Jesus and Jewish nationalism

NOTE TO THE READER: This article is an effort to open up the nature of the Kingdom of God brought in by Jesus through His death and resurrection, doing so by opening up the kingdom of God that our Lord Jesus refused to bring in despite pressure from everyone to champion the restoration of Israel.

At times readers may be confused by whether it’s the writer saying something he himself believes or a description of the thinking of those in error. In a discussion of this sort, ambiguity can be helpful. Scripture has a lot of ambiguity which, sadly, translators are wont to remove. Nevertheless, ambiguity can be helpful in leading us to think more carefully.

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After celebrating the Resurrection of our Lord a week and a half ago, what’s on our minds? Midterm elections? Semester’s end? Socialists? The Strait of Hormuz? Iran’s drive toward having a nuclear bomb?

Sure we’re all thankful Jesus rose from the dead, but Christians need to stop cowering. We gotta step up to protect our land, people, and nation, right?

After the resurrection, Luke 24 recounts an exchange between Jesus and two of His disciples while walking to Emmaus, seven miles from Jerusalem. Out of nowhere Jesus joined them, but they didn’t recognize Him. Striking up a conversation, Jesus asked what they’d been talking about?

What are these words that you are exchanging with one another as you are walking?

It was a heavy question:

And they stood still, looking sad.

One of the two named Cleopas was incredulous:

Are You the only one visiting Jerusalem and unaware of the things which have happened here in these days?

Jesus responded “What things?” They answered:

The things about Jesus the Nazarene, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word in the sight of God and all the people, and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered Him to the sentence of death, and crucified Him. But we were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel.

There it is. They’d been hoping Jesus would use His Divine powers to “redeem Israel.”

Jewish nationalism

The nation of Israel hungered and dreamed of Jewish nationalism, but rather than  becoming the Jews’ political and military champion, Jesus went to death on the Cross. It was tragic, really.

When He preached, Jesus held the attention of thousands; He had the power to cast out demons, quiet storms, and raise the dead, yet He stubbornly refused to use His prophetic gift and supernatural power to restore the nation of Israel to its Divine glory under Kings David and Solomon.

This was what Scripture had prophesied concerning the Messiah, wasn’t it? He was to be of David’s royal lineage, but here Jesus was, declining to fulfill those prophecies. He refused to lift a finger towards ridding them of their wicked Roman oppressors occupying their land.

Surely He had some quixotic reason for giving in to them, for submitting to the Jews and Romans killing Him. What must be admitted, though, is that His three years of public ministry were a bust.

For Jesus’ disciples, this had been an awful disappointment. He could have conquered the Roman legions. Just before His crucifixion, He admitted as much. When His disciple cut off the ear of the High Priest’s servant, Jesus rebuked the poor fellow:

Put your sword back into its place; for all those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword. Or do you think that I cannot appeal to My Father, and He will at once put at My disposal more than twelve legions [72,000] of angels?

If His Father would have listened to an appeal, why hadn’t Jesus asked? Why hadn’t He used His power for Jewish nationalism?

After rebuking His sword-wielding disciple, Jesus went on to give this explanation of His rejection of bloody, fleshly, worldly conflict:

How then will the Scriptures be fulfilled, which say that it must happen this way? (Matthew 26:52-54)

Reminding ourselves His travel companions didn’t know it was Jesus walking next to them, the two now dug their hole deeper. They went on to report they’d heard testimonies Jesus had risen from the dead. In fact, some of the disciples had actually seen Him.

Remember when Jesus first joined these men, Luke recounts they were “looking sad.” Listening now to everything they were saying, their unbelief was on full display. Jesus responded with this rebuke:

O foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory? (Luke 24:25).

A stunner, isn’t it?

Self-critical capacity

Can we manage a smidgen of self-awareness, recognizing ourselves in those two men? We’re much like them. We, too, have received accounts of Jesus’ resurrection, yet two thousand years later we, too, are disappointed with Jesus’ failure to bring us relief from the present Western secularist empire.

