Episode 235

On this episode of the Removing Barriers Podcast, we sit down with Dr. Phil Stringer and Dr. Jim Scudder to discuss arguable the most polarizing nation in the world today: Israel. In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the political right in the United States has in many ways splintered (some would even argue it has fractured), and the issue underlying this change seems to be Israel and the U.S.’ staunch support of it. The disagreement can even be found in the church today. Where before, Christians of every stripe would be unified on the support of Israel, today we find that a substantial and growing number of Christians no longer view Israel favorably and are opposed the our current stance of steadfast support. What has brought about this change? Is it the war Trump waged on Iran? Perhaps the events in response to the October 7th attacks? Could it be that the Information Age has made it so that many can study the events of the past surrounding Israel for themselves? Or is this a spiritual war whose roots run long and deep? Dr. Phil Stringer is no stranger to the podcast and he is joined by his friend and co-author Dr. Jim Scudder to discuss how they believe the anti-Israel stance is the result of the spiritual war against God and His people, and how Christians across the board are lured into adopting an anti-biblical stance. These men wrote a book titled The Spiritual War Against Israel, in which they lay out their reasoning for this change and what Christians can do to fight back.

[Pastor Jim]

The Spiritual War Against Israel, you can find it on Amazon and Kindle is available now as well. You can also get it at ingrace.us, ingrace.us. And our In Grace YouTube channels, we have In Grace Israel. If you like archaeology and apologetics and adventure, you got to watch In Grace Israel. We have In Grace Adventures, 2 channels on YouTube. But we’re also, Dr. Stringer and I are doing a series on the book, The Spiritual War Against Israel on the In Grace Israel YouTube channel.

[Jay]

Thank you for tuning in to the Removing Barriers podcast. I’m Jay and I’m MCG. And we’re attempting to remove barriers so we can all have a clear view of the cross.

[MCG]

This is episode 235 of the Removing Barriers podcast. And in this episode, we will be sitting down with two men who have been dedicated to educating and preaching biblical truths for decades. First, we have Dr. Jim Scudder Jr… Dr. Scudder is a pastor, author, and media host. He served as the senior pastor of Quinton Road Baptist Church in Lake Zurich, Illinois, and president of Dayspring Bible College and Seminary. He has a Bachelor of Biblical Studies and an honorary doctorate of divinity. And second, we have Dr. Phil Stringer. Dr. Phil Stringer is no stranger to the Removing Virus podcast, as we have had him in episodes 197 and 232. Dr. Stringer is the vice president of the King James Bible Research Council and vice president of Dayspring Bible College and Seminary. He is an author and lecturer and holds, among others, a PhD in the English Bible. Dr. Phil Stringer and Dr. Jim Scotter join us to discuss their brand-new book, The Spiritual War Against Israel.

[Jay]

Hi, this is Jay. MCG and I would like for you to help us remove barriers by going to removingbarriers.net and subscribing to receive all things removing barriers. If you’d like to take your efforts a bit further and help us keep the mics on, consider donating at removingbarriers.net/donate. Removing barriers, a clear view of the cross.

[MCG]

Pastor Jim, Dr. Stringer, it is indeed a pleasure. Welcome to the Removing Barriers podcast.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

Absolutely a joy to be back. Appreciate the time I get to spend with you folks.

[Pastor Jim]

Yeah, thank you. It’s great to be on.

[MCG]

Yeah, definitely. I must say I got a chance to read the book from digital cover to digital cover. And I learned a lot. There’s a lot in there that I did not know, and there’s a lot in there that was cleared up for me. So I’ll definitely encourage our listeners to grab a copy of the book and to definitely read it, maybe get a copy to give to someone as well. And one thing I also like is the fact that I could not tell who was the author of the book by the style of the writing. I constantly had to look. So I don’t know if it was planned that way or what, or maybe I’m just not that great of a reader, but I really enjoy the fact that you guys were in harmony that way.

[Pastor Jim]

Well, if it was really deep and technical and hard to understand in an intellectual level, that had to be Dr. Stringer because that’s his mind.

[MCG]

All right.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

Should we tell him the story of the first book we wrote together?

[Pastor Jim]

Yeah.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

We have another book called Evangelism Made Simple, and he wrote some of the chapters, I wrote some of the chapters, and in that book, we did not have the chance to check each other’s work beforehand. And I will tell you, when we got the book at a conference hosted at the church. I had not seen any of his parts. And normally I would go home after the conference and just rest. How bad is this? How much did we get in each other’s way? How much did we trample on each other? So I went home and read it that night, that whole book, and I was so pleased. God was just gracious to us. First time we were trying something like that, it was just mercy. This time we worked at it. This time we read each other’s parts. We made comments. We made suggestions. We did it the way we were supposed to. We weren’t sure We could count on God to be so gracious to us, again, without our doing our part. But that’s an interesting comment, and it is certainly a reflection. We don’t have the same style of speaking, or I don’t think even necessarily the same style of writing. We have absolutely the same doctrine behind all of this. That’s what ties it together.

[MCG]

Well, why don’t we get into the book? Tell us what was the aim behind the book, the inspiration behind the book, whatever you wanted us to as the intro to the book.

[Pastor Jim]

You know, the topic, the hot topic of the day, one of them is Israel. And, you know, isn’t that interesting? Because it’s a little sliver of a country. You know, why is it always in the news? Why is it always, you know, disparaged and the Jews disparaged? So I think we just got tired of it. We just got tired of people bashing Israel and the Jewish people when we should be doing quite the opposite as people that have been saved by a Jewish man who died for our sins. You know, he had an Imma and Abba. He lived all over Israel, grew up in Nazareth and was born in Bethlehem. So why shouldn’t we love Israel for that? Even if you don’t have our eschatology, why wouldn’t we still support and love the people that brought us Jesus and the Bible? Of course, we both feel there is a biblical future for Israel and they’re the apple of God’s eye. So I think we just got tired of people bashing Israel. And Dr. Stringer’s background in history made it like a really, really good proposition where he could write about all of these anti-Semitic groups in tropes and themes over the centuries. And I can write the biblical positions. He could have written the whole book, but I was privileged enough to write some of the chapters and go over some of the miracles of modern day Israel. And I’ve been there a lot. I’ve been there almost 30 times. So I had that background too.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

A real inspiration for me I’ve been in ministry for 53 years, and I always knew the anti-Semitism and all of that was there, but it was there in other groups. It wasn’t in the evangelical Christianity, it wasn’t in fundamental Christianity, it wasn’t among independent Baptists, however term you use. And so it was sort of outside our realm, and it was there, you’d occasionally come across it. It’s probably only been in the last two years. that I’ve seen this enter our realm and it has spread faster than anything I’ve ever seen in 53 years of doing this. It’s just unparalleled the speed with which this is swept across and it’s influencing people, influencing churches. I’ve talked in the last week to two pastors who’ve lost people from their church because they believe Israel still exists. You know, I mean, this is just everywhere. And it got there so quickly. And I felt it was important that you could deal with the theological issues and the historical issues in the same book, that you could sit down between two covers and get the key points in terms of all that. And while I’ve come across some good material on aspects of this, I wanted us to have something that was all together. And I thought that was, for me, a real inspiration. And frankly, we’re trying to meet a real need.

[Jay]

Now, if we were to consider everything we hear online about Israel, it runs the gamut. It’s either Israel is responsible for Egyptian planes in the sky, Charlie Kirk’s death, as well as the bank that refuses to lend you money. And then it goes all the way to the right where Israel can do no wrong and we should worship the ground they walk on. And in the middle, you have people that are giving some convincing, if you would say, arguments as to why we should be against There are so many voices on the issue. What things should we keep in mind when we’re trying to figure out who we should turn to, who we should be listening to for a clear understanding on the issue of Israel?

