Proclaiming Justice with Laurie Cardoza Moore

Pastor Mark Biltz: Replacement theology leads to a lot of the persecutions, the pogroms. I mean, when you look at the Holocaust, it really started almost 2,000 years earlier with the beginning roots of the church, so to speak. Hitler just built on what the church had said.

As far as the church is concerned, they believe that they've replaced Israel. But they don't realize that we're grafted into the Israel of the Bible, the Jewish people. When you think about it, there were no churches in the New Testament. Now that's a mind-blower for people. "What do you mean there were no churches in the New Testament?"

Laurie Cardoza Moore: Welcome to Proclaiming Justice, a podcast from PJTN that focuses the light of truth on vital issues in today's headlines that impact every American. I'm your host, Laurie Cardoza Moore, founder and president of Proclaiming Justice to the Nations, and I'm here to educate, motivate, and activate you to action. I want to arm you with the truth and the facts you'll need to fight and preserve our constitutional republic and uphold the Judeo-Christian values our nation was founded upon.

At PJTN, we exist to confront lies with truth and to bring biblical clarity to the moral crises shaping our world today. As antisemitic ideas once again gain traction in media, culture, and even within the church, it's important to understand that these narratives did not begin in our generation.

In this episode, Pastor Mark Biltz walks us through the doctrine known as Replacement Theology, explaining how it emerged, how scripture was mistranslated and misapplied, and how the false belief that the church replaced Israel laid a theological foundation for centuries of hostility toward the Jewish people. This is a re-release, but the message is more urgent now than ever. If Christians are going to stand for biblical truth, justice, and God's unchanging covenant with Israel, this is a conversation we cannot afford to ignore.

Pastor Mark Biltz: Replacement theology comes in many forms, and this is part of the problem of trying to discuss what replacement theology is because there are some people out there—and these are theologians, people that have all their degrees and everything—but it is even written in some of their books that are very popular. One of them is called Identity Crisis, and it's where they believe that the Jews of today are not the Jews of the scripture. I mean, it goes to where it is unbelievable that they don't believe that the Jewish people today are the same Jews of the scripture.

As far as the church is concerned, they believe that they've replaced Israel. In Romans chapter 11, almost every Christian is familiar with the fact that it says we're grafted into Israel. But much of the church believes that Jesus came and he planted a whole different tree. So it's like there are two trees. There's this Israel natural tree and they get all the curses and none of the blessings, and then there's the church which Jesus started and all the Christians are grafted into this church Jesus started. But they don't realize that we're grafted into Israel, the Israel of the Bible, the Jewish people.

From the Jewish side, replacement theology leads to a lot of the persecutions, the pogroms. It really started, when you look at the Holocaust, it really started almost 2,000 years earlier with the beginning roots of the church, so to speak. The church had said to the Jewish people that you cannot live among us as Jews. In other words, they were requiring all the Jews to convert to Christianity.

And so when they said that the Jewish people cannot live among us as Jews, well then the state, since a lot of these had state-sponsored churches so to speak, the state said, "Okay, well the Jews cannot live among us as Jews, well we'll just say the Jews cannot live among us." And so they kicked them out of all their countries. And so the last 2,000 years is the history of different nation-states kicking all the Jews out of their countries if they would not convert to Christianity.

And then all Hitler did, Hitler just built on what the church had said. The church had said the Jews cannot live among us as Jews, the state says the Jews cannot live among us, and so Hitler just said the Jews cannot live. So it was all built historically on what the church had said.

The problem is a lot of the translators were biased as well. And so with a lot of the English Bibles, of course, some of them are versions rather than translations, but here's one of the common errors that any one of the Christians that are listening to this program can go and get out their Basic Strong's Concordance and see the error and the bias in the translations. It is so obvious.

For example, many people know that the word "church" is translated as either *ekklesia* or *ecclesia*, however you want to say it. But what's interesting is in the gospels where Yeshua—and by Yeshua, I mean Jesus' real name, obviously Mary didn't know English—anyway, Yeshua said, "Upon this rock I will build my..." and now what's the word? In English we say church. Well, when you think about it, there were no churches in the New Testament. Now that's a mind-blower for people. "What do you mean there were no churches in the New Testament?"

The reason why I say that is they weren't speaking English. There were only assemblies. And by that I mean congregations, people meeting together. They weren't known as a church; that's an English word. The Greek word was *ekklesia* or *ecclesia*, like I said. Well, the problem is in Acts, everyone is worshipping the goddess of Ephesus, worshipping the goddess of the Ephesians. And in Acts it says when they were all done with this riot that was taking place because everyone wanted to worship the goddess Diana, it says, "and then they dismissed the *ekklesia*." Oops, we don't want to put "church" because then they'll think the church was worshipping the pagans.

So here you have this very same word meaning assembly. They will pick and choose if they're going to translate it as assembly or if they're going to translate it as church, depending on their bias. Well, the word *synagoge*, that is translated in English as synagogue, right? Well, what people don't know is *synagoge* and *ekklesia* were synonyms; they meant the same thing, identically the same thing. They just meant assembly, a group of people assembled together.

So for example, the Dallas Cowboys: if you go to a Dallas Cowboys game, guess what? That's an *ekklesia*. That's a *synagoge*. It's an assembly of people; that's all that that word meant back then. Well, what do we find? In the book of Revelation, it talks about those of the "synagogue of Satan." Well, the translators put "synagogue of Satan." There it is, *synagoge*, that's a synagogue of Satan. So what happens? We get this bias that the synagogue is evil, bad.

