THE GREATEST LIE EVER TOLD

By: Martin M. van Brauman 

Once again the United Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church (USA) denominations seriously considered anti-Israel divestment at their conventions this year. They persist to demonize Israel and to hype glowing praise on the myth of a pro-Palestinian Liberation Theology. The mainline churches still preach a general replacement theology that is based upon the Christian church replacing the nation of Israel as God’s people on earth, inheriting all the promised blessings under the Covenant of Abraham. Replacement or supersessionist theology calls Christians the “true Jews” and the church the “new Israel.” Replacement theology is the greatest lie ever told and the very existence of Israel and the survival of the Jewish people represent a repudiation of replacement theology and all of its variations that is the foundation of mainline Christian church dogma.

During the close of the 19th century, Theodor Herzl realized that in general society there was always an invisible yet tangible wall of anti-Semitism surrounding the Jew. Following the Alfred Dreyfus case in Paris, Herzl in 1896 published Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), creating the framework for political Zionism with Jewish statehood in an independent territory as the only solution to anti-Semitism. In 1894, Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish artillery officer on the French general staff, was falsely accused of selling military secrets to Germany.1 Forged evidence and anti-Semitic propaganda resulted in his court-martial and sentence to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island off French Guyana.2

Herzl thought that the Jewish question was not a social or religious question but a national question that could be solved only by making it “a political world question to be discussed and settled by the civilized nations of the world in council.”3 Herzl thought that “once settled in their own State, would probably have no more enemies.”4

The rebirth of Israel represents a revelatory event in Judaism’s history and Christian dogma must be reborn to accept God’s continuing covenant with the Jewish people for the ancient Covenant is eternal and was never replaced by the Christian church.5 The Jewish question always has been a religious question. The Jewish question is the eternal annoyance that arose with the questions asked of God to Adam of where are you and your soul and to Cain where is your brother and what have you done.6

I will return the captivity of My people Israel, and they will rebuild desolate cities and settle them; they will plant vineyards and drink their wine; they will cultivate gardens and eat their fruits. I will plant them upon their land and they will never again be uprooted from their land that I have given them, Said the Lord, your God. Amos 9:14-15.

1. Jeremy Cohen, Christ Killers: The Jews and the Passion From the Bible to the Big Screen, (1st ed. 2007), p. 137.
2. Ibid. 
3. Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State, (Dover edition 1988), p. 76.
4. Ibid., p. 153.
5. John K. Roth and Michael Berenbaum, Holocaust: Religious and Philosophical Implications, (1st ed. 1989), p. 326.
6. Alan L. Berger and David Patterson, Jewish-Christian Dialogue: Drawing Honey from the Rock, (1st ed. 2008), p. 120.