A Critique Of "'Chosen People'
Inside the Mind of Christian Identity"

The following is an answer to a future article in the Media Bypass. Despite the article praising "Christian Identity," it is an excellent publication, and worthy of your examination.

 

Check their web site, http://www.4bypass.com/

 

"'Chosen People' Inside the Mind of Christian Identity"

 

According to God's Word, there are some serious errors in the July 1996 issue of the Media Bypass article, 'Chosen People.'

 

Many sincere people are being influenced by “Christian” Identity. Before converting to the “Identity” religion, one should do his homework. Is it “Christian?” Who is Israel? Who is covered by God's Law-Word? Who is the Abrahamic Covenant with? Is there a physical race of God's Chosen People on the earth today? According to God's Word, are folks being led into a false religion that looks like the truth?

 

First, it rightly admits that "Christian Identity" is a faith, or religion. Thus it is in opposition to the Orthodox Biblical Christian faith which says that the Redeemed, or the People of God, consist of people of every nation, kindred and tongue, Rev 5:9. According to Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon, Rev 5:9 must be understood thusly.

 A) kindred means all the persons descended from one of the twelve sons of Jacob; a race, nation, people; thus Israel.
B) tongue means the language used by a particular people in distinction from that of other nations... It serves to designate people of various languages, so the obvious reference is to all tongues and races originating at the tower of Babel. The same word us used in Rev 7:9; 10:11; 11:9; 13:7; 14:6; 17:15. Accordingly, contained among the great number of redeemed before the throne are people from every language group under heaven.
C)people means a people, tribe, nation, all those who are of the same stock and language; univ. of any people. Thayer gives the same additional uses in Rev as he did under tongue.
D) nation means race, nation, foreign nations not worshiping the true God, pagans, Gentiles. Paul uses nation to define the race of people outside of Israel to which he was sent by God with the gospel, Rom 11:13, 15:27; 26:4; Gal 2:12, 14; Eph 3:1, cf. 4:17.

Accordingly, those who might say that God's "Chosen People" are only found in the White, Anglo-Saxon race might have an "intense" knowledge, but it is not knowledge of the Christian Bible, particularly the New Testament, nor of the Christian God.
Restricting God's electing, redeeming grace to one nation or tribe of people is not Biblical Christianity nor is it the Christian God. The extent of their "intense" Bible knowledge is also shown in the following.

 

Second, "Identity" claims to have scholarly support for its position that the White race is the Israel of old; however, notice their "scholars" are recent "Identity" scholars, e.g., Raymond Capt and James Bruggeman. They wisely (subtilly?) avoid the fact that Orthodox Christian scholars from the very foundation of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ do not support their suppositions, e.g.,

 1) Justin Martyr (AD 110-165). In his very lengthy AD 160 "Dialogue with Trypho, A Jew, we find these headings: "CHAP. XXVI. - NO SALVATION TO THE JEWS EXCEPT THROUGH CHRIST," "CHAP. CXXIII. - RIDICULOUS INTERPRETATIONS OF THE JEWS. CHRISTIANS ARE THE TRUE ISRAEL," and "CHAP. CXXV. - HE EXPLAINS WHAT FORCE THE WORD ISRAEL HAS, AND HOW IT SUITS CHRIST." (ANTI-NICENE FATHERS, v. I.194-270.) His writings are among the most important Christian writings to come down from the second century. Though not the first to write Christian Apologetics, he gives us insight into the relations existing between the heathens and Christians in those days. His "Dialogue" shows the early Christian view of the false assumption that anyone except Christians are the true Israel of God. Under the three points mentioned above, Justin presents abundant Scriptural support to counter the false assumptions of his day concerning Israel.

2) Keil-Delitzsch is no doubt the classic Old Testament Commentary. No pastor's library should be without the 10 volume set. According to Keil-Delitzsch,

 

