The New Christian Antisemitism

There's a growing fringe segment of Christianity that hates Jews.

I've long known this, but I saw it first-hand again yesterday. Owen Strachan, a Christian leader who runs the James Dobson Culture Center, wrote a short note on antisemitism within the fringes of Christianity. He wrote,

Your friendly afternoon reminder that:

--There is no global Jewish cabal running the world

--Jews are naturally lost just like Gentiles

--There are Jews doing real evil in our world (just like Gentiles)

--Jesus was (and is) a Jew in ethnic terms

--Antisemitism is evil

— Owen Strachan (@ostrachan) March 17, 2025

I replied, thanking him for speaking out. I said,

Thanks for posting this. 

Too many believers are falling into the delusion of antisemitism: a hatred of Jesus' own family, a hatred of the race of the apostles and all 12 disciples, a hatred of the heritage of nearly all the writers of the New Testament.

Read again Romans 11.

I am reminding fellow Christians that the New Testament says that even if unbelieving Jews oppose the Gospel, they are still loved by God (Romans 11:28-29). And, that they will one day return to their own Messiah (Romans 11:25-26).

But the 200+ replies to all this reveal the poisoned state of many Christian hearts towards Jews. Let me show you a few.

As if to prove Owen's point on Christian antisemitism. Notice how the phrase 'Christ is King' is being misused: not a declaration of Jesus as Messiah, but as a political and racial taunt.

Yet another great example of how "Christ is King" phrase is being misused as racist political chant.

Only Jews hate Jesus, says great internet philosopher Dog Tongue.

"We're not hating Jesus' family, we're just hating the Jews! What's that? The New Testament begins with Jesus' Jewish genealogy? I don't care, I hate the Jews more than I care about the Bible!"

Now here's something different. A claim that Jesus (sorry, Yahusha 😱) isn't white. My psychic powers are revealing to me what he's trying to say: "Jews are white, Jesus isn't white, therefore Jesus isn't Jewish." This is likely a Black Hebrew Israelite cult follower who claim Jews aren't Israelites.

This seemingly innocuous statement is yet another antisemitic threat: The time of the Jews is almost up, and we're coming for you. Tik tock, tick tock.

Jesus' people aren't Jews. Only those who believe in Jesus are his people. Nevermind that the New Testament calls Jews "God's people whom he foreknew" (Rom 11).

"Jews aren't allies of Christians unless you convert! Also, stop murdering people, you evil Jews!"

This is the old antisemitic conspiracy theory that European Jews (Ashkenazi) have no blood relation to ancient Israelites. This theory has been widely disproven, but racists keep repeating it anyways.

If certain Christians in history hated Jews, we should too, right? No way they'd ever make mistakes!

Also, we have green skin. Don't forget that part.

Certainly not enough to read this hot garbage!

You know who "says they are Jews but are not"? Jew-hating Gentiles who believe they are the true Israel.

He did the meme. Shlomo, shut it down! The goyim know!

There is a great deal of brokenness in Christian hearts about Jewish people. 

I could dismiss these replies as random internet weirdos. But something like 95% of the 200+ replies were racist garbage like these. 

Truth is, antisemitism is being mainstreamed in both the progressive left where it is disguised as anti-Zionism, and the conservative right where it is championed an America-first banner alongside all the groypers, Nazis, and Nutzis. With antisemitism increasing on both political sides, many Christians are now falling into the demonic delusion. God help us. 

The Bible warns that all nations will turn against Jerusalem. It is falling into place now, even in the church.

I have newfound respect for those bold Christians who continue to stand up for Israel and the Jewish people. I suspect it will become more difficult to do so in the future.

Some thoughts on death and dying by Aaron Hecht

Do you remember the first funeral you ever went to?

If you're like most people, it was probably the funeral of one of your grandparents or some other elderly member of your extended family who had died of natural causes. That's the sort of gentle introduction to the topic of death that is one of the benefits of living in wealthy countries in this season of history we're currently in. It allows the child who goes to their grandparent's funeral to learn the lesson that a human body eventually wears out and stops functioning, but it's something that won't happen to the child for a VERY long time and so it's not something that child has to start worrying about right away.

This kind of makes us think we're immortal when we're young, and most of us prefer not to think much about death and dying either right away or later on. Most people don't want to think about their own death/mortality until they are at least getting into later middle age, if not later.

But sometimes, things happen that make it impossible to avoid thinking about death and dying.

Reminders of this unpleasant topic of death and dying have never been absent from my experience for very long. The first funeral I attended was when I was 7 years old and it wasn't for an elderly person but rather for a kid in my school who was just a few years older than me. He and his cousin, who lived in another state and had been visiting with his family, died in an accident involving a recreational vehicle. It made me aware, at a very young age, how fragile life can be. I never had any illusions about being immortal or indestructible. This made me more careful and might have kept me out of some bad situations but I think it's also made it difficult for me to enjoy many things.

