 I think it's safe to say that Christianity faced many daunting challenges during its formative years. Israel was a nation that was straining under Roman occupation when Jesus of Nazareth claimed to be the Messiah in approximately the year 27 of the common era. He attracted a small group of Jewish followers and they expected that he would soon liberate them from Roman rule and usher in a utopian messianic age. Jesus' group was entirely composed of Jews and its makeup was not just Jewish, their practice was thoroughly Jewish. Jesus repeatedly told his followers that the focus of his mission was directed exclusively toward the Jewish people and that their observance of the Torah was vital. After leading his group for three years, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for the Passover festival and he was summarily executed, crucified by the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate as any insurrectionist leader would have been. Now this was totally unexpected and came as a tremendous shock and disappointment to his followers. Some of them immediately left the group. Others claimed to have had visions seeing him three days after his crucifixion and soon afterward ascending heavenward. But they anxiously awaited for his return to redeem Israel and usher in the kingdom of God. The second great challenge facing this movement was when their expected return of their Messiah failed to materialize. At some point they began to tweak the entire concept of the Messiah so that it could accommodate a dead Messiah and their basic innovation was to claim that the real reason God sent the Messiah to the world was for him to die as a sacrifice who would atone for the sins of those who would believe in him. Now this desperate makeover of the messianic concept had no traction within the greater Jewish community. As Jesus's small group of Jewish followers continued to anxiously wait for him to return, their group slowly eroded over the course of about 150 years to the point of extinction. However the game changer for Christianity was a mysterious individual named Saul Sha'ul from Tarsus. Sha'ul never met Jesus but he claimed to have had mystical visions, mystical encounters with Jesus who called him to be a follower and to take his message to the non-Jewish world. Saul totally threw himself into this mission. He became known as Paul but he had a serious problem. He didn't really know much about Jesus. He never met Jesus. He never heard Jesus teach. And he didn't seem terribly interested in consulting with Jesus's Jewish followers who had been based primarily in Jerusalem. Instead Paul developed his own understanding of who Jesus was and what he had come to do. Paul was an effective communicator and a tireless traveler and he made numerous converts among the Gentile population throughout the Greco-Roman world. But the third major problem for the nascent Christian religion was the absence of Jews from the pews. This was embarrassing and it was terrible optics. Jesus of course claimed to be the Jewish Messiah. His following that was launched was thoroughly Torah observant but these Jews quickly disappeared and the movement only reemerges with Gentiles becoming the major adherents and they had zero adherents to the Torah and they were led by someone who never met Jesus and who was held under suspicion by the original Jesus movement. Paul struggled to resolve the tension between the continued election of the Jewish people as God's chosen people in spite of their rejection of Jesus but Paul also needed a way to come up with an approach where the Gentiles flocking to his movement could fit into God's plan. So in his letter to the Romans written about 30 years after the death of Jesus Paul asserts that the criterion for inclusion into the covenant with God the main criterion was faith and not blood so by embracing Jesus Gentiles could become part of the Jewish people and Paul likened God's chosen nation to an olive tree that was originally comprised of Jewish people but now non-Jews who believed in Jesus could be grafted into this olive tree yet there was a flip side to Paul's concept. If faith in Jesus was the basis for inclusion into God's covenant and Jewish blood alone was not sufficient in the absence of this faith there was a problem and so in Paul's analogy these branches of unbelieving Jews are broken off from the olive tree. As we move into the second century the leaders of the church moved beyond Paul's rhetoric and took a dramatic step in dealing with the problem of the relationship between the church and the Jewish people and this was essentially to get rid of the Jews. This emerged as a teaching that the church has replaced Israel as God's chosen people this doctrine is known as replacement theology sometimes it's called supersessionism and it asserts that God has no future plan or calling for the nation of Israel they've been replaced by the church and the only thing left for the Jewish people to do is to convert to Christianity and get absorbed into the church that's all that remains for the Jews and they say the teachers of this replacement theology insist that all of the prophecies and all of the promises in the Bible about the restoration of Israel to the promised land all of these promises are spiritualized and allegorized into promises of God's blessings for the church there are many variations on this supersessionist theme the two most popular are number one economic supersessionism sometimes called historical supersessionism this view maintains that Israel's role and mission as God's chosen people was completed once Jesus came as the Messiah the Jews are now obsolete and no longer needed and so the church takes their place God's plan for his people would morph from an ethnic group into a universalistic group one of the early church fathers Milito of Sardis writing in the second century expressed this view and he says the people of Israel were precious before the church arose and the Torah was marvelous before the gospel but when the church arose and the gospel took precedence the model was made void the people of Israel were made void when the church arose in the 20th century Carl Barth famous swiss reform theologian was also an advocate of economic supersessionism and he wrote the following the first