The Bible, Theology and Woeful Ignorance

Massacring Scripture and history to push ugly antisemitism:

There is never a shortage of debates about politics and religion. As someone with an interactive website featuring 7000 articles and 91,500 published comments, I know all about this. I have lost count of how often an angry atheist or secularist or non-Christian will come here trying to tell me what Jesus meant, what the Bible teaches, or what correct theology is. Almost always ignorance and not expertise is being paraded.

Current heated discussions about Israel and Middle East have both biblical and non-biblical dimensions. Both can be weighed into, but one finds many who are just too far out of their depth. This is especially the case when someone who clearly has no biblical or theological understanding comes along pretending that he does.

A case in point is the radical libertarian John Ruddick who recently joined with other Israel-haters and Hamas-supporters on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Pretending that was a ‘freedom ‘march’ was one of the bigger jokes, but when he starts pontificating on theology and Scripture, it gets even more ludicrous. Thankfully many members of the Libertarian Party left after that episode.

He thinks he is some authority on what the Bible teaches, and that he is some sort of theological expert. But it is clear that he doesn’t have a clue. His main religious ‘argument’ against Israel and the Jews is to make the bizarre claim that ‘Christian Zionism’ – whatever that is – is a “heresy”; to insist it is all due to the “perverse Scofield Bible”; and to claim we just need to “read the Sermon on the Mount”. Good grief.

Um, there is nothing heretical about simply stating that the modern state of Israel, like every other state, has a right to exist, to defend itself, and not cave in to those who have sworn to annihilate it. And one can leave theology and eschatology out of this case if need be. See much more on this here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2025/07/21/five-home-truths-on-israel-and-the-jews/

 It is unlikely Ruddick has ever read anything by the American pastor C. I. Scofield (1843-1921). And if his ‘Bible,’ then which one? There of course is more than one version. In 1909 the Scofield Reference Bible was published, with a revised version appearing in 1917. Oxford University Press still publishes it today.

I have both and have read both carefully, although I no longer am as committed to this particular point of view. He, along with John Nelson Darby (1800-1882), popularised what is known as dispensational premillennialism. But of course classical or historical premillennialism (chiliasm), was long held to, including by Justin Martyr (c100-c165), Irenaeus (c130-c200), Tertullian (160-240), Isaac Newton (1643-1727), Cotton Mather (1663-1728), and Lord Shaftesbury (1801-1885).

And here is a simple truth that folks like Ruddick need to get up to speed with. Christians who hold to dispensationalism are not heretics, nor are those who do not hold to it. These are views which Christians can and do differ on. Having different understandings of the end times, and different interpretive frameworks to run with is the norm in church history.

The same with covenant theology versus dispensationalism, and the same with the various millennial views. Godly and learned Christians over the ages have held to all of these various positions. But see more in this two-part article: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2010/11/30/on-the-millennium-part-one/

Thus any claims that earlier believers never thought that God had a place for ethnic Israel and this is just some Scofield con job is the height of theological foolishness and historical ignorance. Indeed, many who preceded Scofield and were decidedly non-dispensational have believed that God is not yet finished with the people of Israel. A few quick quotes will have to suffice here:

“When the Gentiles shall come in, the Jews also shall return from their defection to the obedience of faith; and thus shall be completed the salvation, . . . which must be gathered from both; and yet in such a way that the Jews shall obtain the first place, being as it were the first born in God’s family, as Jews are the first born, what the prophet declares must be fulfilled, especially in them; . . . it is to be ascribed to the preeminence of that nation, who God had preferred to all other nations….” John Calvin (1509-1564) in his commentary on Romans

“There is a day coming when there shall be a national conversion of the Jews or Israelites. The now blinded and rejected Jews shall at length be converted into the faith of Christ, and join themselves to the Christian Church.” Thomas Boston (1676-1732) from a 1716 sermon

“Jewish infidelity shall be overthrown…the Jews in all their dispersions shall cast away their old infidelity, and shall have their hearts wonderfully changed, and abhor themselves for their past unbelief and obstinacy. They shall flow together to the blessed Jesus, penitently, humbly, and joyfully owning him as their glorious King and only Savior, and shall with all their hearts, as one heart and voice, declare his praises unto other nations…Nothing is more certainly foretold than this national conversion of the Jews in Rom. xi.” Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) in A History of the Work of Redemption

“The meaning of our text, as opened up by the context, is most evidently, if words mean anything, first, that there shall be a political restoration of the Jews to their own land and to their own nationality; and then, secondly, there is in the text, and in the context, a most plain declaration, that there shall be a spiritual restoration, a conversion in fact, of the tribes of Israel.” Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892) preaching on Ezekiel 37

“A Christian is the last person who ought ever to speak disrespectfully or unkindly of the Jews. We remember that our Lord belonged to that race, and that his first apostles were also of that nation; and we regard that ancient people as the very aristocracy of mankind, tracing back their pedigree to those before whom the mightiest kings might well veil their faces, and bow in lowliest homage; for I reckon that, to be descended from Abraham, ‘the friend of God,’ and ‘the father of the faithful,’ is to have a lineage higher than that of any of the princes of the earth.” Charles Spurgeon, from an 1880 sermon on Isaiah 2:5

