Dr. John Garr

Sid: My guest by way of telephone is Dr. John Garr. I’m interviewing him this week on his book “Restoring Our Lost Legacy.” Something you said on yesterday’s broadcast I’ve been pondering, and that is that “Many Gentile believers in Jesus feel they had replaced Israel replaced, the Jewish people.” What you’ve said is according to scripture they have not replaced they’ve come alongside the natural Jews. And for instance today all over the world it’s Passover. Jewish people are going into the Synagogues and having the Passover Seder and how would a Gentile believer in Jesus relate to this based on the scriptures?

John: Well based on the scriptures I think that it would be very important Sid for the average Christian to recognize the fact that our faith as believers in Jesus is anchored in the event that occurred on the day of Passover. When Jesus Himself was crucified on the cross of Calvary and became the Passover Lamb that brought salvation and redemption to us and to all mankind. The connection between this event and the Exodus event should be clearly understood and easily understood by Christians. But unfortunately because of Christianity’s historical view that the church has replaced Israel and Christianity has replaced Judaism as God’s religion there has been an effort to try to see that there’s no connection between Christianity and Judaism. So therefore we’ve replaced the festivals of Judaism with Christian festivals and Christian holy days. We’ve replaced all of the ceremony and everything else eventually so there’s a disconnect and Christianity has now defined itself as not being Jewish. But there can be nothing more clear in the development of Christianity then the connection with Judaism it’s continuity with Judaism then the story of the Passover. The Passover was the event that liberated the Jewish people from the Egyptian bondage which had been unrest to them and set them forth on a journey to go to Sinai and meet God and enter into a Covenant with Him at Sinai they were liberated in order to come into covenantal relationship with God to be His people. So therefore, Passover wasn’t completed until they reached Sinai and entered into God’s Covenant received His Covenant and became collectively as a nation God’s chosen people. Well the same thing has happened to us as believers we have come out of the bondage of sin and death by the agency of the Lamb that was slain upon Mount Calvary. As Paul uses the analogy that He was the Lamb that was slain from the very foundation of the earth. John the Baptist said “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” This was all in the context of this metaphor of the Passover Lamb’s being fulfilled or being brought to this fullness, or filled full, in the experience of Jesus being on the cross at Calvary but God has brought us into this Passover experience. So we Christians today have a far greater reason to celebrate Passover than our Jewish friends do, not to minimize the importance of Passover for our Jewish friends because without the Passover event they would not be an identifiable people and they would not be in an identifiable religion as it is today. But we have come to an experience where we have been liberated not just from the bondage of an enslavement in an earthly sense or a physical sense we have been liberated from this awful enslavement from the power of sin and have been liberated and brought in to the glorious kingdom of God and in effect have become a part of God’s kingdom. The same kingdom that God established among Israel now we have come alongside the Jewish people in being a part of that chosen people that bear the name of God in the earth. So we certainly have a strong connection with the Jewish people and should identify with the Jewish people wherever they are, and share in this part of the salvation history that God Himself brought forth.

Sid: I understand John the distancing if you will of the early church from anything Jewish because the Jewish people were being persecuted and the early church didn’t want any more persecution than they had; so they deliberately got rid of everything Jewish and substituted as you put it a thin veneer of pagan things but for good things that have happened in the life of Jesus. But it still was… came from a pagan heritage and you know I can almost understand all of that, but what I can’t understand is why, and I come from a traditional Jewish background, why do we Jews regard Christians as the most anti-Semitic group in history? And why were they and the fact is they were, why?

