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Nathan Jones: 7 Myths For Why Christians Should NOT Support Israel · Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo

• 0:02
  Welcome to Worldview Matters. Discussing controversial issues. Discerning current events. Defending biblical Christianity. No topic. Off limits. And now, here's your host, David Fiorazzo.
• 0:20
  Friends, family in Christ, thank you so much for tuning in to another podcast. I'm so blessed to have my brother Nathan Jones back with us, Lamb and Lion Ministries. The website ChristinProphecy.org. ChristinProphecy.org. And I've got even more good news. Boy, we're starting it off with a bang here.
• 0:41
  Nathan will be coming to Green Bay, Wisconsin next year. Why? He's going to be speaking at the Worldview Matters Conference, helping the body of Christ redeem the time. So that'll be next year. By the way, the website will be ready, I believe, in a couple weeks. We'll get that up and running for you guys so you can get all the information. You know what? I'm just going to take this opportunity and just share...
• 1:06
  We've got one more spot to fill, but we've got Nathan coming. We've got Alex Newman, Hadia Miramati Falco, Pastor Steve Smotherman, Brandon Holhouse, Pete Garcia, J.B. Hickson, Mark and Amber Archer, Brianna Claussen, Harbingers Daily, and Brian Thomas. Who did I miss? Matthew Mayer. He's a pastor from New Jersey. And I've got one more.
• 1:30
  And I'll let you know that very, very soon. So we'll get that website to you in a couple weeks. Brother, Nathan, good to see you. Thanks so much for your time. Oh, you too, David. Wow, I didn't know that was the rest of the lineup. Man, I'm excited. Yeah, yeah. I tend to be a little ambitious. We just started doing conferences. This is my first go at it. You know, I come from the interviewing and the podcasts, and I used to speak at some conferences, and now putting my...
• 1:55
  host and organizers hat on. It's been a learning curve, I'll tell you, but I'm excited. 13 speakers in two full days, and it's just going to be amazing. This one this year was really good, so we're just trying to step it up a notch every time. So very important topic with you, Nathan, before we dive into that, and I'm just going to give it to you right now, friends. We're going to
• 2:20
  myths, and I know there are more, seven myths for why Christians should not support Israel. So in other words, lies, propaganda, deception you've heard, and confusion that has seeped in to the American church. And it's so sad, but we're going to talk about that. Nathan, first, tell us what you guys have been doing at Lamb and Lion, any projects, where can people get more info, and just go ahead and share.
• 2:45
  Okay, well, we're a Bible prophecy ministry, and our mission is to proclaim the soon return of Jesus Christ. We do that a number of different ways, but primarily through our television program, Christ in Prophecy, which I believe it's in its 25th year now. We also have a radio program on about 900 stations throughout the United States. And we also have a podcast called The Truth Will Set You Free. You can find all of that on ChristinProphecy.org or download the Lamb and Lion app.
• 3:12
  Awesome. Thanks, brother. Now, I also want to mention, I think if it wasn't the last time we had you on, it was the time before we talked about your new book, The Coming Millennial Kingdom. Talk about good news, what life will be like for us when Jesus reigns on earth. And there's also confusion in the church about that.
• 3:32
  Which we covered last time. So guys, you can go to worldviewmatters.tv, type in Nathan Jones and catch that interview. It may have been the two podcasts ago with Nathan, but go check that one out because we talked about the coming millennial kingdom. Okay, let's dive into this, Nathan. Nathan Jones.
• 3:53
  I've told you before we got on the podcast that I wish we didn't have to talk about this as much and continue talking about it, but sadly, that's where we are in the church today. And regarding support for Israel, there's a lot of confusion, and the enemy is having a heyday. I mean, he is, I don't know, wreaking a lot of havoc. So overall, give me just an overview before we dive into some of the bullet points today.
• 4:19
  And some of the things we're going to talk about. Just your thoughts on where we're at. I think a lot of Christians didn't see this coming or didn't expect us to be here right now in this time that we're living in.
