Two Doctrines Messianic Believers Find Obnoxious and Why

I’ll give the “why” first:

Here is a picture of the Jewish people after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD right up until just after the late 1940s. They had no rest, they’d removed out to Alexandria, Egypt, they’ve moved to Rome, they’ve moved to Spain. And then persecution would hit them and they’d have no rest, they could never put down any kind of roots. They’d go to Spain, the Muslims took over Spain, and persecuted them there. They would finally let up and then the Crusaders pushed the Muslims out and the Crusaders (Catholic motivated and instigated) set up the Inquisitions and began to spread vicious lies about the Jews, blaming the Black Plague on the Jews because they didn’t get the plague. The only reason they didn’t get the plague is because they practiced the Mosaic health laws, they washed their hands, and so they didn’t get it. But since they didn’t have it, everybody else thought they started it. And the Roman Catholic authorities said “OK, if you don’t convert, you burn” and they burned Jews at the stake by the millions. Is it any wonder why Jews who are now coming to a knowledge that Jesus is the Messiah want nothing to do with Gentile Christianity, even once or twice removed from Catholicism, like the various Protestant or evangelical persuasions, who still hold predominantly Catholic eschatological doctrines such as amillennialism and replacement theology? They’d flee to Germany, and then in Germany Luther and his gang advocated that they ought to be wiped out, hunted down (this also happened in pre-Luther days, as you’ll soon read). You know, it’s amazing how a reformer can be used so awesomely by God and have such big blind spots too. And then finally we know what happened in Germany in World War II, where six million Jews were murdered, exterminated.

I found parts of the European history of the Jews in “A History of The Jews, From Earliest Times Through The Six Day War” by Cecil Roth (which I have on my bookshelf). It is from pages 209-217 and is a part of a section titled “Diaspora 425-1492”. Diaspora means “dispersion”, “a scattering”. Historian Cecil Roth says: “Closest akin to the Jews of England in culture, in condition, and in history, were those of France. Here, ever since the outbreaks which had accomplished the second Crusade, they had lived a chequered existence. From the close of the twelfth century, the ruling house of Capet had developed an anti-Jewish attitude which, for sheer unreasonableness and brutality of execution, was perhaps unparalleled in Europe as a dynastic policy. At the outset, owing to the encroachments of feudalism, the royal authority was restricted to a small area in the immediate neighborhood of Paris. Outside this district its influence was little more than nominal. Hence the hostility of the Crown did not affect the Jews much more than that of any major baron would have done. The history of the Jews in France is therefore to be understood only in relation to the extension of royal authority over the whole country, which, in the end, spelled for them utter disaster.

With Louis IX (1226-1270), better remembered as “Saint” Louis, religious zeal reinforced ancestral prejudices in an unusual measure. The prescriptions of the Lateran Councils were enforced with the utmost severity. A personal interest was taken in securing converts. It was under the royal auspices that the famous Disputation was held at Paris between Nicholas Donin and Rabbi Jehiel, and the Talmud was condemned to the flames. Finally, before setting out on his first Crusade in 1249, the King decreed the expulsion of the Jews from his realm, though the order, it appears, was not carried out.

The sufferings of French Jewry reached their climax under Philip the Fair (1285-1314), St. Louis’ grandson. From the moment of his accession, he showed that he considered the Jews merely as a source of gold. Spoliation succeeded spoliation, wholesale imprisonment being resorted to periodically in order to prevent evasion. The climax came in 1306, when, the treasury being once more empty, the policy of Edward I of England was imitated, with significant differences. On July 22^nd, all the Jews of the country were simultaneously arrested, in obedience to instructions secretly issued some time before. In prison they were informed that, for some unspecified wrongdoing, they had been condemned to exile, and must leave the realm within one month, the whole of their property being confiscated to the crown. By this time, owing to the vigorous and unfortunate policy of the French in recent years, its authority extended over the majority of France proper, including Languedoc and Champagne, where the schools of rabbinic learning had especially flourished. The banishment spelled accordingly the end of the ancient and glorious traditions of French Jewry.