Well, guess what? In the book of James—and believe it or not, his name wasn't James; you can look in any translation, his name was Jacob. But anyway, for the listener audience, I'll say James. It talks about if one comes into your assembly with a gold ring or rich apparel, he's not to be preferred. Well, guess what the word for assembly is there? It's *synagoge*. But here the translators don't want to put, "oh, if one comes into your synagogue," because they want to think everyone's meeting in the church.

So here, even though *synagoge* and *ekklesia* mean the same thing, assembly, they will pick and choose what they want. And I think what's sad is, as many people know, in the Israeli situation, the Palestinian media talks about demonizing Jews in all their school curriculum. And so if you're growing up and you're hearing all this demonization of Jews in your school, in your crossword puzzles, in your comic books and everything else, you just come to believe that way.

Well, that's what has happened to the body of Messiah—and I'll use that rather than church because that's what has happened. And I believe there are many people that are innocent out there that love Israel and a lot of people say they don't believe in replacement theology, but they don't know because of how they've been educated over the last 2,000 years how much replacement theology they really do have. For example, if I were to ask you who are the early church fathers, who is going to come to your mind? Well, I'll tell you what, who comes to my mind is Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They are the early church fathers.

I tell you what, I take God's word very literally and I believe it is inerrant. And when I say I believe he's the same yesterday, today, and forever, then I really mean that. Truth never changes; two plus two will always be equal four. And you can't change God's word. And God gave the land historically to the Jewish people; it was given to them by God. And so it belongs to them.

Now, I think the important thing when it comes to this "Christ at the Checkpoint"—I'm a little bit familiar with it, not fully familiar with it—but the reason why they have these barriers... I've been to Israel many times. I've been to Hebron, I've been to Shiloh, I've been to Itamar where the Fogel family were murdered. And so I don't see a problem with having a wall to protect yourself. Borders are a good thing; walls are a good thing if it's to prevent people from killing you. The whole reason there would not be a need to have a wall is if the Jews weren't being continuously, constantly attacked.

And so I think they need these checkpoints. As a matter of fact, I'm glad it's not personally related to me so people watching this won't necessarily know who I'm talking about, but I have relatives in Israel. As a matter of fact, one of them is Arab; he's a Palestinian. He lives in Jerusalem. And the last thing he wants is an Arab country. He wants an Israeli country because he feels safe.

He knows the minute that this becomes a divided state, the Muslim Brotherhood could take over and he'd be killed, just like in Egypt; all the Coptic Christians are fleeing because they don't want to be murdered. If anyone believes in ethnic cleansing, it's the Muslim Brotherhood. I mean, you don't see a lot of congregations in Saudi Arabia; you don't see a lot of congregations or other denominations in these Arab countries.

And so the Jews, they have no problem allowing different denominations. They just don't want to be killed. And so that's why they have these borders. And this whole idea of Chrislam, uniting Christian and Islam together, is just totally crazy. I have some relatives that think this way too, that Allah and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are the same. Even past presidents believe that of the United States. God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is not Allah.

Allah, according to their writings—the Muslim writing—they say, "Here's a Jew behind this rock or this tree, come and kill him." But the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob does not want to kill his own people. I think people need to have a proper understanding. There is a famous book out called *Time Immemorial* that's absolutely incredible. And what people need to realize is the Jews are not occupying Palestinian land because there never was Palestinian land. There never was a Palestinian government; there never was a Palestinian language. These were all Arabs, basically, who were living in the Palestinian area just like the Jews were.

As a matter of fact, if you go back before 1948, the Jews had their passports and they said Palestinian passports. These were Jewish people that were living in Palestine. Now yes, there were some Arabs who lived in that area over the last several thousand years, but when people went to Israel several hundred years ago, there wasn't anybody there. It was desolate, basically.

And so most of the Arabs that came, came when the Jews came. As the Jews came and they started being productive and having farms and building up things, a lot of the Arabs moved there themselves from other Arab countries to be there. So it's not like it was completely filled with all these millions of Arabs and then the Jews came in and took over and occupied it.

As a matter of fact—now I can't speak for all of the Arab population there, because there were Arabs who lived there who had Palestinian passports just like the Jews had Palestinian passports—but going back to my relative situation, he said during the 1967 war when Jordan had half of Jerusalem and Israel had the other half, his whole family had Jordanian passports. But after the war when the war ended, the Jordanian government said, "We're revoking your passports; you're no longer Jordanians, you're now Palestinians."

And the same thing in the Gaza Strip. Here all these Egyptians that were in the Gaza Strip area, they closed the border when they lost the Gaza Strip and they said, "Guess what? All you Egyptians, you're separated from your family on the Egyptian side. You've got to stay over there. We revoke your passports; you're now Palestinians." So these people aren't Palestinians. They're Egyptians, they're Jordanians, they're Lebanese, they're Syrians, or whatever, who had their passports revoked.

And so here now all of a sudden, in one sense I feel for the Palestinians because they were rejected by all of their brethren, the Arab countries. They weren't allowed to come back to see their family. Well, I would be very upset if I was them, because if you're not an Israeli citizen but you're not from another country, you just got cut off by your own country, what are you to do? So I really feel for them.

But to think that now as all these populations increased of the people in these areas who are now part of the indigenous population over the last 60 years, that's total absurdity. The real problem is the Arabs that don't allow their own people to return. I would bet you in a handbasket that 90% of them would go home if they could, if their Jordanians would allow them to become Jordanian citizens or the Egyptians would allow those in the Gaza to become Egyptians. But the problem is right now it's controlled by Hamas and they want to be a thorn in Israel's side. And so that's why they have these borders.

Laurie Cardoza Moore: Thank you again for joining me on this edition of Proclaiming Justice. Please share this podcast with your family and friends. For more information about how you can get involved, please visit our website at PJTN.org. As a PJTN Watchman, you can help us keep up the fight to preserve our freedom for our children and their children for such a time as this.