• 4:31
  Oh, you're absolutely right. It's actually, I think, a crisis within the church right now. I mean, go back to October 7th, 2023. We had 6,000 Gazans pour into Israel. They murdered horrifically like barbarians, 1,300 Jewish people. They pulled 250 hostages into caves like Morlocks underground. And you would think the world would be, oh no, and want to defend Israel. And about a week or two, that was the case. But brother, anti-Semitism sped.
• 4:59
  spread across the world as Israel finally defended itself. We've seen synagogues burn. We've seen civilians shot on the streets like that young couple in Washington. They're firebombing synagogues all over the world. They're protesting embassies, even in New York City. And the horror of it all to me is that the church pulpits are silent. You can't find a church that wants to talk about Israel. It's too controversial. And so I've been preaching on, should Christians support Israel?
• 5:28
  And I was actually at a, we had a regional conference in Kentucky earlier this year, and I was preaching on it and a young couple in their mid twenties come up to me and boy, did they hate the Jewish people. Yet they really had never met a Jewish person in their area. And they're bringing up, well,
• 5:44
  You know, the Jewish people did this back hundreds of years ago and they did that, you know, stuff they've read on YouTube or Wikipedia, whatever. And it's just like everything that I presented from the Bible just bounced off them. There was something inside of it. As you know, David, it's a spiritual sickness. It's Satan ramping up the hatred of the Jewish people leading up to the return of Jesus Christ.
• 6:06
  Yeah, it really is. It's evil is being called good, good is being called evil. And man, anti-Semitism is off the charts today. So you mentioned for hundreds of years Christians have believed, I mean, generally in the past, a hundred years ago or for centuries, we believed God's word and took it literally as far as supporting Israel.
• 6:27
  I think most people, Nathan, understand that we don't support everything that the Israeli government does, and we understand that it is a secular nation. But what does God's Word say? I mean, I don't support everything our own government does. And America is a secular nation, sadly, but we didn't start off that way. Can you comment on that before we dive into some of the bullet points from your sermon?
• 6:54
  Absolutely. If we are Christians, then we should want to know and follow what God believes and what God wants us to understand. And what he wants us to understand is the Abrahamic covenant. I mean, it's the cornerstone covenant of the Bible. It grants the title deed of the land of Israel to the descendants in the line of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It's unconditional. It's irrevocable.
• 7:16
  And it's an everlasting promise. And the Lord literally sealed it in blood. You can go back to Genesis 12. And the Lord said to Abram, go out of your country from your family's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great. And you shall be a blessing to all the families of the earth. Amen.
• 7:35
  And so he reiterated again in Genesis 14 and 17. He brought him to the land of Canaan, showed him all the land and says, this is yours and your people forever. And some people say, well, doesn't that include the Arab people? Because Abraham was the father of Ishmael. But then we get down to...
• 7:53
  We go to Genesis chapter 17, and he makes it an unconditional covenant that is passed to Isaac. He says, Sarah, your wife will bear you a son, and you shall call him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him. The Arabs will get all the great population that the Lord promised, but the Jewish people would always get the land. It was passed in 1 Chronicles 16 to Jacob, so that Jacob's descendants, the Jewish people as we know them today,
• 8:20
  will receive that land and those numbers and the blessings of the earth. They're still waiting for all the land, and they're still waiting for the blessings of the earth because right now they're cursed across the earth. The second covenant the Lord set up with the Jewish people was the land covenant. In Deuteronomy 28, the Lord says, If you follow me, I will bless you and you will enjoy your land. But if you rebel against me, I will exile you for a time
• 8:43
  and other people will control your land. And after 70 AD, the Gentile world controlled Israel, but in May of 1948, Israel became a nation again, just as Ezekiel 36 and 37 prophesied, and the Lord started bringing them back into the land as the Bible prophesied in unbelief, leading up to the third covenant, and you'll like this one, because it's named David,
• 9:07
  The Davidic covenant and the Davidic covenant promises an eternal king. He's going to descend from the line of King David, and he's going to rule over all the world from Jerusalem. And the Jewish people will be back in the land and will be theirs forever. So there's a future part of this promise of the land covenant. When you understand the Bible and interpret it literally, and you take these covenants literally, you understand that God is not done with the Jewish people and that that land is theirs.