What’s going on? Still today, Jesus is not using His power to bring in His kingdom.

We look back longingly at Rome and its papacy across the medieval world. Rome went on crusade against the Jews and Muslims. Why can’t we?

Christendom flourished under the Holy Roman Empire. Why are we allowing ourselves to be reduced to the indignities and suffering here living under secularists and immigrants’ occupation of our Christian holy land?

Our fathers were faithless, but now we’ll correct things. Some of us who aren’t cowering, quiet, and working on our personal piety understand the deeper things predicted in Scripture’s prophecies. We have faith for battle. Jesus has some real men now; we’re ready to do the hard work of establishing His authority and Kingdom. We’re not losers. We’re not pietists. We’re not scaredy-cats.

Enough of this Kingdom of God “within you.” We’re going to deliver an earthly kingdom to the glory of Christ. If we’re ever going to have a godly legacy, our children need us to stand up and be counted. No more pie in the sky, by and by, for us.

The two disciples on the road to Emmaus complained about Jesus not restoring the kingdom of Israel, and we get it. Of course, today this kingdom of God isn’t Israel, but some amalgamation of our Church and our United States of America.

See what has happed to this hallowed land! The people of God are humiliated and oppressed here living in what has become Sodom and Gomorrah. Maybe a suffering servant was needed back then, but not now.

Losers suffer, fighters never stop winning

While writing, I recall this from a letter to a national leader of the German Christian Church written by Adolph Hitler:

My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Saviour as fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to the fight against them and who—God’s truth!—was greatest not as sufferer but as fighter.… As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.¹

The excerpt above is not, of course, any attempt to make Nazis of Christian nationalists today. It should not be necessary for me to say that.

Nevertheless, it is a warning, putting on public display the similarity between the rejection of the Suffering Servant and His Cross by the uber-champion of German Nationalism, and the warrior rhetoric permeating the young men on Christian nationalism’s bandwagon today. Not the suffering Jesus, but the fighter Jesus. Note how Hitler disposes of Jesus’ suffering, and thus Jesus’ penal substitutionary atonement.

But don’t worry about our “Christian” Nationalism. We would never prostitute the Name of Christ. We’re real Christians. Trust us and hop on.

We must examine ourselves

Dear brother, is this how you talk and write? Do you really think the Church must join you? You really think faithful pastors can be identified by their commitment and preaching of your political crusade? Your holy war? Is this really your Christian hope?

Now I imagine at this point some might be angry and try to bluster through their fear by setting up a straw man. Let me head that off.

Many of us who are opposed to the current call for holy war described above have a holy war we are committed to and have fought for decades. We’re not AWOL from the war against principalities and powers. Rather, we believe it’s a spiritual war for a spiritual kingdom, and the weapons of our warfare are not the ballot box or civil war, but the reformation of the Church through restoring Her to faithful preaching, baptism, making disciples of all men, then teaching all believers to obey everything our Lord has commanded.

We believe the Church’s weapon against secularism’s empire is calling all peoples to repent and believe on Jesus Christ. We believe every Christian must confess His faith in Jesus Christ, not keeping it quiet by only doing so in the privacy of our homes and churches, but out there in public in schools, workplaces, military bases, statehouses, courts, town hall meetings, fraternal organizations, trade groups, online, in hospital rooms and lobbies, prisons, union halls, capital rotundas, outside abortuaries, at tables in student unions—anywhere and everywhere people gather.

Further, we believe in quoting Scripture in political debate over issues that Scripture addresses. We believe the Church’s faithfulness will produce the fruit of our cities, states, and nations restoring our historic codification of God’s law and principles in our laws which, in past centuries, had been constant across the Western world. We believe in God’s authority and law being cited in our state constitutions and other fundamental political documents. We believe Christians should run for office and serve there faithfully.

