Dr. Michael Brown on Antisemitism

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This week Israel is observing Holocaust Memorial Day, which in Hebrew is called Yom HaShoa.

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A siren will sound all across the country, calling everyone to stand in silence in remembrance

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of the six million that died in the Holocaust.

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Our commitment on such a day should be never again.

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So today we have a special guest in our studio to help us learn more about anti-Semitism

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and to guard against it.

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You don't want to miss it, so please stay tuned.

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Welcome to the Israel Answers series, connecting Israel, the Bible, and you.

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Join Susan Michael as she explores timely issues and current events from a scriptural

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perspective to equip the Christian world with a balance and biblical response.

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Please try to subscribe for future episodes, which will ignite your faith and bring the

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Bible to life in your everyday world.

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Now let's join Susan with your Israel Answers.

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Well warm greetings to the Atta Zion podcast.

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I'm Susan Michael with the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem and I'm your host today.

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We are going to be discussing a very important topic that of anti-Semitism, particularly

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Christian anti-Semitism.

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And it is my great privilege to introduce to you our guest speaker today, a real expert

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in this field, Dr. Michael Brown, who is founder and president of Ask Dr. Brown Ministries

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and founder of the fire school of ministry and host of the Daily Radio Show line of fire.

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Dr. Brown is of Jewish upbringing, became a believer in Jesus in 1971 and since then

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has preached all around the world and led a very powerful and impacting ministry.

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He holds a PhD in Near East languages from New York University and was a visiting and

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adjunct professor at a number of seminaries.

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He has contributed numerous articles.

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He has written over 40 books and we're just so grateful for him giving of his time today

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to speak to us on this subject.

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You know Dr. Brown, I will say I love your title Ask Dr. Brown because that's kind of

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my motto.

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When I'm up against an issue, I need to articulate, I need to do research.

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You're one of the first ones that I turn to.

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I so appreciate your balance with your Jewish background, your many years of powerful Christian

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ministry and of course your scholarship.

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So on today's subject, I will say that there is no better expert.

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Very few authors have even attempted to tackle this subject and you have written two phenomenal

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books on the subject of anti-Semitism.

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So I want to thank you so much for joining us today.

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Just warm greetings to you.

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Thanks for the gracious introduction and glad we could have this time together.

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Well we recommend all of those wanting further information to get your two books.

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There is much to learn about the history of Christian anti-Semitism that is covered in

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your first book, Our Hands Are Stained With Blood.

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But in today's conversation, we want to focus more on the contemporary, on today.

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And so before we get into that though, I just would like to ask, would you just give us

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please your definition of anti-Semitism and how do you explain its persistence and existence

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over so many centuries?

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This anti-Semitism in its base root is hatred of the Jewish people as people.

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In other words, it is not simply to have a difference with a Jewish person.

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It is not simply to have a bad experience with a Jewish person and have a negative attitude

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towards that individual.

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It is not even to observe things culturally in terms of Jewish strengths or Jewish weaknesses.

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It is not to have an issue with an Israeli policy towards the Palestinians.

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It is the hatred of the people as a people.

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It is the demonizing of the people, the caricaturing of the people as in Jews or this or Jews or

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that.

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And it's been remarkably persistent.

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It can be documented in, oh, 2300 years back, so before the time of Jesus, before the birth

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of Christianity, because there are some scholars that want to blame it all on Christian views

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of Jewish people, that certainly doesn't work.

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It's persisted to this day in Islam.

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It's burned bright in the midst of atheistic regimes.

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Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler, for their hatred of one another, shared a hatred of

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the Jewish people.

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You can find it among black supremacists, among white supremacists.

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You can find it in secular Japan.

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You think, how does it persist?

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What's the common denominator?

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Well, there is no simple rational explanation.

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I've given lectures many years ago at schools like Yale and Columbia, where I went through

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the widespread nature and history of antisemitism.

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Then I went through the various explanations for antisemitism and none fully work.

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It's not simply a matter of, well, the Jews are different and therefore religious Jews

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are hated, because secular Jews were hated just the same.

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It's often been said that in Nazi Germany that the Jews there were more German than

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Jewish, many of them, and yet they were hated the same way.

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Many Jews secular or hated the same way religious Jews are.

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You go through the various explanations, well, Jews control all the money.

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Well, through much of world history, it's been quite the opposite, and Jews have been

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terribly impoverished.