• 9:36
  One thing I don't understand, Nathan, is how people can misinterpret everlasting covenant. I don't understand that. Well, if you talk about spiritual warfare, I guess I do, and the enemy. But if you do not believe in God...
• 9:52
  you would say, okay, well, just because the Bible says something doesn't mean we should support Israel, right? But now, our context, we're talking about the body of Christ. We're talking about why Christians need to know this and understand. That's what's so, I guess, sometimes frustrating, Nathan. It tests our patience, I guess, because some people have just— like, by the way, the couple that came up to you, did you say it was after you spoke? Yeah.
• 10:18
  They came up to you? Yes. Yeah. After an hour of giving them the biblical and even the legal rights for the Jewish people, they did not believe it. And the reason is, is because we're seeing a shift away in the church from evangelical, literal interpretation of the Bible to spiritualized interpretation of the Bible, where they go back through the Old Testament, they erase the word Israel, and they put the word church in.
• 10:42
  and we call that replacement theology. And all those Christians, and that's the predominant view in the church for the last 2000 years, is that the church has replaced Israel. So to answer your question, David, they read those covenants and they say, well, the Lord's speaking about the church there, but he is not at all speaking about the church there. Second Samuel seven, part of the Davidic covenant promises that the Jewish people will be regathered and replanted back in the land. He's not talking about the church here.
• 11:11
  Paul in Romans 9 through 11 is talking about the Jewish people, not the church. The Lord distinguishes the church from Israel. And unfortunately, it's bad hermeneutics, bad eschatology that they come up with this view that the church has replaced Israel. Israel is just a modern mistake. Evangelicals pushed it, and it just needs to go away for there be peace in the world. Brother, that is a demonic lie.
• 11:36
  Absolutely. Amen. Please, friends, reread Romans 9, 10, and 11 and take your time. Hopefully you have a good study Bible and just absorb that again if you haven't read that in a long time. Psalm 83, 4, and 5 is very interesting to me.
• 11:54
  It says, They have said, Come and let us wipe them out as a nation, that the name of Israel be remembered no more. For they have conspired together with one mind. Against you they make a covenant. They make a covenant.
• 12:09
  Very interesting, Nathan, that it prophesied in the Bible that people would come against Israel. I think of Psalm 2, why do the nations rage? But it's interesting, and it's against—that's against—it says in that psalm against you, Jesus, the Holy One. They're coming against God, and I think that psalm also says the Lord in heaven laughs. You know, he knows their end, the people that are coming against God. But it's interesting—
• 12:36
  to make this connection that if you go against Israel, really you're fighting against God. Is that not biblically accurate?
• 12:44
  That is 100% accurate. You know, I don't understand why the church can't give Israel a break, the Jewish people a break. But for hundreds of years, our greatest theologians have taught us that God has wiped his hands of the Jewish people, they're the killers of Christ, and therefore they should be cursed forever and ever, and they skip over all the passages that talk about their restoration. Isaiah 11, for instance, which talks about the restoration, a regathering,
• 13:12
  a second time from the four corners of the world, the compass points back to the land of Israel. The fact that the Lord is going to put them through a tribulation time period to refine a remnant, a third of the Jewish people, as Zechariah prophesied, that will come back to him. And they will, when they cry out, Baruch, Habab, Hashem, Adonai.
