Tag Archives: gary burge

Wheaton Illinois has antisemitic theology, Wheaton Mass. has antisemitic vandals

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Last week we reported the theological anti-Semitism of Wheaton College professor Gary Burge and visiting speaker Stephen Sizer using the old lie of the Jewish Lobby.

Now in another US college with the same name we have physical manifestations of traditional anti-Semitism.

Wheaton College Jewish residence targeted with anti-Semitic graffiti

November 12, 2012

(JTA) — Anti-Semitic graffiti was found written on the back door of a Jewish residence on the campus of Wheaton College.

The graffiti was discovered Sunday morning at the Jewish Life House of the private liberal arts school in southeastern Massachusetts.

Wheaton President Ronald Crutcher informed the student body of the incident in a campus-wide email, according to the Boston Globe.

“I want to be clear: this will not be tolerated,” Crutcher wrote. “Wheaton is committed to appreciating, understanding and celebrating diversity. Every individual — student, faculty and staff member – -has the right to feel welcomed and safe on our campus and in our community.”

The student residents of the Jewish Life House say they have been targeted before.

Crutcher reportedly said that a campus meeting will be held to discuss the incident and to speak out against bigotry.

 

(post adjusted to reflect corrections pointed out both in RPP comments and on Twitter by @porterspeakman)

Gary Burge attacks Christians with a “Jewish theology” and “Jewish worldview”

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Gary Burge speaking to Hank Hanegraaff at 42:13:

http://www.equip.org/audio/hank-hanegraaff-and-special-guest-dr-gary-burge/

If I am thinking Christian-ly, how should I think about the land? Too often in my conversations with Christians, they are actually doing Jewish theology. They are working out of Genesis and Ezekiel, and they’re working out a theological view of the Middle East which is very much embedded in a Jewish worldview. And yet I am asking the next question, I am asking, did not the arrival of Christ, did not the teachings of Paul, change all this?

Update

Judah comments:

Absolutely not.

 

Where is the evidence that the arrival of Messiah cancels God’s promises to Israel? If anything, we have evidence to the contrary, the reality that God has neither rejected Israel nor revoked his promises to her.

 

By saying Israel’s Messiah cancels God’s promises to Israel, these Christian supersessionists hurt our message about Yeshua. By their theology, they spiritualize away 2/3rds of the Scripture and nullify God’s promises of old.

 

Suffer the Little Children!

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Israeli soldiers and Border police have to suffer the little children who have been sent out by their brave parents to try to engineer a conflict photo opportunity for the gathered press and their mother’s video camera.

We know that staging photos and video footage is a standard Palestinian propaganda tool, however it is also used by anti-Zionist Christians like Rev Stephen Sizer vicar of Christ Church, Virginia Water, UK. Sizer and Gary Burge of Wheaton College, stage a protest at a checkpoint to a close military zone. They then lie by claiming they were met by lethal force!

British Messianic Jewish Leader Concerned at Extremism of CaTC

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President of the British Messianic Jewish Alliance has made a statement regarding the Christ at the Checkpoint conference in the current issue of the BMJA’s Chai magazine:

Christ at the Checkpoint (CATC) conference

CATC is taking place at Bethlehem Bible College in March 2012. It follows CATC 2010, where “Palestinian theologians gave speeches showing how Palestinian Christians read the Bible as an indigenous book, reflecting their land and culture”[1]. It features numerous anti-Zionist speakers including Stephen Sizer, Ben White[2] and Gary Burge[3]. It also features prominent international Christian leaders, including Lynne Hybels of Willow Creek Community Church, and Chris Wright of the Langham Partnership International.

Extremism

It is concerning that the organisers and speakers include people who have gone beyond legitimate criticism of Israeli policies to push anti-Semitic ideas and support racists. Secular commentators have voiced concerns about Stephen Sizer[4] and Ben White[5]. Although CATC’s website affirms Messianic Jews[6], one conference organiser has previously set the police on a BMJA member[7] and has referred to Israeli Messianic Jews as an “abomination”[8], blaming “Zionists” for causing him to do so[9]. A fuller overview of the extremist statements and actions of many conference participants is available at http://tiny.cc/z107f .

Reconciliation?

CATC claims to advocate reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians[10]. Yet if this were the case, there would be equal numbers of Israeli and Palestinian speakers, probably in a neutral venue which all could attend safely. By contrast, most of the speakers are anti-Zionists and non-Jews! It is also telling that the speakers include no Sabra Israelis. Existing forums such as Musalaha bring actual Palestinians and Israelis together and therefore represent far better avenues for pursuing reconciliation.