I also never attended a funeral of any of my grandparents, because two of them died before I was born and the other two died while living in places far from where I was living at the time and I was unable to go. I always knew what they died OF, however, and the same health problems that they suffered from also affected my parents. My father died fairly young of causes very similar to what caused his father to die at a young age and my mother was in poor health for almost 15 years before she died of COVID, which was unanticipated, but her poor health made her very vulnerable to that disease.

All of this family history has made me very cognizant of the need to keep myself healthy and to avoid making the same poor lifestyle choices my parents and grandparents made which led to none of them even getting close to the average life expectancy.

Even leaving that aside, it's a rare year that goes by when I don't get the word about someone in my circle of friends, family, and acquaintances dying. In the past year and a half I've been to five funerals here in Israel and there were three others which I would have liked to go to but I was unable to make it. Most of them, including a cousin who lived in Ashdod and a man I worked with when I lived in Ariel and whose family I was very good friends with, died of natural causes in their later years. But a couple of them were people around my own age or even much younger, including two who were killed while fighting in this war.

All of this is very sad for me of course, but the fact is, none of these deaths made me think much about my own mortality because they all happened to people whose circumstances were very different from mine.

But then, a few weeks ago, I saw a post on Facebook by a guy I went to high school with announcing the death of one of our classmates, a guy I hadn't seen in almost 30 years. He was the same age as me and I can remember the very first time I met him, on the first day of 7th grade. Later, in the 9th grade, we were on the JV football team together and I can also remember him being in a few classes with me.

I found his obituary on the website of the local paper in our hometown, and reading it made me think about my mortality a lot, but not just because he was my age (which is not that old) but because his obituary was so incredibly pathetic. The first third of it was about all the complications in his birth and how he'd had to be in an incubator for the first few weeks of his life. Then it talked about his participation in Little League baseball and a few other sports. He went to college in another state but came home after one year and never went back to college. His obit actually listed a few part-time jobs he'd held for a while and also talked about his hobbies. He never got married, never had a real job for very long and, tellingly, the obit said nothing about how he died. I later found out from another guy we were in school with together that he'd died of a drug overdose which might have been intentional.

It was in the course of talking with him and a few other old friends that I found out about several other people we'd been in school with who met a similar end. I'd heard about two of them but I had no idea how many more there had been.

It all got me thinking about not only my own mortality but mortality in general. 

Then a few days after all this happened, my eldest son had a birthday and a bunch of his buddies came to our apartment to help him celebrate, as they do every year. As I sat in my living room watching them eating pizza and cake and laughing and joking around together, the thought came into my mind that one or more of them might very well meet a similar end to what my old companion had just met. That was a very unhappy thought and I tried to put it out of my mind, but it wouldn't go away.

One guy I grew up with who died in his early 40s because of self-inflicted health problems (i.e. his obituary actually mentioned that he "struggled with substance abuse") was no surprise to me whatsoever. I met him in kindergarten and he was on a bad trajectory even back then. Others who died young were also in bad shape even in childhood. Some came from broken homes, but others had parents who seemed pretty normative and their siblings turned out okay, so it's not all so easily explained.

If anyone is still reading this, I have drawn a few conclusions and takeaways from all these thoughts I've been having lately about death and dying.

First, it's never too early to start planning and preparing for the death of yourself and the people around you. If you've got people who depend on you financially, get life insurance. It's never too early to get a policy, even if you're in your early 20s when you get married. Go to a lawyer and make a will, and don't avoid talking about it candidly with your spouse, siblings, friends and others who will be affected by your death. I knew a lady whose husband died unexpectedly in his early 40s and as terrible as it was to lose him, it was even worse because they had made no plans at all and he had no life insurance or any other kind of support so she had to borrow money for the funeral and then she lost their apartment and there were all kinds of other problems. Don't let that happen to your family.

Second, it's also never too early to start taking care of your health. Get sufficient sleep, eat healthy, and not too much. Don't smoke or drink excessive amounts of alcohol (men over 40 shouldn't drink at all) and get regular exercise. If you do these things, you'll be doing yourself and your loved ones an enormous favor. It's not just about not dying, it's about the quality of life you'll enjoy for several years before you die. My mother was in poor health for many years before she finally died, and she didn't enjoy it. You probably know someone who had, or is still having, a similar experience. Don't let that happen to you.

Third, I have no idea why some people have such a hard time in life and end up dying young, but I know from first-hand experience that for some people, the problems start in early childhood. So if you see a child in trouble, do whatever you can to help them. 

