God’s Chosen People by Jeremiah Michael
Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Jewish world domination are a distortion of our mission to bring King Messiah.
The hook-nosed octopus with tentacles spreading across the globe is a classic racist caricature. It is designed to depict a supposed Jewish desire for world domination. The Nazi tabloid Der Stürmer used this caricature to dehumanize European Jewry as a bloodthirsty, murderous monster. American anti-Semites followed suit, like Elizabeth Dilling in her manifesto, The Octopus.
Der Stürmer and Dilling have passed from the world, but their conspiracies of Jewish global domination continue with vigor in the American far right. Nick Fuentes spews venomous hatred against Jews as resource-sucking parasites in a quest for global control, while Kanye West rants about Jews controlling the black community through pornography.
These conspiracies are echoed daily through the swamp of anti-Semitic propaganda that is far-right media. Disturbingly, certain right-wing pundits sanitize this conspiracy theory as a “globalist takeover” designed to subject America to poverty through a “Great Replacement” of native-born Christian Americans with immigrants. This is not an innocent talking point on the future of America. It is a dangerous anti-Semitic dog whistle.
Chosenness
The conspiracy of Jewish world domination, whether purposefully or accidentally, conflates Jewish “chosenness” with ethnic superiority. This leads to a dangerous line of thinking: The Jewish people claim to be the “chosen people”; Gentiles are not; you only choose what has value; therefore, Jews must view themselves as intrinsically and ethnically superior to Gentiles.
From this logic flows the harmful conspiracy theory that, by virtue of their “chosen” status, Jews aspire to global domination through the abuse and murder of Gentiles. Anti-Semites throw around supposedly talmudic xenophobic statements as evidence for this nefarious agenda. Unfortunately, most people are unaware that these statements are mostly fabrications. Those statements that seemingly affirm a Jewish-ethnic-superiority complex are either twisted beyond their original meaning or are examples of legal hyperbole that were never taken seriously.
Despite this, there is a handful of inexcusably racist and bigoted slurs against Gentiles in Jewish literature. Tragically, the racist fringes of the Israeli right excuse their contempt of and discrimination against Arabs with these slurs.
Thanks to the pain of the decades-long conflict with the Palestinians, extremist rabbis and politicians are growing bolder in their racism against all Gentiles. Some far-right politicians are calling for the outright cleansing of all Gentiles from Israel. The justification for these shameful proposals is the horrible twisting of the status of Israel as God’s chosen people into a type of ethnic superiority that plays right into the hands of the anti-Semites.
Although I am ashamed that these ideas exist in the fringes of Israeli Jewish society, I am proud to confirm that most Jews are repulsed by these ideas. I and my Jewish brethren understand that our status as the chosen people is not because of ethnic superiority, and we understand that the calling of God on our people is to reveal him through obedience to his will.
As a Messianic Jewish man and a disciple of the King of Israel, I am compelled to defend the unique calling God placed on us as his chosen people by showing through Jewish literature that our desire is not to dominate Gentiles but instead to establish the Messiah’s kingdom.
Slandering Jewish people as racist, Christ-hating perverts is evil, dangerous, and wrong. Doing so while purporting to be a follower of Christ is not only shameful, it is blasphemous.
Called to Reveal God and His Messiah
What purpose did God choose us out of all the nations to be his people? He did not choose us because of our might, for we were the “fewest of all peoples” (Deuteronomy 7:7) and a mere “worm” (Isaiah 41:14). God’s love for our forefathers is what caused him to choose us from amongst all the nations to be his unique people: Because he loved your fathers and chose their offspring after them and brought you out of Egypt with his own presence, by his great power. (Deuteronomy 4:37)
God loved Abraham and chose to make his descendants into a mighty nation because of his faith in God’s promises. God fulfilled his promise to Abraham when he brought his offspring to Mount Sinai, adopted us as his firstborn from amongst the nations, and established an eternal covenant with us:
You are all standing before the LORD your God. Your tribal heads, your elders, and your officers, every man from Israel—your little ones, women, and your stranger in your camp, your woodcutters and water drawers—for you enter the covenant with the LORD your God and the oath the LORD your God is making with you today. In order that he would establish you today as his people and he would be your God as we have spoken and sworn to your forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ... and not just you, but you and all your descendants. (Deuteronomy 29:9–14[10–15], my translation)
The nature of God is to unite with his creation, and he chose to unite himself with the Jewish people in order to reveal himself to the rest of humanity. The physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob entered into a covenant with God and accepted the task of revealing him to the world.
