out where he got his false faith and deal with it factually; only in this way can we change the intelligent many that are misled.
The Oxford Press Scofield Reference Bible is the most purchased study bible ever. It has been the standard for dispensationalist since 1908. Footnotes added to King James Edition color the religious thought of some 50-60 million Americans, including 16 million Southern Baptists. It is evident from several recent polls that another 40 million Americans are directly or indirectly influenced by “Christian” media, which is almost entirely Judeo-Christian in teaching. To a greater or lesser degree these 90 odd millions are tied together by some vague thought pounded into their conscience and unconscious that they owe something to Israel, and to every Jew, and punishment await them if they fail to comply. But none of this is anywhere, but in the footnotes.
Mac Hammond wrote:
“when we don’t actively bless Israel, we curse them by virtue of apathy.”
Indeed,Jesus spoke about apathy too, but not a word about blessing Israel. When one of the rejected sheep in Jesus parable of sheep and goats asked Jesus why those symbolized as “goats,” was turned away from the kingdom of heaven, Jesus answered:
“I was hungry and ye gave me no food; I was thirsty and you gave me no drink; I was a stranger, and you took me not in; naked and you clothed me not; sick and in prison and you visited me not;”
The goats protested that they had never had the opportunity to feed Christ, to which Jesus’ reply was all about apathy:
“Verily I say unto you, for as much as you did it not to the least of these, you did it not to me…and ye shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal.”
Does that not sound like it is about heaven and hell? We think so, and Jesus said it was. All the verses of Matthew 25 are part of Jesus’ full lecture on this one subject. Jesus told his disciples twice in advance that the lecture was about, “the kingdom of Heaven,” no where does He mention the kingdom of Israel, as both Scofield and Mac Hammond want their readers to believe. This is important enough to look at Jesus’ words in verses 1 and 14 respectively:
(1) “Then shall the Kingdom of Heaven be likened unto…” and (14) “the kingdom of Heaven is like…”
In Matthew’s account, many Israelis would likely be found on Jesus left hand among the goats because of the way they have treated their fellow men, the Palestinians. Perhaps most Judeo-Christians would be right there with them because of their benign neglect of the least of these, Jesus’ brothers.
Oxford Press, a Zionist influence organization in the UK, clearly wanted to change the subject to make Jesus’ words seem to fit a different sheep and goat judgment, one that required Christians to support and honor political Israel. Never mind loving and doing kindness to the least of your fellow men. Into the 1967 Scofield Reference Bible Oxford Press, the owner inserted a forgery line of their own in italics just before verse (31) which reads:*(5)
“Judgment of the individual Gentiles at Christ’s return to earth.” (5)
Causing the passage to read as follows:
“Judgment of the individual Gentiles at Christ’s return to earth.”
(31) Then the Son of man shall come in his glory, and before him shall be gathered all the nations, and he shall separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.”
The change in meaning is inescapable. Jesus said he was talking about “the kingdom of Heaven”, but… Oxford press brazenly changes the occasion to “Christ’s return to earth.” Furthermore, the judgment that Jesus said applies to “all the nations” applies only to gentiles at some future event not in heaven but on earth.
Mac Hammond may have been fooled along with those he is teaching, or he may like it this way because it works for him. Whatever his reason, he uses a forgery to build his own earthly kingdom.
Stop: please do not go on reading unless you understand what you have just read. If it is not clear, find a Bible and read the words in Matthew 25 in context, then judge for yourself. If you too, have been misled by Bible forgery, the rest of the story will blow your socks off!
Once you understand the Judeo-Christian’s invention, the rest of the story of Matthew 25 is revealed by simply reading it with an open mind. It is about loving and helping the most needy and helpless of the human race. It is in no way about worshiping or serving political Israel. Jesus provides two parables, one parable of the faithful followers who love the least of their brothers as they should love Him, Jesus; the second parable about the sheep that forget to love the least of their brothers, and as a consequence were driven out of the kingdom of heaven. How very simple. Jesus explains His one law, love your brother as you love yourself, and even try to do the seemingly impossible, love your enemy.(1)
But the inventive Judeo-Christian, Mac Hammond, has his own formula. Never mind the suffering Afghan child, Iraqi mother, or Palestinian hungry teenager, just love the state of Israel to earn material favor for you right here on earth where you do not have to die to collect! This is the distorted and biblically false message of Christian Zionism. Mac Hammond is apostate and he takes Jesus’ “name in vain.” This too is a violation of one of God’s simple and logical commandments.
