Israel Forsook the Lord and Served Baal - Part 2
Copied from the sermon notes of Pastor Don Elmore
October 14, 2018
Scripture Reading: Judges 2:20-23
20) “And the anger of the LORD was hot against Israel; and He said, Because that this people hath transgressed My covenant which I commanded their fathers, and have not hearkened with My voice;
21) I also will not henceforth drive out any from before them of the nations [Canaanite nations] which Joshua left when he died.
22) That through them I may prove Israel, whether they will keep the way of the LORD to walk therein, as their fathers did keep it, or not.
23) Therefore the LORD left those [Canaanite] nations, without driving them out hastily; neither delivered He them into the hand of Joshua.”
Who are “this people” referred to in verse 20? What did their LORD say they were guilty of? They had violated the covenant that God made with their fathers. Who were their fathers? It was Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, not anyone else. It wasn’t Abraham and Ishmael (the Muslims). It wasn’t Abraham, Isaac and Esau (the Jews). The fathers referred to in verse 20 was Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (the White race). It was the pure children of Jacob/Israel who broke the covenant that was made with their fathers.
In verse 21, what was the consequence of their breaking the covenant that was made with their fathers? God told His covenant people that He would not drive out any more of the Canaanite nations (the future Jews) that were left after Joshua died. They were left as a test for Israel. Would they keep His laws, or would they serve their gods? Most of Israel’s history they served Baal, the god of the Canaanites. They are still doing it.
One Bible commentator says that there were 17 sins for which God punished Israel:
- Broke God’s covenant,
- Made leagues with inhabitants of Canaan,
- Refused to throw down all altars of the heathen,
- Disobeyed God’s voice,
- Did evil in the sight of God and served Baalim and other gods,
- Forsook God,
- Followed other gods,
- Bowed down to worship other gods,
- Provoked God to anger,
- Would not hearken to judges,
- Went whoring after other gods, committing all kinds of immoralities,
- Turned quickly out of the way,
- Disobeyed the commandments,
- Backslid and corrupted themselves more than their fathers in following, serving, bowing down to other gods,
- Ceased not from their own sins and stubborn ways,
- Intermarried with other races,
- Forgot God.
Here we have notice of God’s decision not to continue to drive out the nations left by Joshua in the land, and the reason for it. The enemies were there to prove Israel. To know whether they would hearken unto the commandments of the LORD, which He commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses. Is this still true today? Yes, it is, and Israel is failing; maybe more than ever.
Judges 3:5-7:
5) “And the children of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites, Hittites, and Amorites, and Perizzites, and Hivites, and Jebusites:
6) And they took their daughters to be their wives, and gave their daughters to their sons [interracial marriages], and served their gods.
7) And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD, and forgat the LORD their God and served Baalim and the groves [Ashtaroth].”
Are Israelites today marrying individuals of the Jewish/Canaanite faith [blood line of the devil] like they were in ancient days? Are the children of Israel doing evil in the sight of their God? Have we forgotten the LORD our God and are we serving Baal and Ashtaroth?
Look at what I received from Christians United for Israel in my email:
Dear DONALD,
Thank you for putting your faith into action by partnering with CUFI to unite the voices of Bible-believing Christian Zionists all across the nation in defense of the State of Israel.
ISRAEL COLLECTIVE SHORT FILM MAKES A BIG IMPACT
Earlier this year, several members of the Robertson family, the well-known stars of the popular Duck Dynasty TV show, went to Israel on a CUFI Israel Collective trip. Their deeply meaningful journey through the Holy Land was captured on film and released on social media by the Israel Collective. Thank you for helping CUFI and the Israel Collective reach thousands of new hearts and minds with this beautiful film!
WHERE ARE THEY NOW? CUFI ON CAMPUS ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT
In the last 10 years, the CUFI on Campus program has changed the lives of thousands of Christian college students. Each one of them represents a significant reward for the investment our donors poured into their lives.
