Volume 4 No 2 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

2012] JEWS WITHOUT JUDAISM 651In 1984, the influential international Bible teacher and Pentecostalevangelist Derek Prince wrote, in Our Debt to Israel, that:. . . in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Spain was the dominant nationof Europe, with a high level of culture, a powerful army and navy, and anempire that spanned both hemispheres. But within a century of expellingall Jews from her territories, Spain declined to a struggling, second-ratepower . . . Britain emerged victorious from two World Wars, retainingintact an empire that was perhaps the most extensive in human history.But in 1947-48, as the mandatory power over Palestine, Britain opposedand attempted to thwart the rebirth of Israel as a sovereign nation withher own state . . . From that very moment in history, Britain’s empireunderwent a process of decline and disintegration so rapid and total that itcannot be accounted for merely by the relevant political, military or economicfactors. Today, less than a generation later, Britain, like Spain, is astruggling, second-rate power. This represents, in part at least, the outworkingof a divine principle stated in Isaiah 60:12: “For the nation andkingdom that will not serve thee shall perish; yea, those nations shall beutterly wasted.” God here promises Israel, and also warns all the Gentiles,that He will bring judgment on any nation that opposes His purposesof redemption and restoration for Israel. 9In the Christian Zionist imagination, the Jewish people cannot possiblybe a “normal” people like the (Gentile) nations of the world. Instead, theyare always exceptional and stand in a unique relationship with God, whoseeffects are universal, touching individuals, nations, and the Church.At the same time as this sense of the Jews as a people requiring specialtreatment, and one whose special treatment results in God’s favor, thereexists as well an appreciation for the nation of Israel in their ascribed theologicalrole as the original and “natural” children of God. In contrast withthose strains of Christian thought that saw the Church replacing Israel in thedivine economy, Christian Zionists see themselves, through the Christevent, as joining Israel and becoming party to the covenant between Godand the nation of Israel. Christian Zionists regularly appeal to parts ofRomans 11, together with verses such as Ephesians 2:11-22, to support theimage of believers as the adopted sons of God, the “wild olive shoot”grafted on the root of “natural” Israel:[Paul] explains that Gentile believers do not replace Israel but enlargeher. Gentiles are being added or “grafted into” the existing natural olivetree of Israel, according to Romans 11:17-21; while in Ephesians 2:11-22we who were once “excluded from the commonwealth of Israel” are9. Derek Prince, Our Debt to Israel (Charlotte, NC: Derek Prince MinistriesInternational, 1984), 14-16.