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You should see through, watch and say, Fiddler on the roof, that was very typical of Jewish

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life around the world over the centuries.

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You go through one explanation after another, and you realize there's no rational, natural

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explanation that works for every different manifestation of it.

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It must be supernatural.

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I see a couple of sides to that.

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One is that God uniquely chose the Jewish people to be his messengers and to bring his

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light to the world, and therefore as a chosen people by God, Satan, the destroyer, will

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want to destroy them.

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Another aspect is that Jews and God's plan still have a key role to play, and that it

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is a Jewish Jerusalem that will welcome back the Messiah.

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Certainly it makes sense for the devil to want to wipe out and destroy the Jewish people

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so that they cannot finish that plan.

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God is even guaranteed in the Scripture, for example, in Jeremiah 31, verses 35 to 37,

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that no matter what Israel does, the Jewish people do, even though we'll come under divine

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discipline, even though we'll be scattered in the nations, he'll still preserve us.

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If Satan can wipe us out, he makes God into a liar.

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So ultimately I see this as supernatural and demonic, enhance the persistence of the hatred.

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Well I always go to Psalm 83, and it says, oh God, those who hate you have said, let

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us wipe them off as a nation that the name of Israel would be remembered no more.

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And so that's very clear that it is a spiritual battle against God himself and his choice

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of people, his plan to use them.

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And they're called in the middle, really, of this spiritual battle.

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So its persistence is also described as a mutating virus.

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Just when you think that you've wiped out the virus, it reinvents itself, and it comes

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back in a slightly different form.

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So what are some of the modern expressions of anti-Semitism that you see most prevalent

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today?

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Yes, so some of the most prevalent would be first dealing with Israel as a nation, so

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that Israel is completely delegitimized.

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Again, the issue is not, say, well I don't think the Israeli policies towards the Palestinians

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and the so-called West Bank or FAIR, or I don't like the blockade of Gaza, whatever, those

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things can be debated and discussed, even if we had very different views on that, that

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wouldn't be anti-Semitic, but to delegitimize Israel as a nation.

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Said that the Jewish people have no right to their ancient homeland, to caricature Israel

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as genocidal, as an apartheid state.

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That would be a contemporary manifestation of anti-Semitism.

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Another one would be in a country like America or a continent like Europe, where over the

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decades Jews, especially the less 30, 40 years, Jews have had a disproportionate influence

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as compared to their population.

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If we just use America, for example, so what there may be 6 million Jews in America today

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out of a population of over 330 million, but you have names like Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook.

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If you have an issue with Facebook, you have an issue with Zuckerberg.

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Well, Zuckerberg is a Jew, and you just go down the list.

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You have a problem with a liberal congressman.

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Well, Chuck Schumer is a Jew.

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And Chuck, see the Jews, they control Congress.

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They control social media.

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And Steven Spielberg in Hollywood, they control Hollywood.

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So you have these leaps.

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You have these caricatures and these leaps.

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And then you just need to, oh, George Soros, he's underwriting all these extreme liberal

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causes.

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And Soros is a Jew.

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And then you've got the shock jocks like Howard Stern, these immoral guys, and he's a Jew.

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So Jews, as I say, are like everybody else except Morso.

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So our strengths are really strong.

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Our weaknesses are really weak.

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And we just tend to rise to the top for good or for bad.

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But I believe based on a calling that God put on us to be agents of change.

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We can do it well or we can do it terribly.

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So there's that manifestation.

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Again, through much of history, that could not have existed because Jews were oppressed

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and Jews were cast out and Jews had to flee from country to country.

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But to the extent you can tie things in with the protocols of the elders of Zion, which

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is a fake document, allegedly speaking of Jewish aspirations to control the world from

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a little over 100 years ago, initially circulated by Russian secret police.

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But it talks about goals of world domination by the Jews.

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To the extent you can point to that imagery and say, ah, look, here it is, here it is.

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That's another form of anti-Semitism that manifests itself.

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And then, theologically, to the extent that Jews don't go along with the Christian program,

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it's easy to demonize.

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You see, it's easy to over-sentimentalize support for Jewish people.

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It's been said that the great qualification for a missionary is not love for souls but

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love for Christ.

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Because people will hurt you and people won't respond the way you want them to and people

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will disappoint you.