We must understand that God chose a physical people and their descendants as his representatives in the world—not an ethereal, spiritual identity that can pass from one people to another but a flesh-and-blood nation. We must also understand that conspiracies of ethnic superiority had nothing to do with this choice.
As the chosen people of God, we are tasked with the responsibility of physically representing him in the world. The means by which we represent him is through obedience to his will. This task is both the burden and the privilege of being the chosen people. We are privileged to physically represent God’s will to the world, and we are burdened by the physical suffering we have endured throughout our history at the hands of the enemy.
However, our suffering is often justified as punishment for our rebellion against our divine calling. God revealed himself to us, and we are therefore called to a higher standard. In contrast, God did not reveal himself to any other nation to teach them right from wrong. Therefore, Gentiles from among the nations who have not attached themselves to the Messiah are disadvantaged because they do not know the will of God.
Paul highlighted this difference between Jews and Gentiles when he reminded Peter that they were “by nature Jews and not sinners from amongst the Gentiles” (Galatians 2:15, my translation).
This is not an absolute statement about Jews and Gentiles or an implication that the two groups have a different level of natural propensity to sin. It was Paul’s reminder to Peter that, as Jews, they had the advantage of knowing God’s will. They were, therefore, responsible to keep themselves from sin and to be “holy and blameless before him” (Ephesians 1:4).
In addition to our role as an example to the nations, our responsibility to be holy and blameless before God is also tied up in our eternal mission to bring the Messiah into the world for the establishment of his kingdom. God chose the Jewish people to be set apart for him in Messiah “before the foundation of the world” (Ephesians 1:4). He also “predestined us for adoption” through Messiah (Ephesians 1:5).
God elected the Jewish people in Yeshua because out of all nations, we were “the first to hope” in Messiah (Ephesians 1:12). Our hope for the Messiah and his kingdom will be fully realized in the “fullness of time” (Ephesians 1:10).
Paul’s insistence on Jewish predestination for sonship through Yeshua parallels Chasidic theology on Israel’s election. During a discourse on the redemption, the Satmar Rebbe claimed, “The soul of the Messiah is the foundation of Israel’s holiness, and from his soul flow all the souls of Israel.” He further stated that the coming of the Messiah is only for the “time God considers worthy” (Ma’amar Geulah, 71). For Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berkowitz, the Messiah was “the life force of every Jewish soul” (Kedushat Levi, Vayigash). Moreover, the Radomski Rebbe taught his students that the Messiah is “the purpose of all creation with whom Israel takes part” (Tiferet Shlomo, Vayechi).
We learn from this that the task of the Jewish people is not merely to reveal God’s will to the world but also to work for the establishment of the Messiah’s kingdom, which will have “dominion from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth” (Psalms 72:8).
The enemy maligns this calling of Jewish election to reveal the Messiah by distorting and corrupting it into a secret plan to conquer Gentiles in a quest for world domination. This is a gross error, but it is also fundamentally a spiritual rejection of the Messiah’s kingdom.
As the people who will be the physical center of the Messiah’s kingdom, we represent his kingdom even now and suffer for it. But let it be clear that we do not suffer because we seek the establishment of an ethnically pure Jewish kingdom; we seek the kingdom of our Jewish King, a kingdom that will fill the world with the revelation of God’s justice and righteousness.
The Gifts and Calling of God
Even the failures of the Jewish people to live up to our calling reveal God’s righteousness as we receive his punishments for our sins in full view of all the nations. Unfortunately, the church fathers misunderstood these punishments as an indication of an eternal rejection of our chosen status. This has led countless disciples to view the idea of Jewish election as something incompatible with and even opposed to the Messiah’s kingdom.
The church fathers’ appraisal of God’s wrath against Jewish rebellion missed the prophetic message that God’s punishments against Israel are restorative. Hosea depicts God as both the afflicter and healer. He punishes Israel for her sins only to heal and restore her:
Come let us return to the LORD, for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up. (Hosea 6:1)
Why would God not punish us? Does a father not punish his children for their benefit? As our Father in heaven, he heals us through punishment because we are his “darling child” for whom his “heart yearns” (Jeremiah 31:20).
God’s sovereign will to love Israel even in her rebellion is irrational from a human perspective, but it is a confirmation that “the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (Romans 11:29).