• 13:33
  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. That is when Jesus has his second coming. And that is what Satan is trying to stop. So this hatred for the Jewish people that is completely irrational. I mean, look at the nation of Japan. There's almost no Jews living in Japan, yet Japan blames most of their problems on the
• 13:51
  on the Jewish people. It's insane. And it's because there's Satan has put in the hearts, sadly, even of Christians, this hatred for the Jewish people, the point of trying to stomp out the Jewish people so that Jesus cannot return. Amen, brother. You use the word irrational. That's exactly what it is.
• 14:09
  And demonic. This anti-Semitism is this irrational demonic response to, you know, this against the Jews. But let's let's talk about some of the myths now specifically. I've heard this for years. The Jews killed Jesus. Weren't there Romans, Italians, the government there, Pontius Pilate? Talk to us about that myth.
• 14:31
  Okay, well, you have, like, Jesse, what you said, Acts 4, 27 through 28, for truly against your servant Jesus, whom you anointed both Herod and Pontius Pilate with the Gentiles and the people of Israel were gathered together to do whatever your hand and your purpose determined to be done. So we got Jews and Gentiles there.
• 14:52
  Now, Jesus went to the cross himself for the purpose of bringing salvation to us. Romans 3.23, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. 2 Corinthians 5, he died for all, that those who live shall live no longer for themselves, but for him who died for them.
• 15:10
  But then we get to John 10, 15, and the son says, I lay down my life for the sheep. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down myself. So who was the killer of Christ? It was Jesus Christ by the will of the father. And so the Jewish people weren't just the Christ killers. The Gentiles were the Christ killers. And David, you and I as sinners, we're all Christ killers.
• 15:36
  Amen, brother. So that's how we can respond with better understanding to, the Jews killed Jesus, right? Now, the Pharisees, they had him arrested, and they plotted against him, but it's God's foreordained plan. Go ahead, Nathan.
• 15:51
  No, you nailed it. That's exactly what they were the instrument of his demise at the time. But Jesus would have crawled up on a cross himself if no one was around and died on our behalf because he loves us that much. So, yes, the Jewish people played a role in it. But people got to remember that the Lord used the Jewish people to bring us the Bible, the word of God, the Messiah, the promises, the fact that the church even exists.
• 16:15
  It goes back to the fact that the Jewish people accepted Jesus as Savior, and that fact that we will receive eternal life. It's because of the redemptive work that the Lord did through the Jewish people. So the church owes the Jewish people a great favor and not the scorn that we're giving her. So in...
• 16:33
  The myths, number two, the way you worded this one, the Jews have been disinherited because of their unbelief. I haven't heard that, I haven't heard it put that way a lot. Can you elaborate a little bit, Nathan?
• 16:49
  Okay. Well, there's this group that meets every year in Bethlehem. It's called Christ at the Checkpoint. They're the most liberal, like Steven Sizer and all these guys. And usually they're the ones that make these arguments. So these are arguments actually that Christians make, Christians make. And so one of them that I've picked up on by watching these Christ at the Checkpoint meetings is the Jews have been disinherited. In other words, God is done with the Jewish people. But
• 17:13
  You can go to Isaiah 49, 14. The Lord has forsaken me, but Zion said, the Lord has forsaken me and the Lord has forgotten me. But the Lord says, can a woman forget her nursing child and not compassion on the son of her womb? He says, surely they may forget, yet I will not forget you. Or Jeremiah 31, 36. If these ordinances depart before me, then the seed of Israel shall also cease from being a nation before me forever. Yeah.
• 17:43
  So we see it again and again in Romans 11. We're told that the Jewish people have been put blinders on that. Paul called it a spirit of stupor to keep them from accepting the gospel. But God always remains faithful. And so Romans 11 one says, has God cast away his people? Paul says, certainly not, for I am an Israelite.
• 18:04
  And we read in 2 Timothy 2.13, if we are faithless, he remains faithful. He cannot deny himself. So the Lord has established the Abrahamic, the land, and the Davidic covenants. He will always be faithful to them, even when we're not faithful. So God has not disinherited the Jewish people.