As the Hebrew..., like the German..., is not always used in an exclusive sense, but is frequently abstracted from what lies behind the terminus ad quem mentioned, it by no means follows from the words, “the Lord rejected Israel... to this day,” that the ten tribes returned to their own country after the time when our books were written, viz. about the middle of the sixth century B.C. And it is just as impossible to prove the opposite view, which is very widely spread, namely, that they are living as a body in banishment even at the present day. It is well known how often the long-lost ten tribes have been discovered, in the numerous Jewish communities of southern Arabia, in India, more especially in Malabar, in China, Turkistan, and Cashmir, or in Afghanistan, and even in America itself; and now Dr. Asahel Grant thinks that he has found them in the independent Nestorians and the Jews living among them; whereas others, such as Witsius, J.D. Michaelis, and last of all Robinson in the work quoted by Ritter, have endeavored to prove that the ten tribes became partly mixed up with the Judaeans during the Babylonian captivity, and partly attached themselves to the exiles who were led back to Palestine by Zerubbabel and Ezra; that a portion again became broken up at a still later period by mixing with the rest of the Jews, who were scattered throughout the world after the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, and a further portion a long time ago by conversion to Christianity, so that every attempt to discover the remnants of the ten tribes anywhere must be altogether futile. This view is in general the correct one, though its supporters have mixed up the sound arguments with many that are untenable. For example, the predictions quoted by Ritter..., probably after Robinson (viz. Jer 1. 4, 5, 17, 19, and Ezek. xxxvii. 11 sqq.), and also the prophetic declarations cited by Witsius (v. 11-14: viz Isa xiv. 1, Mic. ii. 12, Jer. iii. 12, xxx. 3, 4, xxxiii. 7, 8), prove very little, because for the most part they refer to Messianic times and are to be understood spiritually... And the Mosaic manners and customs of the Nestorians prove nothing more than that they are of Jewish origin. In general, the Israelites and Jews who have come into heathen lands from the time of Salmanasar and Nebuchadnezzar onwards, and have settled there, have become so mixed up with the Jews who were scattered in all quarters of the globe from the time of Alexander the Great, and more especially since the destruction of the Jewish state by the Romans, that the last traces of the old division into tribes have entirely disappeared. (Keil-Delitzsch, 2 Kgs 17:22, 23, vol. III.418-421. 1807- 1888/1813-1890 respectively. Emp added.)
Third, origin of the Anglo-Saxon faith is not from the Holy Scripture, as is the Christian faith. E.P Ingersoll, in his preface to Lost Israel found, (1886) claimed the ideas that developed into the "Identity" religion grew out of a study of the Great Pyramid of Geezeh, by Prof. P. Smyth, Royal Astronomer to Scotland. James Hastings, in his 1926 classic Encyclopaedia of Religion & Ethics (in 13 huge volumes), documents that the Anglo-Saxon faith came from John Sadler's Rights of the Kingdom (1649). Sadler's assumptions were drawn from a series of parallels between English law and customs and those of Hebrews and Jews. The more modern version of the Identity faith comes from John Wilson's Our Israelitish Origin (1849), and the first Association was formed in 1879. (Study-Graph, Survey of Major Cults, 1965, John H. Gerstner, Ph. D.) What a wonderful, firm foundation to build religious system upon: The Great Pyramid! Note the dates were after the foundation of America, which Identity falsely claims was founded in Identity theories.

 Fourth, "'Saxon' is a derivative of 'Issac Sons.'" Again, Identity wisely avoids Webster, probably the greatest orthoepist and lexicographer of the English language, for obvious reasons. According to the 1828 Webster dictionary, SAXON, n. [Sax. seax, a knife, sword or dagger, a Saxon.] 1. One of the nations or people who formerly dwelt in the northern part of Germany, and who invaded and conquered England in the fifth and sixth centuries. The Welsh still call the English Sasons. In addition, the 1884 Chamber's Encyclopeadia says concerning the word “Saxon:” SAXONS (Lat. Saxones, Ger. Saxchsen), a German people, whose name is usually derived from an old German word sahs, meaning a `knife,'…” (Chambers Encyclopeadia, a Dictionary of Universal knowledge for the people, vol. VII.101. 1884.)

 

In the introduction to his 1828 dictionary, Webster deals with the common words used by different language groups: Being a Christian, Webster assumed the world-wide Biblical Flood was just what God said it was, a world-wide flood. Therefore, similarities in the languages, he said, are holdovers from the common language all peoples had before the tower of Babel. (Introduction, p. 9.)

 Fifth, "the Abrahamic Covenant of the Bible." Isa 42:4-6 & 49:8 clearly identify Christ as the Covenant of God. Thus all who are in Christ are in the Covenant, for HE IS THE COVENANT. One is placed in the Abrahamic Covenant by grace through faith in the redemptive work of Christ, Gal 3:14; Eph 2:8, 9. Nor can we ignore the promised Covenant of Jer 31:31. The Covenant was not made with any physical race of people; the covenant was made with Christ and His Church, Heb 10:16, 17, 2 Cor 3:3, &c. Furthermore, all nations are held accountable to the Covenant Law of God, Ps 9:7; Isa 13:1-23:8; 24:1-6, 21; Jer 11:2, 3; 18:7-10; 24:1-8; 25:29, and Jer 50, whether they agreed to it or not.