Chosen for the Sake of the Gentiles
The irrevocable calling and gifts of God to the Jewish people are not for the degradation of Gentiles. God called Israel to bring his Messiah into the world for the benefit of all people, which is the mystery of the gospel:
This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in [Messiah Yeshua] through the gospel. (Ephesians 3:6)
There Is No Distinction
Paul was merely saying that despite our distinct legal categories, we are all one in Messiah Yeshua. Like the parallels between Pauline and Chasidic theology regarding the election of Israel in the Messiah, we also find parallels in Jewish medieval philosophy to Paul’s assertions regarding the role of the Jewish people in bringing Gentiles into the family of God.
Saadia Gaon (882–942), the father of Jewish philosophy, noted that both Jew and Gentile are created in the image of God and that God did not choose the Jewish people because of ethnic superiority:
All mankind is equal … in that we are his creation … the language the Torah uses to describe Israel as “God’s possession” and “his treasured nation” are merely honorable ways to affirm the election of Israel [and not ways to denigrate Gentiles]. For us, all people have merit and are precious to God. (Emunot Udaot, introduction and chapter 3)
After laying this groundwork, Saadia Gaon explains that God chose the Jewish people as a conduit through whom he would manifest his mercy and justice to the rest of the world. Through Israel, the world would learn the fear of the LORD by understanding the rewards and punishments he metes out for obedience or disobedience to his will. The purpose of Israel is to be a vessel for the demonstration of divine love and justice so that all mankind can partake in a relationship with God, knowing the will of God regarding sin and righteousness.
Chosen for Love
During a sermon on Parashat Toldot, the great Jewish philosopher Jacob Anatoli (1194–1256) stated that God elected the Jewish people because he foresaw that they would love his Torah. Anatoli explained to his congregation that the Jewish people’s love of the Torah was an expression of the image of God and that this image was shared between Jews and Gentiles—that all mankind was searching for God:
The image of God is shared equally amongst all people. Do not say, “Only Israel has a soul,” in reaction to the foolish Gentiles who say, “Israel does not have a soul,” ... in reality, all mankind are in the image of God in accordance with his will. (Melamdim HaTalmidim, Toldot)
The call to meet the disparaging remarks about Jewish nature with an affirmation of Gentile self-worth could be a reaction to the popular medieval sentiment that Jews were soulless animals. Peter Abelard, for example, described Jews as “animals and sensual … with no philosophy” (Ethics and Dialogue).
Instead of reacting to these slurs with equally disparaging remarks regarding Gentiles, Anatoli called for his Jewish audience to take the higher road and affirm that both Jews and Gentiles have souls and the ability to reason.
Moreover, Anatoli insisted that Gentiles are just as capable as Jews of submitting to God’s will. Therefore, in the same way that Israel’s love of God granted them the status of God’s unique people, Gentiles who strive to love God can also experience communion with God as his children. Rabbi Judah Loew Ben Bezalel (The Maharal, 1512–1609) believed that God predestined Israel to be his firstborn son so he could directly influence a people to live according to his will—a people through whom he could reveal himself to all of humanity.
The Maharal believed that God developed a familial relationship with Gentiles through the Jewish people. He likened Israel to God’s firstborn in the family and the Gentiles to the rest of his children. According to the Maharal, God chose Israel as his firstborn son so that Gentiles could be given the opportunity to be his children as well.
Our Calling
The calling of my people to shine the light of God and to reveal the kingdom of the Messiah is slandered on a daily basis. Our mission to establish the kingdom of Messiah is maligned as a conspiracy to establish our own kingdom. We are unworthy of establishing our own kingdom because we were not called for that purpose. We were called to bring the Messiah into the world so that all Gentiles could receive salvation.
Any arrogance we may have regarding our chosen status is crushed by the historical record of our suffering, which we brought on ourselves by our rebellion. Our constant humiliation at the hands of the nations negates the possibility of exchanging our identity as “the chosen people” for any aspiration to be “the master race.”
We are not the master race any more than any other ethnicity. God elected the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to take on the flesh and blood of a Jew. He gave himself over to shame and humiliation in communion with his people so that all people could be his children alongside his firstborn son, Israel.
The Jewish people are chosen for God’s will; we are chosen for the Messiah’s kingdom; we are chosen for the glory of bringing all Gentiles into the global kingdom of our Jewish King, Yeshua.
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