What Do You Think

About the Ecumenical Schema?

By Elmer Josephson

[Editor: in the same issue of the Bible Light Magazine, Elmer wrote this response.]

Most Jews feel the declaration will be a great boon in at least lessening the persecution that heretofore has come from “the church”. The charge, “Christ-killers”, has been commonly hurled at Jews from so-called Christians. Why should Christians sing, praise and preach Christ’s atoning death and then persecute those charged with bringing it about? What senseless reasoning.

We can understand why some Jews are skeptical about the declaration being a scheme by which to bring all the Jews into the Roman Catholic faith.

Unfortunately, this schema comes too late to save the millions of Jews that have suffered and died at the hands of so-called Christians. The schema cannot call back the torture and death of Jews at the hands of ‘Christians’ during the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, not to mention the Nazi Holocaust of our day.

The Roman Church may now accept believers of Protestant denominations as Christians, yet when she uses the expression, “the Church”, she refers to the Roman Catholic Church. However, the New Testament teaches every true believer in Christ is a member of the invisible Church Universal. The Church is not a local organization but a living organism.

In this schema regarding the Jew, it is held that “the Church is the new people of God”. Many today hold the false concept that the Church has superseded and taken the place of the people of Israel, believing that God has finished with them and they are no longer His covenant people. This school of thought further holds that the Jews must finally be brought into the Church (Roman Catholic) before they can actually have eternal salvation and be fully blessed. That is also still allegedly held that the other Protestant “children churches” must come back into the “mother church” before God’s kingdom is fully realized – until as the schema relates, we “will address the Lord in a single voice and serve Him shoulder to shoulder.”

However, it is not for Jerusalem to come to Rome, but rather for Rome, London, Washington and all peoples to come to Jerusalem. The factual beginning of world redemption was in a promise made to Abraham. “IN THEE shall all nations of the earth be blessed” (Gen. 12:3).

The Apostle Paul in Romans 11 gives the illustration of God cutting off branches from the wild olive trees (Gentile nations) and grafting them into the true olive tree (Israel). He does not pluck up the true olive tree and plant a wild one in its place. The Church has been telling the Jews, Come over and be grafted unto us and join “our church”. How ridiculous! We must ask mercy and forgiveness from the Chief Son of Israel, Who “took not on him the nature of angels but he took on him the seed of Abraham” and said “Salvation is of the Jews.” -