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But if you have an ardent love for the Lord, that will drive you to continue to serve those

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very people.

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In the same way, if you have some type of overly-sentimentalized view of the Jewish people and, oh, we

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love the Jews for this reason, that we were in Israel, it was just amazing.

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And it doesn't go deeper than that.

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And it's not based on what God says in His Word and His purposes and our heart for Him.

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Then it's easy to sour and turn on the Jewish people.

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So those are some of the ways that anti-Semitism is manifest today.

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But in particular, with an extreme anti-Zionism that demonizes and de-legitimizes the state

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and with the idea that Jews are trying to take over the world.

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And hey, look, here's the evidence.

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Well, you know, a lot of our young people are just bombarded by this on social media.

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And there's another form of anti-Semitism that I think is growing and that you have

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a particular concern for and expertise in.

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I'd like for you to take a few minutes and talk to us about Christian anti-Semitism today.

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You know, when we study its history, we like to kind of disassociate ourselves from that

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history, from that church.

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But really, we're seeing it raise its ugly head again today.

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And it's something we really have to be aware of.

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Be prepared to confront it.

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So could you just take a few minutes and talk to us about Christian anti-Semitism and where

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you're finding it today?

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Yes, obviously, it's a real oxymoron, the idea that there could be Jew hatred among Christians

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and demonizing and characterizing of the caricaturing of the Jewish people as a people among Christians.

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And you are right.

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It's something that we've been able to disassociate ourselves from for a long time, saying, hey,

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that's who we are.

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So when I came to faith in 1971, immediately my dad wanted me to meet the local rabbi.

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And shortly after we met, he gave me a book on anti-Semitism in church history that was

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a complete shocker.

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And you've got famous names in church history and terrible things that they've said about

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the Jewish people and then various things that the church instituted against the Jewish

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people, none of its worst times offering Jewish people baptism or death.

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That's why for many Jews, especially religious Jews, for those Jews who know their history,

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Christianity is a dirty word.

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That's why in many Jewish households, kids grow up and hearing Jesus Christ, that's profanity.

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That's a curse word.

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If your parents are really angry, they'll use that as profanity.

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I was talking to an ultra-orthodox rabbi and he said to me, if he said the word Christianity

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around his father, his father would literally throw up.

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So many Jews see things through that lens, sadly, tragically.

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Of course, that's why I wrote the book, Our Hands Are Staying With Blood, to try to help

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Christians today understand that history.

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But all that I experienced for decades in the Lord, especially traveling around the world,

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was a great love for Israel, a great love for the Jewish people.

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And evangelical Christians, for example, in America have become Israel's best friends

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to the fact, the point that the government of Israel even recognizes that solidarity

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and support and sees it as genuine because it's endured now decade after decade after

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decade.

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But yet tragically, that ugly stream remains.

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We can't simply say, well, it's got nothing to do with us because there are Christians,

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conservative Christians, evangelical Christians, Bible-believing Christians that hold to these

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same demonic views about the Jewish people and are some of the quickest to jump on the

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bandwagon and demonize Jewish people.

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I can honestly say that in the last few years, especially primarily through intranet, I've

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encountered more, quote, Christian anti-Semitism than I have in the previous 47, 48 years

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before that combined.

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And I see it coming from a few sources.

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There are some who have swung back into an extreme replacement theology and see no purpose

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for the modern state of Israel and see no prophetic fulfillment, but not only so believe

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that the Jewish people are struck out, that as a people, they committed one too many sins

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and God said, that's it.

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It's over for you.

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So there are some Christian theologies that put such an emphasis on the destruction of

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the Second Temple, even saying that's really the return of Jesus when he came in judgment

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on the Second Temple.

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And that's when God said it's all over for Israel and the Jewish people.

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So individual Jews can be saved, but it's all over for the nation.

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Therefore, you can look at Israel like the most secular person does today, or the most

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radical pro-Palestinian, and the Jews are guilty of all kinds of crimes and atrocities.

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Another aspect is conspiracy theories, that it's remarkable to me to see how these have

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risen in our midst.

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We've seen it politically and in other ways, but it's theologically as well.

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And there are things that have been utterly shocking to me.

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For example, Judaism teaches what are called the Seven Laws of Noah based on Genesis 2

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and Genesis 9 and then rabbinic interpretation to derive these.

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It basically says seven laws that God gave to humanity as a whole.

