2 Ways to Heaven? Daily Wire Commentator Andrew Klavan Appeals to Christians Who Worry About Ben Shapiro’s Salvation
Conservative commentator Andrew Klavan recently sparked controversy by responding to the Daily Wire’s firing of commentator and colleague Candace Owens for what was described as antisemitism.
In an episode of the Andrew Klavan Show, Klavan, himself a Jewish-American who professes to hold to a Christian faith that affirms homosexuality, attacked Christians who have a desire to see Jewish commentator Ben Shapiro bend the knee to Christ:
“Christ is the King and one day every knee will bow and recognize that, because he’s not just my King but King of the universe, but when you use that phrase to mean that God has abandoned his chosen people the Jews through whom he came into this world incarnate and that he’s broken his promises, his covenant with the Jews, you are quoting scripture like Satan does in the Bible. You are quoting scripture to your purpose, and that to me is specifically wicked.
You know, when you spit that phrase at Ben Shapiro, my friend Ben Shapiro, and you know I understand this, all of you who love Ben, and I love Ben and Jordan Peterson, y’all want to see them find Jesus because you know what joy and freedom that gives you and you certainly feel that it alters your relationship with God, but when I think about this to be honest with you, and I know that some people will disagree with this, but, life is not a game show where you guess the name of God and you get to go to heaven. Honk, you know, they ask, the name is Jesus. I look at Ben’s life and think that if Ben were to embrace Jesus Christ it would cause devastation to his family to the people that love him, to the people that listen to him, to his position in the world. I just have a feeling that God has put this guy where he wants him to do what he wants him, to do what he wants him to do.
And as you know, I feel that you know, the Jews were not abandoned by God. I feel the same way about Jordan. Jordan struggles with this stuff, and I feel like I have an inkling of why he has to struggle with it, but his struggle is inspiring to other people, and I think God wants his boys where he’s got em, and there’s no thought in my mind that he’s not gonna send these guys into battle and then turn his back on them when they come marching home. It’s not a game show. You know Christ is Love, Christ is truth, Christ is the logos of the moral order. You follow love, you follow truth, and you follow the moral order, and you will find yourself ultimately at Jesus Christ’s door. I don’t worry about Ben and Jordan Peterson one little bit, and so when you spit Christ the King at them to insist that they have been rejected by the one who sent them to do the work that they’re doing, Nah, no, no, no, no, no. That doesn’t just sit with me in the least.”
Klavan’s comments on the status before God of Jewish people who do not profess Christ show that he holds to the false belief that modern ethnic or religious Jews who do not profess Christ remain “God’s chosen people,” possessing a favored position that will universally lead them to “Jesus Christs’ door.”
Klavan’s beliefs on the salvation of Jewish people are similar to the dispensationalist dual covenant heresy held by John Hagee. Like Klavan, Hagee also has said that he doesn’t worry about evangelizing Jewish people because he believes that they will receive a second chance to accept Christ at the end of the day. This is a heretical position because it directly denies the Gospel to the Jews.
The historical orthodox and reformed theological position on the salvation of the Jews teaches that in the New Covenant, the people of God profess Christ and belong to the church, including both Jews and Gentiles. The view is often derided as “replacement theology” by dispensationalists who believe that the Jews remain the people of God based on their ethnicity and can enter into heaven because of their chosen status.
In Romans 9, the apostle Paul makes clear that not all descendants of Israel belong to Israel, and those who were previously not included in the people of God, gentiles, who have become children of God by faith, have been grafted into the people of God.
The people of God in the new covenant include both Jews and Gentiles, and there is not a second separate covenant by which Jewish people can enter heaven. Jesus is the only way, and there is only one people of God, which is his bride, the church.
But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring. Romans 9:6-8.
As indeed he says in Hosea, “Those who were not my people I will call ‘my people,’ and her who was not beloved I will call ‘beloved.’” “And in the very place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ there they will be called ‘sons of the living God.’” And Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: “Though the number of the sons of Israel[c] be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will be saved, for the Lord will carry out his sentence upon the earth fully and without delay.” Romans 9:25-28
What shall we say, then? That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it, that is, a righteousness that is by faith; but that Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching that law. Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works. They have stumbled over the stumbling stone, as it is written, “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.” Romans 9:30-33
Conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro, a Jewish colleague of Klavan, has been confronted with the Gospel on a number of occasions by pastors and theologians, including Voddie Baucham and John Macarthur. Shapiro maintains his Jewish beliefs and personally refuses to proselytize for the Jewish faith, believing that most people shouldn’t convert to Judaism but rather earn salvation through a works-based system of following the seven laws of Noah.
In regard to Christ, Shapiro believes that Jesus was merely one of many revolutionary criminals of his day who were put to death by the Romans, a belief that is consistent with Talmudic Judaism’s denial of the divinity of Jesus. The frequent strategic use of the term “Judeo-Christian” to pair Judaism with Christianity as allies in the political sphere by dispensationalists and political pundits alike merely reinforces the idea that Christianity and modern Talmudic Judaism can peacefully co-exist and mutually benefit one another without offense.
In the minds of Jewish adherents like Shapiro, works of the Jewish law are highly meritorious. Tolerance towards non-Jews, who he would classify as “good people” who he believes enter heaven as a result of their works-based adherence to the seven laws of Noah, is seen as a virtue.
Unfortunately, when Christians announce the Gospel in a way that declares the sinfulness of man, this falls especially hard on Jewish people, like Ben Shapiro, who take offense to the news that they are sinners in need of a savior (like all other people of the earth). Though it may be offensive to tell a Jew that Christ is King, the announcement of the Gospel by Christians who care about their Jewish neighbors is the kindest thing that one could ever proclaim.
While the focus of the ensuing controversy spurred by Klavan’s words has been cast on a minority of online Groypers and bona-fide antisemites like Nick Fuentes, who have appropriated the phrase “Christ is King” and used it as a rallying cry to promote racial malice and ethnic vainglory, it is important to differentiate between genuine antisemitism and the natural hostility felt toward the Gospel of Jesus Christ by Jews who take offense to the message that there is a Messiah and King to whom they will bow the knee.
While the message of the Gospel is an offense to the unregenerate adherents of modern Talmudic Judaism who trust in their works and bloodline for righteousness, the gospel’s call to repent and acknowledge Christ as King is far from antisemitic. Rather, it is preached to the Jewish people that they might repent and be grafted into the people of God.
And even they, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again. Romans 1:23
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