Fears

Based on the previous statements and actions of some CATC speakers, I strongly believe that CATC will foster extremism and theological anti-Semitism. I also fear that the moderate speakers will be bombarded with anti-Israel material, through selective exposure to the very real suffering of Palestinians. If such influential speakers then write and speak of their emotionally draining experiences in Bethlehem, the very birthplace of the Prince of Peace, then the conference will simply further the delegitimisation of Christian support for Israel. Moreover, for moderate speakers to attend the conference without challenging extremism and anti-Semitism is to legitimize such views. Clearly, this does not promote true reconciliation, nor indeed the pure bride which Yeshua desires (2 Cor. 11:2).

Consistency

I have long campaigned against anti-Semitism within my trade union[11], even to the point of recently resigning[12]. It would be hypocritical to stay silent in the face of anti-Semitism and extremism in the Christian world. As such, along with many other Messianic Jews[13] (far from an “extreme minority” as Ben White has suggested), I have serious concerns about the real motivations and implications of CATC.

Footnotes:
[1]http://www.christatthecheckpoint.com/index.php/about-us/press-release-2010 (emphasis added)
[2] http://blog.z-word.com/2009/07/lies-damn-lies-and-the-apartheid-analogy/ and http://www.
propagandistmag.com/2009/07/17/more-white-lies-about-israeli-apartheid
[3] http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_print=1&x_context=6&x_article=1371
[4] http://hurryupharry.org/2011/11/11/stephen-sizer-and-helen-thomas/
[5] http://engageonline.wordpress.com/2009/07/19/ben-whites-questionable-book/
[6] http://www.christatthecheckpoint.com/index.php/about-us/theological-stances
[7] http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/blog/2010/jan/26/sizer-weissman-holocaust-blog
[8] http://roshpinaproject.com/2011/10/14/british-vicar-calls-israeli-messianic-jews-an-abomination/
[9] http://roshpinaproject.com/2011/10/17/british-vicar-who-called-israeli-messianic-jews-an-abominationissues-
a-non-apology-apology/
[10] http://www.christatthecheckpoint.com/index.php/about-us/conference-goals
[11] http://hurryupharry.org/2009/12/15/is-ucu-suddenly-taking-antisemitism-seriously/
[12] http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/51768/another-academic-quits-ucu-over-antisemitism
[13] http://thinkingoutsidetheblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/christ-at-checkpoint-2012-conference.html

by James M, President of the BMJA

Sizer’s CaTC delegates meet so-called lethal force!

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This is Christ at the Checkpoint 2010 where so called Non-Violent Resistance met with Lethal Force in Beit Jala, this is where Sizer gets his kicks after all his boring sermons! This video shows how the camera can lie, we do not see any context as to why the Christ at the Checkpoint delegates cum protesters run for cover only a shaking camera view of the floor. They are then addressed by a Palestinian who tells them that they have no guns only the Israelis have guns! Well of course it is well-known that Hamas and the various factions of the PLO wander around with daisy-chains and daffodils… of course not, Israeli troops face heavily armed Palestinian terrorists. This protest was a set-up designed to influence American Christians who chant “don’t be machines” and “think for yourself” in a robotic and well-orchestrated way, in fact in the way they were told to beforehand! They are taken to a row of soldiers who are stopping access into a closed military zone, he asks them if they want to go forward, excitedly they say yes and then seek to precipitate a conflict with the soldiers who show restraint and respect letting them get right up into their faces, allow them freedom of speech and expression.

At 9:24 Gary Burge, professor at Wheaton College gets into the face of an Israeli soldier and tells him that he is destroying himself and it will break his soul… your heart is being crushed by this! The soldier is even willing to discuss with Burge who has been so patronising and pompous with him. Burge then boasts about his conversation with the soldier on film with Sizer the cameraman, unethically revealing the soldier’s name and where he lives having told him he needs to save his heart, but does not tell him how! The implication of Burge telling the solider that just following orders, was an echo of other times, was yet another attempt to make Israelis look like Nazis.

Who knows what protests Christ at the Checkpoint organisers have lined-up for CaTC March 2012, but those pastors of Israeli Messianic Jewish congregations that have agreed to attend, have to ask themselves what they would do if there were faced with a member of their congregation doing military service!

Louis Lapides on Gary Burge and the Evangelical Intifada

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Louis Lapides writes:

When it comes to Christians supporting Israel, we have to ask ourselves an important question.  Do I stand for Israel because of my love for the Jewish homeland and its people, or do I support Israel only because Israel’s salvation is the key component to hurrying the return of Jesus?

Sadly, I think the latter is  mostly true. When I tell evangelical leaders and lay people about the current anti-Israel “Evangelical Intifada” taking place in the church, I don’t get a serious reaction. I witness a response that tells me a large segment of evangelicals don’t care whether Israel is being trashed by some evangelicals unless it takes place in their own house of worship.

