David Reagan - New Book on the Jewish People
Did you know that for almost 2,000 years the Church, both Catholic and Protestant has taught that God washed His hands of the Jewish people in the First Century because “they crucified Jesus?” And did you know that another aspect of this teaching is that God replaced Israel with the Church and the Church has inherited all the blessings promised to Israel? And did you know that at the opposite extreme there are Christian leaders today who teach that the Jews do not need Jesus because they have their own unique way of salvation? Stay tuned for a discussion of these important issues.
Nathan Jones: Greetings in the name of Jesus, our Blessed Hope and welcome to Christ in Prophecy. I’m Nathan Jones the Web Minister for Lamb & Lion Ministries, I also serve as an Associate Evangelist with Dr. David Reagan. And the reason I’m opening this program up today is because he is going to be our special guest. That’s right, I’m going to interview Dr. Reagan about his latest book which is titled: The Jewish People: Rejected or Beloved? Dave, I’ve got to ask you a question first before we begin: Why is this seat more comfortable than that seat over there?
David Reagan: Well this is not a very comfortable seat this is what I call the hot seat.
Nathan Jones: The hot seat.
David Reagan: This is where I put the people that I interrogate and so it is kind of unusual for me to be here.
Nathan Jones: Well, you’re going to do fine I’m sure, and if I do fine here. Question for you, you love the Jewish people, I have never met a man in my life who’s loved the Jewish people. You’ve led over 45 trips to Israel and toured Israel. You’ve spoke about Israel in Bible prophecy so much I know you love Israel. Why then write a book about it? Obviously superficially it’s because your love, but why personally did you write it?
David Reagan: Well I wrote it because of my love of Israel and of the Jewish people because the world today, and the Church in particular is filled with all kinds of misunderstandings and myths about the Jewish people. And one of the things that really concerns me is that this is growing within the Church to the point that even evangelical churches are being invaded by the myths, misunderstandings, the misrepresentations, and so I wanted to address those. The book deals for example with the relationship of the Jews with God, that’s the fundamental thing, but also their relationship with the Church and their relationship to the land of Israel itself. All three of those areas are areas where there’s tremendous myths today. For example let’s take the last one concerning the land. The myth that is going around today and which people are buying hook, line and sinker is that the Jews came into that land in the early 20th Century and stole it from the Palestinian people.
Nathan Jones: Oh, you hear that all the time.
David Reagan: Well, that’s right. And it’s just as far from the truth as it can possibly be. I try to point out, I have a whole chapter in there about their relationship with the land and I point out that God promised this land to them through Abraham and it became what they called their Promised Land. That was reaffirmed through Isaac, it was reaffirmed through Jacob, a 1,000 years later David was talking about it in Psalm 105 this was an eternal covenant that God had given them, that land belongs to them eternally. When they got ready to enter the land under Moses he pointed out it’s an eternal covenant, you will always have the deed to this land. And but there was another covenant and that was the use covenant, the Land Use Covenant and God told them if you are not faithful I’m going to put judgments upon you and the greatest judgment is you will be ejected from the land, but they didn’t lose their title. The title is eternal, they were ejected because they were unfaithful. But God then said in the end times I’m going to bring you back, and He did that. He even said their land would become desolate and you know He did that on purpose to keep people from occupying the land. So when they came back in the early 1900’s the land was almost empty, it was mainly owned by foreign land holders in Syria. The people who lived there were poverty stricken and called themselves Syrians, there was no Palestinian identity. And the Jews didn’t steal the land, they bought the land and the Arabs laughed all the way to the bank that these crazy Jews are coming in and buying land that is filled with malaria infested swamps. The trees had been cut down. Nobody wanted this land except the Jewish people. Today they claim the Jews stole it from them but that’s not true and furthermore they have an eternal title to it.
Nathan Jones: So, you see the book then as an apologetics against all the slander against the Jewish people?
David Reagan: That is basically what it is an apologetic and it deals with a lot of different aspects of what people say about the Jewish people. It has to do again with their relationship with God, their relationship with the Church, and their relationship with the land.
