After the clip was played of the traditionalist Catholic denouncing the Jews, first Shelly Volk offers the usual wrong defensive attempt to take the burden of guilt off the Jews for the death of Christ in terms of how we all killed Christ and how He chose to die and wasn't really killed anyway, and then Scott Volk quotes early church father Chrysostom who also waxed vehement against the Jews, and says he got it from a book titled The Roots of Christian Anti-Semitism by Malcolm Hay.
Having been alerted to the possibility of Jesuit deception by Chris Pinto I went looking on the internet for some clue to the frame of reference of this book and its author. I couldn't find much at first but finally I found a reviewer of the book at Amazon saying the author is Catholic and I found out it was written in 1913. As Chris Pinto has pointed out, the earlier the book the more trustworthy a history it's likely to be, especially before the 20th century and especially books purporting to expose "Christian" errors, or the devious ways of the Jesuits and Rome in general.
Scott Volk's reaction alone is enough anyway to raise a suspicion in my mind about the author's agenda in writing such a book. If it is a Jesuitical production purporting to reveal the roots of "Christian" Anti-Semitism it's most likely going to be geared to SEEM to put some of the blame on the Catholic Church by admitting at least the well-known facts about the Inquisition --and in any book written around WWII, their complicity in the Holocaust -- while nevertheless managing to shift the burden of blame to OTHER Christians or at least keep the terms vague enough that the reader isn't going to be able to make a clear distinction. Well, you know, the Protestants were just as bad really.
So Scott Volk reads this book, reads the quote from Chrysostom, and concludes that "this is the nature of what is going on in the 21st century church." Not "the ROMAN Church" where it IS true, but "the church," the true Church where it really isn't true -- not to anywhere near the extent he thinks anyway, and certainly not if the proof of anti-Semitism is the misleading "replacement theology."
But I would expect a Jesuit-inspired book to try to get him to blame the nonCatholic churches or anybody nonCatholic. I'm afraid I can only guess in relation to this book, but there's obviously something askew when "the church" or "Christianity" gets blamed for what the Roman monstrosity did to the Jews -- and for that matter did to far more of the true Christians than to the Jews. Scott Volk seems to have picked up that attitude of blame from this book, or at least allowed the book to confirm what he was already feeling.
But of course perhaps not all of the disunity in the church between Jew and Gentile these days is fomented by Rome. The annoyance I felt in listening to the Volks on the Understanding the Times broadcast I explained in the previous post as
1) about their accusation that "the church" doesn't seriously enough recognize the Hebrew foundations of the New Testament
- which as I show in that post is far from describing my own observations of the PROTESTANT church (not Rome), as I was treated to a great deal of good teaching on the prophetic meaning of the Hebrew scriptures in the tabernacle and the rituals and the feasts and so on, and on the role of Israel in the last days;
- and I go on to show as well that Jesus was most probably NOT called "Yeshua" in His day because Hebrew was most probably NOT the common language of the Jews at that time, but koine Greek.
3) and about their objection to "replacement theology" which to my mind misrepresents the position of the TRUE churches that hold the view that the Church is the inheritor of the Abrahamic promise. That's the BIBLICAL view.
Not the ROMAN Church of course, the Roman Church isn't a church at all, but a monstrosity of blasphemy, fakery and presumption.
It isn't just Jewish believers, there are plenty of nonJewish Christians who are taking this position as well these days -- contrary to the idea that the church is denying the Hebrew foundations it seems to me that way too many are going too far in that direction.
Clearly the Church is made up of "the Elect," which means "the Chosen" -- how can they deny this? After Christ has come and His Church is being formed, FULFILLING the promises of the Hebrew scriptures, how can UNSAVED Israel be in any sense God's Chosen People? Yet the Volks call them that.
At one point [around 20:40] Shelly Volk gives false history to support his view: He says it's the Gentiles who came to outnumber the Jews in the Church who came to believe that since the Jews had failed, "therefore they have become the New Israel of God." Going on to say "And this of course is called Replacement Theology and it's taken on a Greco-Roman mentality rather than the Hebrew mentality."
This is simply false. Except for the unbiblical part about God having no future plans for national Israel and the Jewish people, what is misleadingly being called Replacement Theology is BIBLICAL! Paul himself called the Church the Israel of God. Paul described the Church as the Temple of God being built of living stones. Paul spelled out the inheritance of the Abrahamic Covenant by the Church, not as replacement but as fulfillment! NOT the Gentiles, but the Church, the Church that is Jew and Gentile in "one new man."