In his A Puritan Golden Treasury I. D. E. Thomas lists more, such as:

 “The faithful Jews rejoiced to think of the calling of the Gentiles; and why should not we joy to think of the calling of the Jews?” Richard Sibbes (1577-1635)

“O to see the sight, next to Christ’s coming in the clouds, the most joyful our elder brethren the Jews and Christ fall upon one another’s necks and kiss each other.” Samuel Rutherford (1600-1661)

“The Jews shall be gathered from all parts of the earth where they now are scattered, and brought home into their homeland.” John Owen (1616-1683)

“There is not any promise anywhere of raising up a kingdom unto the Lord Jesus Christ in this world but it is either expressed, or clearly intimated, that the beginning of it must be with the Jews.” John Owen (1616-1683)

Many more could be mentioned, including more recent Reformed preachers and theologians such as Geerhardus Vos (1862-1949), John Murray (1898-1975), Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1991), James Montgomery Boice (1938-2000), and R. C. Sproul (1939-2017). So it is high time we ditch this patently false nonsense about no one supporting Israel and the promises of passages like Romans 9-11 before Scofield, and no one but dispensationalists doing so after him.

As to Matthew 5-7, I take it Ruddick has just one passage in mind, the one about turning the other cheek (Matt. 5:38-42,). He recklessly uses it while he parrots the debunked tropes about Israel committing ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza. That fabrication has been challenged by many. See this piece where I offer plenty of detail on all this: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2025/08/05/genocide-and-starvation-in-gaza/

So how do we understand the text in Matthew? It is about the believer being willing to forego his rights of self-defence and to accept abuse. That is part of the personal ethics of a believer, but there are also biblical social ethics, where God has ordained the state and its right to use force to maintain justice and punish evildoers within the nation, and employ just war measures between the nations.

As I wrote some years ago:

It has nothing to do with the right of the state to use force to deal with wrongdoers, both on a national and international level. And it has nothing to do with being some wimpy doormat who allows everyone to run roughshod over you.

 

As Craig Keener puts it, “While Jesus’ teaching cannot be conformed to the agendas of those who advocate violent revolution, no matter how just their cause, neither does it mean total passivity in the face of evil. It does not mean that an abused wife must remain in the home in the face of abuse; it does not mean that God expects people being massacred to remain instead of fleeing (compare Mt 2:13-20; 10:23). James, an advocate of peace (Jas 2:11; 3:13-18; 4:1-2), was unrestrained in his denunciation of those who oppressed the poor (Jas 5:1-6).”

 

A little bit of historical, cultural, theological and biblical background can help us to avoid improper and even dangerous interpretations of a passage such as this. While we don’t want to minimise the revolutionary impact of the words of Jesus here, neither do we want to turn them into something which he never intended. https://billmuehlenberg.com/2011/04/20/difficult-bible-passages-matthew-539/

Simply taking the Parable of the Good Samaritan at face value, one can see that we have an obligation to defend the innocent from unjust aggression. The famous Christian ethicist Paul Ramsey (1913-1988) wrote superbly on this. See my writeup here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2025/02/05/paul-ramsey-warfare-and-the-good-samaritan/

Contra the libertarians and neo-isolationists who glibly mouth off about ‘What do we have to do with Israel?,’ Ramsey rightly says we have a Christian obligation to love the victim by helping them:

While Jesus taught that a disciple in his own case should turn the other cheek, he did not enjoin that his disciples should lift up the face of another oppressed man for him to be struck again on his other cheek. It is no part of the work of charity to allow this to continue to happen. Instead, it is the work of love and mercy to deliver as many as possible of God’s children from tyranny, and to protect from oppression, if one can, as many of those for whom Christ died as it may be possible to save. When choice must be made between the perpetrator of injustice and the many victims of it, the latter may and should be preferred—even if effectively to do so would require the use of armed force against some evil power. This is what I mean by saying that the justice of sometimes resorting to armed conflict originated in the interior ethics of Christian love.

In his very important new book, the respected Christian thinker Os Guinness has a solid chapter on Israel and how believers should think about the current crisis. You can see some of the quotes of his that I highlighted in a recent piece: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2025/08/10/os-guinness-on-israel-the-west-and-islamism/

But he is worth quoting again from. He said this:

One unassailable conclusion confronts anyone who takes all this history into account. Hatred of the Jews and Israel is the cause and not the consequence of the conflicts in the Middle East. As Dennis Prager sums up the age-old problem succinctly, “The conflict may be the hardest to solve, but it is the easiest to explain. In a nutshell, it’s this: One side wants the other side dead.”

That is the reality we find in the Middle East. Israel faces REAL genocide and extinction from the dozens of Arab and Muslim states that surround it, and the various terrorist organisations that have declared war on it. Israel has a fundamental right to exist and to defend itself against such a satanic onslaught.

And the Christian can support this, while even holding to differing views on theology and eschatology.

[2021 words]