[Pastor Jim]

I think it’s pretty simple. I know you both know this, CG&J. I think just be biblical. Use the Bible as the guide on this. And I think Dr. Stringer, we just did a show for our TBN show today, and he said, he’s already always believed this, but the more he researched it, I’ll let you tell it, but the more he’s seen the future of Israel all over the Bible. Explain that, Dr. Stringer.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

Yeah, it really is. I’ve held this position. I can’t even remember holding another position. It’s probably what I was taught as a child in church. It was what I was taught in Bible college and just what I’ve always held to. But the last seven months since we agreed to start this project, I have just been overwhelmed to see how big an issue it is in scripture, how many places it is referred to, how important it obviously is to God for us to understand this, to be able to see the whole picture. And just for example, dayspring, one of our goals is to have a class on every book of the Bible, have a library class on every book of the Bible. And I set out three years ago, I’m responsible for the academics. kind of harder to get people to volunteer to do books the size of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel. So I signed three of those to myself and been working on those the last three years. And you’ll hear these folks that are steeped in the anti-Semitism, anti-Israel, so forth. They’re constantly quoting phrases. out of those books and other places in scripture where God is angry at Israel. And no question about it. That is a major theme, God dealing with Israel and his failures. But what I discovered over the last three years teaching those classes is that every time, which is almost every chapter in those books, is dealing with God’s anger at Israel for disobedience. Sometimes the message goes on for chapters and chapters. But every single one of those messages of judgment concludes every one. concludes with a promise of restoration. You have not seen the whole picture until you’ve seen that God has an eternal purpose for Israel, not because Israel is worthy or deserving or has always been obedient, or that everything the modern nation of Israel does is good now, but because God created Israel for a purpose. That purpose is to be a testimony to the truth of a creator God to a pagan world. That purpose never goes away. And as often as Israel fails, people today. When you think of Israel, you think of the testimony of a creator God. You don’t think of a pagan nation worshiping many gods. And so that really gripped me. And then the seven months since we started working on the book, I realized what a master theme this is of the Bible and how you have to see it to completely see. I’m certainly not saying that everybody doesn’t get this as unsaved, but to see the whole picture, God made an eternal an everlasting covenant with Israel, His words, not mine. And He gave us eternal and everlasting salvation. Man, if I can’t trust eternal and everlasting when it comes to Israel, how do I trust words like eternal and everlasting when it comes to my salvation? And it’s also sadly a fact that I have not earned or deserved my salvation, but my salvation is an eternal free gift from God. It’s everlasting. It is incredible. that it is mine in spite of the fact that I do not deserve it. And Israel is a picture of that, what God has done for us as individuals at the cross. And Israel stands as eternal testimony to the truth of the Creator God. The church stands as a testimony to the truth of the Redeemer God. And the church was given a commission to take the message of redemption to the whole world, which is why you’re wanting to remove barriers so people can hear that message and get it. And the whole picture of God comes together when you understand this. And the importance of that, I’ve been in this business for a good while. I’ve been busy preaching for long. I’ve preached in 49 states and 30 countries and all that. But I got to say, the last seven months has made an impression on me about how big a part this is in the whole story. And we talk about basic fundamental doctrines. Israel is a fundamental doctrine. God spends so much time on it to see the whole picture. You really need to see Israel and Israelology. I found one author that calls it and I have now adopted that term. And also I have to say you have the joy that I have in knowing that God keeps his promises. And my eternity is based and tied up in that joy that God keeps promises. And you begin to find that character of God represented in the promises he has made to Israel and how he has kept them.

[Pastor Jim]

So Jay, your question was like, what voice do you listen to? I’m not being flippant at all when I say we just need to listen what God says because you have the spectrum and you have right and left that’s getting this very wrong. So we really, really, really need to get into the word. And you’re going to glean stuff like Dr. Stringer just said, which I guess I didn’t realize that every time God was pronouncing judgment on Israel, it did end with a proclamation of, I have a future for you. And then we connect that today because we have promises too, that it’s very important that we have a promise keeping God.

[MCG]

Yeah, definitely. Well, let’s get into the book, some of the book, because as I said, I’ve read it and Jay is a busy wife and she didn’t get to read it as much as maybe I’m a little bit more of a slacker, so I got to read it. So Dr. Stringer, in the introduction, in the introduction, mind you, you said it is the theme of this book that the only position that can harmonize all biblical statements on Israel interpret them literally and present them clearly is the premillennial pre-tribulational Christian Zionist position. Now, do you want to show any more gasoline on that fire of a statement?

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

Sure. Loads of gasoline here with me. I’m a judge in my study. Give J. Vernon McGee credit for expressing it that way. You go through his through the Bible commentaries and he would point this out constantly that here’s a passage that if you interpret it literally, you have to take that position. Now again, he would say here, this passage, if you interpret literally, where he’d say, this passage throws out all these different theories, like replacement theology and so forth, if you interpret it literally. And God purposely made the Bible so we have to study it. It’s not grab a phrase here, grab a phrase here. And it studies hard work. And we’re commanded to study, and in connection with being commanded to study, we’re commanded to rightfully divide the word of truth, which we were talking about a couple weeks ago. And the only way you can take everything literally is to hold that position. Otherwise, you have to come to part to scripture where it was, well, that’s symbolic, or that’s not for today. And I use this illustration. Years ago, I was administrator at another Bible college, and I was gonna teach the book of Zechariah. It had not been taught before. I was gonna teach it. Again, one of those books everybody didn’t jump to volunteer to teach. And I’ve got a long day. I have a major car work done. So I go, I’m sitting in the lobby of the car dealer, I’ve got three commentaries with me that I’m working using to get this class. It’s not a book of Zechariah. First commentary is written in 1880s. It’s excellent when it goes through the visions that make up the first half of the book of Zechariah. Then you come to the second-half and it says, the second-half is about Israel and the tribulation in the millennium. It says you can’t take this literally. So Israel can never be a nation again. So he guesses at what all these things are symbolic of. You go to the second book written in the 1920s, And the author gets to the second-half and he said, now, this is hard for us to comprehend. He said, it’s hard to imagine that Israel could ever be a nation again. But the Bible says it will be. And since the Bible says it will be, we have to believe that and we have to take this literally. You get to the third book, it’s in the 1980s. That author did not feel the need to address the subject of whether Israel could be a nation again for obvious reasons. He didn’t spend a sentence on it. And if you don’t do that, take that position, there’s parts you have to say, well, this really means that, or they mean something else, or that’s not. Somebody told me the other day that the promises that God gave for the borders of Israel, they’ll one day be the borders of Israel. So we can’t take that literally. Well, you take that position of the scripture, and we address the subject to a literal interpretation of the scripture. Which parts do we make symbolic? It’s almost like, gee, the parts I can’t understand, those are symbolic, and we’ll make them a picture of something, and we don’t have to wrestle with that. If you do not take the pre-tribulational, pre-millennial, Christian Zionist position, you have to start asking yourself which parts of the Bible am I going to make symbolic and not take literally? And that’s dangerous because you never know when you’re going to stop when you start on that process. And it’s amazing, Independent Baptist movement, and I’ve spent a lot of time teaching Baptist heritage. I’ve done a lot of Baptist here at these conferences over the last 50 years. And the first and most basic Baptist distinctive is sole authority scripture. It’s the only authority we have. And that’s why I think this issue wasn’t a problem in Baptist churches for many, many years. We just took everything lit. Bible said Israel’s gonna do this someday. We just believed Israel’s gonna do that someday. And that controlled our approach to Bible interpretation. It controlled our approach to preaching and so forth. And there’s been a great lessening and influence on the Baptist distinctives, which starts with the Bible as sole authority. And that’s kind of opened the door for this to come into our movement where it didn’t exist before. The people I’m around, the colleges I attended, the colleges I spoke at, I’ve taught courses at over 30 colleges now, and almost all of them independent Baptists. There are all kinds of preachers conferences. We just took it for granted. J. Brennan McGee addressed this A lot. He was actually a Presbyterian background. Most of the people he worked with were replacement theology, and he took some criticism, but he was a Presbyterian. He said, look, we have to take this literally. And it made him a Christian Zionist, in spite of his background, his influence of people. He was around not taking that position. And so he spent a fair amount of time pointing this out, passage after passage, is if you’re going to take this literally and put all the pieces together, in a structure that doesn’t contradict one another, then you’re going to be premillennial, pre-tribulational, Christian Zionist, because there’s no other way to take literally all these passages, put them in a harmonious way. And I have all the time people throwing at me a statement out of Jeremiah or a statement of Isaiah. Read the rest of the passage. It may take you several chapters till you get to the end. Read the rest of it. God always puts it in context for us. Knowing our frailties and weaknesses, he puts it in context for us so that we won’t miss. You look Jeremiah 1 and 2 when God is condemning Israel for being like Sodom and Gomorrah, and he says he’s going to judge them, and he did. But then he also says he will not abandon them like he did Sodom and Gomorrah. You don’t have the whole message till you add that part.

[MCG]

I’m going to repeat that, and if I get any backlash, I’m going to duck and point to you, Dr. Stringer.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

Feel free. Feel free. Somebody asked me if that was a hill I would die on. It is.

[Jay]

Well, that leads into my next question, because if it’s a hill that you’re willing to die on, that means this is a spiritual thing. And Pastor Jim, in chapter one, the title is God’s Purpose for Israel. You said that the war against Israel is spiritual and getting this wrong has serious consequences. A wrong view of Israel has led to incorrect doctrines like replacement theology and supersessionism. Why is it a spiritual war, not a physical one that we can see, and how does that wrong view of Israel create these different erroneous theologies.

