Are Jews Today Guilty of the Crucifixion?

By Rev. Ted Pike5 Aug 10 

Abraham Foxman, of the Anti-Defamation League, recently pronounced that acceptance of the New Testament record that the Jews had Christ killed is “anti-Semitic.” This implicates tens of millions of Bible-believing Christians worldwide. With ADL’s charge comes the necessity, especially for Christians, to reexamine the issue of who is to blame for the crucifixion.

Scripture teaches no one is guilty for the sins of another. We all enter the world innocent of the misdeeds of our parents. This includes every Jewish child.

Yet the Bible also teaches we can become guilty of the sin of another by sympathy with it. Christ said the Pharisees were guilty of the murder of Abel and all righteous blood from the beginning of the world. (Mat. 23:35) Why? Because the Pharisees persecuted righteousness. Had they been present in the time of Abel, they would have murdered Abel. Thus, according to Christ, it is possible to become spiritually guilty of a sin, such as murder or adultery, even without physically committing the act. The will is there. All that is lacking is the opportunity.

Modern or rabbinic Judaism is a product of those very Pharisees whom Christ excoriated, and who ultimately had Him crucified. The authoritative Universal Jewish Encyclopedia explains:

"The Jewish religion as it is today traces its descent without a break through all the centuries from the Pharisees. Their leading ideas and methods found expression in a literature of enormous extent, of which a great deal is still in existence.. The Talmud is the largest and most important single piece of that literature.." The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Article on "Pharisaism," p. 474

If a Jewish child is born into an Orthodox Jewish family, he innocently enters a religious system entirely obedient to those who masterminded the crucifixion of Jesus. The Pharisees and their vast, rambling "anti-bible", the Talmud, possess greater authority for religious Jews than does the Old Testament. As the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia confirms: "Thus the ultimate authority for Orthodoxy is the Babylonian Talmud. The Bible itself ranks second to it in reality, if not in theory." Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, "Authority" p. 637.

What does the Talmud teach about Jesus? It says He seduced and deceived the people. Git.56b-57a. He was a bastard, his mother Mary being a whore. San.106b. He practiced sorcery and enticed His race to apostasy. San.43a. He was a fool. San.67a. He was stoned, burned, decapitated and strangled in His death. San. 106b, Git.57a. He was excommunicated for the thought of seducing a woman and in His shame fell down and worshipped a brick. San.107b. He is now in hell, languishing in boiling hot semen. Git.56a. The Talmud is emphatic that it was necessary to kill Jesus because He was "one of the three worst enemies of Judaism." Git.56a. He was a false prophet who seduced and deceived the people. Git.56b-57a.

Is the modern Jew guilty of the death of Christ? The answer is simple. If he agrees with the Talmud that the Pharisees did the right thing by having Jesus crucified, then that Jew today is as guilty as the Jewish mob that sided with the Pharisees 2,000 years ago, shouting "Crucify Him, crucify Him." Mk. 15:13. If, however, the modern Jew disassociates himself from loyalty to the Pharisees and their claims against Christ, then he is free from any guilt.

The New Testament Gospels present in clearest terms successful efforts by the Pharisees to persuade the Romans to crucify Christ. In the Book of Acts, the disciples, in face to face rebuke of the Pharisees, insistently identify them as the culprits: "The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you had put to death by hanging Him on the cross." Acts 5:30; cf. Acts 2:22, 36; 3:13-15; 4:10.

Unfortunately, amid the shock waves of Mel Gibson's "Passion," many evangelical Christian leaders rushed forward to absolve all Jews of any spiritual guilt concerning the crucifixion. They declared, as many evangelicals believe, that we are all guilty of the crucifixion. The idea of "corporate guilt" for Christ's death is unknown to Scripture. While we "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23), we have not all crucified Jesus. Such pandering not only makes God's law of none effect, it attempts to free the Jews from a burden of guilt they themselves invited. To hasten the crucifixion of Christ, the Jewish leaders said, "His blood be upon us and upon our children." Mk. 27:25. All adult Jews who still support the Pharisaic system which crucified Christ are thus linked in spiritual guilt with those who actively accomplished the act.

Of course, anyone, such as a gentile Satanist, who approves of the crucifixion, or a Christian who becomes apostate (Heb. 6:6), is spiritually guilty of crucifying Christ. Rabbinic Judaism however, because it constitutes the "synagogue of Satan" (Rev. 2:9) uniquely incurs blame for Christ's death upon all Jews who give themselves to it.

During the past century, Jewish apologists, for purposes of ecumenical harmony with Christians, have referred to Jesus in such terms as "a great teacher." Such a description is found nowhere in rabbinic Judaism's most sacred repository of authority, the Babylonian Talmud. Rabbinic Judaism, despite efforts to whitewash it, remains of all great religions (including Islam) the most vehemently opposed to the claims of Christ. To be a religious, observant Jew is to embrace the Talmud and its blasphemous opinion of Christ.