Elsa and Isaac Rodriguez met through CUFI on Campus five years ago and later married. Now, as partners in youth ministry, their mutual passion for Israel remains a cornerstone of both their marriage and their ministry. The education and experience they received from CUFI is now being put to use in shaping the hearts of the young Christians under their leadership in Odessa, TX.
"I have been a member of CUFI for 8 years now and it has truly been one of the best decisions of my life. I am married to Isaac Rodriguez, and we co-Youth Pastor in mentoring and raising up the next generation of Christian Zionists that are passionate about blessing the Nation of Israel. I am blessed to have been a recipient of the many scholarships provided by CUFI. Your sowing will reap a harvest here in America!" - Elsa Rodriguez, Youth Pastor
"After attending my first CUFI on Campus event in 2013, I knew I couldn't simply stay idle. I had to get involved. I applied for the 2013 DC Summit and was blown away by the amount of resources which were available and the quality of speakers and college students that were in attendance. At that moment, I knew I would stay involved with CUFI for life."- Isaac Rodriguez, Youth Pastor
Together, Elsa and Isaac have visited Israel six times in the last five years and have brought more than a dozen members of their youth group to the DC Summit. The many decades of pro-Israel ministry and advocacy ahead in the lives of this couple, and the thousands of young people they will influence, are part of the incredible legacy you are leaving to the people of Israel by supporting CUFI on Campus.
THE CONGRESSIONAL LIAISON PROGRAM GATHERS STEAM
One of our most important initiatives of 2018 has been the implementation of recruiting dedicated grassroots leaders in every Congressional district in America to be the voice for CUFI. We launched this initiative just before the Washington Summit, and the response has been both overwhelming and encouraging. Our new recruits are filled with passion and excitement, and their dedication will be the key to advancing CUFI's pro-Israel agenda through the gridlock of Congress by building personal relationships with their elected officials and staff in their home states and districts.
CUFI is moving full steam ahead, but we are only able to make these advances because dedicated supporters like you stand with us in prayer and financial partnership. By choosing to support CUFI, you are part of a historic movement that is making a lasting impact on the US-Israel relationship and repairing centuries of damage between Christians and the global Jewish community.
We cannot thank you enough for what you have invested in this effort. Please continue to stand with us and with the Jewish people as we partner together to bring millions more Christians into the movement God has begun.
Blessings to you and those you love,
Did you notice that the pictures in the CUFI email were non-Israelites except for the family of the Duck Dynasty, who could be white? And did you catch that at the end of his article that he makes the following statement: By supporting CUFI you are “repairing centuries of damage between Christians and the global Jewish community.”
Centuries, hundreds of years, of damage between Christians and the Jews. Does it go back to the punishments given out in the Garden of Eden? Yes, it does. They are eternal enemies. Cities, counties and countries all throughout Europe have expelled the Jews for many, many years. But now it is forgotten. This salutation was given as the punishment to the serpent (Satan):
Genesis 3:15: “And I [the LORD God Almighty] will put enmity [hatred] between thee [serpent, Satan] and the woman [Eve], and between thy seed [descendants of the serpent, Satan] and her seed [descendants of Eve]; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.”
Who are these two seed lines that have a hatred put in them by the God of the Bible? They hate each other. They have been at war for over 6,000 years. To attempt to “repair the damage done for centuries” is treason for CUFI. It is conceding defeat. It is ignoring the punishment put on Satan. It is helping them in their attempt to destroy Israel completely and to defeat their LORD God. What blasphemy!
America is forsaking the LORD God of Israel. Who do they worship now?
How did this happen? Well, it occurred during my lifetime. I didn’t know much or understand much of what was going on at the time. In fact, I have now discovered that I was on the fringes of it. I saved an October 10, 2014 article that appeared in the Cincinnati Enquirer newspaper. The article was entitled, “Back to the Beginning of Freedom Summer”. Activists reunite in Oxford (Ohio), where they met in 1964 to join the civil rights movement.