Conclusion:
The one great unbridgeable error common to dispensational or Judeo-Christian leaders is the provable fact that there is little or no Christ in what they teach. In the heat of supporting a growingly unpopular world Zionism and its brutal repression of the occupied Arab/Muslim people of Israel, Judeo-Christian leaders directly and arrogantly contradict what Christians everywhere take by faith to be the words, and laws of Jesus Christ. This is why Judeo-Christianity must end, and will end, with the emptying of its churches.
Endnotes:
*(1) Jesus’ new commandment: You have heard that it is said thou shall love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy, but I say to you, love your enemy, bless them who curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father that is in heaven. KJV Matthew 5:43-46
*(2) From Religious Rant to Political Bombast to Spiritual Emptiness and Deception, by Pastor Art Preisinger Jun 02, 2007 http://cp.whtt.org/index.php?news=2&id=1418
*(3)Cause of Our Conflict, Audio-visual, by Charles Carlson
www.whtt.org/show
*(4) Scofield Reference Bible 1967 Version, page 19-20;
*(5) Winner’s Way, Vol. 3, 2007
Vigil: San Antonio TX, John Hagee’s Cornerstone Church, Sunday, October 28, 2007
JOIN US: PROJECT STRAIT GATE VIGIL FOR PEACE WITH JUSTICE
On the public streets outside Cornerstone Church, 18755 Stone Oak Pkwy. San Antonio, TX
Time: Join us Sunday, October 28, 2007, 8:00 AM – 11:30 AM (Near Highway 181 north off Charles W. Andrews Loop)
IF A THING IS WRONG ACT LIKE IT’S WRONG
Pastor Hagee is founder of Christians United For Israel, and “Night To Honor Israel.” He is a committed and angry enabler of Serial Wars who lobbies openly for a pre-emptive bombing of Iran. He leads this big congregation in the bloody path of Christian-Zionism, teaching the apostate doctrine that the State of Israel is the “fulfillment of Biblical Prophesy.” This mega-church is ignoring the Christian belief that Jesus Christ is that fulfillment and His words call out for peace. This abuse of Scripture has led to serial wars and bloodshed of at least half a million Arab people and has forced 5 million or more into refugee camps, not to mention the 3900 American military and many civilian mercenaries that have died. Come, help call this big congregation to Choose Life, Not War.
To view the apostasy of John Hagee’s Night to Honor Israel, go to Bill Moyers Journal, October 5, 2007
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10052007/watch2.html)
To view recent press coverage of Night To Honor Israel, quoting Project Strait Gate (We told the reporter there is little or no Christianity there) go to: (http://whtt.org/index.php?news=2&id=1829)
THE RULES OF THE VIGIL:
* Please park your car OFF THE CHURCH PROPERTY and park and walk only on public right-of-ways
* Watch for the big Yellow and black Project Strait Gate sign
* Signs are furnished, bring your own if you wish; examples are:
BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS
NO MORE WARS FOR ISRAEL
IRAQ? WWJD? (WHAT WOULD JESUS DO)
CHOOSE LIFE, NOT WAR.
CHRISTIAN RACISM KILLS PALESTINIANS
INNOCENT BLOOD ON OUR HANDS: Iraq, Gaza, Afghanistan, and American blood.
APOSTATE CHURCH Christ Followers Must Not Kill* Please dress in traditional church attire.
* Refrain from loud exchanges with anyone, this is a quiet vigil.
* Please give space to those who come out to talk.
* Do not interrupt, do not argue…educate.
* Stay spaced so all the signs may be seen by those in the church.
* Feel free to tell the press what you think, but please refer official inquires to sponsors.
* Hand out literature will be provided.
* The police will be notified of this event and be asked to be present.
Project Strait Gate
More than sixty vigils: (http://whtt.org/straitgate/index.php?id=14&news=1)
P O Box 14491
Scottsdale, AZ 85267
Home office contact 480-947-3329
Local Contact: Dave 210-687-1484 [email protected]
Press contact: Charles: 602-741-4650
http://whtt.org/straitgate/index.php?news=2&id=251
Article Source: We Hold These Truths