• 18:23
  Amen, brother. So the next one we already addressed, you addressed the fact of replacement theology. The church has replaced Israel and now receives her inheritance. So let's move on to myth number four. The Jews regathering back to the land of Israel can't be from God because they haven't repented and accepted Jesus as their Messiah. Share a little bit more about that, Nathan.
• 18:45
  Oh, yeah, that's very popular amongst Christians. I get that. Even when I'm on certain radio interviews, they'll say, well, wait, Israel, they have to go back to Israel in belief and accept Jesus. That's not the case at all. The Lord is regathering them in unbelief to go through tribulation to then finally accept Jesus as Messiah. We read in Isaiah 11, 11, It shall come to pass in that day
• 19:08
  "...that the Lord shall set his hand again a second time, not the Babylonian, but at post-Roman time, to recover the remnant of his people. He's going to set up a banner for the nations, in other words, a flag, the Israeli flag, and he will assemble the outcasts of Israel and gather to disperse a Judah from where? Not from Babylon, but from the four corners of the earth."
• 19:30
  Brother, you can read in Ezekiel 36, Malachi 3, again and again, that he's bringing the Jewish people back in unbelief to purify them so that a remnant may be saved and accept Jesus as Messiah when he returns. Okay, I really want to spend some time on myth number six, but we did touch on myth number five already about the Israeli government. If you want to share anything about that, please do. Otherwise, let's jump to number six. Go ahead, Nathan.
• 20:00
  I think you nailed it. To support Israel is to support every action in the Israeli government. There are some Christians you find that do that. Anytime that Trump says anything against Netanyahu, they're like, oh, America's doomed. That's not the case. The Netanyahu government is a secular government. We don't have to agree with everything they say. I'm a strong Republican, but I don't always agree with everything Donald Trump says. But that doesn't make me a heretic. We've got to let that argument. It's a very straw man argument.
• 20:27
  Okay, so let's camp here for a little bit, number six, because the land is so important. You already touched on it a little bit, and it's amazing the little speck they're living on compared to what God promised them. But myth number six is the Jews stole the Palestinians' land and lived there illegally. Boy, I guess God didn't see that coming, did he, Nathan? Yeah.
• 20:50
  No. And that's the bailiwick that most people will use, that the Jewish people are just horrible to the Palestinians. Rick Steves, I love Rick Steves Europe, but he goes over to Israel and he's so pro-Palestinian and the Jews are so horrible. I've been to Israel many times. The Jews aren't horrible to the Palestinians. But again,
• 21:10
  So let's go back to what God said with the Abrahamic covenant. The Jews have, get this folks, the eternal deed to the land of Israel. And not just the current land they're living in, from pretty much the Nile to the Euphrates, which they don't have yet. You can read in Deuteronomy 33 through 5, the Lord will bring you back from captivity, have compassion on you, and gather you again from all the nations of the world, and you shall possess the land. That's a promise that Moses foretold to the Jewish people.
• 21:39
  So we'll get people that say, well, that's the Bible. I don't believe in the Bible. So the Abrahamic covenant has no meaning. Okay, well, how about the fact that in the late 1800s, the Jewish people started coming back to what we call Palestine because the Romans renamed the land Palestine and started buying the land at exorbitant prices from the Ottoman owners at the time. I mean, it was,
• 22:04
  It was swampland. It was deserts. Nobody lived there. Mark Twain went through it in the 1860s, said he traveled for three days and he didn't encounter a single person. And the Arabs were laughing all the way to the bank. These crazy Jews are buying up all the land. They have the legal title deeds to the land. They did not steal the land. But it was also illegal.
• 22:25
  Internationally recognized in November 1947, the UN made UN Resolution 181. And it said that the land that the Jewish people are on is their land. It's recognized by the international body, the United Nations. So God said they own the land. The title deeds say they own the land. And the United Nations recognized that they own the land. The Jewish people stole nothing.