1964…Oxford, Ohio…I was there! I was a senior at Miami University. In the summer of that year I graduated; in the fall of that year I began my teaching career. I have just a few recollections of what happened. I didn’t even know the great defeat that was suffered by the Christian faith during this ordeal. I wasn’t even aware that there was a war going on. I was like most “Christians” at that time. We celebrated Christmas and Easter. That is what made us Christians. The Jews and others didn’t. That is what made them non-Christians. Pretty simple.
Why did this event happen in Oxford, Ohio? Why did it happen in June 1964? I had just graduated, and I felt the need to go to a seminary. We (my parents and I) decided on Louisville Baptist Seminary. My mother and I traveled to the school in Louisville to talk to them about my entering. While waiting for the Dean to come and talk with us, I began looking through the dorm rooms. I talked with several of the students. When I returned to where my mother was waiting, I was sure that I wasn’t going to this seminary. It was too liberal for me. We went home.
Soon thereafter, I received notification that I was recommended for a teaching job in the Oxford schools. I could coach basketball too. Well, it was really the reverse. I got the job teaching math because they wanted me to coach basketball. I would be an assistant to the varsity coach and be a head coach a 2nd freshman team. No pay for this, but it was what I wanted. I just got paid for teaching: $4200 a year. All the events were transpiring in Oxford and I was unaware of it. It was a major turning point in America’s history.
There were about 800 students, mainly from East Coast schools and mostly Whites and Jewish, who arrived in Oxford and changed a nation. Why did they come to Oxford? They were supposed to go to the first interracial and coeducational college in the South—Berea College--founded in 1855. Berea College, about 1½ hours south of Cincinnati, was the first college to admit other races to go to school with whites! And, females along with males! Now, all schools in the nation must admit all students regardless of race, gender and now sexual orientation.
But Berea College said that they feared for the safety of Freedom Summer volunteers that summer of 1964. Privately, according to other documents, administrators caved into pressure from alumni not to house volunteers on campus. Berea College was now not available. Where would they go? There were many of the Berea College alumni that were against the volunteers coming to their college. Why?
The National Council of Churches (a communist organization) provided the answer. They were the organizers of the Freedom Summer and the Council asked Western College President, Henrick Young, if training could be held there. Western College was a college for females. Its president was a leader in the Presbyterian Church and an educational pioneer for creating an international students’ emphasis at Western College. Young agreed, and students traveled to Oxford for two weeks of training, June 14-27. Western College was located right across the street from Miami University. The two institutions merged in 1974.
Bob Moses, Mississippi field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, a communist organization), proposed in the autumn of 1963 the idea of a voter registration project in his state. The Mississippi Summer Project received approval from several civil rights groups the following February, and leaders decided on initiatives, including voter education and creation of Freedom Schools of Black children.
Who was going to lead the volunteers going to Oxford, Ohio to flood Mississippi with the mostly white northern Jewish college students drawing attention to the only 6.7% of African-Americans registered to vote, the lowest rate of any of the 50 states? It was a 1964 graduate of Queens College in New York City. His name was Mark Levy. Levy got his seeds of social activism from his liberal Jewish home. He attended, his freshman year in 1957 at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, which is 60 miles northeast of Oxford. Antioch College, even in 1964, was known as a very, very liberal college.
What is a “liberal Jewish home”? I googled it and found this:
“We [liberal Jews] affirm a love for the Land of Israel and a strong commitment to the State of Israel. We pray for her people, care about her security and wish to enact the vision of her founders of a Jewish state for all its inhabitants, at peace with its neighbours, democratic and prosperous. We promote a two-state solution, and oppose all boycotts. We also strive to emphasise [emphasize] the value of, and to nurture, the unique symbiosis between Israel and the Diaspora. We combine this vision of Israel with strong support for religious pluralism within the State, and partner with selected organisations [organizations] within Israel to advance the cause of Progressive Judaism inside Israel and the rights of all Israelis, including those of other faiths and none.
