A particularly thorny issue in Christian theology is how to think about Jews. Without a balanced and biblically grounded approach, we can veer into either antisemitism or heretical universalism.

The Role of the Jews

First, let’s be very clear that the Jews were not the only humans who could be saved during the Old Covenant. Abraham’s covenant included a provision that those who blessed him would be blessed, and those who cursed him would be cursed (Genesis 12:3). This provision passed through Isaac down to Jacob, such that for the entirety of the time of the Mosaic Law, Gentiles could be saved by choosing to bless God’s people as a recognition of God’s sovereignty (they also had to follow the general principles of righteousness that had been in place since the days of Noah).

In this way, Melchizedek, Joseph’s Pharaoh, the Gibeonites, Hiram of Tyre, the Queen of Sheba, Naaman, the Ninevites, Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus the Great, Darius the Great, and many others went to the “good” part of Hades (the two parts of Hades being depicted by Jesus in Luke 16:19-31), where they awaited resurrection into the New Jerusalem at the end of the millennium. Jesus confirms this in Luke 11:31-32. Thus, what Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob secured for themselves was not the sole path to salvation, but rather a priestly role for the whole world.

The nation of Israel was a kingdom of priests (Exodus 19:6), which is why God dwelled amongst them. The Levites were the priestly tribe within Israel, so they had a more intimate connection to God’s presence. Within the Levites, the Aaronic priests could enter God’s sanctuary, and within the Aaronic priests, the High Priest could enter the Most Holy Place once a year.

Because of Israel’s history as God’s priestly nation, when Jesus brought salvation to the world, He started with Israel. While He occasionally healed or blessed Gentile believers, His mission field during His earthly ministry was almost exclusively the Jews or the Samaritans (northern Israel). This continued forward into the early Church, which was exclusively for Israelites until the conversion of Cornelius, when it officially spread to Gentiles (although there were precursors, such as the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8).

This is why Paul said in Romans 1:16 that the gospel was for “everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek [i.e., Gentile].” The Jews had a favored status because “to them were committed the oracles of God” (Romans 3:2).

The Imminent Judgment

Nonetheless, the favored status of the Jews only gave them early access to Christ’s covenant, not automatic salvation. As John said to the Pharisees and Sadducees right at the beginning of the New Testament:

“Brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not think to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones.” (Matthew 3:7-9)

In reality, a great judgment was looming over the Jews for their slide into national wickedness. The very next verse, John warned the Jews:

“And even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees. Therefore every tree which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clean out His threshing floor, and gather His wheat into the barn; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” (Matthew 3:10)

As Jesus Himself said to the Pharisees and scribes:

“Serpents, brood of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell? Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes: some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Assuredly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.” (Matthew 23:33-36)

In addition to all this pent-up judgment from Old Testament martyrdoms, Jesus’ own martyrdom would be poured out on the Jews of His day:

But they cried out all the more, saying, “Let Him be crucified!”

When Pilate saw that he could not prevail at all, but rather that a tumult was rising, he took water and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, “I am innocent of the blood of this just Person. You see to it.”

And all the people answered and said, “His blood be on us and on our children.” (Matthew 27:23-25)

After Jesus’ ascension, when the Holy Spirit was poured out on the Church on Pentecost, Peter urged the Jews in Jerusalem to “be saved from this perverse generation” (Acts 2:40), i.e., the generation that would suffer all this judgment. And how could they be saved? “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins.” (Acts 2:38)

Note that Peter uses the same word that John did: repent. Both men also mentioned Jesus as critical to salvation. As Peter said later, “Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name [than Jesus Christ of Nazareth] under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). This all ties back to Jesus’ definitive claim of “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” (John 14:6)

Thus, as one would expect from reading virtually any part of the New Testament, Jews cannot be saved without faith in Jesus. As Paul said about the Jews of his day who rejected Jesus:

Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. (Romans 10:1-4)

For you, brethren [the mostly Gentile believers of Thessalonica], became imitators of the churches of God which are in Judea in Christ Jesus. For you also suffered the same things from your own countrymen, just as they did from the Judeans, who killed both the Lord Jesus and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they do not please God and are contrary to all men, forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they may be saved, so as always to fill up the measure of their sins; but wrath has come upon them to the uttermost. (1 Thessalonians 2:14-16)

Indeed, with His crucifixion, Christ tore down the dividing wall between Jews and Gentiles (Ephesians 2:14-16), such that in Christ, a true Jew is one who has an inward circumcised heart, not outward circumcision of the flesh (Romans 2:28-29). While earthly Jews held a special honor in Christ’s Church, the ones who refused to hear the gospel were children of the flesh, the sons of bondage, who persecuted the sons of promise (Galatians 4:21-31). These faithless Jews were destined to see faithful Gentiles sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while they themselves would be cast out into outer darkness, where there would be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matthew 8:11-12).