[Pastor Jim]

Yeah, so we came up with the title, The Spiritual War Against Israel, because when you look at all of these issues, and we’re talking about Jew hatred, anti-Semitism, anti-Israel sentiment, you can’t really explain it. And you read every Holocaust author We did a whole series on the Holocaust or on our In Grace TV show. And we went to Auschwitz and Theresienstadt. We went to the camps and we had a survivor on the show. We interviewed him at the Holocaust Museum in Illinois. And I really researched this and I read as many as I could. And these were really brilliant people. Many of them were Jewish. And none of them could really point to a cause of why did Hitler, why was he so against the Jews? Why was he doing that? And so I think, you know, we as Christians, we have insight into this. And Daniel, Daniel was praying, how long will it be that we’re in captivity? is there an end to this? And there was a messenger sent to answer that prayer, but that angel was delayed and God had to send back up. So there was this galactic battle going on that, it’s not visible, but to me, it’s the only explanation of what we’re seeing today. Israel, on October 7th, was attacked in a heinous, just grotesque way. I was invited to the embassy of Israel in Washington, and they showed us the footage, the actual footage, and it’s women were crying, running out, people were getting sick. So that’s what happened to Israel. Hamas filmed it and broadcast it. The next day, people are blaming Israel and calling saying Israel’s committing genocide. They hadn’t even gone in for a response and they had hundreds of their people that were being held hostage. So how could that be? You know, I can see it maybe after Israel destroyed all of the buildings in Gaza as they had to. They had no choice. But First day when there was no response yet, they’re already saying this and there’s all this anti-Israel protest all around.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

It was organized before anybody could finish listening to the news broadcast.

[Pastor Jim]

Yeah, so it has to be spiritual. This war on Israel. Now it manifests in physical ways. You know, it’s been manifested in, you know, Hezbollah continuing to fight Israel and of course Iran now and everything. But the root of it is spiritual. And we have Ephesians 6. And so we have, we as Christians, we have insight into all of these things. But if we don’t recognize it as a spiritual war, we’re either not going to be teaching truth or we’re going to be teaching error. And that error will lead to a public or a church that isn’t thinking properly about this issue. And this issue, I think, is so important to God that we get this right. So that’s why we call it the spiritual war against Israel, because there’s no other explanation. We know in Revelation there’s this great dragon that is trying to devour the child that a woman is giving birth to. We know that that’s Satan. We know the woman is Israel. We know the child is Jesus. We know that Herod the Great had no reason but still slaughtered all the innocents in Bethlehem trying to get rid of this Messiah. The reason Israel and the Jews are attacked over and over and over and blamed for everything. And by the way, if they’re so good and so rich and so powerful and AIPAC and all this stuff, how is it that the world is still so much against them? They’re doing a terrible job if they’re buying off all these people. So why are they always getting blamed? Why are they the scapegoat? I think it’s because God chose them, not because they’re great, not because they are always obedient. but because God is God and he always surprises us by his grace.

[MCG]

Yeah, definitely. I must say at times I’m baffled when I listen to some of these pundits. How did you get to Israel from there? I was like, you know, but maybe I’m just not the smart one in the room.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

I have a chapter in the book on Hitler and another one on Hamas, just going through statements from Mein Kampf, statements from the Hamas Charter. And it’s the same thing. And it’s the same thing, and you can basically sum it up. And I think Jay mentioned earlier, if you don’t have the job you want, it’s the Jews. Everything is the Jews, and it never ends. And they’re conspiratorial behind everything. And this is not in the book. I didn’t come across this till we were done with the book. I wish I had. If we ever do a second book or enlarge it, will go in there. But George Orwell said that the definition of an anti-Semite is that they’ll believe anything said against a Jew, no matter how improbable or how unhistorical or how unverified, if it was said against the Jews, they’ll believe it. And that’s a good definition of anti-Semitism. You see that when you read Mein Kampf or you read the Hamas Charter. Every problem you’re experiencing the Jews. If you’re not as wealthy as you would like to be, that’s the Jews conspiring against you. If you don’t have everything you want, that’s the Jews conspiring against you. If there’s a deficit in the government, that was the Jews that did that. And we’re hearing this constantly, that if we would drop our $3 billion a year of military aid to Israel, that would balance the budget. which is $1.7 trillion out of it. But that is all the fault of that $3 billion. And it amazes me, these budget hawks. I never hear them talk about hundreds of billions of dollars we’re spending fighting global warming. Even now that the United Nations admits it’s no longer an immediate threat, we’re still spending hundreds of billions of dollars. That’s not the problem. Billions, hundreds of billion dollars on fraud. That’s not the problem. It’s the $3 billion of aid to Israel. That’s the whole problem. Get rid of that, the budget will miraculously balance itself. And The genocide, you hear this all the time. I heard it several times today. Have you seen what Israel’s planes can do, what Israel’s air force can do, what they’ve done in Iran? If Israel wanted to commit genocide against the Palestinians, how long do you think it would take the Israeli air force? to wipe out two million Palestinians that are near at hand.

[MCG]

One hour.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

Instead of the army and to clean up any handful of survivors. If Israel wanted to commit genocide against Gaza, Gaza would be empty of human life. The accusation that they’re trying to commit genocides, if they’re trying to commit genocide, they’re the most inefficient force in the history of the world that’s ever tried to commit genocide.

[MCG]

Yeah, that’s true. All right. Dr. Stringer in chapter two, prophecies of judgment. consideration in reference to Isaiah chapter 51. You said chapter 51 of Isaiah promises a glorious future for Israel. These promises have not yet been fulfilled. This one chapter completely refute replacement theology, British Israelism, amelanism, post-melanism, the Kaiser theory and the Nazi theology. Would you elaborate on how Isaiah 51 Does all that.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

It describes some of the blessings to come in the millennium. Nothing like that has happened yet. And he said, boy, the millennium describes when the wolf and the lamb will lay down together. All right, tell me that’s been fulfilled already, or that you can send your children out to play with their pet asps. You say, I’m busy right now, I gotta do this. Why don’t you go out in the backyard and play with your pet poisonous snakes? None of these prophecies have been fulfilled. The barriers, land, the boundaries that God declared for Israel have not been fulfilled. But you go to Isaiah chapter 51, you take any one of those theories. We list a whole list of sources of false history in the very last paragraph of the book. You take any one of those groups, what they teach, you go to Isaiah chapter 51, and it destroys the promises about the millennium. destroy all of those theologies, all of those ideas. And the folks we mentioned there don’t all have the same politics. They don’t all have the same morals. But they all have this same view of history that Israel passed. And anything in the Bible that has reference to Israel has already been fulfilled. And those things you think are about Israel, they’re fulfilled in the church, but they can’t agree on which church. The Roman Catholic Church believes that replacement theology, they believe God replaced Israel with Roman Catholicism. But the Orthodox Church says God replaced Israel with the Orthodox Church. And the Jehovah’s Witnesses say that God replaced Israel with Kingdom Hall. And the Mormons believe God replaced Israel with Mormons, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. You notice a theme there? I mean, it’s all wrapped up in this is all really about us, and everything God had to say is about us. And so anything you think it says about Israel, apply it to us. But none of those groups want to apply what God says yet about judgment on Israel. The worst judgment on Israel is yet coming, the time of Jacob’s trouble. And I’ve never heard the Catholic Church say, well, that applies to us. That’s what God’s gonna do to us one day. Or the Orthodox or the Mormons say, that’s what God is gonna do to us. They just want the promises about the blessings to be transferred to them and skip all the rest.

[MCG]

Yeah, I must say, up and reading the book, that’s one of the things that truly opened my eyes on this because I was thinking about it. I never thought of Isaiah 51 of dispelling all these doctrines, but yeah, definitely.

[Jay]

Pastor Jim, the Balfour Declaration, many people would say is the genesis of all of the modern day issues that we have with Israel. Can you help us understand the circumstances surrounding Israel’s miraculous rebirth and how we got from the Balfour Declaration of 1917 to the Holocaust and now to this anti-Semitism that we’re seeing in the West today.

