With respect for Dr. Martin Luther King
Unity &
Ethnic Equality
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Thomas Williams writes:
What would you think of a religious sect that taught that
there is one race that is by nature superior, and another race that
is by nature inferior?
And suppose that this sect taught that the superior race
has a divine right to dispossess members of the inferior race and
take their properties without compensation, and to ethnically
cleanse those who resist this expropriation, using violence if
necessary?
And suppose that this sect believed so strongly in this
system of racism and ethnic cleansing that it was willing to plunge
the world into war in order to fulfill its objectives.
And suppose that this sect claimed 70,000,000 adherents in
the world's most powerful nation, and had a stranglehold on the
foreign policy of that nation, so that the military and financial
might of that nation was directed toward the goal of helping the
superior race and suppressing the inferior race?
Welcome to the wonderful world of American
dispensationalism.
Dispensationalists, who are found in many fundamentalist
and evangelical denominations, follow the theological beliefs
of John Nelson Darby, C. I. Scofield and Hal Lindsey, who taught
that ethnic Jews constitute a superior race who are destined to take
over Palestine, then the entire Middle East and finally the
world. This naturally leads to a resentment of Palestinian Arabs,
and all other Middle Eastern nations that sympathize with the
Palestinians intheir resistance to the program of pushing them out
of their historic homelands. Dispensationalism,
taken to its logical conclusion, leads to racism.
It should be emphasized that not all American
fundamentalists and evangelicals are dispensationalists. Not all
dispensationalists are Zionist who support the Israeli takeover of the Middle East,
although it would be difficult to find prominent
dispensationalist spokesman who would publicly disassociate themselves from Zionism.
A few dispensationalists display personal animosity and hatred toward members
of Middle Eastern ethnic groups they dislike, while most attempt to maintain
cordial relations with individuals fromsuch groups.
Having made these disclaimers, it must be admitted that the
modern dispensational movement produces a lot of rhetoric and
propaganda against the Arab peoples that can only be described as racist.
For instance, an article on the web site of Cutting Edge
Ministries of Attleboro, Massachusetts, in an article entitled "White
Hot Genocidal Arab Hatred of Israel and All Jews is Setting the
Stage for End of the Age Fulfillment of Prophecy," contains this
white hot denunciation of the Arabs: "As Arabs armies advanced
toward the heart of Europe, they wantonly killed, raped,
and pillaged entire villages and cities.
This is the true Arab, and please do not ever forget it."
In October, 2000, Evangelist Franklin Graham, son of Billy
Graham who has built a reputation for fighting racism, stunned
observers with this attack on the Arabs, made during a
"Festival" in Lexington, Kentucky: "The Arabs will not be happy until
every Jew is dead. They hate the state of Israel. They all hate the
Jews. God gave that land to the Jews. The Arabs will never accept
that. Why can't they live in peace?" Dispensationalist followers of
the Grahams apparently were undisturbed by this declaration
that all Arabs are evil and that they have no civil or property
rights in the land of their birth.
In his Last Call newsletter, Pastor F. M. Riley of Roswell,
New Mexico denounces the Palestinians as "lazy" and accuse them of
stealing Palestine from the Jews, saying, "The Palestinians (and other Arabs)
have never been anything but 'squatters' on land that never
belonged to them in the first place."
Even dispensationalists who do not indulge in overt racist
condemnations of the Arabs often follow the assumption that
the Palestinians are meant to be subservient to the recent
Jewish colonists and settlers who have taken over their country,
and that Palestinians are not entitled to the same basic human rights
as all other peoples and ethnic groups are. This is an inherently racist ideology.
Another common teaching among dispensationalists is that
the Palestinians Arabs are Edomites, or the "House of Esau,"
and that it is God's will that all the Old Testament curses and
judgments on the ancient Edomites are meant to fall upon the modern Palestinians.
However, in reality there is no connection between the
Edomites and the Palestinians. Josephus, in his "Antiquities of the Jews," Chapter IX, (2), stated that the entire Edomite or Idumean nation was absorbed into the Jewish nation in the 2nd Century BC, and this statement is accepted by modern historians and Biblereference works. Thus, much anti-Arab prejudice is based on a totally false application of Old Testament prophecies against ancient Edom (similar to the misapplication which places the "curse of Ham" upon modern blacks).
Meanwhile, although Iran is a non-Arab country, the current
government of Iran has sided with the Palestinians. As a
result, some dispensationalists regard the existence of Iran and
the Iranian people as a threat to their theological belief that Israel
must take over the Middle East and therefore Iran must be bashed
also, as was done by Jimmy DeYoung in an article in the October/November 1998 issue of the Zionist magazine "Israel My Glory," in which he states, contrary to all Biblical and historical evidence, that "Persia, that ancient biblical enemy of the Jewish people, is the modern state ofIran. The hatred the Persians had for the Jewish people has carried over to the Iran of today."