John: Well it’s just a fact of history and it’s unfortunate it’s basically the scar on the face of the Christian Church that it’s almost unremovable is the Church’s attitude in history toward the Jewish people. And I think that one of the reasons for that is that there’s always been this hatred of the God of Israel that’s been at the core of anti-Semitism. They even predate the date of the first century there was this attitude among Haman in the Persian kingdom all the way back. This identity that there’s a people among you who don’t fit in because they worship another God whose strange to us and is not in the best interest of the king to tolerate these people. So the world at large, because of the pagan heart that is man opposed first of all to the God of Israel. And then secondly they’ve been opposed to the people who represent that God to Israel and there’s no more people that’s more specifically and clearly are identified as the people of the God of Israel who makes demands righteous demands on humanity than the Jewish people. So the Jewish people have been hated. It’s unfortunate that this spirit began to permeate the church because within the church there were people who were very anti-Semitic and coming from their cultures they didn’t trust the Jews, they didn’t like the Jews and they didn’t like Judaism. So in order to elevate Christian thought and the Christian religion and their experience they felt that the best thing to do was to do away with every Jewish element from it. In fact Constantine himself the Roman Emperor the 4th Century said that “Concerning Passover observance this irregularity must be discontinued so that we can have nothing in common with the murderers and parasite of our Lord.” Now that’s a direct quote. What he was talking about was the fact that the earliest church was continuing up until that time to worship and celebrate the death, burial and resurrection at the time of Passover according to the Jewish calendar. Now I think that that’s a very interesting thing that the church was still doing this for 4 centuries in the western part of the church and it was still observing Passover until the 11th Century in the eastern part of the church or the Eastern Orthodox part of the Church. Then we come to this time frame and all of this was done away because the idea was now we can have nothing in common with the Jewish people because they were they were “the murderers of our Lord.” Which is the most ridiculous accusation that could be hurled against the Jewish people.

Sid: For those ignorant people that don’t know why it’s ridiculous would you explain.

John: Well the reality is the Jewish people in the time of people the vast majority of the Jewish people “the Jews” probably 90% of them didn’t even live in Israel, or in the land of Judah; they didn’t live there they were scattered in the diaspora. But at the same token only a small handful of the leadership of the nation of Israel at that time worked in collaboration with the Roman authorities to eliminate what they perceived as a threat to social order and that was to get rid of Jesus because there was a growing feeling among a large and increasing segment of the Jewish population at that time that this Jesus was the Messiah. He was the expected deliverer and so the political authorities thought that the best thing to do in order to put down this rising tide of interest of someone who might pose them a political and military problem was simply to eliminate Him. And so they got together in context with the Roman leaders, Pontius Pilate and the others that were working with him, and the leadership of Israel. Which by that time we have to understand that even the High Priest was appointed by the Roman authorities and not by divine anointing or anything, it was basically an appointment by the Roman authorities. So they conspired among themselves to put down this political threat and that was to do away and destroy Jesus. So the mass of the Jewish people were nowhere involved in the crucifixion of Jesus and indeed the Gentiles, the Romans, were the ones that held the ultimate responsibility because they alone had the power of execution. They could either allow a person to live or they could execute that person the Jews didn’t have that power the Jewish authorities in that day. So the responsibility for the execution of Jesus rests on the Roman authorities of the Gentiles and not on the Jews. So the church turned it all the way around and said that the Jews killed Jesus and so since the Jews killed Jesus it’s okay for us to hate them, it’s alright for us to persecute them and as the story goes along it becomes alright for us to kill them all in the name of Jesus. Now this is one of the great authorities of history that such a religion of faith and love and beauty and purity have been turned and twisted completely around to become a religion of hate and or murder.

Sid: You know that wouldn’t have ever happened if the church had not been diluted by its original Jewish heritage.

John: Absolutely if the church had continued to recognize the fact that it was inherently Jewish none of that would have ever happened. Because in effect, for a Christian who understands that his faith is inherently Jewish it’s impossible to hate Jews because if you do it’s a form a self-hatred, you’re hating yourself. (Laughing) It’s pretty astounding when you start thinking about it.

Sid: What about the Sabbath I mean this is such a controversial thing as far as I’m concerned from searching the scriptures God never changed the specific day. He did show the fulfillment of the Sabbath is a person not a day Jesus, but by the same token He never changed a specific day. Why is it so important to make the shift from Saturday to Sunday I’m not looking at it in any legalistic fashion but why was that so important?

John: Well again this was one of the things that was finally culminated in the Constantine time in the time of Constantine in the 4th Century was the requirement that people in the Roman Empire set apart Sunday and the church set apart Sunday as opposed to the Sabbath as a time for worship. But it basically developed over a period of many centuries before that time because the church being a Jewish entity were worshiping God on the Sabbath, and their worship carried over on the end of the Sabbath which was the sundown on Saturday into the first day of the week which would have been any time after sundown on Saturday evening. And they continued to worship that when you read these Arab references when you read about the first day of the week this is what it’s talking about.

Sid: Whoop we’re out of time.

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