Pray for the children in your family and in your community, especially the children who are friends with your own children, and try as much as you can to include them in life-enhancing activities that you create with your own children. Try to teach children that you have influence with the importance of making good choices and avoiding things that can harm them and/or are more trouble than they're worth.

Fourth, take a moment to think about what your obituary would say if you died today. If you're not happy about what it would probably say, take some time to think about what you have to do to make sure your obituary says something better.

Last but certainly not least, make it a priority to spend time in prayer on a regular basis to cover all this. Pray that God would reveal to you any unfinished business you might have here in this life so you can take care of it in case this mortal life were to end unexpectedly. Do you have someone you need to forgive or someone whose forgiveness you need to seek? Is there anything else God has for you to do that you haven't done yet? Don't wait even one more day to ask Him to reveal it to you so you can sort these things out, because no one is guaranteed tomorrow.

These are the thoughts I have for you this week brothers and sisters. I hope it blessed someone to read this.

When God Moves in Human History, a Lesson from the Book of Exodus by Aaron Hecht

There are episodes in human history when we see people in positions of authority act in ways that are so absurdly counterintuitive that the only explanation that makes any sense whatsoever is that God is reaching down from Heaven above and touching the hearts and minds of those people to do things which might not make any sense in the natural but which are vitally important to move His plans and purposes forward.

There are several examples of this phenomenon in the Bible, and the best is from the Passover story found in the Book of Exodus. Since Passover is coming up soon, it's a great time to dive into some lessons this book can teach us.

Of course, we all know the story. God sends Moses and his brother Aaron to Pharoah and tells him that God commands him to let the Children of Israel go out from the Land of Egypt where they have been enslaved for hundreds of years. Pharoah refuses and in Exodus 7:17; Thus says the Lord: “By this you shall know that I am the Lord. Behold, I will strike the waters which are in the river with the rod that is in my hand, and they shall be turned to blood."

The Nile stays in this undrinkable form for several days, until Pharoah begs Moses to relent, which he does, but then, in Exodus 9:12 we see what happens next, But the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh; and he did not heed them, just as the Lord had spoken to Moses."

So God instructs Moses to bring another plague on Egypt, and the process repeats itself over and over again.

It becomes obvious to everyone what course of action Pharoah should take, for the sake of his people and his kingdom. Even his own advisors finally came to understand that their gods could not protect them from the God in whose name Moses spoke. 

But Pharoah did not do what it was obvious to everyone he should do, and the Bible tells us that the reason was because God Himself "hardened Pharoah's heart" so that he would continue to disobey His command.

Why would God do that?

The answer is as simple as it is terrifying. God wanted Pharoah to continue making a mistake because he was using Pharoah and his mistakes as an instrument to punish the Egyptians for their idolatry and to show the entire world that He was God and the idols the Egyptians worshipped were not gods.

Even after Pharoah has finally let the Children of Israel go, God moves to ensure that there is one more opportunity to make His point in Exodus 14:4; "Then I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, so that he will pursue them; and I will gain honor over Pharaoh and over all his army, that the Egyptians may know that I am the Lord.” And they did so."

At the time of the Exodus story, Egypt was the richest, most rich and powerful country in the world. In every way, technologically, socially, culturally, politically, economically and militarily, it was the greatest nation on earth in its time, just like the United States of America is today. And just like the USA of 2025, it did not give credit to God for all its wealth, power, technology and advancement, but rather, it gave credit for all these things to false gods and idols.

Perhaps the most tragicomically absurd idol Americans worship is called "American exceptionalism" which is a term that can mean almost anything the person who uses it wants it to mean. The truth is, America is an exception to many of the trends that can be observed throughout human history, but in some other ways it's no different than any other great empire or civilization that came and went all through human history.

The United States is composed of a powerful central government that presides over people inhabiting an impressively large land mass, exploiting its resources, trading with other countries, collecting taxes on labor, commerce, etc. and spending money on an army, a road system, schools, regulations, etc.

America has social tensions around the issues of race, religion, and culture and it also has good days and bad days. There's crime in America, both organized crime and random crime, white collar crime and street crime. There is also a great deal of honest, honorable and even noble work that happens in America every day. There are people who work as farmers, and there are others who work as scientists and doctors and lawyers and police officers and construction workers and office workers and teachers and street sweepers and every other kind of honest work you can imagine. There's also less honest work people do, including people who work as prostitutes, drug dealers, pickpockets, burglars, hitmen, etc.

There's nothing "exceptional" about any of that. 