Nathan Jones: I liked how you began it, I think your thesis is right there by quoting Deuteronomy 7:6 and it says, “For you are a holy people to the Lord your God, the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.” God sees the Jewish people as beloved and you belove the Jewish people as well.
David Reagan: Well, yes, and He says if you touch the Jewish people, talking about in an improper way, you touch my eye.
Nathan Jones: The apple of His eye, yes.
David Reagan: The apple of His eye, so, you better be careful. And in fact it says in Joel chapter 3 if you mess with my people in the end times by trying to divide up their land I will deal with you. And that is a warning to the United States of America, as well as to all the nations of the world.
Nathan Jones: So this book also then protects people from making the mistake of slandering the Jewish people.
David Reagan: I hope so.
Part 2
Nathan Jones: Welcome back to Christ in Prophecy and my interview of our ministries Founder, Dr. David Reagan. I’m asking him questions about his newest book, The Jewish People: Rejected or Beloved? Dr. Reagan in chapter 5 you say that Replacement Theology is evil. The chapter is titled, “The Evil of Replacement Theology.” Wow, evil. What makes Replacement Theology evil? Because most churches today hold to Replacement Theology; the idea that the Church has replaced Israel and taken on all their blessings.
David Reagan: Yes, well let me go into a little bit more detail first of all what Replacement Theology is before I tell you why I think it is so evil.
Nathan Jones: Ok.
David Reagan: And it is very evil. Replacement Theology is an idea that God as you said at the very beginning of the program washed His hands of the Jewish people because they were guilty of deicide which is a word that means the killing of God, they killed– they are blamed for the killing of Jesus. And that He replaced the Jewish people with the Church giving to the Church all the blessings that He had ever blessed the Jewish people leaving them with all the curses but the Church getting the blessings. Now this developed very early in the history of the Church. As you well know when the Church was founded everyone in it was Jewish.
Nathan Jones: Oh, yeah.
David Reagan: One-hundred percent Jewish.
Nathan Jones: Even Luke probably.
David Reagan: Yes, they had all written–the Jewish writers, the Jewish members, the Jewish leaders, but very early on the Church began to grow very rapidly among Gentile believers and before long the Gentiles believers were 10 times, 100 times more than the Jewish believers. And the Gentile believers began to turn on the Jewish believers and began to denounce them. Now this is very interesting because early in the Church it was the other way around the Jews predominated and when the Gentiles started coming in the Jews were very gracious to them. They said, “No, you don’t have to be circumcised. You don’t have to follow the Law of Moses. You don’t have to do those things. You don’t have to become a Jew in order to be a Christian.” But within a very short period of time within less than a hundred years the Gentiles had dominated the Church and they were suddenly saying to Jews, “You can’t be a Christian and remain a Jew, you’ve got to become a Gentile. You’ve got to put aside all your Jewish practices, everything that has anything to do with Judaism.” And then they began to put this monkey on the back of the Jewish people saying, “Ok, you really don’t have any rights at all because you killed God.” And now it’s interesting in the book of Acts it says who killed Jesus Christ, it says, it was the Romans, it says, it was the Jews, it says it was the Gentiles and of course you and me.
Nathan Jones: You and me, yeah.
David Reagan: Because we all are responsible for the death of Jesus. He died for our sins and the sins of the world. But no the Church has always focused on the Jews and has denounced the Jews for being the killers of Jesus. So this began to build over the ages. By the time it got to the Middle Ages this was the accepted doctrine of the Church; the Jews are to be hated, Jews are to be persecuted, because Jews were Christ killers. And this was actually taught by the Church, it is your responsibility to persecute Jews. And they were terribly persecuted. And in the Middle Ages they came up with the passion plays which were–the people thought well that was all about wonderful plays about the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. Well they were but they were also plays to try to keep this anti-Semitism going because all of the Jewish characters wore big hook noses and when they’d come on the stage they would boo them and throw things at them, and it was designed to keep that hatred of the Jews going. And then you had the myths during the Middle Ages that the Jews were polluting the wells of the Gentiles. The Jews were kidnapping Gentile kids and taking their blood and using it for Passover. And you know even during the Black Plague they blamed that on the Jews because the Jews didn’t die as much as the Gentiles because they followed the hygienic rules of the Law of Moses.