[Pastor Jim]

Some people think that the modern nation of Israel was a man-made attempt and a man-made accomplishment. But when you really understand it, even during Balfour’s day, he was the foreign minister of Great Britain. He was not the majority. There was tons of anti-Semitism around him, but he was an evangelical Christian who believed the Bible. And also, which is really amazing, there was a chemist, Chaim Weisman, Jewish Zionist, that was a scientist and his scientific discovery of a cheaper and faster way to manufacture explosives was able to end the stalemate of World War I. And so when it came time for this decision to support Israel or the Jews having a homeland, it was amazing that this man was in place, but it wasn’t the consensus of the country or of the world. So I almost think that is a miracle Even during the Palestinian mandate, when Britain got control of Palestine, which if they hadn’t had that control, there wouldn’t have been eventually the partition plan which led to the rebirth of Israel. All of these things had to come together in miraculous ways. So the Balfour Declaration was integral. It was in, I believe, November of 1917. And shortly thereafter, Palestine was in the hands of the the allies, which even that story I wrote in the book about a general who used a tactic found by Jonathan, the son of Saul, and the same tactic defeated the last pocket of Ottoman Turks’ empire there in Palestine, the same tactic that had been used 3,000 years earlier. These are a few Bible-believing evangelical Christians, but they weren’t the majority, but God used them in the right place at the right time.

[MCG]

Incredible. All right, so let me set up this next question. It’s for you, Pastor Jim. And of course, Dr. Stringer, you can always chime in. So chapter five is how Israel fit into a dispensational view. So I have an audio here that I would like for you to react to. This is William Wolf from the Southern Baptist Church, and he was being interviewed by Tate Brown on the Tate Brown podcast discussing Israel and how Christians have been or should be responding. He was asked, why do you think that evangelicals have issues with mint elites? And that’s his words, not mine. To mint elites, yeah. Or why is there so few elites in politics? So I’m going to play it. It’s a bit long. So if you get the gist of it, you want to chime in and I cut it off, that’s fine. But I’m just going to let you hear what he says. I cut out the questions and everything. So let’s hear what he has to say.

[Tate Brown podcast]

Yeah, I’ve actually got a, I think I have a pretty strong theory on this one. And that was in the middle of the 20th century as sort of all of the churches were going through what’s kind of called the modernist fundamentalist controversy, where there was this new modern theology, a liberal theology that was coming into the church and combined with the secularization of the culture, the rise of the sexual revolution. A lot of conservatives in these other denominations Again, PCUSA, Episcopal Church, Methodist, they lost their institutions, their denominations and their seminaries. And then they also saw the culture going radically left. And they essentially employed, we wouldn’t have called it back then, but some people might understand the reference now, a Benedict option. They retreated to their own communities, to their own small institutions, like Bob Jones University, right, for example. And they just said, let’s create our literal own conclaves a lot in the South, and we’re going to separate from the culture. This is sort of like fundamentalism. And Zoomer probably attacks this, and rightly so. And so they retreated from the culture because they thought that they had lost. And I think a lot of that too, quite frankly, is driven by a dispensationalist theology. The idea of everything’s going to get worse, a pre-millennial dispensational theology, everything is going to get worse, then we’re going to have the rapture and Jesus comes. So they retreated from the culture. That’s really what happened. And then Jesus hasn’t come back yet. And the culture still kind of ebbs and flows and gives and takes. And then things kind of got so bad, I think a lot of evangelicals started waking up and realizing, okay, we need to get back involved. We need to fight. We need to be faithful in our generation, fight for our children. Even if we don’t know when Jesus is coming back, even if he’s coming back tomorrow or if he’s coming back 100 years from now, we need to fight for faithfulness in our country and in our So that’s really, that’s what led to it was we lost institutions. There was a total cultural and denominational retreat. And now I think slowly but surely, these people are waking up and saying, wait a minute, we need to actually be salt and light as Jesus called us to, preserve our culture and to shine a light and to fight for what’s good, right and just. And hey, you know what? Even if that means sometimes we want to put our views into law, we should because everybody else is doing it too. Yeah, absolutely.

[Tate Brown podcast]

And I think you’re 100% on the money there. You brought up an interesting point because you mentioned dispensationalism. This is obviously, I would say, the flavor of the month and many parts of conservative commentary. It seems to me that people just came across it and now they’ve addressed this as the big problem. But I do think there’s a lot of truth in that. I do think that dispensational theology, it’s fairly novel, if I’m not mistaken. I mean, I’m sure it’s been around, but as far as mass adoption, it’s fairly novel, coming really in tandem with the Second Great Awakening. I do think, a lot of people will talk about its implications of foreign policy. And I do think there’s some accuracy there. But I think where it has an even more troubling outcome is, to your point, within the way that people actually sort of understand the world around them, the way that they interact with politics, is they kind of blackpill. I mean, it really is a blackpilling theology because you just are under the impression that, again, things are just going to get worse and worse and worse and there’s not much you can do about it. If you had that mindset, it makes total sense why you would retreat and why you would try to insulate yourself from the culture as much as possible. But what you’re seeing within the SBC, and this isn’t being discussed as much, is you’re seeing a real emergence of kind of more classical reformed theology. It seems like dispensationalism, at least anecdotally, but I think this is borne out in the data. For people under maybe 40 or 50, it’s increasingly rare to find people that are adamant dispensationalists, maybe they have some loose affiliation or some loose like understandings that would maybe stem from that. But it’s far more common, at least as I understand it, seeing the SPC among younger people and maybe even middle-aged people to have a more classically, maybe like covenant theology point of view.

[Tate Brown podcast]

Yeah, so I’m going to give a very- Take it on, Pastor.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

I’ll have to jump in. She was asking you. I’ve heard about as much as I could take. Go ahead.

[Pastor Jim]

All right, so my take is I don’t think dispensationalists are to blame. I think a real biblicist that holds a dispensational theology is one that is anticipating the return of the Lord. And in the end times, there will be scoffers saying, He’s supposed to have been here. Where is he? He isn’t here. I think if anyone abandoned the political sphere, it was wrong that they did that. I don’t think it’s a dispensational problem. I think it’s a carnal problem. I think that the church has gotten so worldly, they haven’t been effective in a lot of spheres, including politics. And that’s why you don’t see a lot. I think there’s only one evangelical that’s on the Supreme Court and you have a lot of Roman Catholics that he called the elites. And we need to mint more elites. And that’s fine. And I think we should. But again, I don’t think the blame lies at dispensationalism. I think dispensationalism properly understood. Jesus said, Be ready, be watching. You know, he talked about the virgins that some were ready and some weren’t ready. So we’re talking about there’s other reasons that the church has been disengaged improperly in our political and governmental spheres. We need to be doing that. Even if he is coming soon, even if it is getting worse and worse, we should still try everything we can to rectify that until he comes.

[MCG]

Dr. Stringer.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

Yeah, I would say, and I hear this all the time, I’ve dealt with this yesterday, I’ve dealt with this today, folks talk about dispensationalism who have no idea what it is. and they’ve not gone to the trouble to find out before they talk about it. The people I have known that have been effective in fighting the moral issues of the day are dispensational, independent, fundamental Bible-believing, premillennial, pre-tribulational Baptists. We don’t believe things get worse and worse until it’s overwhelmed with as bad. We believe a rapture is coming. We believe we have a responsibility unto the rapture to stand fast, and we’re concerned about moral issues. And I’ve been involved in fights over moral issues, religious liberty and all that for a half century. And far and away, the partners in fighting for those issues have been pre-millennial, pre-tribulational, dispensational, independent Baptists, have done far more in those issues than I’ve seen anybody else do. And I hear people say, It’s a rapture, doctrine of rapture. That’s why everything is such a mess. No, there is nothing about the doctrine of rapture that doesn’t tell us to stand for what’s right until the rapture comes. And the effective people on impacting our government, our country, and our society, not 100%. I have a lot of Bible Presbyterian friends. I thought it was interesting they threw shade at Bob Jones on this. Bob Jones was no great teacher of the rapture. Bob Jones was a non-denominational school. Most of my Bible Presbyterian friends went to Bob Jones, who were opposed to the doctrine of the rapture and so forth. And they learned that, frankly, learned a great deal of that from the professors at Bob Jones. But I don’t think these folks understand at all what the issue is or who it is that’s been fighting the battles. And someone who’s been involved in these battles for a half century, where have those folks been? They’ve rarely ever been involved or been with us when we were fighting those battles.

[MCG]

When I was listening to that, I was like, I had to clip this and let these guys listen to it because I was like, where did this dispensational stuff come in? It was just baffling to me.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

That’s what the John Birch Society used to teach, the doctor of the raptures, why the communists are getting control of our country. Well, who is it that’s been fighting those battles? And you talk about political? application of it, probably the most dramatic political application I ever heard. I’m sitting in offices in Syria where the Lord worked miraculously to let me go there and spend several days preaching in Syria, but I had to go through offices in the airport first, and they were scared to death. that I was going to come in and preach dispensationalism and that one day God designed for Israel to have Syria.