So the whole idea of "American exceptionalism" is nothing but a fairy tale, and the best thing you can say about it is that it sometimes inspires people to do better or try harder in their individual or group efforts than they might otherwise have done. It certainly is not a god which deserves to be worshipped, but many Americans, including many who call themselves Christians, do in fact worship at the alter of this false god called "American exceptionalism."

The US military is another false god that many American Christians worship, and just like the military of Egypt which God triumphed over in Exodus chapter 14, it is a false god that can and will fail those who put their hope and trust in it.

Now, to get back to my original point, America is also typical in that it has periodically had leadership that made decisions that were inexplicable, and even irrational, at the time.

An easy example to cite is President Harry S. Truman's decision to recognize the newly established State of Israel a few minutes after David Ben Gurion read out the Israeli Declaration of Independence at midnight on May 14th, 1948. Truman took this step against the advice of nearly all of his advisors, including his Secretary of State George C. Marshall, who even told Truman that he personally would not vote for Truman in the next election if he went through with it.

To be fair to Marshall, he was just doing his job, advising the President that recognizing a Jewish State in the Middle East might be good domestic American politics but it would cause the US all kinds of headaches with the Moslem world, which is where most of the known oil reserves were (and still are) and this would leave the US vulnerable in the emerging Cold War with the Soviet Union.

But Truman did it anyway, and I believe he did it because God "hardened his heart" against all the advice he was getting from Marshall and most of the rest of his advisors.

All of that brings us to the events of these past few days, which have seen President Donald Trump do something that is a massive break with traditional US diplomacy. 

I am of course talking about his Oval Office argument with visiting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. There has been a LOT of commentary on this incident, starting almost immediately after it happened. All kinds of bloody-minded nonsense, fairy tales, ludicrously absurd gaslighting, and sheer, raw, bloodcurdling stupidity has been thrown around by talking heads from all over the spectrum. I've seen all the same videos and read all the same Facebook posts about the situation that you have, and I advise you to ignore all of it.

The truth is both President Trump and President Zelensky are making big mistakes in this situation, and I believe that this is a result of God "hardening their hearts" against doing the things they should do because he's using these men to advance His plans and purposes for this season of history. I believe President Putin of Russia is also being used by God for this purpose, as the decision he made three years ago to send his tanks across the border into Ukraine was also galactically stupid and has had disastrous results for his country, but he has not done the smart thing which would be to admit he made a mistake and withdraw his troops back into Russian territory. He has refused to do this even as the death toll from the war has skyrocketed and the Russian economy has suffered catastrophic damage. It might even be comparable to the damage done to Egypt in the time of the Exodus, but that's kind of hard to judge.

Beyond that, there's all kinds of things that are happening as a result of Putin's mistake in February of 2022 and the mistakes President Joe Biden and many European leaders made in the years since, and the mistakes both Trump and Zelensky are making right now, that I think might be relevant for prophetic history, starting with the fact that the EU is making moves that could lead to greater political, economic and even military unity. This war has also brought Russia and Iran closer together, with Turkey and Egypt also drawing closer to Moscow's orbit. Other countries that are mentioned in the Prophecies of Ezekiel 38-39 are also being affected by the decisions these kings are making in this season of history, most notably Syria.

I am not a prophet myself and I have never pretended to be one, so I'm not going to tell you what day the Gog Magog war is going to start, or when the Isaiah 19 highway linking Egypt and Assyria, running through Israel, will be built. I'm not going to tell you when all the nations (including the United States) will come against Jerusalem or try to pinpoint the identity of the Anti-Christ or the Two Witnesses or any of that other stuff.

I'm simply going to tell you something that I'm sure you already know, that we are living in Prophetic times. God is on the move in this season of history we're in. God is hardening the hearts of kings so that they make some incredibly stupid mistakes that have already brought enormous suffering to their people, and it's just getting started. 

So that leaves you and me with a big job, and that is to be in urgent prayer. Pray that God will work in the hearts and minds of leaders at all levels of government and in all sectors of society, including our own families. For that matter, we all need to be putting our own houses in order, especially our literal houses where we live with our families, but also our neighbors and our co-workers. Is there someone you feel like God wants you to share the Gospel with? Is there a ministry project you feel like God is prompting you to sow into? Is there a book God is prompting you to write? Or maybe it's a song he wants you to write, a website he wants you to launch, a relationship he wants you to start, or reconcile.

Is there someone you know you should forgive and/or be reconciled with?

Do it! 

Don't wait, because the one thing we know for sure about seasons when God is moving in human history, it's that things can sometimes move very quickly, and when things happen quickly, opportunities can come and go in the blink of an eye, and once they're gone, they never come back.

So whatever it is that God is putting on your heart to do, don't harden your heart like Pharoah did, move TODAY, because Eternity is a long time to be in regret.