There were, indeed, a couple of brief, ignoble interludes before the curtain finally fell. The same mercenary considerations which had prompted the expulsion of the Jews soon made it advisable to encourage their resettlement. Accordingly, in 1315, Philip the Fair’s brother, Louis X, issued an edict permitting them to return to the country for a period of twelve years. The few who cared to avail themselves of this hazardous opportunity were entirely insufficient, whether in number or in intellectual calibre, to reestablish the great traditions of their fathers. Almost immediately after, they had to undergo a period of tribulation barely rivaled even in the tragic record of the Jewish Middle Ages. In 1320, a Crusading movement sprang up spontaneously amongst the shepherds of southern France, the so-called Pastoureaux. Few, if any, ultimately embarked for the East, but all seized the opportunity of striking a blow for the religion of Jesus nearer to home. A wave of massacres of almost unprecedented horror swept through the country, community after community being annihilated. [Now in the 1940’s, and more recently in the 1980-1990s we’ve seen the “ethnic cleansing” which has taken place in Jugoslavia, the murder of hundreds of thousands, the annihilation of who communities. So plug that understanding into what has been written here.] In the following year, a similar wave of feeling, diverted this time into a purely ludicrous channel, brought about a recurrence. A report was circulated widely that the Jews and lepers, brother-outcasts, had been poisoning the wells by arrangement with the infidel kings of Tunis and Granada [Spain]. This ridiculous pretext was eagerly followed up. Massacres took place in many cities. An enormous indemnity was levied on the communities of the whole realm. Finally, contrary to the terms of the agreement of only seven years before, the new king, Charles IV, expelled the Jews from his dominions without notice.

A period of thirty-seven years elapsed before the experiment of toleration was tried again. However, in 1359, after the financial crisis which followed the disastrous defeat at Poitiers, a few financiers accepted an invitation to resettle in the country. The Crown protected them, until a charge was brought against the Jews of Paris of having persuaded one of their number to return to Judaism after accepting baptism. For this heinous crime, the principal members of the community were arrested and flogged, and it was determined to banish the whole of the wretched remnant. On September 17^th, 1394, the mad Charles VI signed the fatal order. A few months were granted them to sell their property and settle their debts, a process not made any more easy because of the subsequent order, by which their Christian debtors were absolved from paying their dues. Ultimately, when the limit was expired, they were escorted to the frontier by the royal provosts.

Some of the exiles sought refuge in the south, at Lyons, where they were allowed by the local authorities to remain until 1420; in the County of Provence, where they were not finally expelled until the beginning of the sixteenth century; or in the possessions of the Holy See about Avignon and Carpentras, where Papal policy of tolerance allowed them to remain permanently, in enjoyment of toleration if of nothing else. Others crossed into Italy, where near Asti, they established a little group of congregations which continued until our own day to preserve the ancient French rite of prayers. But the majority, in all probability, made their way over the Pyrenees or across the Rhine, where further scenes in the age-long tragedy had meanwhile been enacted.

In Germany…

From Germany, owing to its peculiar political conditions, there was at no time any general expulsion, as in England or in France. It figures instead in history as the classical land of Jewish martyrdom, where banishment was employed only locally and sporadically to complete the work of massacre. The famous Golden Bull of the Emperor Charles IV (1356) alienated all rights in the Jews, as in other sources of revenue, in the territories of the seven greater potentates who were members of the Electoral College. Minor rulers, bishops, and even free cities, claimed similar prerogatives, subject only to a very remote Imperial control. In consequence, when the Jews were driven out of one district, there was generally another willing to receive them, in consideration of some immediate monetary advantage. Thus, though there were few parts of the country which did not embark on a policy of exclusion at one period or another, there was no time, from the year 1000 onward (if not in Roman times), when Germany was without any Jewish population.

On the other hand, there was barely any intermission in the constant sequence of massacre. The example set in the first Crusade was followed with fatal regularity. When external occasion was wanting, the blood libel, or a charge of the desecration of the Host, was always at hand to serve as pretext. So long as the central authority retained any strength, the Jews enjoyed a certain degree of protection. On its decay, they were at the mercy of every wave of prejudice, superstition, dissatisfaction, or violence. In 1298, in consequence of a charge of ritual murder at Rottingen, a whole series of exterminatory attacks, inspired by a noble named Rindfleisch, swept through Franconia, Bavaria, and Austria. In 1336, a similar outbreak took place in Alsace, Suabia, and Franconia at the hands of a mob frankly calling themselves Judenschlager (literally, Jew-slayer, or slayers of the Jews), led by two nobles nicknamed Armleder, from a strip of leather which they wore round their arms. [This sounds like it is right out of World War II Germany, armbands, slaughter of the Jews—it all matches. Hitler wasn’t doing anything different, he just went a little further and was through Eichmann a little more efficient.] The names of over one hundred places where massacres occurred at this period were subsequently remembered. Yet this was the merest episode in the history of German Jewry.