Jesus Himself is the fulfillment of hundreds of the Old Testament prophecies. He Himself is the New Israel and the Church is the new Temple of God. All this is New Testament scripture. To deny it as the Volks and others seem to be doing these days is very wrong. Shelly Volk at one point says "the ultimate end is, What does the word of God say?" [17:42 on the audio counter] But he's just misrepresented scripture by effectively denying what the word of God clearly says, that the Jews took the curse of the death of Jesus upon themselves, and both he and his son Scott go on to misrepresent the word by denying that the Church is the fulfillment of God's plan of redemption of souls and the Elect.
There is no replacement here. The Church is the fulfillment of the Hebrew scriptures, not the replacement of Israel but the true Israel of God. It isn't as if the Jews stopped being the Chosen and the Church took over their role, the Church is what all the scriptures were aiming for from the beginning. It has always been the REMNANT that were God's, not the whole people of Israel. It is the REDEEMED, the FAITHFUL, who are God's. "Not all Israel is Israel." The Church is NOT Gentile, it's JEW AND GENTILE, it's the UNIVERSAL CHURCH, it's the saved out of all lands and all peoples. The Church goes back THROUGH ancient Israel through Job and Noah and all the PRE-Jewish people who put their faith in God.
NEVERTHELESS it is clear that God has continuing plans for national Israel as well and great numbers of Jews are to be saved at the very end.
Clearly there is a fear of the growing anti-Semitism in the world that is partly fueling this exaggerated Jewish emphasis in the Church these days but it is a big big mistake to hang that as a blanket judgment on the Church as that book by Malcolm Hay apparently succeeds in doing judging from Scott Volk's take on it.
As it always has, it is most likely that the majority of the true Anti-Semitism is coming from the Roman Monstrosity, and from Islam, the two legs of the soon-to-be-revived Roman Empire, the Beast that is soon to come back to life and trample down everything on this earth.
However, there is no shortage of anti-Semitism in the world, and probably the Church too. There is a spiritual mystery involved with anti-Semitism I think, it's a way God's judgment against the Jews for the curse they took upon themselves gets expressed in the world, and yet anyone who would persecute the Jews comes under God's judgment as well. We're all under God's judgment -- "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone" -- until we're saved in Christ, and that's what we must hope for all the sinners on this planet. God loves mercy over judgment. Vengeance is His, not ours.
In any case it's not right to equate anti-Semitism with true Biblical doctrine as even these Jewish Christians the Volks are doing whether they want to recognize that or not. Scripture says the Jews took the curse of Jesus' death on themselves, scripture says that the Church is the inheritor of the promises to Abraham, scripture says the Church is the Israel of God. This is fact, not anti-Semitism. It can of course be USED for anti-Semitic purposes, but the point is that this whole subject calls for careful distinctions and not the broad statements that came from this radio talk show. Names need to be named so that exactly who is being accused of what can be figured out. A Roman Catholic preaching vehemently even from true scripture against the "accursed Jews" is PROBABLY preaching anti-Semitism, but we need to know he's a Roman Catholic and withholding that information while implying the source is "Christian" contributes to the false equation of Rome the Antichrist with the true church of Christ. This whole subject is a powder keg, it has to be approached carefully and not with broad accusations.
Again, I believe there is definitely to be a role for Israel to play as the end times drama unfolds and huge numbers of Jews will be saved out of it and join the Church which IS the Israel of God.
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Apparently it's always necessary to make the effort to avoid any implication of accusing individual Catholics of supporting the horrors of the Inquisition or the Holocaust and so on. I certainly don't have rank and file Catholics in mind when I'm talking about the evils of the Roman Church. Individuals may or may not share the mentality of the Church governors, and any individuals who don't share it or can be brought to see its anti-Biblical and anti-Christian nature, need to obey the Bible and leave the RCC. Catholic authors of books on anti-Semitism or the Holocaust or the Jesuits or whatnot COULD be seeing through the errors of their Church. The reason I suspect that Malcolm May is probably a jesuitical type defender of the Church instead is that Scott Volk seems to have arrived at the conclusion from this book that "the church," including Protestants as well as the Catholics, all equally promote anti-Semitism, which is not exactly your fair-and-balanced perspective on the history of these things. If the book really did expose the truth it should drive a wedge between the Roman and Protestant churches. That's my thought anyway.
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