Someday, the Bible teaches, a remnant of Jews out of the Great Tribulation will believe on the One their fathers crucified. Yet for the present, the church must heed Christ's warning to "Beware of the leaven (teaching) of the Pharisees." Matt. 16:6. In other words: Beware of Judaism. Paul also warns the church, referring to unbelieving Jews as "enemies" (Rom. 11:28) "...who both killed the Lord Jesus and prophets, and drove us out. They are not pleasing to God, but hostile to all men." I Thess. 2:15

The Jews were given transcendent spiritual light, first at Sinai, and then through their prophets. When they rejected that light, they were plunged into incredible darkness. While individual Jews may not necessarily be held guilty of such apostasy, the fact is Jewish leadership and institutions remain formidably opposed to Christianity. Moses warned the Jews that if they rejected God's law, they would be cursed above all nations. Deut. 28:15. They not only rejected God's law, but crucified its giver, Jesus Christ. Christ said that the House of Israel, after its rejection of Him, would be left desolate. Lk.13:35.

Today, no evangelical leader has the privilege of removing guilt from Jews who still reject their Messiah and embrace the teaching of His murderers. Christ has both a long-standing love-affair and quarrel with the Jewish nation. He will settle that quarrel some day on His own terms, at last obtaining faith, obedience, and righteousness from what scripture repeatedly describes as a "stiff-necked people."

Such a people now control Hollywood and America's media. They dominate Congress. They dictate America's foreign policy in the Middle East. They are the fountainhead of anti-Christian activity and legislation, including so-called "anti-hate" laws which strip Christians of free speech. In short, they are more determined than ever that Christ will never prevail. Yet in the end, Christ will have righteousness from His people, the Jews. "They will look on Him whom they pierced and they will mourn ... as one mourns for an only son." Zech. 12:10.

How ADL Wants to Outlaw Christians

By Rev. Ted Pike
2 Aug 10 

Few familiar with the 97 year history of the Anti-Defamation League would deny its ambition to destroy the Christian/conservative right. ADL’s first great step was passing its federal hate crimes law last fall. The next stage was indicated last week by national director Abe Foxman. He said 80 million Americans are “anti-Semitic”—40 million “seriously infected” and 40 million “mildly” so.

What is Foxman’s reason for ensnaring so many in such a preposterously wide net? He is spinning a mythology that anti-Semitism in America is a “serious national problem”—one, like the “epidemic” of hate crimes, to be met with federal legislation.

Foxman is moving us toward a federal “anti-Semitism” law - probably under the expanded jurisdiction of ADL's Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act. If Foxman has his way, it could become a federal hate crime to engage in speech he considers anti-Semitic: alleging Jews have too much power in government, finance, or media, as well as voicing "strong" criticism of Israel. It would also include the New Testament claim that Jews killed Christ.

To understand the future, know the past. Over the last 25 years, ADL has persuaded liberals that hate crimes had indeed escalated to the point of crisis—a crisis that only a federal hate law could cope with. ADL thinks big—the bigger the lie, the bolder ADL states it as fact.

But ADL does more than distort facts. It turns upside down the most fundamental terms and values that govern civilization.

In 1988, ADL sponsored a national competition to create a model anti-hate law for America. At the time, few outside Canada and Sweden had ever heard of a “hate crime.” From the beginning, ADL lassoed its conceptual hate crimes noose around the largest number of people. It redefined a characteristic we all possess for good or bad: “bias.” ADL blackened the reputation of all bias (except bias against Christian/conservative values). ADL made bias equivalent to “hate.” It then relentlessly conditioned police, educators, the media, etc., that prejudice and intolerance (i.e., hate) were so evil, especially when motivating a crime, that a biased criminal act should be punished with at least triple penalties.

Quantifying “Hate”

But did hate crimes of the magnitude ADL claims really exist? No. ADL had to create its own hate crime reality. In 1990, it persuaded Congress to enact its Hate Crimes Statistics Act, empowering the federal government to require annual reporting of hate crimes from the states. ADL also instructed police in America on its twisted definitions, permitting them to report to the FBI as a “hate crime” any altercation, name-calling, or accusation which police believed was motivated by bias. As a result, ADL was able to “document” about 7500 hate crimes annually. At least 95 percent were never determined to be an actual crime in a court of law. Even when so ludicrously inflated, such “crimes” constitute 1/15 th of 1 percent of actual, documented annual crime in America.

Yet the sleight of hand worked. After sensitizing America to the threat of “hate,” and stacking up an annual 7500 “hate crimes,” ADL was able to dramatize the “epidemic” of hate enough to put President Obama’s signature on the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2010.

The federal hate law now exalts homosexuals, Jews, blacks, Muslims and women with preferential rights to federal hate crimes protection. The only reason the hate law has not been implemented with the kind of persecutive force felt in Canada, Sweden, and Australia is that the Christian/conservative right (very largely educated by the National Prayer Network over the past 20 years) has at last made hate laws an extremely volatile issue. Indeed, this issue could unseat Democrats in November. Nevertheless, ADL’s federal law pulsates in its potential to persecute Christians and conservatives as soon as the time is favorable.