It was in 1348 and the following year that the fury reached its height. The Black Death was devastating Europe, sweeping away everywhere over one-third or more of the population. It was the greatest scourge of its kind in history. No natural explanation could be found. Responsibility for it, as for any other mysterious visitation, was automatically laid on the Jews. The ridiculousness of the charge should have been apparent even to fourteenth century credulity, for the plague raged virulently even in those places, such as England, where the Christian population was absolutely unadulterated, and elsewhere the Jews suffered with the rest, though their hygienic manner of life and their superior medical knowledge may have reduced their mortality. It was when the outbreak had reach Savoy that the charges became properly formulated in all their grotesque horror. At Chillon, a certain Jew “confessed” under torture, that an elaborate plot had been evolved in the south of France by certain of his co-religionists, who had concocted a poison out of spiders, frogs, lizards, human flesh, the hearts of Christians, and consecrated Hosts. The powder made from this infernal brew had been distributed amongst the various communities, to be deposited in the wells from which Christians drew their water. To this the terrible contagion which was sweeping Europe was due!

This ridiculous farrago of nonsense was sufficient to seal the fate of the community of Chillon, the whole of which was put to death with a refinement of horror. Hence the tale spread like wildfire throughout Switzerland, along the Rhine, and even into Austria and Poland. There followed in its train the most terrible series of massacres that had ever been known even in the long history of Jewish martyrdom. Sixty large communities, and one hundred and fifty small, were utterly exterminated. This was the climax of disaster for German Jewry, just as the great expulsions had been for England and France. Never again did they recover their previous prosperity or their numerical weight.

When the storm had died down, a large number of the cities thought better of the vows made in the heat of the moment never to harbor Jews again in their midst, and summoned them back again to supply the local financial requirements. The period which followed was one of comparative quiescence, if only for lack of victims. King Wenceslaus (1378-1400), however, initiated the shortsighted policy of the periodical cancellation of the whole or part of the debts due to the Jews in return for some immediate monetary payment from the debtors. It was therefore impossible for the Jews to recover the position which their predecessors had held, and the hegemony of German Jewry passed, with the refugees, to the East.

In Austria…

There followed an interlude when the Jews of Austria, who in 1244 had received a model charter which guaranteed their rights and safety, enjoyed a certain degree of relative prosperity, succeeded as usual by intellectual activity and the emergence of a few scholars of note. This was ended by the revival of religious passions following the rise in Bohemia of the Hussite movement, an anticipation of the Protestantism which was to make its appearance one hundred years later. The Hussites did not show themselves by any means well-disposed towards the Jews. Nevertheless, the latter were suspected of complicity in the movement, and were made to suffer on that account. Every one of the successive expeditions sent to champion the cause of orthodoxy began its work, like the Crusaders of two centuries before, by an attack upon the various Judengasse, and massacre once again succeeded massacre. In 1420, a trumped-up accusation of ritual murder and Host desecration resulted in the extermination of the community of Vienna, a disaster long remembered as the Wiener Geserah [Geserah in Hebrew means “evil decree”].

In the Catholic church…

The General Council of the Catholic Church which met as Basle from 1431 to 1433, in order to remedy the deplorable condition of ecclesiastical affairs, solemnly re-enacted all past anti-Jewish legislation down to its least detail. Not long after, a fiery and eloquent, but strangely fanatical Franciscan friar name John of Capistrano, almost the embodiment of the anti-Hussite reaction, was commissioned to see that the policy of the Council was carried into effect. Everywhere, from Sicily northward, anti-Jewish excesses followed in his train. At Breslau, in 1453, an alleged desecration of the Host led to a mock trial under his personal auspices. Forty-one martyrs were burned to death before his lodgings in the Salzring. All other Jews were stripped of their goods and banished, their children under seven years of age having previously been taken away to be brought up in the Christian faith. The example was faithfully followed in the rest of the province. Thus the Papal emissary passed on, attended by a constant procession of outrages, burnings, and massacres, toward Poland.” [And that is just a tiny portion of Jewish “Diaspora” history, taken from Cecil Roth’s “A History of the Jews, From The Earliest Times Through the Six Day War”.]

