When Netanyahu recently used Jesus as an example of someone defeated for being weak, he expressed the 2k year-old reason the Jews rejected Him to begin with; He wasn’t the Zionist Messiah they were looking for.
Many theologians increasingly believe that Judas had a motivation for betraying Christ other than shekels; he wanted to force Christ’s hand to kick off the Zionist revolt to restore the Kingdom of Israel.
Right before the ascension, the disciples had one final question for Christ. Entranced with the Zionist dream, they asked if it was time for Him to restore the kingdom to Israel. Jesus dodged the question and told them to await the Holy Ghost. After Pentecost, the Apostles never once brought up the Zionist subject of national restoration ever again. After the Spirit came, the Zionist concern disappeared from record among the Apostles.
The Apostle Paul catalogs his Jewish credentials, only to call them dung, or garbage. He appeals to his Roman citizenship in the present tense, while treating his Jewish bona fides as something that no longer carries value. After being filled with the Holy Ghost, Luke identifies him by his Roman name, Paul, rather than his Jewish one. As time went on, what had once been the core of his identity became something he would occasionally invoke only to make a theological point, usually to emphasize the end of the Old Covenant. His Israelite credentials went from badge of honor to discarded currency, something he could reference, but no longer needed.
The huge Christianity-Judaism split came in 66-70AD. The unbelieving Jews – all Zionists – stayed to fight the Romans because it was an existential fight for the nation-state of Israel. The Christians? The Christian Jews fled instead to Pella, because it was not worth fighting for. And the unbelieving Jews came to hold it against them. But they weren’t traitors, per se. They just weren’t the slightest concerned for Zionist ambitions.
From root to crown, Christianity has always been an aggressively anti-Zionist religion. A Jewish ethnostate has never been something Christians thought worth fighting for, worrying about, or teaching about. Jesus was crucified for NOT being the Zionist Messiah they wanted. Two thousand years later, as Netanyahu showed us last week, they still reject Him for it.
Zionism has never been the Christian position. It’s always been the dividing line between those who understand God’s big picture, and those who don’t.
It’s interesting to note that the jews of Christ’s time, as they still do today, aspired to have a warrior-King Messiah who would subdue Israel’s adversaries with armed might.
Instead, God sent them a Messiah with a message of Love, peace, and goodwill toward men: all men, not just jews. God’s kingdom of life everlasting would begin in Christ’s name, with repentance of sin for our salvation, and a Baptism for the remission of Original sin. God’s laws for righteous living would still be followed but this time out of love, not just obligation.
I’d also think it interesting that The Lord God set an adversary against the Zionist jews who’s the equivalent of a warrior-King, namely Mohammed.
The Christians, on the other hand, are the ones most likely to defend Israel. This doesn’t show a weak Christ, does it?
I’d say it’s the rapture-ready Dispensational church that has a weak Christ. After all, the rapture was invented by 3 RCC monks during the Reformation to keep the Reformers from saying the Pope was the antichrist. The thinking was that if the time of the antichrist could be pushed into the future then the Pope wasn’t the antichrist. So originally the rapture was called futurism.
Then there’s the Scofield bible used by Dispensationalists. Scofield was not a really moral man and he took liberties with the Word of God. He’s also responsible for saying the Jews were the Chosen people of God.
I’m truly sorry for them. There are a lot of decent, Christ loving people in that church. It’s the leaders and theologians who should have known there was something wrong.
I should have added that the Christians are the ones most likely to aid Israel: not the Hindus, not the Buddhists, nor any other named religion. Israelists should keep that in mind.