It is easily documented that, for instance, we have been opposing the (Radical) Two Kingdom error for years, condemning its effort to abuse Scripture and reformed church fathers in the interest of gagging the people of God’s faithful and Biblical political witness against every form of rebellion against God which the godless have been working to codify and enforce. We have more of such credentials, but documenting pastoral achievements is foolishness.

Christian nationalism’s helpers

As we have shown above through only two of the many such examples recorded in the Gospels, Jesus Himself declined the pressures and attempts of His disciples and followers to push Him to use His prophetic voice and Divine power in support of Jewish nationalists’ zealots who were fighting against their nation’s occupation by the legions of the Roman Empire.

Many among the present Christian nationalist movement think their work towards the return, today, of things similar to Rome’s medieval Crusades, Holy Roman Empire, and Christendom would be good. Despite repeated warnings that electoral religion will necessarily depend upon the votes of, for starters, Mormons and Roman Catholics to join what is named a “Christian” political crusade, the pastors and writers selling this “Christian” political alliance will, of necessity, share the glorious Name of “Christ” and “Christian” with false Mormon shepherds who deny our Lord’s divinity; with false Roman Catholic shepherds who preach, teach, and practice ex opere operato sacramental salvation.

If our millenarian alliance in the restoration of Christendom necessarily depends upon making common cause with Roman Catholics, what was Ezra’s problem?

Now when the enemies of Judah and Benjamin heard that the people of the exile were building a temple to the LORD God of Israel, they approached Zerubbabel and the heads of fathers’ households, and said to them, “Let us build with you, for we, like you, seek your God; and we have been sacrificing to Him since the days of Esarhaddon king of Assyria, who brought us up here.”

But Zerubbabel and Jeshua and the rest of the heads of fathers’ households of Israel said to them, “You have nothing in common with us in building a house to our God; but we ourselves will together build to the LORD God of Israel, as King Cyrus, the king of Persia has commanded us.” (Ezra 4:1-3)

“The enemies of Judah and Benjamin” said what?

They said:

Let us build with you, for we, like you, seek your God; and we have been sacrificing to Him since the days of Esarhaddon king of Assyria…

And how did Ezra respond?

You have nothing in common with us in building a house to our God…

Scripture recounts Ezra’s rejection of help rebuilding Jerusalem for a reason, but does it still possess value for us? Here’s the obvious and necessary question: Who are today’s enemies of Christ and His Church with whom we’re tempted to make an earthly alliance toward bringing in the Kingdom of God?

Waiting in the wings: Rome’s billions of souls

Shall we form an alliance and rebuild the walls of our nation alongside the very enemies of the Church whom Calvin, Luther, Knox, and their fellow reformers risked death in exposing and opposing? Shall we declare Ezra a perfectionist, explaining to our voters and their pastors that it’s not the purity of the people who join us in the work that matters, but the purity of the work itself?

There we go, back to Egypt. Or, better, back to Rome.

Let us face the historical fact that it was in the Name of our Lord and King that the Reformers exposed Rome’s corrupt medieval empire and idolatrous doctrine and worship. The reformers consistently called Rome’s worship “idolatry.” They poured their lives into fighting Rome in order to restore the true Christian Church and the authority of Her Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Luther and Calvin never ceased shouting the warning that Rome’s doctrine, worship, and sacramental practices condemned men to Hell. Their battle against the Church of Rome was fierce and lifelong, and never forget they did this from their love of the Lord and His sheep.

Rome remains the enemy of Christianity.

The pastor’s true calling

Many men calling souls to rebuild Christendom in America are pastors and elders who will give an account to the Lord for their protection of His sheep. When they stand before Him, will they explain to Him that, in their time of 2026, redeeming Israel—er, redeeming America—through the ballot box or civil war—whatever it takes—was their faithful fulfillment of their duty to preach and teach and protect His sheep?

One final warning from our Lord: