Heretics oftentimes cherry-pick the Bible, omitting what is inconvenient and connecting what is not related to advance an agenda foreign to the biblical witness.
Marcion taught that the Old Testament God was different from God the Father.
Arius taught that Jesus was a created and finite being.
Pelagius taught that we are born without an inclination to sin, and some have actually managed to live without sinning.
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All of these early heretics used the Bible to argue for their heresies.
Today, there is a new group of online influencers who use the Bible to execrate Jews and Judaism, contradicting the teachings of both Testaments.
Bible Church pastor Joel Webbon is one of the loudest and most malicious of them all. He argues that the New Testament is not concerned with physical Jews, only with those who accept Christ. He cites Paul’s statement in Romans 2 that “no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly” because “circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit.” Therefore, Webbon alleges, we Christians are to “put no stock in the flesh” of Jews unless they accept the Jewish Messiah.
This means that God has terminated His eternal covenant with the Jewish people and has no concern for them unless they convert to Christianity.
But Webbon does not stop there.
He attacks Jewish character with shocking calumny. In a recent post on X, he pronounced that “those of Jewish descent are generally marked by subversion, deceit, and greed.” In words that are light years from what Jesus and Paul uttered about second-temple Judaism, Webbon writes that the Jewish religion is “parasitical.” We have not heard such antisemitic invective since the mass rallies of Nazis in the 1930s. Christians who wonder why so many in the German churches looked the other way when Jews started to disappear should take notice.
Webbon’s contempt for non-Messianic Jews would shock St. Paul (a Jew) who said his fellow Jews who had “zeal without knowledge” (Rom 10:2) were nevertheless “beloved” by God because of their fathers the patriarchs (Rom 11:28). St. Peter (a Jew) would say that Webbon’s malevolence is condemned by the God who “shows no partiality” and repudiates ethnic defamation (Acts 10:34).
Like every heretic, Webbon omits much in the New Testament that is inconvenient for his thesis. For example, just two verses after Paul lauds circumcision of the heart (which is commended explicitly in Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Jeremiah), he asks, “Then what value has the Jew? What is the value of circumcision? Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God” (Rom 3:1-2). So, Webbon believes circumcision has no more value before God, but Paul disagrees, and just after Webbon’s misguided prooftext.
Besides signaling that non-Christian Jews still have something precious — the oracles of God — Paul argues in this same letter to the Roman church that his “kinsmen according to the flesh” are “Israelites” and still possess “the adoption” as God’s “firstborn son” (Ex 4:22) and “the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises” are still theirs (Rom 9:3-4). Again, Webbon misrepresents Paul: the Texas preacher claims Paul denigrates Judaism without Christ, but Paul exalts its gifts.
Webbon despises Jews who have not seen Jesus, but Paul has “unceasing anguish” for them (Rom 9:2). Webbon suggests that God hates Jews and no longer counts them as His Chosen People, but Paul says they “are [present tense] beloved by God because of the Fathers [the patriarchs]” (Rom 11:28). And their “calling” as God’s Chosen People is “irrevocable” (Rom 11:29). Like every heretic, Webbon tries so hard to promote his agenda that he has to twist the Scriptures in order to do so.
Webbon claims the Jews of modern Israel have nothing to do with biblical Israel, and alleges that the Jewish state is made up primarily of Ashkenazi Jews whose DNA does not match that of New Testament Jews. Both of Webbon’s allegations are wrong. Mizrahi Jews from North Africa actually slightly outnumber Ashkenazi Jews, and tests have shown that Ashkenazi Jews do indeed have DNA proving links with first-century Israel.
Webbon proclaims proudly that “the state of Israel is not biblical Israel.” This is a strawman. It is not a claim that most Christian Zionists make. Instead, the New Christian Zionism is more subtle but biblical, that the state of Israel is a necessary protection for the covenanted people, whose return to the land in the last three centuries fulfills biblical prophecy.
Even the New Testament prophesies that the Jews will return to the land from the four corners of the earth. In his second speech in Jerusalem, delivered after Jesus’ resurrection, Peter says there is still to come a future apokatastasis, using the Greek word in the Septuagint (the primary Bible for the early church) for the return of Jews to the land from the four corners of the earth (Acts 3:21). For Peter, then, the return from exile in Babylon did not fulfill the Old Testament’s prophecies of return. Nor did Jesus’ resurrection. There was a future return to come. And we know this did not happen for another 1,800 years.
Historians agree that a massive return of Jews to the land began in the eighteenth century. Webbon and his cohorts, such as Calvin Robinson (who has heroically fought for biblical truth elsewhere but sadly endorses Webbon’s diatribes), ignore Peter’s prophecy.