I also observe Christians who listen to anti-Israel speakers or view the pro-Palestinian films like Little Town of Bethlehem and With God on Our Side, with a malaise. It is the rare Christian who is going to do the research and reading it’ll take to refute and burst the propaganda bubble surrounding these films.

I would hope that my blogs and the writings of so many other evangelicals (see my Blog Log) who see the serious of the anti-Israel invasion of the evangelical church will wake up.

One of the battle fronts of this “Evangelical Intifada” is theological.  Names likeStephen Sizer, Vicar of Christ Church in the UK and Wheaton College New Testament professor Gary Burge are among the theologians who espouse the scriptural nuts and bolts of the anti-Israel invasion.

In a recent radio conversation with Michael Rydelnik, Jewish Studies department head at Moody Bible College, Burge states the covenants God made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob have been fulfilled in Christ.  Christ, according to Burge, is the true seed of Abraham.  The promises Christians experience in Christ have been “elevated above the promises made to Abraham”. No longer is God concerned with the land of Israel, but is more focused on the whole world.

If Burge is correct, then the nation of Israel should not be of any concern to the writers of the New Testament after the coming of Jesus.  The major focus should be on Christ and the church – not one nation, especially Israel.

In Galatians 3:9 Paul writes,  ”Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.”

Burge correctly notices God’s focus today is urging all humanity to find salvation through Israel’s Messiah.  Burge fails to understand the verse quoted by Paul from Genesis 12:3 has always been the Lord’s intent – to bless the whole world through the people of Israel.  Through progressive revelation, the prophets revealed this blessing would come through one seed of Israel – the Messiah. However, the salvation of the earth brought through the messianic seed of Israel is not at cross purposes with God’s other covenants with Israel.

In Romans 9:4-5 Paul writes concerning  the people of Israel, “Theirs is the adoption to sonship; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen.” Paul traces God’s plan to bring the Messiah forth from Israel who will bless all of humanity.  Yet Paul never says the other covenants God has with Israel will be nullified once the Messiah comes.

Paul says later in Romans 11:25-27 that He will bring Israel into the blessings of the New Covenant and will forgive their sins.  This is a promise that will be fulfilled with the nation as a whole but in the meantime the God of Israel is saving a remnant of  Jewish people as they place their trust in Yeshua (Romans 11:5).

Further evidence is found in the prophetic passages of the New Testament that describe Israel back in the Promised Land after the present diaspora. In Matthew 24:15-16 Jesus quotes from the Hebrew prophet Daniel (9:27) that in the last days prior to his return, “So when you see standing in the holy place ‘the abomination that causes desolation,’ spoken of through the prophet Daniel—let the reader understand— then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.” For this passage to be fulfilled, a Jewish temple must be standing in Israel. The rebuilding of the Temple can only occur if the Jewish people are back in the land.


For those Reformed theologians and adherents of replacement theology who see these events as already fulfilled in the first century, then they would be forced to conclude Jesus has already returned. In the passage after the mention of the “abomination that causes desolation,” Jesus adds, “Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory. And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other”(Matthew 24: 30-31).

We must conclude the Jewish people will be back in the land prior to the return of Jesus when the abomination [the Antichrist] stands in the Jewish Temple to desecrate it (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4).

The presence of the Jewish people in the land of Israel prior to Jesus’ return fits with other passages in the New Testament.  In Acts 1:11 in harmony with Zechariah 14:4 the scriptures teach the Messiah’s feet will stand on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. In Zechariah 14 the prophet is speaking to the Jewish people and telling them the nations of the earth will come against Israel (vs. 2) but the Messiah will come to Jerusalem to defeat their enemies.  How can such a passage be fulfilled unless the Jewish people are back in the land?  Despite the New Testament’s focus on the gospel going forth to all humanity (1 Timothy 2:4), God’s dealings with the people of Israel never cease.

In the radio interchange between Rydelnik and Burge, the Moody Bible College professor brings out the fact Israel is mentioned in the Book of Revelation in harmony with Matthew 24 and the Old Testament prophets.  The Jewish Temple is mentioned in Revelation 11 as being rebuilt prior to Jesus’ return. In Revelation 12:5 Israel is seen under the figure of a woman who gives birth to “a son, a male child, who “will rule all the nations with an iron scepter.” Israel becomes an object of Satan’s hatred and is persecuted by the devil or dragon.

In response Burge answers like most scholars who refuse to see the obvious by saying, “scholars debate the images seen in the Book of Revelation.” I’m sorry to inform Gary Burge but when God gives instructions to measure His temple  describing the altar and the outer court of the gentiles (Revelation 11:-12), the interpretation of the text is not figurative but literal.  Where will Burge stop with his excuse of referring to the use of figurative language in Revelation to avoid acknowledging Israel’s place in prophecy?  Is the return of Jesus in Revelation 19:11-16 figurative or literal?