And that’s just a tiny sampling of European Jewish history. Now I have come to see, in my studies of the differing Christian churches and denominations, that it is doctrines which mold the prevalent attitudes within the minds of a church’s or denomination’s members. And if historically we can find a doctrine or two doctrines which have molded the minds of Europeans against the race of the Jews, often leading to the slaughter of millions of their race, it would be safe to assume, even label those two doctrines as not really being of true Christian origin. Wrong doctrine, it has been said, leads to wrong lifestyles. Wouldn’t you say the slaughter of innocent lives, of men, women and children is a wrong life-style? I would. Let’s read a little bit more about these two doctrines which, understandably, our Messianic brothers and sisters in Christ dislike immensely.

Amillennialism

Now for those two doctrines Messianic believers find obnoxious. Now that we’ve read the “why” (it’s often enlightening to find out “why” people find something obnoxious, before reading about what it is they find obnoxious).

I am not attacking any Christian or denomination in the following paragraphs--but I am challenging a particular method of interpreting Biblical prophecy, which many Christian denominations use for interpreting Bible prophecy. Also, when the word “heresy” is used in the following excerpt please understand, the word “heresy” is used to donate a way of interpreting Bible prophecy and not to label any Christian holding to such secondary beliefs. The following explanation which I excerpt from Chuck Missler’s new two cassette tape series titled “Thy Kingdom Come, Christ’s Millennial Reign” explains the historic origin of the amillennialist way of interpreting prophecy. Chuck Missler paints this description with a wide brush and is looser with the historic facts and oversimplifies in ways that drives real historians crazy. But he presents the facts in understandable language and short order without writing a book on the subject, and that is why I use his description here of why I cannot promote the amillennialist view on this site in the very few sections this site has on prophecy. But first a couple observations I’ve made on the subject myself.

Some denominations fall into the category of being amillennialist in their eschatological interpretation (interpretation of prophecy). And some Christians and Christian denominations of the amillennialist persuasion also believe the book of Daniel was written around 139 BC by a number of Jews who were trying to influence Jewish thinking toward the coming Messiah--instead of properly attributing the writing of the book of Daniel to Daniel himself under the direct inspiration and guidance of God during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, datable to 600-539 BC. In my opinion this belief is false and attacks the very innerency of the Word of God in the Old Testament canon--at least in the part of God’s Word that deals with prophecy. A person or church can have this interpretation while simultaneously trying to jump through every imaginable hoop in utilization of proper hermeneutic Biblical interpretation rules, and still be seriously off in their understanding of Bible prophecy. Most Protestant churches hold this amillennialist view because they inherited it from the medieval church they came out of in the Reformation, and not because they carefully researched this belief. So some historic research is needed to explain why this site will only promote the pre-millennialist interpretation of prophecy. But first let us address the question of properly dating the writing of the book of Daniel.

If Josephus’s ANITIQUITIES OF THE JEWS is an accepted history text (which many historians agree it is), then those who would believe that the book of Daniel was written in 139 BC might look up the passage in BOOK XI, Chapter VIII, 4 and 5, part of which I quote. Now remember Alexander the Great is dated to the 330’s B.C. I quote, “And when he [Alexander] had said this to Parmenio, and had given the high priest his right hand, the priests ran along by him, and he came into the city; and when he went up into the temple, he offered sacrifice to God, according to the high priest’s direction, and magnificently treated both the high priest and the priests. And when the book of Daniel was shewed him, wherein Daniel declared that one of the Greeks should destroy the empire of the Persians, he supposed that himself was that person intended…” A footnote in Josephus for this passage says “*The place shewed Alexander might be Dan vii. 6; vii. 3-8, 20,21,22; xi. 3; some or all of them very plain predictions of Alexander’s conquests and successors.” So if the book of Daniel was written in 139 BC as some suppose, how in the world did a high priest of the Jews present it to Alexander the Great in the 330’s BC in the city of Jerusalem in the temple of God? Good question.