Israel constituted on the basis of physical descent from Abraham this has fulfilled its mission now that the savior of the world has appeared its members can only accept that fact with gratitude and attach themselves to the people of this savior their own king whose members the Gentiles are now called to be as well its mission as a natural community has now run its course and cannot be continued or repeated however there's a second more pernicious approach towards replacement theology called punitive supersessionism and this approach maintains that Israel's place as God's people was forfeited by them because of their sin in rejecting Jesus as a result God washed his hands of the Jewish people leaving them with no purpose whatsoever as a nation this view insists that God is finished with the Jewish people Martin Luther who was the founder of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century expressed this view in his infamous work concerning the Jews and their lies which he published in the year 1543 and there Luther writes the following for such ruthless wrath of God is sufficient evidence that the Jewish people assuredly have erred and gone astray even a child can comprehend this for one dare not regard God as so cruel that he would punish his own people for so long so terribly and unmercifully therefore this work of wrath is proof that the Jews surely are rejected by God are no longer his people and neither is he any longer their God from the second century until the 19th century supersessionism was embraced by virtually all of Christendom Catholics Protestants Orthodox churches all embraced this doctrine of replacement theology as we'll see later there was a serious defection from this view beginning in the 20th century but even so it seems that today a majority of churches still hold today to some form of replacement thinking modern day Israel is seen in replacement circles as an accident of history that is no different than when India gained independence from Great Britain in 1947 these Christians insist that Israel today has no spiritual significance whatsoever and that God has no special plan or destiny for it the Knox theological seminary issued a document in 2002 entitled an open letter to evangelicals concerning Israel the letter begins by denouncing anyone that teaches that the Bible's promises concerning the land of Israel are being fulfilled today in a special region or holy land perpetually set apart by God for one ethnic group alone the letter goes on to insist that the promises made to Abraham do not apply to any particular ethnic group but to the church of Jesus the true Israel since being issued this document has been endorsed by hundreds of theologians and pastors including some of the most well-known Christian leaders in the world it turns out that the roots of replacement theology can be uncovered on the very pages of the Christian Bible while the actual meaning of many of these passages is a subject of debate among Christians today those who play who embrace replacement theology will cite these passages for support in the gospel of Matthew chapter three verses seven through ten it describes when John the baptizer is meeting people to Jordan river to immerse them and he sees the leaders of the Jewish people the Pharisees and the Sadducees coming and he says to them you brood of vipers who warns you to flee from the wrath to come you must bear fruit worthy of repentance do not presume to say to yourselves we have Abraham as our ancestor for I tell you God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire later in the book of Matthew chapter 21 verses 33 to 46 is the famous parable of the landowner and Jesus addresses the Jewish people and says listen to another parable there was a landowner who planted a vineyard he put a wall around it dug a wine press in it and built a watch tower then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place when the harvest time approached he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit the tenants seized his servants they beat one they killed another and they stoned a third then he sent other servants to them more than the first time and the tenants treated them in the same way finally he sent his son to them they will respect my son he said but when the tenants saw the son they said to each other this is the heir come let's kill him and take his inheritance so they took him and they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him so Jesus asks now when the owner of the vineyard comes what will he do to these tenants and they replied he'll bring those wretches to a wretched end and he'll rent the vineyard to other tenants who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time jesus then addressed the jews and said have you never read the scriptures the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone the lord has done this and it's marvelous in his eyes therefore i tell you the kingdom of god will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit in the book of acts chapter 3 verse 23 peter was preaching to the jews about their need to accept jesus as the messiah and prophet of god and peter says anyone who does not listen to him will be completely cut off from their people paul in his letter to the romans in chapter 2 verses 28 to 29 writes for he is not a jew who is one outwardly nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh but he is a jew who is one inwardly and circumcision is that of the heart in the spirit not in the letter whose praise is not from men but from god the last book of the christian bible the book of revelation chapter 3 verse 9 writes indeed i will make those of the synagogue of satan who say they are jews but they're not they lie and i will make them come and worship before your feet in paul's letter to the galatians chapter 3 verses 26 to 29 he says addressing the galatians not a jewish audience for you are all sons of god through your faith in the messiah jesus and if you belong to the messiah then you are abraham's seed heirs to the promise only if you belong to the messiah in his letter to the galatians later on in chapter 6 verses 15 through 16 paul writes for both circumcision and uncircumcision mean nothing what matters instead is a new creation may peace come to all of