Nathan Jones: Hygienic rules.
David Reagan: Yes. So it just went on and on until finally what happened is at the Reformation when Luther said let’s get back to the Word of God everybody thought at long last you know this is going to be it we’ll get back to the Word of God, this anti-Semitism will stop. And Luther even wrote some documents in which he said that he thought that the Jews were very intelligent, and the reason that they had not come to the Gospel was because the Church had perverted the Gospel, but now that he had restored it they would come back in big numbers.
Nathan Jones: Yeah, Luther didn’t stay to that view too long, did he?
David Reagan: Well, when they didn’t come back in big numbers he turned against them. And in fact that’s what most people don’t know is that Martin Luther who is one of the great heroes of the Christian faith was a man who ended his life writing some of the worst things that have ever been written about the Jewish people. For example he called them a miserable and accursed people, stupid fools, miserable, blind and senseless, thieves and robbers, the great vermin of humanity, lazy rogues, blind and venomous.
Nathan Jones: And this is the father of the Reformation?
David Reagan: Yes. And then he even wrote a document and you can find–all you have to do is get on the Internet and type Martin Luther Jews and you’ll find that he wrote a document in which he said point blank, “Their synagogues and schools should be burned. Their houses should be destroyed. Their Talmudic writings should be confiscated. Their Rabbis should be forbidden to teach. Their money should be taken from them and they should be compelled into forced labor.” And that’s the reason–
Nathan Jones: Now Luther’s views formed the foundation though of a big movement in the 20th Century right, that wiped out many of the Jews in the Holocaust?
David Reagan: Well yeah because in “Mein Kampf.”
Nathan Jones: Hitler’s book.
David Reagan: Hitler said that he considered Luther to be a great warrior, a true statesman, and a great reformer. And in fact that at the Nuremberg War Crime trials after World War II the Nazi leaders said, “All we were doing is what Luther told us to do.” Most Christians do not understand that Jews consider the Holocaust to be a Christian action. That it was something that Christians did to Jews. Well of course they were quoting Luther. Most of the Nazis were members of churches. They would celebrate Christmas. All this was done in the name of Christ. And it is no wonder that Jews today have such a negative attitude toward Christianity and are very suspicious of any Christian who wants to share the Gospel with them because of the way they have been treated. And so the Holocaust was really the culmination of almost 2,000 years of Christian anti-Semitism. And I document it in great detail, I mean century by century what was said about the Jewish people and how they were so horribly persecuted because they were called Christ killers.
Nathan Jones: No wonder the Jews hate the Church so much because we have a reputation and a history of persecuting them.
David Reagan: And what happened is because of that after the war was over anti-Semitism sort of calmed down but it is reemerging today.
Nathan Jones: Oh, yeah.
David Reagan: In the name of anti-Zionism. They used to say the Jews can’t live in our country, now they’re saying the Jews can’t live in their own country. So you have anti-Zionism in some of the most virulent anti-Semites on the scene today are Christian spokesmen who are anti-Zionist.
Part 3
Nathan Jones: Welcome back to Christ in Prophecy and my interview of Dr. David Reagan about his new book, The Jewish People: Rejected or Beloved? Dave another chapter, chapter 6 in your book really touched me it’s called, “The Tragedy of Dual Covenant Theology.” Now I don’t think most people understand what Dual Covenant Theology is. Can you explain that? And you use the word tragedy which again is a very weighty word, why a tragedy?
David Reagan: Well most– you’re right most people have never even heard of Dual Covenant Theology but it’s been around for a long time. It originally was characteristic of the most liberal denominations in the United States because these denominations take the position more and more that there are many roads to God. There is the Muslim road and the Jewish road, and the Christian road and the Hindu road.
