The Problem with Choosing the Wrong Friends

There are many religious “holy books” and many “gods.” Is the Bible merely another of the many? Or is it uniquely the Word of the one true and living God? Take the Jews and nation of Israel. God calls them a chosen people through whom He would offer to the nations His Light, His Word and His Messiah. To that special privilege would be added awesome responsibility to be holy and obedient to God. If so, guaranteed blessings would follow as promised in Deuteronomy 28:1-14.

But the rest of the chapter—54 more scriptures—speaks of terrible curses that would haunt the children of Israel if they dared to abandon total allegiance to God by choosing the wrong friends. Chased from the Promised Land. No rest among the nations. Victims of hideous antisemitism. Reduced to the habits of their heathen “friends” in offering their own children to the gentiles’ “fire god” Moloch (to God’s horror!). Eating their own children “secretly in the siege” rather than starve.

Yet God staked His reputation that the Jews would never disappear. Nations would be used to chastise Israel. God would then destroy those nations (like Babylon) and reduce others (like Egypt) to little status, while preserving the Jews. Those Gentiles who showed mercy and aided the Jews were blessed. There was always God’s promise to restore the Jews to the land of Israel.

After 70 years in Babylon, cured of idolatry, a remnant returned. Messianic pretenders would come and go. But one Jew would come who would never disappear. His life was one of love and His power unmatched. Sick healed! Demons sent shrieking! Blind and deaf restored! Dead raised! Elements tamed! Jesus was heralded by Jewish masses as Messiah. The worst envious leaders could say in trying to flatter Him in order to trap Him was, “Master, we know that thou art true, and teachest the way of God in truth…for thou regardest not the person of men.”

Jesus called Himself Israel’s hope and warned that rejecting His love would bring a destroyed temple, terrible suffering and heathen domination. Yet His love would be unconditional and they would see Him again as their deliverer. Before that time, a remnant of Jews would trust Him as Messiah, a remnant of Gentiles would come to true faith in Him, while the majority of Gentiles would make a mockery of His name through lives of hypocrisy and even hatred of the Jews through whom Christ came.

Today, God’s mercy has Israel again on the map. Much of the world wants Israel dead. The tiny nation is surrounded by hostility and infected with the sins of America and the West. Her reliance on the UN has been shattered—her hope in the USA is shaky.

Israel’s truest friends are Bible believing Christians—whom most Jewish leaders refuse to trust because of our insistence that while our love for them is unconditional, so is our conviction that Jesus the Messiah will prove to be the hope of Israel. We put no price tag on such friendship. It is as unconditional as is God’s covenant with the Jews. The reason we stand at the side of persecuted Jews or a suffering Israel is because we have no option—our love and orders come from Jesus Himself!

"Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ" (I Corinthians 11:1)
The ST. PAUL SCHOOL, with Frank Eiklor, Eileen Young and Cecilia Contreras