They also ignore Jeremiah 31, where God says that as long as the sun, moon, and stars remain in the sky, the Jewish people will always be a nation before him (vv 35-36). The implication of their claims is that God changed His mind about this promise, which would mean that Jesus was wrong when He proclaimed in Matthew 5:17-18 that every stroke of the pen in the Old Testament is from God.
Webbon and his allies cannot afford to acknowledge other critical New Testament evidence that undermines their distortions — most importantly, the land promise in the apostolic documents. The Hebrew Bible says explicitly or implicitly one thousand times that God gave the land of the Canaanites to Abraham and his progeny, and at least three times the New Testament repeats this promise. The author of Hebrews says God led Abraham to a place to receive as an inheritance, and that Isaac and Jacob were heirs with him of the same promise (Heb 11:9). Before his martyrdom deacon Stephen said God promised to give Abraham this land as a possession and to his offspring after him (Acts 7:4-5). Paul tells the synagogue at Antioch of Pisidia that “the God of this people Israel chose our fathers, and after destroying seven nations in the land of Canaan, he gave them their land as an inheritance” (Acts 13:17-19).
The Holocaust proved that Jews need a state to protect them from antisemites who would destroy them. This is as true today as it was one hundred years ago. The Jewish state is not perfect. Christian Zionism is not an endorsement of everything modern Israel does. We cannot know if this form of the Jewish state is the last we will see before the eschaton.
But we should affirm what the Bible teaches — that the Jews are still God’s Chosen People, they are His “beloved,” and their return to the land is a fulfillment of God’s promises. Because they need a state to protect them, and this state is the only state in the Middle East that provides political and religious freedom to non-Jews, this new movement to denigrate Jews, Judaism, and the Jewish state should trouble all Christians. These influencers are uttering libels similar to those made in Germany a century ago.
Another antisemite, Candace Owens, accuses Israel of the very thing Hamas and Iran have attempted — genocide of the Jewish people. Owens claims Israel is attempting genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. I have written elsewhere to show the absurdity of this charge, but suffice it to say that the United Nations has defined genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” (my emphasis).
If Israel were intending to destroy the Palestinian people, why has it given world-class education and healthcare — not to mention religious and political freedoms — to its two million Palestinian citizens? Why does it send Arab-language warnings to residents before an attack so they can save their lives? Why does it risk its foot soldiers by sending them into booby-trapped buildings when it could simply destroy the buildings from the air? Retired British Colonel Richard Kemp has told the BBC, “I don’t think there’s ever been a time in the history of warfare when any army has made more efforts to reduce civilian casualties and deaths of innocent people than the IDF is doing today in Gaza.”
Like Marcion, Webbon and his allies suggest that the God of the Old Testament is different from the God of the New Testament, which implies that the New Testament errs when it testifies that God loves the Jewish people, that they are still his Chosen People, and that the land promise is still in place. Marcion agreed with what these influencers suggest, that only some parts of the New Testament are inspired.
Like Arius, Webbon and his allies reject the profound Jewishness of Jesus and His apostles, and Jesus’ commitment to the revelation of the Old Testament.
Like Pelagius, Webbon and his allies suggest that God’s history of redemption is based on human works and not grace. They imply that God’s covenant with the Jewish people is based on Israel’s performance and not his sovereign will.
These Christian antisemites display the “arrogance” and “pride” that Paul warns gentile Christians against in Romans 11. They ignore Paul’s warning to “understand the mystery” of Israel, and they disregard his inspired declaration that the “whole lump” of Israel is holy, even its broken-off branches (Rom 11:16, 25). They suggest that we gentile Jesus-followers are above the “root” instead of sustained by the root of Israel (v. 18). They deny what Scripture insists on, that Paul’s “kinsmen according to the flesh” are “Israelites” and that to them still “belong the adoption … and the promises” (Rom 9:3).
As a result of their selective and prejudiced reading of Scripture, they present a different God and a different gospel from that of the Bible. As heretics always do.
Christians should denounce this new antisemitism among their own, and teach what Scripture teaches: “Has God rejected his people? By no means! … Do not be arrogant toward the branches. If you are, remember it is not you who support the root but the root that supports you … So do not become proud, but stand in awe” (Rom 11:1, 18, 20).
If we do not call out this unbiblical ignorance and hatred, future generations will ask us what we ask about the churches of Europe in the first half of the 20th century, how could they not see? Why did they not speak up?
Gerald McDermott teaches at Jerusalem Seminary and Reformed Episcopal Seminary. He is editor of The New Christian Zionism and Understanding the Jewish Roots of Christianity, and author of Israel Matters and A New History of Redemption.