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And if a Gentile will live by these laws, which include, for example, don't blaspheme,

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don't commit idolatry, don't commit adultery, don't steal, don't murder, don't eat the

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limb of a living animal, establish courts of justice, that if Gentiles will live by these

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seven laws, that they will be acceptable to God, just like a Jew living by the 613 commandments

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of the Torah.

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And it's that simple.

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It's what many religious Jews believe.

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No Gentiles don't need to keep all these laws, they just need to keep these seven.

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Well somehow, this is now a major internet sensation that Jews are planning to begin

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executing, beheading Christians under the institution of the Seven Laws of Noah.

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It's one of the most bizarre things I've ever heard in my life.

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I had to devote a whole chapter to it in my book Christian Antisemitism to deal with it

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and it continues to grow.

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So what it comes from is that these are all theoretical laws.

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In other words, in the Messianic era, that Gentiles would still be required to keep these

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seven laws, just like Jews would be required to keep all 613.

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And in the Messianic era, let's say a Jew would not keep the Sabbath, that person would

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be put to death, just like if a Gentile would worship an idol, they would be put to death.

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And because there's a debate within Judaism whether Christians and their belief in a Trinity

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and a divine Son, whether they are idolatrous or not, that based on that belief that if

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they are idolatrous, well then they'll be put to death under the Seven Laws of Noah.

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And because the United States government has approved the Seven Laws of Noah and the Vatican

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has approved the Seven Laws of Noah, this is all this vast conspiracy that very soon

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Jews are going to turn on the whole world and begin beheading all these people.

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You think, who could possibly believe that?

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But amazingly, there are people who are thinking people and have studied this and oh, it's

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there and listen to what the rabbis have to say.

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So you have bizarre things like that.

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And then you also have, as different quotes from the Talmud have circulated and different

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writings that could easily be taken in very negative light or taken out of context, these

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have now been made to demonize the Jews as a whole and that the Jews believe Jesus is

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burning in hell, an excrement, that the Jews believe it's perfectly fine to sexually abuse

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a child and there's nothing to it.

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So you get these bizarre statements and some based on complete misunderstandings of rabbinic

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literature and these circulate and these lend credence to these other anti-Semitic views.

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I'll say this last thing.

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We have to remember that the generation growing up today is quite distant from the Holocaust.

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And with our very short memories these days, something that took place in the 1940s and

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began in the 1930s has no connection to many young people today.

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They did not see the rebirth of Israel out of the ashes of the Holocaust.

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They did not see the miraculous preservation and growth of Israel over the years and they've

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been bombarded with a steady diet of evil Israel, bad Israel, terrible Israel.

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And many young people in particular want to side with the underdog, with the one that

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is the oppressed.

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Israel is now the oppressor, the evil oppressor.

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So these things have factored into creating an environment where maybe in my generation

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it was much more natural to have a great love for the Jewish people in recognition of the

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modern state of Israel.

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Today it's not that natural and we can't take it for granted.

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Well, your first book, Our Hands Are Stained With Blood, which I bought back in the 90s

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when you first published it.

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And of course, since then you've expanded it and you've published a second edition.

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But it was really my primer at what taught me about that history.

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But as you said, you've seen a rise of it.

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We're encountering some of these bizarre conspiracy theories as well.

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It's very distressing.

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And so your second book is just so important because you do address some of those conspiracy

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theories and really set the record straight.

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I really appreciate that you wrote that book and that you wrote both of them.

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And I noticed in one of the books you wrote, you mentioned that in all of your interaction

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with seminaries where you've been an adjunct professor at several of them, if I'm right,

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you discovered none of them are teaching the history of Christian anti-Semitism.

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And could you just address that for a minute?

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How do you explain that?

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Yeah, it's a massive blind spot.

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In some cases it's embarrassing and it's avoided.

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But in other cases, it's a massive blind spot.

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I was talking to a black friend of mine here in the States and he was saying, he goes,

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we don't get it.

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He's a believer and an educator.

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He said, you know, the way the Holocaust is to the Jewish people, slavery and segregation

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is to black Americans.

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And you don't seem to recognize it as much in your history and your teaching.

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It's almost downplayed.

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He said, it's hard for us to understand.

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And the truth is that all of us have blind spots in certain ways.

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But if we love the Lord, when someone reveals those blind spots to us, then we respond with

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graciousness and humility and we make a course correction.