[MCG]

Oh wow.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

And that’s not what I was there for and that wasn’t my purpose, but we had this long conversation with these threatening people. And I finally got past them by saying this, if I understand the scripture right, I don’t even see a reference to the United States after the rapture. I said, I do believe all these things you’re worried about are going to happen, but I don’t believe we’re going to make them happen. And I don’t even know that the United States will be a country when they happen. And when I said I thought the United States might not be a country someday, all of a sudden they were okay. That’s literally how I got into the country of Syria.

[MCG]

Oh, wow. Before my wife jumping on the next question, let’s go in a little bit of break and then we’ll come back. All right, you’re listening to the Removing Virus podcast. We’re sitting down with Dr. Phil Stringer and Pastor Jim, the authors of the brand-new book, The Spiritual War Against Israel. We’ll be right back.

[Jay]

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[MCG]

All right, so why don’t you guys tell us how can someone grab a hold of this book before we jump into the rest of the questions?

[Pastor Jim]

It’s on Amazon and it’s also a Kindle edition on Amazon, but they can also go to our website, which is ingrace.us, ingrace.us. That’s the media ministry of our church. And we have a ton of books. We have the other book that we mentioned, Evangelism Made Simple. We co-authored that. And I think that one is really, both of these issues are really important issues. We have to make sure we know the message of the gospel. And I also think we need to be informed on the future for Israel and understand and Bible prophecy. So in grace.us and Amazon are the two ways to get it.

[Jay]

All right. Okay, Dr. Stringer, this one is for you. On chapter six, titled The Sole Authority of Scripture and the Nation of Israel, could you go more in depth on how our view of scripture affects our view of Israel and the end times and everything surrounding Israel?

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

Again, I go back and illustrate with Zachariah. The last half of Zachariah is about Israel in the tribulation. And in chapter 14, Israel in the millennium. If Israel doesn’t exist, what do you do with that? And if you interpret that literally, Israel had to exist again, even though there was a lengthy period of time when because of judgment, Israel was not functioning as a nation. If Zechariah is true, and if I interpret the Bible literally, Israel had to exist again. And people puzzled over that or denied it or said it can’t be, but now look where we are. I mean, Israel’s in the news not only in existence, it’s in the news every single day. Almost dominates the news in recent times. If you interpret the Bible literally, there had to be a place where God is yet going to keep all of his promises to Israel.

[MCG]

Well, let’s continue with you, Dr. Stringer, in chapter 8. How do you say this? Is Putin nice? Putinistas? Putinistas. Putinistas, phony conservatives, pseudo libertarians and anti-Semitism. You said even fundamental Baptists are deeply influenced by Putinitas, phony conservatives, pseudo libertarians and propagandists. How can we protect ourselves from all that? Because you’re throwing me under the bus there. At least I go to a fundamental Baptist church.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

You don’t have to be, and most aren’t. But everybody I know in them, our circles, has gone the wrong direction on this, has gone, almost everybody, has gone because of Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, who is right now speaking at an economic conference in Russia with Vladimir Putin, and Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, and Megyn Kelly. And we listened to them. I did. I listened to all three of them. because we thought they were solid conservative voices in a time when there’s so much false information out there. All of them changed direction. All of them used to be pro-Israel. All of them used to be anti-Russia, anti-Russian imperialism. And at some point, something dramatically changed. And when I first began to talk about this, people said, You’re crazy. You don’t realize what they’re saying. Tucker Carlson doesn’t support Putin, and Candace Owens doesn’t support Putin. And say, Where’s Candace Owens today? And you have Tucker Carlson. You have all three of them making the most outrageous anti-Israel statements. And they’ve all adopted the Putin worldview that the world must be divided into seven kingdoms. And Putin’s excuse for invading Ukraine is that Russia was destined to rule over Europe, and he has to go through the Ukraine to get there. And of course, Putin’s view, the Mideast has to be one country and had to be ruled over by Iran. And you had all these folks talking about Putin’s invincible, but he was going to conquer Iran in two weeks. And Iran’s invincible. We should not challenge Iran. I remember Tucker Carlson saying that if we took on Iran, we’d suffer 50,000 casualties in the first stage of the operation. It’s invincible. And at some point, those three and others, but those are the three that are most influential in the circles that I’m aware of, completely changed position. And everybody’s asking why. And I have bring up in a book the illustration of Tokyo Rose, who was actually being held captive in Japan and really didn’t have any choice. So she’d be broadcasting absolutely ridiculous things, how the United States was losing World War II and were suffering much greater casualties and were being reported. And our soldiers were disillusioned and they wanted Japan to win. et cetera, et cetera. And she just went on and on with this. In her case, she was actually held captive in Japan, kind of had a gun to her head. She would eventually be tried for treason, convicted, imprisoned, but then pardoned by Gerald Ford. And I paid some attention to that because she moved to Chicago, where I pastored, and had a florist shop. And I actually went to the florist shop several times hoping to meet Tokyo Rose, but she was never there when I was there. And then you had Baghdad Bob, who worked for Saddam Hussein. And he’s delivering reports about how Iraq is destroying the American army. The reports of the American army being near Baghdad are completely false. And I remember watching on CNN split screen, they have him saying the American army is nowhere near Baghdad. And on the other screen, they’re interviewing a captain, an American military captain who’s in Baghdad. And they’re telling him, so we’ve got Baghdad Bob on the other screen saying this. And he said, can you get me an address? We’ll go by and see him. And later in the day, Baghdad Bob is still saying the Americans aren’t there. And you can see the tanks in the background of his broadcast. Propagandists say what they’re forced to say, paid to say, expected to say. And my conclusion on all this is you can’t explain what’s happened to all these people without figuring there’s a lot of cold, hard cash in this discussion. And that’s coming out more and more in terms of this. You see connections, both the Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson have connections with target businessmen. And you have, again, Candace Owen is speaking in this economic summit in Russia today, and they’re propagandists. And some of our people fell for it. I was talking to a pastor the other day, he said that one of the arguments that Putinistas used bad to take over Ukraine because Zelensky was massacring Christians there. You know, he’s a Jew, and that’s what Jews do. And I know several Ukrainian pastors and missionaries in Ukraine. That’s not the case. It’s only in the Russian-occupied areas when non-members of the Orthodox Church have anything to fear. So I would say things like that, and people say, They’re all spies. All the pastors are spies, Jewish spies, and all the missionaries are Jewish spies. And I was just talking to a pastor, said he had a family leave his church because they said the church was supporting missionaries with Ukraine. And he said, All the missionaries in Ukraine are Jewish spies. And if we don’t quit supporting these Jewish spies, we’re not coming to church here anymore. And so, they weren’t going to quit supporting these faithful missionaries. But a propagandist will say anything, no matter how ridiculous. There’s sometimes various reasons, but usually it’s cold, hard cash. They’re making pay. And Putin is well known when he took the country of Georgia and when he took Crimea from the Ukraine in 2014. He bought all kinds of journalists. to report what he wanted reported. And he influenced the public perception of things in Georgia and in Crimea. And so there’s absolutely no reason to think he wouldn’t still be doing exactly the same thing today. And others, when I would first begin to talk about that, folks just went crazy. Putin was supposed to be the great defender of the Christian faith. And Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly and these folks were conservatives trying to save America. And you still have it in certain politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie, still trying to make the exact same points. They opposed any aid to the Ukraine. They don’t want to sell military equipment to Israel. And we’re just being lied to. Putin is supposed to be the hero in this story. And so that is the point I’ve been trying to make for some time. When I first started to make it, a lot of people said, you don’t know what you’re talking about. But every day’s news, including today, demonstrates it. And I’ve had several people apologize saying that we just didn’t realize what was happening. And there it is, plain as day. And it really is. These propagandists are a great danger. And you can’t control what your people do as a pastor. But I think you owe it to your people to warn your people about them.