those who follow this standard and mercy to the israel of god and by the israel of god paul means those who follow jesus in the first book of peter first peter chapter 2 verses 9 to 10 he writes again to his Gentile audience but you are a chosen people a royal priesthood a holy nation god's special possession that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light once you were not a people but now you are the people of god once you had not received mercy but now you have received mercy these sentiments were carried further in the pronouncements of the church fathers beginning in the second century the epistle of barnabas written around the year 100 of the common era was even considered for inclusion into the christian bible and it states there that only a christian can make sense of the bible because carnal jews with their earthly mindset fail to grasp the hidden messages of their own scriptures as a result the jews eternally forfeited their entitlement to the covenant promises made to abraham isaac and jacob justin martyr in the second century in his famous dialogue with trifo the jew it's not clear if trifo was an actual jew or a literary device but it's a famous debate he has with a jew named trifo and in this dialogue justin maintained that god's covenant with israel was no longer valid and that he was the first one justin martyr to identify the church as the true israel he writes for the true spiritual israel and descendants of juda jacob isaac and abraham are we who have been led to god through the crucified messiah we who have been quarried out from the bowels of the messiah are the true israelite race and in his dialogue with trifo justin declares the scriptures are not yours they are ours in the second century saint iranius the bishop from leon france writes that the house of jacob and the people are is of israel are disinherited from the grace of god the church has completely replaced them also in the second century clement of alexandria writes that israel denied the lord and therefore forfeited the place of the true israel hippolytus of rome in the second century writes that the jews were darkened in the eyes of their souls with the darkness utter and everlasting they were destined to be slaves to the nations forever in the third century tertulium the great church father wrote that the promise of genesis chapter 25 that the older will serve the younger this was referring to asa and jacob when rebecca was pregnant with twins she went to a prophet for understanding and he told her you have you're carrying twins and the elder will serve the younger and tertulian writes that the promise of this prophecy in genesis chapter 25 was a prophecy that israel would become subservient to the church because israel is the elder faith and the church is younger the elder will serve the younger and he wrote that god divorced the jewish people and rejected them in favor of the christians syprian of carthage also in the third century who was a student of tertulium writes that the jews departed from god and lost favor while the christians took their place he writes we christians pray to god as our father because he has begun to be ours and he has ceased to be the father of the jews who have forsaken him origin of alexandria also in the third century writes we may assert in utter confidence that the jews will not return to their earlier situation for they have committed the most abominable of crimes in forming this conspiracy against the savior of the human race therefore the city where jesus suffered was necessarily destroyed the nation that was driven from its country the nation the jewish nation was driven from its country and another people was called by god to be the blessed election origin as well wrote that destruction of jerusalem served as the bill of divorce by god to israel eusebius who was the bishop of casaria he was born in 265 he died in 339 he continued in the teaching of the church that the true israel was the christian religion and he wrote that while the promises of scripture were meant for the church all of the curses of the bible still apply to the jews hillary of potier who was a bishop sainted by the catholic church granted sainthood in the fourth century writes that jews are a perverse people accursed by god forevermore the archbishop archbishop of konstantinople sainton christus them in the fourth century was a very famous preacher nicknamed the golden tongue preacher delivered eight sermons against the jews he writes the synagogue is not only a brothel it's a den of thieves and a lodging place for wild beasts jews are in veteran murderers possessed by the devil their debauchery and drunkenness gives them the manners of a pig that is why i hate the jews and it's a christian's duty to hate the jews because they worship satan saint jerome in the fourth century was famous for producing the latin vulgate translation of the bible writes that jews are serpents wearing the image of judas their psalms and prayers are like the braying of dunkies they are incapable of understanding the scriptures saint ambrose the bishop of milan in the fourth century writes the jews are the most worthless of all men they are lecherous greedy and rapacious they are perfidious murderers of the messiah they worship the devil their religion is a sickness the jews are the odious assassins of the messiah and for killing god there is no expiation possible christians may never cease vengeance and the jews must live in servitude forever god always hated the jews and it is essential that all christians hate them as well born in 354 st augustine of hippo the great theologian considered to be the greatest of church fathers in terms of his development of christian theology basically embraced everything that was said previously about the jews he writes if we hold with a firm heart the grace of god which has been given to us we are israel the seed of abraham let no christian consider himself alien to the name of israel but augustine was the first to deal with the question of why would god even bother to allow the jews to continue to exist in spite of their terrible crimes no one had thought about this before if god is through with the jews why is god still preserving them and in his sermon called against the jews augustine wrote that even