Liberal Judaism arose in the 19th century and throughout the 20th and will further evolve in the 21st century. We have stayed true to the aims of our founders, whilst blossoming into a national movement of dozens of synagogue communities [synagogue of Satan] and many thousands of members. We have been an active participant in all of the key intellectual, political and religious discussions of British Jewry over the last one hundred years, and our public profile has never been greater.
We are proud to be liberal and proud to be Jewish, and will always engage with others on shared values and interests, whether it be in tackling climate change and other risks to the environment, poverty, inequality and other forms of injustice.”
What the article doesn’t say is the Jews hate Jesus the Christ, plotted His murder, killed Him, and then bribed the Roman soldiers not to speak about His resurrection. They not only hate Him, but they hate all His followers. Who would want a person like this to be their leader?
At the time, I had many Jewish friends. My basketball coach was Jewish. Many of my teachers were Jewish. One teacher, Mrs. Fine, a Jew, made this statement when I was in her eighth-grade class: “The most important decision has been made by the Supreme Court. It will change the world. It was Brown v. the Board of Education.” It has taken me practically my whole life to know that she was correct.
Mark Levy’s dorm adviser, Steve Schwerner, welcomed freshmen to Antioch and told them a boycott had begun of a Yellow Springs barber who would not take African-American [Black] customers. Steve was the brother of Michael Schwerner, one of the three activists who left Oxford after the first week of training and were killed by Mississippians in Philadelphia, Mississippi. The other two, who were killed, were Andrew Goodman and James Chaney. Schwerner and Goodman were Jewish, and Chaney was a mulatto. Chaney was the only black who was killed, but he had joined the Congress of Racial Equality [another Jewish/Communistic organization] in 1963 and worked as a community organizer, just like Obama did years later.
A few of the other Jews who were at Oxford, Ohio including Levy’s future wife, Betty Bollinger: Jacob Blum, Paul Cowen, Bob Feinglass, Barney Frank, Adam Klein, Ruth Koenig, Rita Koplowitz, Robert Mandel, Sara Lieber, Michael Lipsky, Judy Michelowsky, Ira Landess, Mendy Samstein, Nancy Samstein, Peter Rabinowitz, Gretchen Schwartz, and Ellen Siegel.
The future chairman of the SNCC was a man by the name of Stokey Carmichael. Stokely was born in Trinidad, West Indies on June 29, 1941. His father was a native of the British West Indies and his mother was a Panamanian.
He rose to prominence in the SNCC, working with Martin Luther King Jr. and other Southern leaders to stage protests. Carmichael later lost faith in the tactic of nonviolence, promoting “Black Power” and allying himself with the militant Black Panther Party. Renaming himself Kwame Ture, he spent most of his later years in Guinea, where he died in 1998.
In 1954, at the age of 13, Stokely Carmichael became a naturalized American citizen and his family moved to a predominantly Italian and Jewish neighborhood in the Bronx called Morris Park. Soon Carmichael became the only black member of a street gang called the Morris Park Dukes. In 1956, Carmichael passed the admissions test to get into the prestigious Bronx High School of Science, where he was introduced to an entirely different social set—the children of New York City’s rich white [and mostly Jewish] liberal elite.
Carmichael was popular among his new classmates; he attended parties frequently and dated white girls [interracial dating]. However, even at that age, he was highly conscious of the racial differences that divided him from his classmates. Carmichael later recalled his high school friendships in harsh terms: “Now that I realize how phony they all were, how I hate myself for it. Being liberal was an intellectual game with these cats. They were still white, and I was black.”
African Americans and Jewish Americans have interacted throughout much of the history of the United States. This relationship has included widely publicized cooperation and conflict; and—since the 1970s—has been an area of significant academic research. Cooperation during the Civil Rights Movement was strategic and significant, culminating in the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The relationship has also been marred by conflict and controversy related to such topics as the Black Power movement, Zionism, affirmative action, and the role of a small number of American Jews, among a large number of other Americans and others, in the Atlantic slave trade.