Another big stumbling block to the amillennialist interpretation comes to mind. There are about 300 specific prophecies about the first coming of Jesus Christ, the Messiah, in the Old Testament. These prophecies were all literally fulfilled, each and every one of them. No allegorizing there. But in the Old Testament we find many of those prophecies of Jesus 1^st coming are mixed right in with what are clearly known and recognized to be prophecies of Jesus Christ’s 2^nd coming. How can one switch how he interprets these 2^nd coming prophecies, allegorizing their literal meaning away, while all the while knowing that the 1^st coming prophecies that are imbedded right within the same texts were literally fulfilled? That to me is a stretch beyond sound logic into the fantasy-land of myth. The first part of the three part series on the 2^nd coming of Jesus Christ in this website is a survey of all those Old Testament prophecies about the 2^nd coming of Christ, and you will see all the prophecies for Jesus Christ’s 1^st coming imbedded right within the same prophetic texts as those that apply to Jesus Christ’s 2^nd coming, so you’ll be able to make this observation right on the spot. Don’t take my word for it, read those prophecies for yourself in that first section of the 2^nd coming prophecies series on this site, and then look them up in your own Bible and see what I’m talking about--that the 1^st coming prophecies were all literally fulfilled and were in no way meant to be allegorized into some different meaning, and so the 2^nd coming prophecies contained in the same text also cannot be interpreted in any other way but literal--just can’t be without breaking every rule of Bible interpretation and common sense.

With that in mind, here are those excerpts from Chuck Missler’s “Thy Kingdom Come” which will add some historic perspective of where Amillennialism came from, and thus why it’s a flawed way of interpreting Biblical eschatology. They are excerpted here to fill in vital background information on the Amillennialist view of prophecy and why this website does not subscribe to this view. [Chuck Missler is the head of Koinonia House, an independent Christian resource ministry of Calvary Chapel.]

“What I’d like to talk about a little bit is, ‘Thy Kingdom Come.’ We’ve heard that a lot, haven’t we. Isn’t it in the Lord’s Prayer?--‘Thy Kingdom Come?’ What does that mean? It may shock you to realize that probably nine churches out of ten have no idea what that means. In fact, they deny the root doctrine that lies behind this. We see it says in Matthew 6:10 “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’ What on earth does that mean? We’re going to explore that a little bit. Nothing in heaven or earth is more certain. How is that prayed? Jesus taught us to pray that. How often has that been prayed over 1900 years? You know, in Luke 19 Jesus said that a certain nobleman went into a far country to receive a kingdom and to return. And he goes on with this parable. Who’s the nobleman? Our Lord. He’s left, he’s coming back, and to receive the kingdom. The return of Jesus Christ to rule on the planet earth, you’ll be shocked to learn how controversial that is. Many of us here probably take that for granted. There are 1,845 references to that in the Old Testament. Seventeen books give prominence to that very event. Three hundred and eighteen references in the New Testament, in two hundred and sixteen chapters. Twenty-three of the twenty-seven books in the New Testament give prominence to the return of Jesus Christ to rule on the planet earth. You would think that we could get it, wouldn’t you? You’d think that we’d understand that. Most of us realize there are three-hundred specific specifications that Christ fulfilled in his first coming, his first advent as they call it. For every one of those there are eight of them for his second coming. So it’s a big topic.

