Wolves as Sheep
I’ve never seen so many enemies come out of the woodwork in opposition to Israel.
Some of them you can’t see.
In the 17 years I’ve been writing this column, I try to bring you information you won’t find anywhere else. This week’s column is another example of that. I want to talk not so much about Israel’s prosecution of the war against Hamas, but about some of the reasons they have so many enemies.
First, the answer to why Israel has so many enemies is theological. Only theological. We’ve discussed in the past that this began at the beginning, Genesis 3. For it was there that God set enmity between the Jewish people and the serpent. Enmity means perpetual war. The serpent would oppose mightily the woman that would deliver the Child, the coming Redeemer. He was born into a Jewish family in is ancestral land. The enmity is ancient.
It’s the enemies we can’t see that are perhaps the most dangerous.
One such example—incredibly—comes from the heart of evangelicalism. A decade ago, a relatively unknown Southern Baptist seminary professor, Russell Moore, took over as president of the denomination’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. The ERLC has been the “public policy arm” of the SBC for quite some time. As if an ostensibly Gospel-oriented group needs a policy arm to mimic the world. Millions of dollars go into the ERLC budget each year.
Moore would prove to be (in my estimation) a subversive, a plant that would take the SBC in a left-wing direction. Further, his views of Israel show him to be a Replacement Theology guy, although like most that adhere to that heresy, he claims he is not.
A couple years ago, Moore left the SBC and got a bigger platform: editor of the left-wing magazine, Christianity Today. On the very day of the satanic Hamas attacks on Israel, October 7, Moore penned what appears to be a pro-Israel op-ed for CT. He said some of the right things, but then in the second paragraph, he said this:
“Some might assume that evangelical Protestants automatically support Israel based on eschatological views that cast the modern state of Israel in some role in biblical prophecy. For some, this is indeed the case. Many of us, though, don’t share those beliefs. We believe the promises of God are fulfilled in Christ, not in the 1948 Israeli Declaration of Independence. Many of us are quite willing to call out Israel when we believe it is acting wrongly. We don’t believe the Israeli Knesset is somehow inerrant or infallible.”
Do you see what he did? He gutted Israel’s historical claim to the Land. It’s why I don’t believe him. He is disingenuous. He wants to make what appears to be a pro-Israel statement, in order to placate the more-conservative wing of the Church. But he believes none of the genuinely pro-Israel text of the Bible. He wants to—needs to—let you know that he isn’t willing to “cast the modern state of Israel in some role in biblical prophecy.” He’s too intellectual for that.
Moore also on his personal website penned an article about one of his heroes, John Stott. Stott, a British priest in the Anglican Church, was also not “an Israel guy.”
One article provides a look inside this theologian’s view of Israel:
“In February 1987, I had an opportunity to meet Dr. Stott and asked ‘What is your perspective now on Zionism and Christian Zionism in particular?’ He paused, then answered: ‘After considerable study, I have concluded that Zionism and especially Christian Zionism are biblically untenable.’”
Moore has been greatly influenced by such “thinkers.” Men that have followed in the footsteps of untold scholars and clergy of the last century that infected our seminaries with “anti-Zionist” (read, anti-Semitic) thinking.
When Moore left for a plusher perch, his hand-picked successor was Brent Leatherwood. I knew exactly what his policy views would be. They would be identical to his mentor.
Sure enough, continuing with what I consider to be clever propaganda in the war against the Jews and Israel, Leatherwood after the October 7 attacks produced a podcast with ERLC staffer Lindsay Nicolet and their guest, Paul Miller. The latter, a professor at Georgetown University, a senior fellow at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council, and a member of the U.S. Army, also served as a CIA analyst. Question: why are Southern Baptist leaders platforming a person with such credentials? What are the odds he will be genuinely pro-Israel?
Not good.
(By the way, the Scrowcroft Center is named for General Brent Scowcroft, a leading advisor for President George H.W. Bush, a member of the same team that pressured Israel into the disastrous Oslo Accords in 1991. Those evil men were of the same ilk as the Arabist State Department, Deep Staters that were definitely no friends of Israel.)
In fact, right on cue, the podcast conversation revealed three people that 1. Support a Palestinian state 2. Really don’t know much (Israel’s independence was in 1947? Some analyst. 3. Followed the Washington Regime’s talking points about the need for Israel to show restrain so as to minimize civilian casualties.
Not once did they describe the real scope of the Hamas attacks. This is classic Washington/Media speak. Talk about “war breaking out,” etc., and people have no real idea what happened, or why. In this particular situation, the listening audience doesn’t know much (and Leatherwood pointed out that rank-and-file don’t know much at all about this jihad against Jews), and so no one told them that Hamas demons murdered children in front of their parents, cut off women’s breasts, gouged-out husband’s eyes, raped females of all ages, burned people alive, etc.
At one point, Miller let us know he supports the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Also, incredibly and perhaps most disturbingly, he claimed that Hamas and the “Palestinian Authority”/PLO are two completely separate entities and while the PA isn’t always right, they are still nowhere near what Hamas is.
That is a lie. Believe me, a CIA analyst knows this. He, like Leatherwood and Moore, is a propagandist for the Left.
The PLO is the PA. The PLO, since its founding in 1964, has been a murderous terrorist group dedicated to murdering Jews and eliminating the state of Israel. Like its Hamas cousins, the PLO charter to this day calls for the elimination of the state of Israel. The ERLC platformed on a podcast a propagandist that wants to delude the audience.
Evangelical leadership, a sizeable part of it, is anti-Israel. That’s just the way it is. Reformed theologians have burrowed-in in recent decades, and the constant efforts of the Palestinians to dupe Americans has paid dividends. The SBC, the Assemblies of God, and other non-denominational entities have moved away from Israel support. The smaller churches and many rank-and-file members (such as readers of this column) are pro-Israel and love the Jewish people.
But the loudest voices and the leadership are corrupt.
Learn to see the wolves.
www.patreon.com/TheGodThatAnswers