By Charles Gardner —
The silence of the Church in the wake of the exponential rise of global antisemitism has been “deafening”, a UK pastor has said.
Dr Thomas Fretwell was being interviewed on Revelation TV for Simon Barrett’s Middle East Report.
Pastor of Calvary Chapel in Hastings, Sussex – where William the Conqueror established his credentials as King of England in 1066 – Dr Fretwell is also CEO of the Ezra Foundation, promoting serious study of the Bible, particularly as it relates to Israel.
In his travels to the Holy Land since October 7th 2023, he found the entire nation traumatized. “They don’t understand the world’s response to the sadistic nature of Hamas atrocities; instead of showing sympathy, they are marching in support of the terrorists,” he said.
“They’ve been so confused and feel very much alone. All of which has exposed the veneer of civility we have in the Western world, and the silence, particularly of the church, is deafening.
“The church needs to find its voice,” he added. “If we are not speaking up, who else is there to do it as our whole history is intertwined with theirs. One of the reasons the church is so silent is that they don’t know what to say.”
Which is why he set up the Ezra Foundation – to help Christians understand an issue which has become so muddied by so-called replacement theology, teaching that God’s covenant with the Jews now belongs exclusively to the church.
“But our job as a church is to proclaim the whole counsel of God, of which Israel is part. We should be commending Christ to the Jews by our love for them and weeping with Israel at the present time.”
Moreover, the miraculous way God has kept Israel over the centuries is surely a great testimony to the Bible’s truth. And if God has finished with Israel, why do the Scriptures say he is returning to Jerusalem?
Even our gospel presentation often removes the entire history of Israel from the narrative – that is, we tend to jump from the fall at creation to the solution at the cross without, for example, reference to the Jewish Passover which is surely the perfect picture of what Christ has done for us. This is “a massive error”, he said.
Dr Fretwell has seen Israel as the theme interwoven throughout the Bible right from the start of his Christian experience. “It was self-evident,” he said. “It was only when I mixed with Christians more broadly that I realized it was controversial.”
The controversy rages on, but the battle is the Lord’s.
