Historical Anti-Semitism and Christian Heresy
For centuries, anti-Semitism and racism have gained support from perverse counterfeits of Christianity. One heresy which warps the Gospel gained momentum under English King Henry VIII. Many race-based heresies have been stimulated by this “British Israel” movement. Even the U.S. Civil War was driven in part by this lie that God views the White and Black races differently. Henry VIII sowed some of the seeds of our Civil War and of slavery.
American Thinker has been exploring continuing anti-Semitism in response to worldwide efforts to arrange an academic boycott of Israel by colleges and universities. Boycotts of Israel are actually illegal. Any boycott that frustrates U.S. foreign policy violates U.S. law. But the hypocrisy and self-contradictions among advocates reveals the anti-Semitism of this BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) movement. The anti-boycott law is not being enforced under Obama.
This week, three people were murdered at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City, apparently by Frazier Glenn Miller (aka Cross). Miller is a former KKK leader who has run for office both as a Democrat and a Republican. He is reported to have yelled “Heil Hitler” while being arrested.
When Henry VIII broke with the Vatican and created the independent Church of England, the new Church struggled with legitimacy. The king’s spinmeisters seized on a theory that the English people are actually the Lost Tribes of Israel. Advocates for the fledging church needed something to shore up the Church of England’s right to exist independent of Rome. Arguing that the English people have more claim to God’s blessing than does the Catholic Church in Rome was just the excuse they needed. The English people are the true heirs of God’s Covenant with Abraham.
This has never been the official doctrine of the Church of England. However, the Church benefitted, and even featured a musically delightful hymn “And Did Those Feet In Ancient Times” that spreads completely irresponsible raw speculation about Jesus visiting England as a young adult.
All of these heresies replace individual responsibility for one’s own sin with group identity. In all corruptions of Christianity, Jesus is sidelined and made irrelevant. Minimizing Jesus Christ as humanity’s Savior is the purpose. All counterfeit versions of Christianity distract from the central tenets of salvation from sin through the willing choice of Jesus Christ to die in our place. A personal, individual relationship with God is avoided by identifying with a group.
But in order to claim to be the true heirs of Israel, what could British Israelites do about the actual heirs of Israel, the Jewish people? To advance political goals, claims that God rejected the Jews had to be recycled. They dusted off complaints that some Jews played a minor role in the crucifixion of Jesus. (Less than one one-hundreth of one percent of the world population of Jews then attended Jesus’ trial before Pontius Pilate. Most were not even in Jerusalem that day. Italians – the Romans – actually crucified Jesus.)
Now, the Lost Tribes of Israel are a historical and Biblical fact. Two of the tribes obeyed and believed God and returned from captivity in Babylon and Assyria to rebuild Jerusalem. These are known today as Jews (from Judah). The other ten tribes disobeyed God and stayed behind. There is no hint that they ever moved from what later became Persia.
But that is irrelevant to our relationship with God. The current racist “Christian Identity” heresy, which grew out of the neo_nazi movement, makes personal guilt for individual sin irrelevant. To say it with all the ugliness they do, White people need no forgiveness, while other races cannot be forgiven. Sin becomes exclusively a group issue. Yet nothing about the actual Lost Tribes justifies any such non-Christian concept. Christianity emphasizes individual moral responsibility for one’s own personal actions.
Later, the virus spread and mutated. British Israel faded from history, but spawned heresies justifying slavery of kidnapped Africans. Both the North and the South in the Civil War prayed for victory. But the Confederacy did not believe in Jesus Christ as Savior but rather a belief that Whites are God’s chosen people. This train of thought is duplicated in today’s “Christian Identity” movement.
The Lost Tribes of Israel grew to include Germanic and Scandinavian peoples. More extreme strains started to teach that non-White races resulted from humans mating with demons (fallen angels). They furiously attack Noah’s Flood as only a local event. The Bible teaches that everyone is descended from Noah’s family. You may not believe that is literally true scientifically. But that is unquestionably the Bible’s perspective on humanity – that all of us are cousins. Racists try to use the Bible, but the Bible says we are all one family.
Meanwhile, the Khazar theory was developed to disparage Jews. The small steppe country of Khazaria officially converted to Judaism in order to achieve neutrality between Christian Russia and Islamic Arabs. Yet the vast majority of Khazars never personally adopted Judaism. It was only a diplomatic ploy. The Khazars originated from the Eastern Steppes. A surviving statue of a Khazar warrior looks like the Emperor of Japan. The Oriental Khazars did not resemble today’s Jews.
Nevertheless, anti-Semites insist that the world’s modern Jews are descended from Khazars, not from Israelites. So the Jews have no spiritual, family, historical, or genetic claim to the land of Israel or to Abraham’s covenant with God.
However, scientists have developed DNA testing of entire populations. Researchers of the Human Genome Project are mapping differences in DNA around the world. DNA shows that
(1) all Jews who still self-identify as Jews show incredible genetic similarity with each other, no matter where they live,
(2) all self-identified Jews are very close genetically to Semitic populations around Israel,
(3) Jews show no genetic similarity to Khazars,
(4) all modern Jews share a common genetic ancestor 3,000 to 4,000 years ago – or up to 2,700 years before the Khazars, and
(5) Jews show striking contrast in DNA from populations they live among.
Worldwide, the reader might consider the continued spread of anti-Semitism in terms of the Nazi gold, artwork, and other wealth smuggled out of the Third Reich. Over 700 “Bormann Enterprises” were funded by the Nazi regime in exile. These were supposed to preserve the Nazi Party and return to plant the seeds again in Germany for a Fourth Reich.
This may seem hard to believe. But consider that the Nazis thought they would win a peace treaty short of total surrender. They never imagined how totally the Nazi Party would be discredited. So billions measured in today’s dollars were parked offshore, left with no real purpose.
I have debated activists from Canada, Scandinavia, and Australia who will passionately tell everyone how Hitler never wanted a war, it was all England’s fault, Hitler was a great man, Hitler wanted peace, etc., etc. Dwight Eisenhower, Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Josef Stalin were all Jews (none of them were) and World War II was all a conspiracy. Germany was the innocent victim. They not only spread anti-Semitism but also glorify Hitler and defend his actions at the same time. These groups offer full-service, across-the-board public relations for the Third Reich’s philosophies. I believe that these agitators are the last remnants of the Bormann Enterprises spending the last few Deutschmarks.