ADL doesn’t want to wait. Ever proactive, ADL now wants the public to believe that the potential hate crime of anti-Semitism pervades America especially among Christians and conservatives. To this end, Foxman began his latest video with the biggest lie he could muster: that 45 years ago, one of three Americans was “seriously infected” with anti-Semitism. That’s nearly 65 million people! This incredibly audacious lie is to confirm ADL’s constant assertion that America has a long and stubborn history of Jew hatred residing in the "extremist" right - bigotry which ADL and its 45 state hate laws helped subdue. Foxman implies that with 80 million anti-Semites in America today, we must more than ever depend on ADL.

In 1965, when a third of Americans were supposedly anti-Semitic, I was a freshman in college. In my entire life to that time, outside of our family, I cannot remember hearing Israel or Jews criticized. Forty-five years ago, Israel was riding a titanic wave of popularity—practically the whole western world unconditionally cheered its “miraculous” rebirth. Israel was not criticized for its terrorist expropriation of 800,000 Palestinians in 1948 or any of its actions in the 1967 or 1973 wars against the Arabs. Except for its participation in the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacres in Lebanon, there was almost no worldwide criticism of Israel’s saturation bombing of 19,500 innocent refugees in southern Lebanon. Not until Sharon’s brutal invasion of the West Bank in 2002 did world opinion significantly rise against Israel. It has especially escalated since the 2009 siege of Gaza, and recently, its terrorist raid on the "Free Gaza" flotilla, killing nine activists.

In 1965, there did exist a small minority of opinion critical of Jewish supremacism, largely subsisting off earlier information provided by voices such as Winston Churchill, Charles Lindberg, Father Coughlin, Gerald L. K. Smith, and Elizabeth Dilling. The largest emerging anti-Zionist voice came fromLiberty Lobby out of Washington, DC. Yet such relatively underground dissent did not translate into any appreciable degree of popular criticism of Jews or Israel. Where does Foxman, then, get his figure of 1 in 3 Americans at that time being “seriously infected” with anti-Semitism? It comes from the same place he gets his assertion that 80 million Americans are Jew haters—his creativity as a liar. Such incredible prevarication springs from his desire to condition the American public that anti-Semitism, like hate crimes, is now a much greater national epidemic than anyone imagined. Foxman, a primary architect of the federal hate bill knows exactly what he is doing—what works.

With great forethought, he thus defines in his latest video that anti-Semitism is belief in the New Testament account that the Jews had Christ killed —implicating as anti-Semites all Bible-believing Christians worldwide. Foxman claims that, from the time of the church fathers, the charge that Jews were “Christ-killers” has been a homicidally destructive feature of Christianity. It, more than anything else, has provided fuel for the ovens of Dachau and Auschwitz. In his book, Never Again: The Threat of the New Anti-Semitism, Foxman says of European Christians what he largely still believes about many Bible-believing Christians today: “...the political and social atmosphere in which the persecution and killing of millions of Jews could be seen as broadly acceptable could not have existed without the tacit acceptance of the Christian churches, as well as the ingrained anti-Semitism of 20 centuries of dogma, doctrine and preaching that demonized Jews.” He quotes Elie Wiesel, “…the killings could not have happened without the sins of millions of Christians, sins of commission as well as sins of omission.” (pg. 94)

Foxman contends that Christianity’s anti-Semitism is so intrinsic that belief in a literal interpretation of the New Testament remains a potent threat to the Jewish people. Thus, Christianity’s capacity to create more Holocausts won’t end until laws in every nation proscribe public proclamation of New Testament teaching, especially concerning the Jews. Such "anti-Semitism" includes Christian evangelism of Jews, which Foxman in his book says, "is inherently anti-Semitic in that it implicitly denigrates the value of Jewish belief." (pg. 138)

ADL: Anti-Semitism is a "Disease"

In Foxman’s latest video, he also insinuates that the 80 million Americans “infected” with anti-Semitism are victims of a disease. This suggests that criticism of matters Jewish is a psychiatric disorder. Foxman’s Bolshevik forbearers confined critics of Jewish communists, not just to prisons, but psychiatric hospitals. Reputable Swedish evangelists testify that under Sweden’s ADL-inspired hate law, just criticizing Jews or Israel can land you in a psychiatric hospital for up to a year of drug rehabilitation—even before trial!

I had hoped the power of the evangelical right could thwart the momentum of ADL’s federal hate law. It couldn’t—very largely because leaders of the New Right knew ADL was behind hate laws and feared being called “anti-Semitic” by criticizing a venerable Jewish “civil liberties” organization. Their fear of ADL still exceeds their fear of a Christian-persecuting Gestapo – and, I believe, their fear of a God who commands they speak the whole, undiminished truth.

ADL is now in stage two, encircling the religious right with its “noose” of accusation, negatively stereotyping Bible-believers as those who portray Jews as “Christ-killers.” Will Christian/conservative leaders still refuse to publicly acknowledge ADL’s threat to the survival of Christianity? Probably. As ADL pushes for punishment of anti-Semitism under the present federal hate law, it knows Evangelical leaders will never want to seem to be in favor of anti-Semitism by opposing such inclusion. Far from exposing and resisting ADL such leaders will doubtless continue to respond to ADL in a way that delights it and is crucial to its ultimate success.

They give ADL what it wants most from them: silence.