• 22:50
  Jeez, that couldn't be more clear. And again, friends, we'll put the link to this in the description here for the podcast. Let's go to number seven. To support Israel is to hate the Palestinian people. And you kind of go, didn't God so love the world? Go ahead, Nathan.
• 23:11
  No, go ahead and finish that because you're absolutely great. God loves the Palestinian people. He loves the Jewish people. He loves all people. But the Arab propaganda, they started seeing Israel become wealthy. They turned a desert into a bounty. You can travel all over Israel and see all the fruit and the agriculture, the industry. They got jealous. They started coming in and war after war after war, they've tried to steal what the Jewish people have owned.
• 23:39
  Now, what's really terrible is after the war, were they independence? The Arab world sent all these people, Syrians, into the land to take the land once the Jewish people would be defeated. They weren't defeated. A bunch of kibbutzim took on all these armies. And the Syrians that were invaded the land weren't allowed back into their own countries. And so for 70 some years, they existed in refugee status.
• 24:05
  Yasser Arafat, an Egyptian, started calling them the Palestinian people to give them some kind of identity. But they had no history, no language, nothing there. You can go archaeology and it's all Israel's people. So these Palestinian people are really Syrians. They're really Lebanese. They're really Egyptians, especially the Gazans. There's no such thing as a Palestinian people.
• 24:31
  But the Palestinian people, who abuses them? It's the Arab nations that refuse to let them back into their countries again. Now, if you talk to the Palestinians, and I've talked to many of them while I'm over there, they prefer to live in Israel because they get more benefits, they can make more money, they have better health plans, they get to participate in the government. They could not do that in any of the Arab nations. And every time an Arab nation threatens to nuke
• 24:58
  Israel, who would they also be nuking? The two million Palestinians living within the Jewish state. So the insanity of it is that the Arab world hates the Palestinians, not the Jewish people. Wow. You know what? I don't think most people get that information from CNN or the education system or academia. We don't hear that from the media. What you just shared, very important to realize. People have more freedoms in Israel than...
• 25:26
  than they do in some of these other countries. So, man, there's just so many myths to bust, Nathan. So now we can move on, and just in the last two minutes, you can maybe bullet point the reasons why Christians should support Israel. Number one is democracy. Go ahead and touch on whatever ones you would like.
• 25:47
  Oh yeah, democracy. I mean, after all, the nation of Israel is the only Western-style democracy in a sea of Islamic tyranny. To support Israel is to support the only nation, the only one in the Middle East, that offers religious freedom and human rights to women. A second reason to why Christians should support Israel is defense. Israel protects the West and Christianity. They're the first line of defense against the radical Islamic world.
• 26:12
  Also economics, Israel contributes, most of the PhDs and the Nobel Prize winners are Jewish people. They've created all sorts of agricultural technologies, medicines, they raise the standard of living in the world while the Arabs pull it down. So to support Israel is to support all the wonderful things they've been inventing.
• 26:32
  There's also blessings. Genesis 12, the Lord says, I will bless those who bless you and I will curse him who curses you. So there's blessings. It's also biblical. Wouldn't we as Christians want to believe and follow what Jesus believes and follows?
• 26:48
  And then the final point is prophetic. There are all sorts of prophecies in the Bible that prophesy Israel being regathered, coming to salvation, and becoming a prime group, a priesthood during the millennial kingdom. So if we're Christians, followers of Christ, we should want what God wants.
• 27:06
  I can't say amen strongly enough after that. What does God want? What does his word say? Do we believe his word is inerrant and perfect and holy? And why don't we continue to follow him and his word regarding Israel?
• 27:22
  It's a head-scratcher, but I understand, we talked about earlier, the spiritual dimension behind this, the warfare, and the demonic agendas of deception and confusion. And it's in the body, but we're trying to root it out. Nathan Jones, Lamb and Lion Ministries, ChristinProphecy.org. Brother, to be continued, we'll see you next time. Thank you so much for your time today. Thank you, David. Friends, share this one. God bless you, and as always, keep speaking the truth about things that matter.