Nathan Jones: Universalism.
David Reagan: And who are we to say that Christianity is the only way to God? Well Jesus Christ said it.
Nathan Jones: Yeah.
David Reagan: He said, “I am the only way.” But anyway it was characteristic of liberal groups. And basically what it says is that the Jews really do not need Jesus because they have their own way to God. Their way is by following the Torah, following the laws of Moses and if they are faithful to those laws and have their faith in God then they have their own way, and it is really an insult to them to try to share Jesus with them that it is an insult to their culture and whatever. But what is so upsetting to me and one of the fundamental reasons I wrote this book is because this view unbelievably is now going into the evangelical movement. In fact one of the best known pastors in America today who is on television constantly and is a household name is one of the major advocates of Dual Covenant Theology. He says that the Jews do not need Jesus. He says it is a waste of time to even preach to the Jews or to share the Gospel with them. And yet as you well know how does Romans 1 start out? The Gospel is for the Jew first and then the Gentile.
Nathan Jones: Well I think the Bible is pretty explicit Acts 4:12, “There is salvation in no one else, there is no other name under heaven given to me by which we might be saved.” Or Jesus in John 14:6 said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life no one comes to the Father except by me.” The Bible is crystal clear right?
David Reagan: Yes, and the really tragic thing about this is what I’ve noticed over the years is that when people discover the Jewish roots of Christianity they get excited because most people don’t know our Jewish roots and it is exciting to discover the Jewish roots. And then they begin to study those Jewish roots and as they study them they begin to develop a love for the Jewish people and a love for the Hebrew Scriptures that they never had before. And then what I find is this ultimately begins to morph into a feeling of, well surely if they are the chosen people of God, if God loves them so much and if they contributed so much then surely they have some other way to get to God other than Jesus Christ and we just must be loving of them. And so the tragedy of Dual Covenant Theology is that people end up loving the Jewish people into Hell.
Nathan Jones: I’ve heard you say that before and the push back from these people is usually rage. Now you could say that they are loving the Jewish people to Hell but that is exactly what they are doing right? By depriving them of Jesus and Gospel they are depriving them of the only way to salvation and thus sending them to Hell. Right?
David Reagan: And see some of my best friends fall into this category because they are Christian Zionist. A Christian Zionist is a Christian who believes that the land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people. That they have a right to it and that we need to stand firmly behind them and support their right. But many of the Christian Zionist that I have met, not most but many have moved into this situation where they think, “Well there must be some way for the Jewish people to be saved other than Jesus Christ because they are so rejecting of Jesus, and yet at the same time I know that they are God’s chosen people and so there must be a way.” But they don’t understand what chosen means. Chosen does not mean that they are saved.
Nathan Jones: Yeah.
David Reagan: Chosen means that they have been set aside by God to be a witness of Him in the world and they are a witness. They are a witness of what it means to have a relationship with God, that when you are faithful to God He blesses, when you are unfaithful He disciplines. And He has them under discipline right now. When you repent He forgives, He forgets and He blesses again. And we are told in the Bible that at the end of the Tribulation period of time, so seven years of Tribulation, that during that time two-thirds of the Jewish people are going to die at the hands of the Antichrist.
Nathan Jones: Second Holocaust.
David Reagan: Only one-third will live until the end. It is going to be a greater Holocaust than the Nazi Holocaust. But it says that at the end of the Tribulation when they come to the end of themselves that they will look upon Him whom they have pierced and weep and wail and mourn as they weep over the loss of an only son and they will accept Jesus as their Messiah. In fact Jesus Himself said I will not return until the Jewish people are willing to say, “Baruch Haba Bashem Adonai.” “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.” So even those Scriptures make it crystal clear that the Jews have no hope apart from Jesus Christ. And yet these folks say, “Oh, no it is not proper to share the Gospel with a Jew.” And in fact I have even known of situations where people were sharing the Gospel with Jews and some of these Christian leaders would find out about it and interject themselves and tell these people, “You don’t need Jesus.”