During the colonial era, Jewish immigrants to British America were generally merchants from London. They settled in cities such as Providence, Rhode Island, Charleston, South Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia, generally becoming part of local societies. They were slaveholders when that was the local practice.
With major immigration of Ashkenazi Jews from Germany, followed by waves from Eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Jews and blacks had a greater variety of encounters, and these were markedly different in northern cities and southern areas, many of which were still dominated by agriculture. Jewish immigrants entered northern and midwestern cities in the same period when blacks were migrating in the hundreds of thousands from the rural South in the Great Migration.
In the early 1900s, Jewish newspapers drew parallels between the Black movement and Jews, pointing out that both Blacks and Jews lived in ghettos, and calling anti-Black riots in the South “pogroms”. Stressing the similarities rather than the differences between the Jewish and Black experience in America, Jewish leaders emphasized the idea that both groups would benefit the more America moved toward a society of merit, free of religious, ethnic and racial restrictions.
The American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, and the Anti-Defamation League were central to the campaign against racial prejudice. Jews made substantial financial contributions to many civil rights organizations, including the NAACP, the Urban League, the Congress of Racial Equality, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. About 50 percent of the civil rights attorneys in the South during the 1960s were Jews, as were over 50 percent of the Whites who went to Mississippi in 1964 to challenge Jim Crow Laws.
Marcus Garvey (1887–1940) was an early promoter of pan-Africanism and African redemption, and led the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League. His push to celebrate Africa as the original homeland of African Americans, led many Jews to compare Garvey to leaders of Zionism. An example of this was that Garvey wanted World War I peace negotiators to turn over former German colonies in southwest Africa to blacks. In that period stressing self-determination for former colonies, Zionists were promoting a “return of Jews” after 2,000 years to the historic homeland of Israel. At the same time, Garvey regularly criticized Jews in his columns in his newspaper Negro World, for allegedly trying to destroy the black population of America.
The widely publicized lynching of Leo Frank, a Jew, in Georgia in 1915 by a group of Southerners after he was getting favored treatment in jail, caused many Jews to “become acutely conscious of the similarities and differences between themselves and blacks.” Some had an increased sense of solidarity with blacks, as the trial exposed widespread anti-Jewishism in Georgia. The trial also pitted Jews against blacks because Frank’s defense attorneys suggested black janitor Jim Conley was guilty of the murder of the white girl. The Jews called him a “dirty, filthy, black, drunken, lying, nigger.”
In the early 20th century, Jewish daily and weekly publications frequently reported on violence against blacks, and often compared the anti-black violence in the South to the pogroms endured by Jews in the Russian Empire. They were inspired by principles of justice, and by a desire to change racist policies in United States. During the first few decades of the 20th century, the leaders of American Jewry expended time, influence and their economic resources for black endeavors, supporting civil rights, philanthropy, social service, and organizing.
Julius Rosenwald was a Jewish philanthropist who donated a large part of his fortune to supporting education of blacks in the South by providing matching funds for construction of schools in rural areas. Jews played a major role in the NAACP in its early decades. Jews involved in the NAACP included Joel Elias Spingarn (the first chairman), Arthur B. Spingarn, and founder Henry Moskowitz. More recently, Jack Greenberg was a leader in the organization.
Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer (1927).
Jewish producers in the United States entertainment industry produced many works on black subjects in the film industry, Broadway, and the music industry. Many portrayals of blacks were sympathetic, but historian Michael Rogin has discussed how some of the treatments could be considered exploitative.
Rogin also analyzes the instances when Jewish actors, such as Al Jolson, portrayed blacks in blackface. He suggests that these were deliberately racist portrayals but adds that they were also expressions of the culture at the time. Blacks could not appear in leading roles in either the theatre or in movies: “Jewish blackface neither signified a distinctive Jewish racism nor produced a distinctive black anti-Semitism”.