Messiah and the State of Israel

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Haredim say Israel shouldn’t exist as Moshiach hasn’t yet come.

Yet Israel does exist, so surely Moshiach has come?

Here’s an example of haredi anti-Zionism featured in MomentMag – one that Gary Burge et al. should pay attention to:

“I don’t think Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state”. These are thirteen words I thought I’d never hear uttered at the Shabbat dinner table of a Charedi rabbi.  Yet at a recent Shabbat dinner with a buttoned-down Litvish rebbe that I attended not long ago, the conversation turned to everyone’s least/most favorite topic and I pushed the woman I was sitting next to utter the above statement, certainly a bold one for any Jew to proclaim.   The conversation had gone from friendly conversation to fierce debate to silence in under three minutes. I literally did not know how to respond.

It was not long ago that such anti-Israel sentiment was unheard of amongst even the most secular of American Jewry.  To utter such a statement, at a Charedi rabbi’s house of all places, would have elicited the strong disapproval of those in attendance, and rightly so.  Now, I’m all for freedom of expression, but the roots of such ‘anti-Zionism’ I find quite troubling. This stance, which I believe is growing in popularity amongst the uber-assimilated (in America at least), is derived from a brash form of public anti-Zionism which is gaining a foothold in everything from academia to politics to popular culture and finance in Western democratic states.  It is not connected to a form of anti-Zionism common among some sects of ultra-Orthodox Jewry, which finds its basis in a body of classical Jewish texts.  The Jewish anti-Zionists say that their own tradition forbids them from supporting a modern political state of Israel until the coming of the Moshiach (the Messiah). But a secular Jew who denies Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state has been influenced some of the very anti-Semitism that we tell ourselves is gone from the world, or at least from the sheltered corner of it that we secular American Jews inhabit in such safety and security.  And I’m beginning to think that this stance poses some danger to Israel’s very existence.

Gary Burge and the “Territorial World View of Judaism”

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Cross-posted on Seismic Shock

The upcoming movie With God On Our Side seeks to highlight the theology of Christian Zionism and its impact on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Last month, the Twitter page of With God On Our Side linked to an article written by lecturer and theologian Gary Burge.

Burge’s article ‘Why I’m not a Christian Zionist, Academically Speaking’ is hosted on the website of the Institute for the Study of Christian Zionism (IFCZ) – a group monitoring Christian Zionism which Burge helped found.

Burge concluded his article:

“This is my ultimate complaint perhaps: Christian Zionists believe in Jesus, but I wonder if they are always thinking like Christians in this matter. They have uncritically inherited the territorial world view of Judaism and wed this to prophetic predictions that are unsupportable. And that is why the great historians of the future (who are not yet born) will level a serious critique against this movement.”

Burge wants his Christian readers to distance themselves from the “territorial world view of Judaism.”

But is Burge’s world-view also territorial?

Burge’s ISCZ website links approvingly to the website of Neturei Karta. Neturei Karta is an ultra-Orthodox Jewish movement fiercely opposed to the existence of state of Israel on religious grounds.

Neturei Karta are particularly vitriolic in their messianic opposition to the modern state of Israel. Neturei Karta rabbis attended Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust “review” conference in Iran and also congratulated Hamas for gaining power in Gaza. The Neturei Karta’s Aharon Cohen has previously claimed that the Holocaust dead ‘deserved it’.

The ISCZ have also shared a platform with Neturei Karta. In May 2008, Aharon Cohen was present alongside a representative of the ISCZ at the Voice of Palestine conference in Indonesia, in which participants called for a one-state solution.

Given their claim to be “Christians for Biblical Justice“, it is odd that someone representing Burge’s ISCZ should share a platform with alongside the Neturei Karta. It doesn’t make sense either. Whilst Burge’s ISCZ sees Zionism as a consequence of the “territorial worldview of Judaism”, Neturei Karta argue that Zionism is directly opposed to Judaism.

Of course, the ISCZ are not merely cheerleaders for Neturei Karta. They also promote other religious Jewish anti-Zionist sites such as Jews Against Zionism and Jews Not Zionists.

In doing so, however, the ISCZ lay themselves open to the same charges they lay against Christian Zionists: forming alliances with Jews based on shared political opinions about the ‘Holy Land’.

Gary Burge’s ISCZ is happy to criticise the ‘territorial worldview of Judaism’ when writing about Zionism, but then supports a Judaism with an anti-Zionist territorial worldview.

To fully distance himself from a ‘territorial worldview of Judaism’, Burge would have to distance his IFCZ organisation from any religious Jewish group expressing any theologically-based political opinions about the modern state of Israel – starting with Neturei Karta.