[MCG]

Yeah, definitely. You know who surprised me the most in all of this? It’s Candice Owens, because she seems like she came out of really strongly against Black Lives Matter. And I think that’s what gained a lot of following. And then as you were speaking, it reminds me of the George Floyd protest where I remember the CNN broadcast where this guy was literally standing in front of a burning building. The burning building was his backdrop. And he was saying that the protest was mostly peaceful. I’m like, yeah, with a burning building.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

Nobody ever treats me that peacefully. You know, I was really shocked by Candace Owen as well. And her father-in-law has made a number of interesting statements about that process of change on her part. But that is for those folks where the money is, I believe. And I think one of the things that’s happened too with all of them, they tried to ride the coattails of Donald Trump to influence. And they thought they had influenced Trump to be against Israel and to be against the Ukraine. And certainly he is, I’m not pleased with how he’s approached the Ukraine. I’m not always pleased with how he’s approached Israel, frankly, including this week. But they tried to ride his coattails and they tried to take credit for his success. And when he steered a different direction by saying, we have to deal with Iran, boy, that really created a problem for them. They can’t ride his coattails anymore. And they have gotten more and more and more bizarre. So now you have Candace Owen who talks to time travelers and goes and gets information. You have Tucker Carlson who talks about being attacked at night by demons. And that’s pretty bizarre set of scenarios. And I think, again, you can’t control who people listen to. But I’m seeing again and again, very frankly, some of these folks’ followers I’ve been threatened by physically. I’ve been told, you will not show up at this church, a preacher. You will stop saying this or you will, because Putin is the man of the hour. It’s all been bluff. Nobody’s ever made any attempt to carry any of that out. But I talk to pastors all the time who have had people leave their churches. Well, the church I was just in this last week, pastors said, you know, a family that helped us start this church and was absolutely essential to us in the early years of this church plant, has left the church because we believe that Israel exists and we don’t believe that Putin is the great Christian savior.

[Jay]

These are conservative. YouTubers, podcasters, pundits, and they have massive platforms. But we also have a problem with Christians that have even smaller platforms, but still have significant influence, say, what people think Christians are talking about or thinking about online. And it seems like a lot of these reformed guys, they are leaning more toward an anti-Israel stand because of their belief in replacement theology. And Pastor Jim, if I could get you to jump in on this, whole idea of replacement theology that the church is now Israel. Could you help us to understand where that theology comes from? And you mention in the book how the unintended But legitimate problem with this theology is that if God can replace Israel with the church, can he replace the church with something else? In other words, we can’t trust God’s promises because he’ll change and his word isn’t what he says it is. So can you walk us through what replacement theology is, how it weakens God’s promises?

[Pastor Jim]

Yeah, so in Genesis, there are all these incredible promises from God. which I call unconditional, eternal, unilateral. And actually one of them in Genesis 15, I believe, Abraham is instructed to cut animals and birds in half. And there was a covenant that two individuals would walk through and it was like showing the seriousness of this agreement that if one of us breaks this agreement, we’re okay with being cut in half. And that was a common thing. So then after this is all set in place, God puts Abraham to sleep and God himself walks through the midst of these animals. So it’s God is swearing to himself to fulfill this. It’s not even a covenant between him and Abraham at that point. It’s God promising God, who we know the Bible says cannot lie. So where does replacement theology, supersessionism, or even sometimes it’s called fulfillment theology and They’re all the same thing. In essence, they all say the promises that were given to Israel aren’t in play anymore. Well, maybe I could understand that in, you know, the early church, the whole church was Jewish initially, you know, it was all in Jerusalem. And slowly, you know, God used the persecution in Jerusalem and Peter to bring the gospel to Cornelius and then, you know, Paul and the gospel flourished and it went out. And we’re not Jew or Gentile, but then What started kind of all this is all of a sudden Rome destroys Jerusalem and the Jews, many of them are killed, the rest are scattered. So now what are the church fathers supposed to do at this point? Well, some of them started to say, well, maybe we had this wrong. And because they rejected Jesus as a nation, maybe we are now the recipients of those promises, which is basically replacement theology. So I can maybe understand that. And Dr. Stringer already talked about some of those books where the authors, before 1948, you could maybe understand that, but not now, right? Not now, after all these predictions have come to pass and have come true. So here’s really the short answer. If God can or would break his promise to Israel, why then would we think that God wouldn’t choose another entity other than the church? Or when God promises us eternal life by simple faith in Jesus, or I’ll never leave you or forsake you, like now we have no security in those promises anymore because we are now saying that God has changed his mind or God has broken this unconditional, unilateral, eternal promise. So it really does affect theology when you go down that path, which again, maybe I could understand it. pre-48, but today I cannot. And I’d.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

Like to add to that, also, he replaced Israel with the church. Which church? Everybody, their church, of course. And you could talk to some of these Presbyterian folks, I’m going to say folks, and say, well, God replaced the church. Well, it’s the Reformed church, or it’s the Orthodox church, or it’s the Catholic church. towards the Mormons. And I asked one of my Bible Presbyterian friends, and he’s a man I admire in some areas, I said, am I part of the church that God replaced Israel with? And he didn’t know what to say because he was not going to a knowledge of Baptists or the legitimate church. And so it becomes a very self-serving doctrine. And one of the things that happened, again, that pastor said, you can kind of understand this, I’ve got 4 volumes. It’s actually produced by the Seventh-day Adventists, but it’s famous characters all throughout church history and their eschatology. And it quotes them in various areas, and many of them, not all, but many of them believe that Israel had been replaced by the church. And they’re writing all that. And again, if you looked at it, you could understand from arguing current events where you might have seen that or thought that. But they had a problem in 1948. And that is where they invented this Khazar doctrine that, well, this isn’t Israel. This isn’t really Israel. This is several million Khazars pretending to be Jews in order to loot the Holy Land. and hundreds of millions of people around the world engaged in the conspiracy with them to pretend to be Jews when they’re not. And that is one of the most absurd things I’ve ever heard. the Mafia had a famous statement that said, you can trust three people to keep a secret if two of them are dead. Can you imagine a secret conspiracy with millions of people and hundreds of millions of partners? Such a thing is absolutely, utterly ridiculous. And all these folks that offer this, they want to run to this book by Kessler called The 13th Tribe. And he wrote a whole book about a Turkish tribe, the Khazars, adopting Judaism. But I don’t think they’ve ever read the book that they’re waving around because the theme of the book is so many Khazars became Jews that it would be legitimate to call them the 13th tribe. Assuming that’s true and they’re people, they dispute it, not whatever. But even if that’s true, if so many Khazars became Jews, they became the 13th tribe. That doesn’t do away with the other 12 tribes. The title refutes what they’re making out of the book. He’s claiming they’re the 13th tribe, but they had to say something. because their theology evaporated in 1948. And so they had to invent something really bizarre. And Hamas, you know, in its charter really focuses on this. These really aren’t the Jews. We’re not against the real Jewish people. And you see this from the British Israelites and just all kinds of folks jump on this today. But if you’re going to say that I am convinced that Israel has been replaced by the church, you have to answer the question, which church? And the answer will always be mine.

[MCG]

You know, as I was reading that chapter, it took me back to when I first got saved as a new convert. Episode 100, if you want to hear my testimony. But when I first got saved, I got saved at a Moravian church, and I was being discipled by Seventh-day Adventists. And I was reading what they called a quarterly, which is a devotional book. And they made a lot of analogy between Israel disobedience and God’s judgment to the Sabbath. So as I was reading that book, and you kind of made an analogy between Israel disobedience and the church. And you said, if God has now given up on Israel because of their disobedience, why wouldn’t he give up on the church? Because the church has equally been disobedient. And I was like, I kind of stopped and pondered that because it’s true. So definitely kind of just opened my eyes there as I was reading that chapter there.

[Pastor Jim]

Yeah. So I think that again, that’s an important thing to consider because God, he’s given these promises and it’s important that we understand that God keeps his promise. He cannot break his promise. He cannot lie. Yeah, and we fail. Absolutely. Israel failed. Absolutely. We’re not saying Israel’s always great and obedient. As a matter of fact, he chose them not because they’re going to be always great and obedient. He chose them so he could show forth his power and his might and his grace and his love. And so, I don’t know, I think that all of those things apply to us as well, that we have to consider all these things.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