Nathan Jones: But are Jews getting saved today?
David Reagan: Oh, yes. See that’s– when these people say it’s a waste of time to share the Gospel with a Jew they are ignoring the fact that since 1967 since the Six Day War more Jews have been saved, more Jews have come to Jesus accepted Yeshua as their Messiah than ever before in all the history of Christianity.
Nathan Jones: Wow.
David Reagan: This is tremendous. There was not one Messianic Synagogue, not one in 1967 when the Six Day War occurred. Today there are 100’s in the United States, all over the world because Jews are coming to Jesus as never before. And yet these people are saying don’t share the Gospel with Jews because it is a waste of time.
Nathan Jones: Almost sounds like a satanic deception.
David Reagan: Well it is. That is the only thing it can be, it is a satanic deception. And it breaks my heart because I know these people love the Jewish people.
Nathan Jones: Oh, yeah.
David Reagan: They mean well, but boy you talk about a deception. Let me tell you everybody needs Jesus. I don’t care whether Hindu, Muslim, Jew, Pagan, Atheist, whatever they need Jesus Christ because He is the only hope of the world. He is the only hope for our salvation. There is no salvation apart from Jesus, you can’t earn it on your own. You certainly can’t earn it by following the Law of Moses because no one was ever able to do that. The Law was given to convince us that we needed a Savior. And in fact Jeremiah himself said, one day it will be replaced by a new covenant. The Law of Moses is not even in effect now it is the New Covenant that came into effect with the death of Jesus Christ who is our only hope.
Part 4
Nathan Jones: Welcome back to Christ in Prophecy. I am discussing with Dr. Reagan his newest book entitled, The Jewish People: Rejected or Beloved? In addition to the two chapters we have been discussing the book contains seven other chapters with titles like these: Is There Any Hope for Israel?, The Middle East Crisis in Biblical Perspective, The Most Important Prophetic Development of the 20th Century, The Horror of the Holocaust, Israel’s Covenants with God, The Phenomenon of Messianic Judaism, The Hope of Christian Zionism, and it even has an appendix down there, The Willowbank Declaration which is a great read. Dr. Reagan I am going to go back to chapter three you say the most important development of the 20th Century. I mean that was a busy century so what then is the most– I mean I don’t know if you want people to read it first to find out or do you want to tell us what the most important prophetic development was?
David Reagan: No, no I’ll tell you about it.
Nathan Jones: Well, thank you.
David Reagan: We go into great detail here about it in the book, but yeah let me just give you a brief overview. I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt the most important prophetic development of the 20th Century was the regathering of the Jewish people from the four corners of the earth. God said if you are disobedient to me I am going to scatter you all over the world and that occurred beginning in 70 AD when the Romans conquered Jerusalem, and later on under the Second Revolt it spread even more. By the beginning of the 20th Century there were Jews on every continent of the United States– not the United States but the world. There were Australian Jews, there were Latin American Jews, and African Jews and Asian Jews they were everywhere God had spread them all over.
And everywhere they went He said, “You will be persecuted,” and they were. He said something else though, He said, “I will preserve you.” And no other people in all of history have been scattered all over the world and been preserved. I mean you look in the Bible and everybody is against the Jews; the Babylonians, the Persians, the Hittites, the Moabites, the Amorites, they’re all against the Jews. And yet where are they today? They are all in the dustbin of history. Where are the Jews? Back in their land. God said, “I’ll preserve you.” So He said, “I’ll scatter you. You’ll be persecuted. I’ll preserve you. And one day I will bring you back into that land.” And that is what He’s doing. He is bringing them back into the land.
At the beginning of the 20th Century there were only 40,000 Jews in all the land. By the end of World War II, 600,000. Today over 6 million, as many as were killed in the Holocaust. And they continue to come from over 120 nations of the world. Nothing like it has ever happened in history before. I don’t know how anyone can look at this and say it is not a work of God. And yet there are many people who look at that and say, “Well that is just an accident of history.” It’s God’s hand. Even the Jews, many of the Orthodox Jews recognize that it is God’s hand that has brought them back. And He is bringing them back for a reason. And the reason is to bring all the nations of the world together against them, and to hammer them as no nation has ever been hammered, not because He hates them, because He loves them. He wants to bring them to the end of themselves,s and when He does that they will turn to Him. You see in the Old Testament every time they got in trouble they ran to Egypt. Modern day times they get in trouble where do they come? United States.