though the jews deserved death they were destined to wander the earth as eternal witnesses to the triumph of the church over the synagogue he also wrote that the adherence of the jewish people to the torah proved the antiquity and the authenticity of the old testament which in the church's opinion contained numerous prophecies foretelling the coming of christianity the jews therefore serve according to augustine as evidence that christians didn't forge these prophecies in the hebrew scriptures about jesus of course the great danger with this kind of anti- jewish rhetoric and we've only seen a little bit of it is that this kind of ideology has a propensity to slide into anti- jewish behavior john christastem i mentioned previously the golden-tongued preacher whose vile rantings about the jews were quoted went further he wrote that when animals have been fattened by having all they want to eat they get stubborn and hard to manage when these animals are unfit for work they are marked for slaughter and this is the very thing the jews have experienced by making themselves unfit for work they've become ready for slaughter this is why jesus said in the gospel of luke chapter 19 verse 27 as for my enemies who do not want me to reign over them bring them here and slay them in my presence christastem served in anteak syria where they're followed after his rantings tremendous persecution of the jewish community they're finally leading to the expulsion of every jew from that city i mentioned before that martin luther was the father of the protestant reformation and he wrote a notorious tract called concerning the jews and their lies where he referred to the jews as a miserable and accursed people stupid fools miserable blind and senseless thieves and robbers the great vermin of humanity he writes the jews are lazy rogues blind and venomous but he went past this he didn't just put the jews down what did luther advocate their synagogues in school should be burned their houses should be destroyed their Talmudic writings should be seized their rabbis should be forbidden to teach their money should be taken from them they should be compelled into forced labor adolf hitler later often referred to martin luther's teachings and he wrote that he saw himself as carrying out the legacy of martin luther now this claim that the christian church is the true israel of the bible strains credibility israel is mentioned over 2000 times in the hebu scriptures and christian theologians have to do one incredible tap dance through the bible in order to interpret all of these passages allegorically to be referring to the church this attempt to co-opt the bible seems especially suspicious when all of the predictions of judgment against israel are understood literally this is especially strange when you find passages in the bible where the very same verse has both threats of punishment and a promise of rescue to the jewish people how is it possible to say well half of the verse is speaking about israel but half of the verse is really speaking about god's promises to the church for example in the book of germany at chapter 30 verse 11 the prophet says for i am with you declares a lord to save you for i will destroy completely all the nations where i have scattered you only i will not destroy you completely i will chase in you justly and i will by no means leave you unpunished so in the very same verse where god says he will punish us he will chase in us he promises but he will never destroy us and he's going to save us and take care of our enemies and somehow the church that embraces replacement theology has to say well part of this verse applies to israel part of the church any unbiased study of scripture will reveal that god made his covenant with the nation of israel as an everlasting relationship and there are literally hundreds of passages that show this for replacement theologians their identity theft becomes incredibly bizarre and it reminds me of that old film the invasion of the body snatchers because not only do these replacement theologians insist that the church is now the true israel some of these replacement theologians insist that the church existed from the beginning of time and that all of the faithful people in the jewish bible knew jesus believed in jesus and put their faith in jesus it's similar to many in islamic theology that insist that abraham was a good muslim as well what does the bible actually say about the jewish people and their covenant genesis chapter 17 verse 7 god says to abraham i will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants after you in their generations for an everlasting covenant to be god to you and your descendants after you and this promise is literally repeated dozens and dozens and dozens of times in the book of vaikr leviticus chapter 26 verses 44 to 45 god says in spite of this when they are in the land of their enemies i will not reject them or abhor them so as to destroy them completely breaking my covenant with them because i am the lord their god but for their sake i will remember the covenant with their ancestors whom i brought out of egypt in the site of the nations to be their god i am the lord the prophet isaia in chapter 54 verse 10 writes for the mountains may be removed and the hills may shake but my loving kindness will not be removed from you and my covenant of peace will not be shaken says the lord who has compassion on you a few chapters later isaia chapter 59 verse 21 as for me this is my covenant with them says the lord my spirit that is upon you and my words that i've put in your mouth shall not depart out of your mouth or the mouths of your children or out of the mouths of your children's children says the lord from now and forever the prophet Jeremiah chapter 31 verses 35 to 36 says something amazing thus says the lord who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar the lord of hosts is his name because if this fixed order of nature departs from before me declares the lord then the offspring of israel will also cease from being a nation before me forever says the lord god is saying that as long as the laws of nature are working there will be a jewish people the prophet josea chapter 2 verses 19 to 20 i will betroth you to me forever yes i will betroth you to me in