The British Messianic Jewish Alliance

Summer 2002, Issue 215

Careless Theology Costs Lives!

Malcolm MacGregor makes an important point in his article, Neither here, nor there! (Evangelicals Now, January 2002) when he says that the new birth and conversion, rather than morality, are man’s primary needs. We are concerned, however, that Pastor MacGregor finds it necessary to preface this vital subject with a criticism of the State of Israel.

            What could have been an excellent article is replete with historical inaccuracies and unhelpful interpretations of historical events. MacGregor begins the piece with the astonishingly inaccurate and misleading observation that the land of Israel is “about 60 miles long and 30 miles wide, and is what used to be called the land of Palestine ”. The modern state of Israel is more like 260 miles long and 60 miles wide!

            To say that Israel used to be called “ Palestine ” is also misleading and appears to lend support to the Arab claim that in 1948 the Zionists took the land by force and renamed it. “ Palestine ” was the name given to the land by the Romans after they destroyed Jerusalem and the temple in AD 70 in an effort to eradicate all evidence of a Jewish nation. This they did by renaming Jerusalem , “Aelia Capitolina” and Judea , “ Palestine ” after the Jews’ ancient enemies the Philistines. Today’s “Palestinians” are not at all related to the Philistines. Indeed, the PLO’s current definition of a Palestinian is non-ethnic; a “Palestinian”, according to the PLO, is anyone who lived in the land before 1947, and includes both Arabs and Jews. Between 1948 and 1967, when both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank were in Arab hands, no attempt was made to create a Palestinian state!

            MacGregor’s claim that a piece of land is “the root of the trouble which is threatening to destroy our world today” is wildly inaccurate. The root problem is Islamic imperialism and Islam’s claim that the Qur’an is the final revelation from God. That being so, lands that were once under Islamic domination must continue to be Islamic. So long as Israel exists as a sovereign Jewish state, it remains a thorn in the side of Islam, which is why the PLO refuses to acknowledge the existence of Israel on its maps of the region.

            Contrary to MacGregor’s claim, the establishment of the Jewish State in 1948 did not of itself force thousands of Arabs into exile. Arab citizens were ordered to leave their homes by the invading armies from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Yemen and Egypt so that they would be free to slaughter Jews in the reborn modern State of Israel without fear of accidentally killing fellow Arabs in the process.

            By the same logic that fuels his value judgement on Israel ’s 1967 pre-emptive attack on Egypt ’s air force so they could not bomb Israeli towns, MacGregor would have to condemn America ’s attack on Al-Qaida bases in Afghanistan . Israel took East Jerusalem and the West Bank only after Jordan had declared war on her. Both these areas are part of biblical Judea promised to the Jewish people both by God and the British!

            MacGregor speaks of “various atrocities” that accompanied “these actions” but mentions only Deir Yasin, which was not an attack by Israeli terrorists, but by units of the fledgling Israeli Defence Force in 1948 fighting a war for survival where, regrettably, civilians were caught up and killed. He does not, however, make any reference to the numerous atrocities perpetrated by Muslim civilian mobs as they swept through the Jewish areas of Jerusalem killing the inhabitants and burning their homes. It is this inaccurate version of history that fires the Intifada and Islamic fundamentalist attacks on Israel .

            The belief that the Jewish people are at the centre of God’s purpose for the world is not restricted to American pre-millennial churches. Erroll Hulse ’s The Restoration of Israel demonstrates that there are A-millenarians and Post-millenarians who also believe that Israel is central to the divine purposes. Equally, to believe this does not mean one must view Arabs with enmity. Quite the opposite is true. On the other hand, however, we have found that many Christians who are “pro-Arab” have little or no love for Jewish people. (See The Calvary Accord, CWI Herald, Winter 2001).

            It is significant that when Pastor MacGregor turns to the text of John 4, he does not deal with the Lord’s words to the Samaritan woman: “You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship for salvation is of the Jews” (v22).

            Had Pastor MacGregor stuck to his subject, his article could have been an excellent restatement of the new birth as the only solution to humanity’s problems. But, as it stands, his treatment of John 4 is more eisegesis (reading a meaning into the text) than exegesis as he violently and unnaturally shoehorns the problems of the Middle East into John 4. He inexcusably states that Jesus brought a “new religion”, forgetting Jesus own words in Matthew 5:17: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them.” Faith in Yeshua is the continuation of the oldest faith in the world.

            Furthermore, to suggest that world history is “neither here, nor there”, is a denial of God’s creation and a retreat from God’s calling to us to go into this “present crumbling world” and make disciples for Jesus (Matthew 28:19). 

By Richard Gibson and Gil Alon

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