Sixth, America, the covenant nation? Lev 25:18, 19, promises that if a nation will keep and do God’s statutes and judgments, it will dwell safely in its own land. Conversely, departure from God’s Word turns the nation that once dwelt safely over to the pagans, Ps 144:15; Deut 28:15ff. Ps 33:12, tells us that race has nothing whatsoever to do with being established safely in a land, e.g., “We are a white, Anglo-Saxon nation; therefore, we are special before God.” Violation of God’s statutes and judgments causes any nation founded upon them to no longer dwell safely in a land. Thus any nation established upon God's statutes and judgments is heir to the blessings of God promised in Ps 33:12, &c. (See Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, #326e. Moody Press.) On the other hand, when that nation turns its back upon God's Law-Word, it forfeits its safety in the land. In fact, God uses heathen nations to punish those who are unfaithful to their foundational covenant with Himself.

Just as sure as God moved His servant, Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, against His people in Palestine (Jer 25:19, &c.), God is now moving foreign national troops, e.g., German and Russian, into His place of judgment against America’s anti-Biblical, Antinomian “Christianity.” “Promise Keepers,” “Dobsonites” and “Gothardites” continue to multiply, and televangelists continue to rake in the money to "convert the world and feed the hungry" while foreign troops enlarge their presence upon American soil. Why cannot people add two and two and get a proper answer? Clearly, what is being promoted as Christianity is not Biblical Christianity, or American Christians would not be on the verge of losing their land, Lev 25:18, 19.

 

Only the antiChristians deny that the founders of America entered into covenant with the Lord God of the Christian Bible.

 

This nation was founded upon and by the Christian God, not the god exalted by Judaism, Jn 8:54; Jesus Christ clearly told the Jews that the god they worshiped, which did not point to Himself, was a false god and not the God of Abraham. Thus the Christian God is defined as He Who: 1) can be approached by all nationalities; 2) is approached only through the shed blood of His Son, Christ Jesus, and 3) is revealed in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ (thou shalt call his name JESUS, Mat 1:21.) Thus He is not the Jewish god nor the god worshiped by the majority of "religious" people today, for their god does not require the blood sacrifice for sin. These united States do not have a Judaic/Christian heritage; they have a distinctly Biblical Christian heritage, emanating from the desire to spread the gospel of Christ to every creature (not just the "Anglo-Saxon" race). It was clearly the Christian God Who established America. (The Christian Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States, B.F. Morris, Introduction, p II. G.W. Childs, Philadelphia, PA, 1864.)
"[T]hese United States" were to be the theater of the development and triumph of the Christian religion, the gospel of Christ, not the Jewish religion. The fathers of America entered into a covenant with the Christian God of the Bible. John Winthrop (1588-1649), aboard the flagship Arabella, spelled out what would happen to his national posterity if it forsook the covenant with God. (See God and Government, The Restoration of the Republic, vol. III.xi.) The early commitment of this nation, supported by every colony, was to faithfully obey the Law-Word of God, spread the gospel of Christ to every creature and advance the kingdom of God on earth. (Christian Character, 52.) In a large New Haven barn on June 4th, 1639, the founding fathers of these united States made the following covenant with the Christian God:
"Forasmuch as it hath pleased the Almighty God, by wise disposition of his divine providence, so to order and dispose of things that we, the inhabitants of Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield, are now cohabiting and dwelling in and upon the river of Connecticut, and the lands thereunto adjoining, and well knowing where a people are gathered together the word of God requireth that, to maintain the peace and union of such a people, there should be an orderly and decent government established according to God, to order and dispose of the affairs of the people at all seasons as occasion should require; do, therefore, associate and conjoin ourselves to be as one public STATE or COMMONWEALTH, and do enter into combination and confederation to maintain and preserve the liberty and purity of the gospel of our LORD JESUS, which we now profess, as also the discipline of the churches, which, according to the truth of said gospel, is now practiced amongst us; as also in our civil affairs to be guided and governed according to such laws, rules, and orders, and decrees as shall be made.

 "I. That the Scriptures hold forth a perfect rule for the direction and government of all men in all duties which they are to preform to God and to men, as well in families and commonwealths as in matters of the church.

 "II. That as in matters which concern the gathering and ordering of a church, so likewise in all public offices which concern civil order,--as the choice of magistrates and officers, making and repealing laws, dividing allotments of inheritance, and all things of like nature,--they would all be governed by those rules which the Scripture held forth to them. ...
The General Court, established under this constitution, ordered,--
"That God's word should be the only rule for ordering the affairs of government in this commonwealth." (Christian Character, 66-68.)