righteous and justice in loving kindness and mercy i'll betroth you to me in faithfulness and you shall know the lord god says that he will betroth the nation of israel forever one of the most frequently occurring prophecies in the tenah is god's promise to restore israel to her ancestral homeland after their long exile it's impossible to plug the christian church into these passages unless the bible is distorted in ways that renders its prose meaningless deuteronomy chapter 30 verses 1 through 5 so it shall be when all of these things have come upon you the blessing and the curse which i've said before you and you call them to mind and all the nations with a lord your god has banished you and you will return to the lord your god and obey him with all but obey him with all your heart and all of your soul according to all that i command you today you and your sons then the lord your god will restore you from captivity and have compassion on you and will gather you again from all the peoples where the lord your god has scattered you if your outcasts are at the ends of the earth from there the lord your god will gather you and from there he will bring you back the lord your god will bring you into the land which your father's possessed and you shall possess it and he will prosper you and multiply you more than your father's this promise of the return to our homeland is repeated dozens and dozens of times by the prophets and of course if god has been done with the jewish people for the past two thousand years why has he miraculously preserved us when much larger and stronger nations have disappeared from the world why would he miraculously bring us back to our land after centuries of exile and supernaturally protect us and preserve us in the face of persistent and massive attempts to drive us into the sea it's hard to believe that anyone can actually insist today that Israel does not matter to god anymore the church has insisted for the past two thousand years that the jewish people are blind and incapable of understanding our own bible but the old saying goes that whenever you point your finger you have three pointing right back at yourself and this saying was never truer it's hard to understand how the great minds of christendom fail to see the clear and obvious teaching of what the bible actually says but this blindness has been lifting John Nelson Darby was the leader of the Plymouth Brethren in ireland in the 19th century and he rejected the idea of twisting the hebrew scriptures by means of allegory and spiritualizing its meaning and he wanted to understand the bible using its plain meaning based on a literal historical grammatical approach and with this manner of study the distinction between israel and the church became obvious to Darby based upon the biblical testimony he came to believe that there'll be a future time when god will literally fulfill the promises he made to israel his system of understanding the bible became known as dispensationalism this theological approach postulated that god relates differently to mankind during different distinct eras in history that are called dispensations each dispensation is defined by a covenant that god makes with mankind at that time Darby insisted that god never replaced israel with the church but that he has two programs in history one for the church and one for israel dispensationalism began to slowly gain acceptance in the 20th century and by the latter half of the 1900s it was widely held by many evangelical Protestant denominations today's large Christian Zionist movement that is so supportive of israel is largely made up of dispensationalists but in conclusion I think it's important for us to not lose sight of the fact that even those Christians today who reject replacement theology they still believe that they have become part of spiritual israel they consider themselves to be spiritual jews and while they may love the jewish people they do not love Judaism they believe that the Torah is not a viable path for jews and that jews are lost without coming to faith in Jesus as a matter of fact it is precisely those dispensationalist Christians who were so supportive of israel that at the very same time the most active in targeting jewish people for conversion to Christianity dispensationalists are convinced that Jesus is going to return to our planet very soon and that when that happens the jewish people will be destined to become ardent followers of him but god revealed in the scriptures that in their future it will not be the jewish people who will come to the realization that for the past 2000 years their beliefs were in error the prophet Jeremiah says about the end times in chapter 16 verse 19 of his book oh lord my strength and my stronghold my refuge in the day of trouble to you shall the nations come from the ends of the earth and say our fathers have inherited nothing but untruths worthless things of which there is no prophet the bible never says that at the end of time the jews will admit that we had been wrong throughout history on the contrary the bible repeatedly tells us that the end of history it will be the nations of the world who will confess that they had been wrong all along the prophet Zechariah Zechariah chapter 3 chapter 8 verse 23 writes thus says the lord of hosts in those days 10 men from all the nations of the world will grasp the garment of a jew saying let us go with you because we have heard that god is with you truth be told this is actually beginning to take place now i do a weekly program on the internet with william hall called a rabbi cross examines the new testament we study one chapter of the christian bible each week william is the son of a christian pastor and was himself a christian leader before realizing that something was wrong a few days ago he posted on his facebook page that he has 80 friends and acquaintances who are either former pastors former church leaders or other children of pastors that's just one person who's telling us that in his orbit there are 80 people who were fervent christians that are now coming towards the toro coming to learn from jewish rabbis i receive emails from these people every week saying to me rabbi i just want to grab whole of the corners of your garment because i know that god is with your people