When I was pastoring in Marion, Indiana, a fellow came to me and he said, he’s been a Wesleyan for years. He said, I don’t want to be a Wesleyan anymore. He said, they don’t believe in eternal security. And he was referring to the same passage Pastor referred to, Genesis 15, where there was an unconditional covenant God promised with himself. And he was thinking of eternal security. But he said the whole idea of losing your salvation is based on the idea that all of God’s promises are conditional. But he said when you look at Genesis 15, which he was applying to salvation, it is very obvious God has made promises that are not conditional, that are unconditional. And that’s absolutely true about salvation. It’s also absolutely true about Israel. But if you start believing God has no unconditional promises, you got a lot deeper problems than your discussion of the state of Israel. Why would God continue to save us? And some folks will say they’re living in complete spiritual victory and they’re so close to the Lord. and this, that, and the other. And my answer to that is usually, is it okay if I ask your wife about that? How you’re living in absolute victory all the time and never have a problem and never sin. And pastor will probably remember, we were in Ghana, Africa, and we’re doing a preacher’s meeting there. All kinds of preachers came to it. One man had come and he brought up a bunch of folks in his church. And he said, question and answer session. He said, you men keep talking about Christian sinning. He said, don’t you know Christians never sin? He directed the question to me. And I said, sir, could I ask you a question first? Do you ever sin? He said, well, that’s not the issue. I said, would you humor me? And let me ask you this question. Do you ever sin? So finally he answered, he said, no. And his whole church broke up laughing when he said that. Because they know. Anybody that knows us would know us better than that. Thank God he has some unconditional promises. And you have to read scripture carefully, see what they are and they aren’t. Some of God’s blessings on our Christian life are conditional. Certainly many of God’s blessings on Israel were conditional. That’s why they came and went, came and went. You read the book of Judges. I’ve just spent time recently preparing class on a book of Judges that I’ll teach at a college in the Philippines in August, and I’ll teach it day spring in September. And you talk about blessings being conditional. They get the blessing of God, they disobey, they get judged by God, they repent, they get the blessing of God, they disobey. It’s a cycle of 14 times, a book of Judges. I remember reading it as a bus kid teenager, reading a book of Judges saying, did these people not get it? Do they not know what is going to happen? Is this not obvious? Did you not see just what happened before? But Israel was never done. He was not finished with them. He judged them. He’s going to yet judge Israel again in the time of Jacob’s trouble. Israel’s worst judgment is coming. We get accused. Two things people say, and they have no idea who read the book or what. They’re guessing what we were going to say. That there’s a separate plan of salvation for Jews. I’ve never met a Baptist that believes that. Pastor addresses that very well in the chapter one gospel for women. And that we think Israel’s a theocracy, and so anything it does is automatically right with God. Not only is that far from the truth. Israel’s worst judgment is yet coming. Time of Jacob’s trouble. Israel can do wrong, does do wrong. That’s not the point. And when somebody tells me that they live above all known sin, I just laugh. it’s ridiculous. I had a guy tell me that one time I passed her, but we played against each other in basketball leagues. And so I asked him, I said, do you ever sin? But before you answer. Do you remember we’ve been against one another on the basketball court? I’ve seen how you behave on a basketball court. I’ve seen how you’re handing yourself with referees and authority. Before you answer me this question, just remember, I know you. You could talk to people that don’t know you. Thank God they’re unconditional problems. I wasn’t questioning your salvation. They’re the unconditional promise for Israel.

[MCG]

Yeah. You know, even just a cursory reading of the Old Testament, how does the Bible sometimes describe Israel as a stubborn, stiff-necked people. You know, I don’t know if you ever had a stiff neck, but man, I used to get them quite often, and it’s not any fun to have a stiff neck.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

No, it’s not.

[MCG]

Yeah, right. Dr. Sturgis, chapter 14, you said in the book, Hitler and the Holocaust, is the title of a chapter, anti-Semitism and the spiritual war against Israel depend upon absurd fantasy-based rewriting of history. And then you mentioned, of course, the prominent voices that we mentioned already, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens. Are you saying that they don’t understand the history of the Holocaust and all these things.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

They claim the Holocaust didn’t happen, or that it only happened in a limited sense. And I frankly don’t think they believe that. If there’s any chance that they believe that. Holocaust was well documented, you know, when Eisenhower went through. and he saw what was happening. He brought all of the leading generals in the American army and made them go through everything so they see for themselves. He brought in journalists from all over Europe so the journalists could come see it. He marched thousands of American soldiers through the Holocaust sites. He made the local residents go through it, all for one reason. He said, someday somebody’s going to try and deny that this happened. And he wanted there to be thousands and thousands of witnesses. And people can become so self-deluded, they believe their own lies. I don’t know what to Carlson’s mind or Megyn Kelly’s mind or Candace Owens’ mind. It’s hard for me to believe that they really believe that. When Baghdad Bob was saying, you know, the American armies are being defeated at every turn, he didn’t believe that. Alam Hussein had a gun to his head, you know. When Tokyo Rose said the United States is being defeated all over the Pacific, she didn’t believe that. It’s what she had to say in her circumstances. Have these folks repeated these lies so much they actually believe them? I doubt it. I rather suspect if the cash flow turned, Because you’ve seen them turn on a dime in what they teach and stand for. If the big money tomorrow was all of a sudden to be, yes, the Holocaust did happen. It was terrible. We must unite again around Israel. I suspect that’s the position they would all take. I don’t really believe they believe any of that.

[MCG]

Anything to add, Pastor Jim?

[Pastor Jim]

You know, I don’t know. People say that Dr. Stringer and I are taking Israel’s money. So, I mean, I wish, that’d be great, but.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

I can give them an address if they’d like to send some.

[Pastor Jim]

I’m always really hesitant and careful to not accuse people of that. But I mean, I don’t know how else to explain it. To have Nick Fuentes on Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes was kind of making a joke about the ovens of Auschwitz and baking cookies. And it was just sick. It’s absolutely sick because I’ve seen the ovens at Auschwitz. And even, okay, so here’s kind of what they’re saying. They’re saying, well, it wasn’t 6 million. It was just like 2 or 300,000. Okay, that’s incorrect. But let’s just say, are you okay with 2 or 300,000 people being innocently slaughtered, even if that’s true, which it’s not, but they have this derangement and I think they’re sick and I don’t know why they’re thinking this or saying this, except Satan is really good at deluding people’s minds. So I think it all comes down to a spiritual issue.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

It is a spiritual war.

[Jay]

Yep, absolutely.

[MCG]

And so the fact that I’m from a country where the population is roughly 110,000, saying there’s only two to 300,000 is like, you just wipe out my country three times. So yeah, it’s crazy.

[Jay]

Isn’t it funny, too, that a couple thousand of Palestinians are killed, let’s say, and it’s, oh, it’s a genocide, it’s this side or the other. But even if you were to go with the lowball estimate of 200,000 the Holocaust and we can’t even call it, it’s not really a Holocaust. And so, yeah, the idea that this would be a spiritual war because everything is so anti-Israel, even if it’s obviously not, that’s very clearly the case. Now, let’s jump to chapter 15. modern Islamic terrorism against Israel and the United States and the West. And there’s a quote by Dinesh D’Souza in there that says, the West has been battling Islam for more than a thousand years. It is possible that this great battle has now been resumed and that over time we will come to see the 70-year battle against communism as a short detour. Is the Iranian War just a continuation of this thousand-year war or is it more political than spiritual?

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

It’s both. Again, if you will read the Hamas charter, which is Hamas, which is subsidiary of the Iranian government, and you read the Hamas charter, they claim to be carrying on this war that has gone on for centuries. And they’re very, very clear. They express themselves in a fashion you couldn’t possibly miss. Their goals, their intentions, they are financed and directed by the government in Iran that I refer to as the Mad Mullahs several times. That is an attitude that has justified violence since 1948 aimed at Israel, and it still justifies it. And they will call Israel the little Satan. They call the United States the great Satan because, again, humanly speaking, I believe it’s God undertaking for Israel, but humanly speaking, Israel survives because it has vastly superior American military equipment. I mean that’s been demonstrated You just saw the american-made military equipment used by Israel in the United States up against the best Chinese and Russian military equipment that Iran could obtain and look what happened and so that’s dramatic We’re the great Satan because we make the existence of Israel possible and it is a spiritual thing and you have communication with Christians in that part of the world They’re very conscious of it the Iranian protesters aren’t just carrying signs about how bad the government is. They’re burning mosques. It’s the same thing in their mind. They understand what it is they’re dealing with. I wish there was more conscious of that in the United States. And what’s happening here is a spiritual war. When you listen to Graham Plattner or Thomas Massie or Ilhan Omar or Rashida Tlaib and the things they have to say about Israel and Mamdami, this all has real important political ramifications. But it starts spiritually. You cannot reason with these people because there’s something in their heart that desperately needs to blame the Jews for all the problems of the world. And that ultimately is satanic. I find it interesting. latest cry, I think, from these folks is, well, the Jews are all satanic pedophiles. All of a sudden, they’re discussing that’s one of their new Jewish libels that was just said about MAGA. Anybody still supporting Trump is a Jewish satanic pedophile. That reflects a spiritual hatred that isn’t produced by men just disagreeing over ideas. There’s something more to it than that.