And indeed, as Jesus also foretold when He shared a parable of a fruitless tree that would be cut down (Luke 13:6-9), or when He lamented over Jerusalem and its desolate house (Matthew 23:37-39), the Roman army inflicted a grievous judgment on Judah during the First Jewish-Roman War, sacking Jerusalem and burning the Second Temple to the ground.

Rabbinical Judaism Then

After the First Jewish-Roman War, a second generation of Christian Jews arose. However, about 60 years after the destruction of the temple, a charismatic Jewish leader named Simon bar Koseba, who later went by the Messianic title Simon bar Kokhba, came along and promised to restore the defeated nation of Israel. He pledged to overthrow Roman rule, establish an independent Jewish nation, and rebuild the temple.

Since this was the heretical interpretation of the Old Testament that had flourished in Judea ever since the Romans took over and that had led to the first war with Rome (albeit with very unsuccessful results), some heretical rabbis, including the prominent Rabbi Akiva, proclaimed bar Kokhba to be God’s promised messiah. Of course, the Christian Jews opposed bar Kokhba as a false messiah, to which he and his forces responded with violence and persecution.

It is not commonly understood that this conflict between the new version of non-Christian Judaism that is now called “Rabbinical Judaism” and the Christian version of Judaism that is now called “Messianic Judaism” appears in Scripture. Specifically, bar Kokhba is the beast from the sea in Revelation 13, while Rabbi Akiva is the beast from the earth. They are depicted as antichrist figures, seducing Jews away from Jesus, waging war on the saints (Revelation 13:7), and eventually leading the nation into utter devastation and destruction, as had been promised hundreds of years before in Daniel 12:7. Indeed, the Romans under Emperor Hadrian defeated bar Kokhba’s forces, unleashed an almost genocidal destruction on the Jews across Judea, and expelled the Jews from Jerusalem.

Important Note: The Daniel verse I just mentioned indicates that this devastation of the Jews during the Third Jewish-Roman War represented the end of God’s judgment upon them. Therefore, the bloodguilt of Jesus and the Old Testament prophets that rested upon the Jews was wiped clean in 135 AD. Jews today only bear guilt for their own rejection of Jesus as the Jewish Messiah.

Rabbinical Judaism Now

In 1948, in the wake of World War II, Israel was re-established as an official sovereign nation. This has led to a modern religious movement known as Christian Zionism, which proclaims devoted support to the modern nation of Israel to be a mandate for Christians.

Let’s consider some key aspects of the modern state of Israel:

• They follow the principles of Talmudic Judaism, of which the antichrist Rabbi Akiva was a principal founder.
• They deny Messianic (i.e., Christian) Jews the right to emigrate to Israel. This is particularly abhorrent because the re-establishment of Israel was a response to the Holocaust, and Messianic Jews would have been just as eligible for the slaughter of the Holocaust as Rabbinical Jews.
• They seek an earthly Jewish kingdom instead of the spiritual one of which Jesus is king (John 18:36).
• They await a messiah who has yet to come, who will rule their earthly kingdom.
• They seek to rebuild the temple, even though the Mosaic Law is obsolete and passed away during the First Jewish-Roman War, just as Paul said it would (Hebrews 8:13). The enshrinement of the Wailing Wall is evidence of just how much importance the people of Israel still place upon the temple that Jesus destroyed by the hand of the Roman general Titus.

It is thus clear that the modern state of Israel is following the exact same playbook as the antichrist Jews during the Third Jewish-Roman War. The Bible spoke firmly against that playbook, and Christ led the Roman army against them and devastated them completely, because of their perfidy.

How then can Christians who claim to believe the Bible and follow Jesus support the state of Israel so rabidly? Well, it has to do with twisted eschatology. Because Christians Zionists put the entirety of Revelation in the future, they believe a Great Tribulation of faithless Jews will precede the rapture, which will allow Christians today to escape death. They therefore promote the interests of national Israel to bring these events to fruition as soon as possible, even though they expect the Jews in Israel to suffer greatly for it.

As I have explained in The Enigma of the End Times, however, all of Revelation is in the past. True Christians seek to spread the gospel to all nations, including the Jews. Indeed, after the gospel finishes conquering the Gentile world, the nation of Israel will fully convert to Messianic Judaism (Romans 11:25-27). When that happens, the eternal earthly happy state described in Isaiah 65:17-66:24 will come about.

Therefore, in contrast to the heresy of Christian Zionism, what Christians are actually called to do to bring about peace on earth and perpetual shalom is not to withhold the gospel from the Jews and usher them toward destruction, but, as one would expect from the nature of Jesus Christ, to witness to Jews and call them to the one true faith. We as Christians must not support the nation of Israel in its sinful rejection of Jesus as Lord but rather levy on them the same expectation of conversion to Christianity that we have historically applied to every other nation on earth.