Jews often interpreted black culture in film, music, and plays. Historian Jeffrey Melnick argues that Jewish artists such as Irving Berlin and George Gershwin (composer of Porgy and Bess) created the myth that they were the proper interpreters of Black culture, “elbowing out ‘real’ Black Americans in the process.” Despite evidence from Black musicians and critics that Jews in the music business played an important role in paving the way for mainstream acceptance of Black culture, Melnick concludes that, “while both Jews and African-Americans contributed to the rhetoric of musical affinity, the fruits of this labor belonged exclusively to the former.”
At the Freedom Summer, singing was a large part of their training. They learned the songs of the movement: “This Little Light of Mine,” “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize,” “We Shall Overcome,” and Oh, Freedom” were among them. I remember locking arms with some of these people and singing. I particularly remember singing, “We Shall Overcome.”
On the March on Washington, on August 28, 1963, Gospel legend Mahalia Jackson sang “How I Got Over”, and Marian Anderson sang “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands”. This was not Marian Anderson’s first appearance at the Lincoln Memorial. In 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution refused permission for Anderson to sing to an integrated audience in Constitution Hall. With the aid of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and her husband Franklin D. Roosevelt (Jewish heritage), Anderson performed a critically acclaimed open-air concert on Easter Sunday, 1939, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
Joan Baez [Mexican father, Scottish mother who were converted to Quakerism] led the crowds in several verses of “We Shall Overcome” and “Oh Freedom”. Musician Bob Dylan [Robert Allen Zimmerman] performed “When the Ship Comes In”, for which he was joined by Baez. Dylan was a Jew who was converted to “Judeo-Christianity by the Vineyard Church, Inc. Peter [an Ashkenazi Jew], Paul and Mary sang, “If I Had a Hammer” and Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind”.
There was criticism that there were too many white singers. Actually, they were not white, they were mostly Jewish and hybrids.
Another singer, who was an activist in the Civil Rights movement, was Harold George Bellanfanti Jr., “Harry Belafonte.” His mother was born in Jamaica, the child of a Scottish white mother and a black father. His father also was born in Jamaica, the child of a black mother and a Dutch Jewish father of Sephardic origins. His mother was a mulatto and his father was a mulatto (with the Canaanites/Jewish blood). No wonder that he was an activist.
And then there was the actor Sidney Poitier. His parents, both mother and father were Bahamian farmers who owned a farm on Cat Island and traveled to Miami to sell tomatoes and other produce. Sidney was the youngest of eight sons, who was born in Miami while his parents were visiting. Poitier grew up in Nassau, Bahamas, then a British Crown colony. Because of his birth in the United States, he automatically received American citizenship. He was raised a Roman Catholic but, later became an agnostic with views closer to deism. Now you understand why he made the racial movies, like “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.”
Although African-Americans (Blacks) had been legally freed from slavery, elevated to the status of citizens and the men given full voting rights at the end of the American Civil War, many continued to face social, economic, and political repression over the years and into the 1960s. In the early 1960s, a system of legal separation, known as Jim Crow laws, were pervasive in the American South, ensuring that Black Americans remained separate from the Whites. They also experienced separation from businesses and governments, and in some places were prevented from voting through intimidation and violence. Twenty-one states still prohibited interracial marriage.
Fifty years ago, there were still 21 states in which it was illegal to marry someone of a different race than what you were. Now it is legal to marry anyone of any race. What in the world changed? We have forsaken our LORD God of Israel. We, according to the covenant, are to be a separate people.
We didn’t listen to what the LORD, our God, who brought our ancient people back from Egypt, declared to us. We didn’t listen to our former king. We didn’t keep the covenant that He made with our fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. If you are married interracially, what race is your offspring? Neither. It is hybrid. Israel is to be a separate people.
Now, do you understand the “unprecedented event” that happened this week. The hurricane that hit close to Mexico City, Florida and then went to the northeast through Georgia, a small part of Alabama, and then the Carolinas. Devastation. Tremendous destruction. There will be more coming. The War is coming to a climax.
Come quickly LORD Jesus.
To be continued.
Blessed be the LORD God of Israel.