[MCG]

Right. Yeah, that’s quite interesting because as I contemplate on the war on communism is like, okay, it’s just a blurping history. But when you think about this war, or at least this spiritual war with Israel and the West, it’s enormous.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

And part of what happened with all this, after World War I starts the movement that’s going to lead to the creation of Israel. But the first thing that happens after World War I, the Ottoman Empire had been on the side of Germany and Italy and so forth. They lost World War I. The Allies broke up the Ottoman Empire into some 40 different countries because they understood that part of Islam is the conquest of the world. And so they wanted to make them all smaller, less powerful countries that could not be a threat to the world. And so they create Kuwait and they create Iraq and Saudi Arabia and all this. And none of these nations had a fraction of the strength of the Ottoman Empire. And it worked. for a period of time. People forgot Islam was a threat because they weren’t conquering anything. And they just forgot it. And where the philosophy of terrorism came from was the idea that we have to retake, conquer the world. We can’t do it with armies. We’ll terrorize the world into submission. And you look what’s happening right now. Look what’s happening in Europe where they’re terrified of getting Iran’s wrath. And they’re terrified of their Muslim immigrants responding with terrorism at the instruction of Iran. And they are actually succeeding through terrorism at a level that the Ottoman Empire wasn’t capable of. And the whole philosophy of terrorism was designed, it was implemented. You first saw it in the 60s with the attack on the Israeli athletes at the Olympics. and terrorism and then different aspects. One of the problems they’ve had is that terrorists cannot get along with each other. But you had Saddam Hussein who wanted to combine terrorism with a nuclear power. And you’ve had Iran, exact same ambition. You combine terrorism with a nuclear power. And they are so determined to be a nuclear power, they’ve taken the beating that they have taken and will not surrender because they will not give up the ambition of one day being a nuclear power that would make all of this come together. Communism is almost a blip. If you think of world history and you think of hundreds, thousands of years, I think D’Souza is very correct. Communism is kind of a blip on that. The battle for over a thousand years has been with Islam and Islam’s ambition. 72 different versions, official versions of Islam. Some of them do not call for the conquest of the world, to be fair. Many of them do. And you see the influence of that. We live with the influence of that every single day in our world.

[MCG]

Yeah, definitely. Pastor Jim, In the light of that, how can we be a blessing to the Jewish people?

[Pastor Jim]

That was my question because we had been taking a lot of trips to Israel, leading tours and filming for Ingrace. So I had a lot of Israeli Jewish friends and I was trying to share the gospel and share who Yeshua was. And most of them literally do not know anything about Jesus. We assume they do. We assume they hate them. Most Jewish people I’ve met in Israel and here in other places, they know nothing. Even the ones that are around Christians a lot, they still don’t know anything. And so I asked the Lord to help us here in the Chicago area meet some Jewish people because they live right by us. And we’ve had incredible opportunities just to, here’s one thing every Christian can do, go up to someone that’s Jewish and just say, listen, I love you, I support you. something that a friend of ours that wrote our forward Mark Robinson said thank them for providing your Messiah so I went in and I just said you know I just really want to tell you I appreciate the Jewish people I love you I support you I support Israel thank you for giving me my Messiah that goes so far and then we create friendships and then they’ll come to our honor Israel days and We will go to any Jewish things that we can go to, and they’re asking me to come and read Psalms and pray. I’m not ecumenical at all, but I do know that they are the people of the one true God, and I want to introduce them to someone they don’t know at all, and that’s Jesus. We’ve had these great opportunities. Just go up to them and just say, Hey, I support you. I love you. Then there’s other things that we can do. There’s antisemitism. Go bring them a dozen white roses. White roses were used in Europe as a symbol of resisting the Holocaust and just go up. They’ll know what it is when you bring white roses to a synagogue near where there was anti-Semitism. We did this in a Jewish cemetery that was swastika with spray paint. I tell you, that led to so many more opportunities. They invite us back to the rededication of the cemetery. They ask us to come up and speak at that. So it snowballs because the world is so against Israel. They are so thrilled to find people that aren’t Jewish that love them and support them.

[MCG]

Yeah, definitely.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

I haven’t had near as much experience with this as past My pastor in Chicago, I got to meet a Russian Jewish family there, and they asked if I would celebrate Passover with them, which I did for three years. And they were just thrilled. They would introduce me as their Christian preacher friend. They had a Christian preacher who was their friend. They would give me 5 minutes at the end of Passover to explain what the Passover means to Christians. I gave the gospel. They adopted a child from Russia. And they wanted the rabbi to go with them to pray over the child at the airport. And the rabbi wasn’t available to go. So they asked if I would go with them and pray. And I said, you have to understand if I prayed, I would pray that this child would one day come to know Christ as their Messiah. And they said, that’s fine. That’s fine. So I went to the airport with them and prayed. And they were just thrilled to have a Christian preacher that was for them.

[MCG]

Amen. All right, well, Pastor Jim, tell us, maybe give us an example of one of your Jewish friend who you were able to lead to the Lord. And in chapter seven, one gospel for Jews and Gentiles, you know, maybe you can explain to us what the dual covenant theology is and how can the Jewish person be saved today?

[Pastor Jim]

All right, so let me just start with dual covenant. It’s basically John Hagee and a few other invention that if you’re Jewish, you’re fine, you’re born saved kind of, and we know that everybody needs the gospel. And Abraham was saved by faith. And so how do we share this message with Jewish people? I think we create friendships. We love them unconditionally. A lot of them are very weary of conversion. There’s some different words that we should probably use with them. I would always prefer to use the word Messiah than Christ because they’ve been called Christ killers. So there are certain words that just really grade on them so we can learn how to use phrases a little bit better instead of saying the Old Testament. I will say the Older Testament or the Hebrew scriptures, because we have these phrases and these words the Bible actually doesn’t use. And so we can get better at that. So just because we’re being friends and loving them, we’ve had two invitations to come and sit with the Jewish family, one in Israel, one here in our area. They were both at the very last day of very significant Jewish holidays. And both husbands of both families asked me the same thing. Pastor Scudder, don’t Christians believe Isaiah 53 is talking about Jesus? I’m like, yes, yes we do. Can I read it with you? So both of these families heard me reading and explaining Isaiah 53. And one of them said, well, that’s speaking about Israel and the Jewish people and the Holocaust. I said, so you’re saying the Jewish people and the Holocaust paid for my iniquities? And he goes, no, that can’t be right. MCG, I can’t tell you that they got saved, but I know for sure they’ve heard the gospel multiple times. They’re also following us on social media and they’re watching us on YouTube. You know, they have a lot to lose if they publicly proclaim they’ve accepted Jesus and some will. Eventually Nicodemus did and Joseph of Arimathea did. But initially I think they were believers, but they were careful and quiet about it. So I’m not sure, but I know that the gospel has gone and they’ve been invited to our church. They’ve been coming to a lot of our services. The gospel goes out every time. And so you’re going to have tremendous opportunities, but we have to have some patience too.

[MCG]

Yeah, definitely. Well, gentlemen, it was a pleasure reading the book. Thank you for writing it. It is needed. Hello audience once again where and how they can obtain this book?

[Pastor Jim]

Okay, so The Spiritual War Against Israel, you can find it on Amazon and Kindle is available now as well. You can also get it at ingrace.us, ingrace.us. And our In Grace YouTube channels, we have In Grace Israel. If you like archaeology and apologetics and adventure, you gotta watch In Grace Israel. We have In Grace Adventures, two channels on YouTube, but we’re also, Dr. Stringer and I are doing a series on the book, The Spiritual War on the In Grace Israel YouTube channel, so you’re gonna hear us discussing a lot of these same themes. I might say too, we’re gonna do a.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

Whole college class on this, 28 hours of lectures, some by him, some by me in October, and that will be posted on our college website for anybody to look at, just like our class on the dangers of Calvinism is on there now for anybody.

[Pastor Jim]

And that’s Dayspring Bible College, dbc.edu.

[MCG]

Amen. Well, that again is also needed. Good Christian Bible colleges. All right, gentlemen, thank you for joining us on the Removing Barriers podcast.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

Thank you for having us. You guys are blessed.

[MCG]

Thank you. Definitely. God bless you all.

[Dr. Phil Stringer]

Look forward to the next time.

[MCG]

Yeah, definitely. We’ll definitely have you guys back.

[Pastor Jim]

Thank you. God bless you guys. Good to be on with you.

[Jay]

Thank you so much for listening to the Removing Barriers podcast. Make sure to rate us everywhere you listen to podcasts, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Stitcher. Removing Barriers, a clear view of the cross.

[MCG]

Thank you for listening. To get a hold of us, to support this podcast, or to learn more about removing barriers, go to removingbarriers.net. This has been the Removing Barriers podcast; we attempted to remove barriers so that we all can have a clear view of the cross.