In Exo 19:8; 24;3, 7, the Hebrews at the mount said, "All the words which the Lord hath said will we do." (Compare Jn 14:15 with Ac 7:30-38: It was Jesus Christ Who spoke to the Hebrews.) They, accordingly, agreed to do the Law of God as revealed through Moses. The founding fathers, with no thought of whether or not they were decedents of the Hebrews of old, said, "All the words of God's Law we will do." And thus they made a covenant with the Christian God of both the Old and the New Testaments, for the God they covenanted with is revealed in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ; He is, therefore, not the Jewish god. They promised to base the laws and actions of their new nation in Holy Scripture; they promised the Christian God that if He prospered them, they would render strict obedience to God's Word; they made it clear that if the nation they founded departed from the covenant they made with the Christian God, that God's wrath and vengeance would be upon the faithless people for breaching their covenant. America’s founding fathers’ agreement with the Lord God placed the following generations of Americans within the covenant- conditions of possessing the land (Lev 25:18) that have stood since Abraham.
The original covenant was not between the civil authority and the people under that authority; the covenant was between the people and the Christian God of the Bible Who established their nation. We must all admit that the covenant has been broken, but which covenant? Those looking and hoping for a political solution requiring no repentance and obedience to God's Word (even Antinomian Christians) say the covenant that is broken is between the Federal civil government in DC and the people, i.e., the Constitution. However, those who believe God's Word know the covenant that is broken is the one between the people and the Christian God: The people promised to render strict obedience to God's Law-Word, and the founders agreed to God's righteous vengeance if they or their children departed from that covenant.
Every weapon that fallen man can bring to bear has been used against that founding covenant to pattern America's laws after God's Law-Word. The state education system has been, probably, the most effective weapon.

 

Abraham, the father of those who have placed their faith in Christ (Ro 4; Ga 3:9, 29, &c.), walked in the statutes of the Lord long before the Ten Commandments were given. He is held up as the example for all God's people of all time — till the end of time. Thus any person or nation, e.g., America (clearly founded in the Christian faith in the Lord Jesus Christ), can enter into the covenant relationship that Abraham had, and receive the blessings outlined in Deut 28, 29. On the other hand, those who fail to walk in His statutes will inherit the curses. Nationality has nothing to do with the blessings and curses of the law, for the law covers every living soul, or there is no final judgment according to God's Law.
Certainly, every pulpit in this nation at one time sounded forth the responsibilities of the covenant made by America's founding fathers with the Christian God as revealed through the Lord Jesus Christ, but that message was not the message that the Anglo-Saxon race is somehow, though a series of supposed travels, God's "Chosen People." It was a distinctly Calvinistic message that held that the Elect of all races are God's Chosen People. It is by God's sovereign, electing grace that one enters into the covenant, and God does not call according to race.
Seventh, some day even those who hate the name of Jesus will have to bow and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, Php 2:10, 11.
The above facts, and many more, are throughly documented in Pastor Need's book, Identitying Identity.
Rev. R.J. Rushdoony said of Identifying Identity: "Pastor Ovid Need, Jr., has a discerning and systematic mind, and this appears clearly in his study, Identifying Identity: A Biblical Examination of Assumptions Found in British-Israelism, Anglo-Saxonism, Christian Identity (spiral-bound, 72 pp., King and Kingdom Publishers, P.O. Box 6, Linden, Indians 47955; telephone 765-339-4609; $14 postpaid). This is a detailed exegitical analysis, made without rancor or unkindliness, of some of the basic assumptions of champions of that faith. In specific, the premises of one man are analyzed, but these are points common to most in the Identity Movement. Ministers should keep a copy of this work on hand to answer questions, or to loan to troubled persons. The fact that derelict ideas are sometimes held by likeable people does not lessen their danger. Pastor Need s analysis represents much painstaking study, and we are all the better for having his manual. It is detailed, specific, and Biblical. He explains and corrects rather than condemning and is always gracious." (Chalcedon Report, June, 1996.)
[America's conversion to "Protestant Zionism" is well documented in The Death of Victory, a 460 page book by Pastor Ovid Need Jr., Ross House Books. 1997.]
 Pastor Ovid Need Jr.
Linden Baptist Chruch
30 Plum St
Linden Indiana
 (Pastor Need publishes a serious theological paper, The Biblical Examiner, which examines issues as mentioned above from a throughly Biblical perspective. It is sent upon request, as the Lord provides.)
 

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