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So often when you're teaching American history, you just want to teach the best things and

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the most amazing things in our history and kind of downplay the worst or treatment of

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Native Americans or things.

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You know, because there's so many good things about America.

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So all the more when you're looking at church history, there's so many good things and good

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developments and you want to focus on kind of the movement that gets to you today.

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And often that's, you know, looking at the heroes of the faith and looking at those who

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sacrificed for the gospel and looking at these exemplary models of the Christian kindness

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and discipline and so on and so forth.

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And the bad parts, the aberrant, well, that's really somebody else or that's not us, but

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it's inexcusable.

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It's utterly inexcusable.

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There are some seminaries now that have worked now with Messianic Jewish scholars and that

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have incorporated more teaching on these subjects because, again, American history through Native

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American eyes reads differently than American history, say, through European American eyes.

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In the same way, church history through Messianic Jewish eyes often reads differently than through

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Gentile Christian eyes.

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And there has been some positive influence now in more recent years.

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But I remember a conversation that I had with one of the world's leading church historians,

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a fine Christian man.

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And I asked him, so when you teach church history and you're dealing, say, with the

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church fathers and a great leader like John Christastom, I said, when do you teach about

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his seven sermons against the Jews, which were used by Hitler, republished by Hitler

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to help fuel anti-Semitism?

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He don't.

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They have whole classes on Martin Luther because he was such an influential thinker.

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And for us Protestants, those that would be in that larger camp, a tremendously important

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figure.

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And I asked, so when you teach on Martin Luther, when you teach about his anti-Semitic

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writings, which also were not only reprinted by the Nazis, but utilized by the Nazis in

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terms of strategy and treating the Jewish people, we don't.

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It's inexcusable.

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There is no valid reason not to do it.

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In fact, it must be taught.

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If we don't learn from history, we will repeat these mistakes.

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And yes, it's true.

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As I've taught some of the content of our hands that stand with blood in different nations.

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Christians are utterly shocked.

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Christians in India, Christians in South Korea, Christians in other parts of the world, especially

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in Asia, Africa, they're utterly shocked to hear these things because they don't have

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a direct history, even in their own traditions of these things.

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A lot of this has been a largely Anglo phenomenon.

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Even when I've taught it with Christians from European background, they didn't know how

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deep it was or how far back it went.

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And they're shocked.

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They'll come up to me with tears.

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And nonetheless, this is part of history.

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And we cannot deny it.

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We cannot downplay it.

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And yes, there has been Christian love for Israel.

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There has been Christian support for the Jewish people.

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There has been a beautiful stream, especially in various evangelical circles, as people

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have gotten more and more back to the Bible.

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It's given them more and more appreciation for God's promises to Israel.

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And the church has found comfort in God's patient, loving dealings with Israel.

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Despite his judgments, he's preserved the Jewish people.

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The same way Christians have taken comfort in that, these things must be taught.

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There must be education based on truth.

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We must understand why these things crept into church history.

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And without replacement theology, the idea that in God's plan of salvation, the church

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had taken the place of ethnic Israel, and God was finished with the Jewish people as

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a people without replacement theology, that door of anti-Semitism likely never would have

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been opened the way it was opened.

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So we need to address the manifestations of this theologically as well as ideologically.

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Well, Dr. Brown, we just want to thank you again for not only spending time with us today

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to discuss it, but for the two books that you published that we can all study and gain

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an understanding of this horrible history of Christian anti-Semitism so that we can

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learn from it to make sure that it doesn't happen today.

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There are concerning trends that I see here in the United States, even in the church community.

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We have so much to learn.

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So we want to thank you for your exceptional efforts to educate all of us.

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We're going to put on the screen a link to where they can order your books, and we'll

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put it down below in today's show notes.

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Please be sure and get Dr. Brown's books and pass them around.

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There's so much for us to learn and to stand against today, to stand against anti-Semitism

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that is rearing its ugly head again today.

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So thank you for joining us on behalf of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem.

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I want to say shalom and thank you for spending time with us today.

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We hope you have enjoyed this episode of Out of Zion with Susan Michael.

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Be sure to subscribe to Out of Zion Now on Apple Podcasts, cpnshows.com, YouTube, or

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wherever you like to listen and learn.

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Out of Zion with Susan Michael is a production of ICEJ USA All Rights Reserved.