Nathan Jones: United States, yeah.
David Reagan: Even we are turning against them. It is going to come to where there is no one for them to turn to. And when they get to the end of themselves they will turn to God. And a great remnant will be saved to the everlasting glory of God. So God has a purpose in regathering them from the four corners of the earth, and I believe that is the most important prophetic development of the 20th Century. And it lead to other things, once you regather them then the next obvious thing you do is you re-establish the state which happened on May 14th, 1948. And then the next obvious thing is that you reconquer the city of Jerusalem; you’re eternal capital. That city has only been the capital of one nation in all of history and that is Israel. It was never a capital of any other nation.
Nathan Jones: No.
David Reagan: And so that happened in June of 1967. So you’ve got them coming back. And the thing that is interesting to me about that and I know you’ve heard me mention this before but on June the 7th 1967, when the Jews reconquered the Old City for the first time in 1,800 years they rushed to the Western Wall, they began to weep and wail and Rabbi Shlomo Goren the chief Rabbi of the Israeli Army who later became the chief Rabbi of Israel came up to that wall, and he had a Torah scroll under one arm and he had a shofar in his other hand, I’ve seen photographs of this.
Nathan Jones: Oh, yeah.
David Reagan: He blew the shofar and he said, “I proclaim to you the beginning the Messianic age.” Now why did he do that? Because he knows the Old Testament prophecies that say when the Jew is back in the land and the Jew is back in the city, the Messiah is going to come.
Nathan Jones: I agree with you totally. The idea– and I don’t think people really understand what a miracle Israel being regathered into a nation again, because sure there could be a people group say the Mayans decedents they live in the same area, they can say hey 100’s of years ago we used to be part of the Mayan Empire, or the Aztec Empire. But not when you scatter a people to the four corners of the wind where they have to live in different cultures and speak different languages.
David Reagan: Yet keep their identity.
Nathan Jones: And keep their identity. So a Jew is a Jew. I grew up with many Jews up in Philadelphia.
David Reagan: Oh, yeah.
Nathan Jones: And even though they are American citizens they keep their identity. Even if they are not practicing Jews they keep their identity. And I think the Lord has made them so concentrated on tradition because it has kept their identity so He could regather them. And now they are speaking Hebrew in their own country again, a dead language. I mean it is a miracle and I totally agree.
David Reagan: And I might add that I think thus far if you were to ask me what’s the most important prophetic development of the 21st Century.
Nathan Jones: That I’d like to know.
David Reagan: I would say it is all of the nations of the world coming together against Israel because that is the last of these prophecies concerning Israel. And that’s where we are. Even the United States of America which has been Israel’s greatest friend we began to turn against them under the first Bush Administration when we demanded that they start trading land for peace an appeasement process that does nothing but whet the appetite of the aggressor. And now under the Obama Administration almost a complete rejection of Israel just putting them aside and demanding that they basically commit suicide by surrendering their heartland. So we have joined all the nations of the world and the Bible is very specific about this in the end time all the nations are going to come against Israel. So we are living in exciting times.
Nathan Jones: Yes, we are.
David Reagan: We are seeing prophecies fulfilled before our eyes that point to the fact that Jesus is about to return.
Nathan Jones: Amen. Now that’s a great way to end it. So I am going to end it folks, that’s our time for this week. In just a moment our announcer will tell you how you can secure a copy of Dr. Reagan’s new book. Now I hope our program today has been a blessing to you and hope you’ll be back with us again next week, the Lord willing. Until then this is Nathan Jones speaking for myself and Dr. David Reagan saying, “Look up, be watchful, for our redemption is drawing near.”