This article was originally published by The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry.

During one of my trips to Israel, as I was looking around the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, I noticed a peculiar mural on one of the walls. Though dimly lit, I could just make out the ancient image of Jesus stretched out on the cross, the man who crucified him sitting by His head.

The scene itself was not unusual, considering its location. What was shocking to me was that the man with hammer and spike in hand was not a Roman soldier, as the Scriptures record, but a Jewish man.

Such a depiction in such a place serves as a stark reminder of the often subtle, yet strong animosity that has pervaded the church’s history and its theology throughout the ages, the present-day included.

When talking to those who hold to Replacement Theology, however, we are often accused of creating a strawman, a false argument set up to be defeated. We are told that Replacement Theology is not anti-Semitic and that the term Replacement Theology is a misnomer that does not accurately represent their views. Fulfillment Theology or Supersessionism are more accurate terms, we are told.

While it should be admitted that many of those who hold to Replacement Theology today are not anti-Semites, history proves that anti-Semitism was indeed a major motivation in the formation of Replacement Theology as a system of thought.

Many of the early Gentile church fathers, such as Dionysius, thought that the literal understanding of Scripture, especially concerning the Messianic Kingdom, was “too Jewish,” so they began interpreting Scripture allegorically, denying the traditional literal interpretation that Old Testament Jewish believers and the early church had held to for centuries.

For example, Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, in his Testimonies Against the Jews, wrote that he “endeavored to show that the Jews, according to what had before been foretold, had departed from God, and had lost God’s favour, which had been given them in past time, and had been promised them for the future; while the Christians had succeeded to their place, deserving well of the Lord by faith, and coming out of all nations and from the whole world” (emphasis mine).

Armed with this new way of interpreting Scripture and the deep-seated anti-Semitism many of its leaders held to, the church soon began pushing the nation of Israel off of is divinely-ordained “seat,” and started viewing itself as the “True Israel,” which took the place of “ethnic Israel” of the Old Testament, the majority of whom had rejected Jesus as their Messiah.

In his work, Dialogue of Justin, Philosopher & Martyr, with Trypho, the early church father Justin Martyr wrote “We, who have been quarried out from the bowels of Christ, are the true Israelitic race.”

While many such men contributed to the unseating of Jacob, it can be argued that personal and theological views of no single person caused so much destruction for the Jewish people as did those of Martin Luther.

​Luther originally looked upon the Jewish people kindly. In 1523, he penned That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew, a tract in which he criticizes some within the Roman Catholic Church for their anti-Semitic views and for trying to force Jewish people to convert to Christianity. “If I had been a Jew,” he wrote, “and had seen such dolts and blockheads govern and teach the Christian faith, I would sooner have become a hog than a Christian.”

His views devolved, however, after unsuccessful attempts to gently share the gospel with the Jewish people over a 20-year period. By 1543, his rather benevolent attitude toward Israel had turned downright anti-Semitic. In his pamphlet, The Jews and Their Lies, Luther made caustic remarks about the Chosen People of God:

“What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews?” he wrote. “First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them.”

Luther went on to advocate the destruction of Jewish homes and of Talmuds, forbidding their rabbis to teach anymore, limiting their travel, and forcing them into hard labor.

Such scathing remarks sound eerily similar to those of another German anti-Semite of a more recent age. Indeed, Adolf Hitler frequently quoted the revered Luther’s comments on the Jewish people, paving the haunting road to Holocaust.

With the sun setting on the last remaining survivors of Hitler’s so-called “Final Solution,” and as another generation of Jewish people is facing the rising tide of anti-Semitism throughout the world, may the phrase “Never Again” be the declaration not only of opposition to another Jewish genocide, but also of the church’s resolve never again to turn on those the Messiah calls His “brethren.”

This article was originally published by The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry.

He sat across from me, his steel blue eyes examining my own. Those eyes had seen many things during their 80+ years—the forced expulsion from home, death marches, ghettos. They were witness to the Holocaust, one of the most horrific events of the 20th century, an experience that shaped his life. And here they were, looking into my own eyes, searching.

“You know,” he began in his thick Hungarian accent, “you are the first Christian I have ever met who loved Israel and the Jews. I thought Christians hated us.”

I was stunned. This man, a survivor of the Holocaust, in his nearly nine decades, had never before met a follower of Jesus who loved his people and their nation. How could this be?

Unfortunately, the words of my elderly friend are not unique, nor are they entirely misinformed. Down through the ages, the Jewish people have been persecuted, maligned, and killed in the name of “That Man,” the title many substitute for the name they dare not utter—Jesus Christ.

How is it that the church became associated with Jew-hatred? Besides the fact that all human beings have wicked hearts capable of such prejudice, I believe history proves the root of much of this animosity within the church stems from the theological scourge known as Replacement Theology, a system of thought that, in its various forms, pushes Israel from its rightful “seat” in God’s plan.

As Christians, we sometimes forget, as do many of our Jewish friends, that Christianity is not a Gentile religion. On the contrary, the Bible is a Jewish book, with Jewish themes, penned by Jewish men, all pointing to the Jewish Messiah, Jesus.

It was through the Jewish prophets that God made some very specific promises to the nation of Israel, among them a land, a nation, and the promise of both receiving blessing and being God’s conduit through which He would bless the world (Genesis 12:1–3). He also promised that the kingdom of David would be established forever (2 Samuel 7:16), a Kingdom that would be ruled by the Messiah (Isaiah 9:6–7).

​Because the early church was predominantly Jewish in its membership, its expectation was that God would literally fulfill these promises to Israel. They believed that the land of Israel was the Jewish homeland promised to Abraham and his descendants forever. They would have understood that the days would come when, although God had scattered Israel throughout the nations for their disobedience, He would restore the Jewish people to the land He gave to them one day. They also were yearning for the day when the Messiah would return to Earth to set up His promised Kingdom (Acts 1:6).
Additionally, the missions program of the early church was to take the gospel to the Jew first and then to the Gentile nations, as Jesus commanded (Acts 1:8) and as Paul later reaffirmed (Romans 1:16). As the gospel went out, however, the makeup of the church changed due to the astounding number of Gentiles coming to faith in the Messiah. The church became a beautiful, ethnically diverse body of people from all over the world. But this change in makeup eventually led to a tragic transformation in the way people viewed both the Scriptures and the “People of the Book,” now a minority in the church—a transformation that would affect both the church and the Jewish people for centuries to come.

As I looked back into the eyes of my elderly friend, I could not help seeing him as a link to an ancient story, a Jewish story. It was this man’s ancestors with whom God identified Himself. It was to them that He committed the Scriptures. It was to them that He promised the Messiah and His Kingdom. It was to them that He gave the gospel first. May the church throughout the world never forget either Jacob or the chair God has given him in His plan for history.