So, many modern dispensationalists are displeased with the
Arabs and the Iranians, for supposedly hindering the divine plan for Jewish hegemony in the Middle East. But it turns out that many of these dispensationalists are equally irritated with the Jews and will even vocally condemn Jews, for their alleged sin of choosing to live in America and other Western countries, instead of moving to Israel where they supposedly belong according to dispensational ideology.
Here we have a paradox - Gentiles are allowed to live in
America or anywhere else they wish (unless you are a Palestinian
desiring to live in Palestine, which is forbidden). But Jews, who are supposedly the master, superior race, are not allowed to choose where they can live like everyone else - they must live in Israel, the new ghetto set aside for them, or suffer the divine displeasure. Some have even suggested that the Holocaust during World War 2 was God's punishment upon the Jews for not relocating to Israel, and part of God's plan to force them to go there anyway.
Dwight Wilson in his book "Armageddon Now" has extensively
documented anti-Semitic attitudes on the part of some
dispensationalists in the early 20th Century, as well as
their distribution of the anti-Semitic forgery "Protocols of the
Elders of Zion." Regarding dispensationalists of the 1930's and their attitude to German persecution of the Jews, Wilson says, "In spite of being theologically more pro-Jewish than any other Christian group, the premillennarians also were apathetic - because of a residual anti-Semitism, because persecution was prophetically expected, because it would encourage immigration to Palestine, because it seemed the beginning of the Great Tribulation and because it was a wonderful sign of the imminent blessed hope." Since that time evangelical concern for the welfare of Jews, as well as Arabs, has often played second fiddle to their desire for their peculiar prophetic schemes to be fulfilled, regardless of the cost in human misery.
Meanwhile, entire sermons have been preached and books have
been written on the subject of the greedy Jew who stays in
America so he can make money, instead of going to Israel where he belongs. The 1987 book "Let My People Go - The Struggle of the Jewish People to Return to Israel" by Tom Hess has on its front cover a Jewish man who is unable to go to Israel, because he is chained to a pole marked "Wall Street," thus perpetuating the offensive stereotypes of the rapacious Jew who will do anything for money.
Although there has never been a society more hospitable to
the Jews than America, this book attempts to scare Jews into fleeing to Israel, saying that millions of American Jews will soon be butchered by the KKK, Islamic terrorists or the KGB unless they hightail it for the Holy Land now. In a chapter entitled "American Jews" - Bound by Materialism," Hess accuses American Jews of being enslaved by the god of mammon, and tells them, "It's time to stop saying, 'I'm an American Jew,' stop bowing down and worshipping the god of materialism in America and fulfill your end-time biblical destiny. Return to the land of your forefather..."
If someone demanded that Americans of African, Mexican or
Chinese ancestry stop identifying themselves as Americans and get out of the country, and go back where their ancestors came from, this would quickly be identified and condemned as reprehensible racism. If we do thus to American Jews, it is clearly racism also.
In discussing the latent racism against Jews, Arabs and
other Middle Eastern peoples, on the part of dispensationalist who are frustrated of all these peoples to do exactly what they think is necessary to fulfill by the failure the "Armageddon theology" end-times fantasies that have been predicted by their favorite prophecy preachers, it must be emphasized that I am not accusing all dispensationalists of being racists or holding to racist views. This article
describes the attitudes of some dispensationalists, not all of them. No doubt there are many sincere dispensationalists who would publicly repudiate such views, if given the opportunity.
Therefore, I hereby invite all American dispensationalists
to publicly subscribe to and declare their agreement with the
following 2-point manifesto against racism:
1. We affirm that all Americans Jews are to be embraced and
welcomed as American citizens at all times, and encouraged to stay in
America if they wish, to enjoy the benefits that this society has provided for the Jewish people.
At no time will we give the impression that American Jews do not
belong here or that they belong in Israel.
2. We affirm that the Palestinian people are endowed with
the same human, civil and property rights as all other peoples of
the world, including the right to reside in their homeland, to travel
freely, to govern themselves free of foreign military occupation,
and to return to their homeland in the event that they have been
exiled. Whatever privileges we may regard the Jews as having been divinely in this dispensation, those privileges do not include the right to oppress the Palestinians in any way or to expropriate their property without compensation.
This is a platform that all of us, dispensationalists and
non- dispensationalists, can agree on. It is a scriptural
platform, because the Bible teaches that there is no difference
between the Jew and the Greek (Romans 10:12), that God has put no difference between Jews and Gentiles (Acts 15:9), that God has made of one blood all the peoples of the earth (Acts 17:26), and that in Christ there is Jew or Greek (Galatians 3:28). The Apostle Paul taught that there is no advantage in being a Jew, Galatians 5:6, 6:15, Philippians 3:3-9.
Any theological teaching that gives Jews a place of
privilege over Palestinians or Gentiles in general, or that places any added burdens and restrictions upon the Jews because of their ethnicity, is a relic of an unenlightened past, should be erased from our thinking or preaching.
Mr. Thomas Williamson is an ordained Baptist minister who
lives inChicago, Illinois. He contributes to Media Monitors Network (MMN)from time to time.