Now tragically there was a very prominent church father by the name of Origen. He was very pious, popular, he was very persuasive. He’s one of the great figures of the third century church. He wrote many important documents, but he primarily presented Christian doctrine in Greek terms, in Hellenic terms. But the real tragedy is he introduced a theory of inspiration, or interpretation I should say, that allegorized the Scripture to extremes. And his writings influenced Augustine somewhat later. Now get the picture of Augustine. Augustine was that bishop of Hippo in North Africa from 354 to about 430 [AD]. Very, very influential guy, he’s one of the most influential leaders of the western Church. He wrote “The City of God” which portrayed the church as a new civic order during the ruins of the Roman Empire. About this time, by 476 the Roman Empire is in pieces. So it’s already starting to fall apart. But get the picture. From, ah, 325 and following, the Roman Empire--Constantine made the Christian religion legal, big step. The second successor after him made it the state religion. Get the picture of a government funded pulpit where a pastor is preaching that Jesus is coming soon to rid the world of its evil rulers. That wasn’t what you called politically correct. That was embarrassing. So they began to soften that by saying “Well, he’s gonna rule in our hearts.” So “literally dispossessing the earth of its usurpers and ruling” became watered down and away. So although Augustine’s writings, many of them, defeated numerous heresies of the period, his allegorical reposturing of an Amillennial eschatology—eschatology is the study of the end times or last things. And Amillennialism is a term used by those who deny a literal Millennium, as such. We’re gonna hit that head-on. And of course from Augustine you get Auchwitz. [this statement of Chuck’s put in context a little later.] You see, Origen allegorizes Scripture, Augustine institutionalizes that allegorization of the Scripture in what we call Amillennialism. And that led to a Medieval eschatology that the Reformation failed to restore. You know the Reformation under Martin Luther and the rest of them did an incredible job at what we call soteriology--that’s the study of salvation. They returned to the Scripture and recognized that salvation comes by faith alone. Many people willingly died being burned at the stake in their commitment to the authority of Scripture, in soteriology. The great tragedy of the Reformation was they didn’t go far enough. They accomplished great things in soteriology, but they ignored the eschatology. They continued to embrace an Amillennial eschatology that was their heritage from the Medieval [Catholic] church. And so, because of that, most Protestant denominations are Amillennial in their eschatology. And that also leads them to being post-tribulational in their views. We’re gonna talk a little bit about that.

What are the problems with Amillenialism? Well first of all, the Old Testament is replete with promises of a Messianic rule--the Messiah all through the Old Testament. In fact, it was so emphasized that when Jesus came in humility they didn’t recognize him because they had their eyes fixed on one that was going to come in power and rule. The destiny of Israel is all wrapped up in this. The destiny of Israel and God’s Covenant is denied by most modern Christian churches tragically, because of this [Amillennial] heritage.

When you get to the New Testament you got another problem. Gabriel meets Mary and gives her an announcement of her new child, that he is going to take David’s throne, Luke chapter one, verses 31-32. Well that’s a problem. David’s throne didn’t exist in those days. They were ruled by Rome. The king was an Edomite, Idumean, they’d say. Herod was a Roman appointee, wasn’t even Jewish. That wasn’t David’s throne. And yet her child was going to take David’s throne. Has Jesus ever done that? No. Where’s he now? On his Father’s throne, not on his throne. I believe his throne’s gonna be the Mercy seat, that will reappear as a gift when he comes. That’s a whole nuther study. And there are numerous confirmations of all of this in the New Testament, let alone all the Old Testament promises. To dismiss or somehow explain away the Millennium--there are many views about eschatology that good scholars can differ on. Most of us meet once a year just to do that, to share different views of subtleties and details. And yet there is one view, that if you hold that view, it has disturbing implications. Some are post-trib, pre-trib, fine. But if you’re amillennial you’ve got a problem, because to dismiss or explain away the Millennium is to impugn the character of God. You’re calling God a liar. God means what he says and says what he means. He is the opposite of Allah. The Muslims worship a god who is presented as being unknowable, capricious, he can do anything. There’s no certainty, no certainty about Allah. The God of the Bible, the God of Abram, Yitshak and Jakob, the God that we worship, delights in making and keeping his promises. To imply he doesn’t keep his promises is to attack the thing that he holds dear, his character. And amillennialism, tragically, does that very thing. And yet it’s embraced, I would say, by nine out of ten churches in America.” In the quote above, a remark was made about “Augustine to Auschwitz”, which needs some clarification, which Mr. Missler clarifies this in his notes which came with the tapes, which I quote: “One of the derivative aspects of an amillennial perspective is that it denies Israel’s role in God’s plans. This also leads to a “replacement theology” in which the Church is viewed as replacing Israel in God’s program for mankind. In addition to forcing an allegorization of many key passages of Scripture, this also led to the tragedy of the Holocaust in Europe. The responsibility for the six million Jews who were systematically murdered in the concentration camps has to include the silent pulpits who had embraced this heretical eschatology and its attendant anti-Semitism.” To read an article describing the origins of “replacement theology”, written by a Harvard Theological student, CLICK HERE: http://www.UNITYINCHRIST.COM/prophecies/replacementtheology.htm .