1,500 Rally to Denounce Anti-Semitism as Anti-God

About 1,500 evangelical Christians, from babies to bikers, gathered Saturday at Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa to hear speeches denouncing anti-Semitism as anti-God.

Christian sponsors--the independent evangelical church and Shalom International, a Southern California-based ministry promoting “love for all peoples”--said they harbored no “hidden agenda,” only a message of solidarity with Jews and Israel in an effort to counter increasing evidence of anti-Semitism.

“Forty years after the Holocaust, people are still testing the waters to see if they can harm Jews and see if they get a response. . . . We want them to know we don’t consider anti-Semitism a Jewish problem,” said Frank Eiklor, founding president of Shalom International, based in Orange. “We’re making it the church’s problem and the Christians’ responsibility.”

Shalom International has identified 75 hate organizations nationwide, he said. Last year in California, reports of anti-Semitic acts increased 121% from the previous year, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

“Anti-Semitism is a Christian problem,” agreed speaker Rabbi Haim Asa, who said he represented the Orange County Jewish community at the rally. Asa’s Temple Beth Tikvah in Fullerton was set ablaze by vandals in January, and with help from many of the rally’s supporters has been restored and fitted with a security system.

“In our country it is an ever-present minor issue,” he said. But noted that Jews have historically become targets in any country where economic conditions turn bad. Small farmers in the Midwest recently blamed their problems on “Jewish banks” despite national policies that have favored agribusiness and exacerbated their problems, he said.

Calvary Chapel pastor Chuck Smith said the rally was also sparked by Paul Conrad’s political cartoons in the Los Angeles Times that criticized Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in uprisings the past six months in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“We felt they bordered on being anti-Semitic,” Smith said. “We--the church--are sensitive to the issue because of the silence of the church during the Holocaust.” He said church history embarrassed him.

“We’re here to say attacks against Jews are attacks against the church.”

That theme was echoed by other speakers, including motorcycle pastor Phil Aguilar, who roared into the rally with two dozen leather-jacketed Christian bikers just as Israeli dancers were starting to perform.

“Anybody who’s talking about the Jewish people is talking about us, and we’re taking it personal,” said Aguilar, pastor of Set Free Christian Fellowship of Anaheim and leader of Christ’s Sons Motorcycle Club.

The former outlaw bikers stood in pairs like security guards, ringing the throng seated on a grassy playground of a church-connected school. “We prayerfully keep things in balance,” explained club member John Robinson.

The nondenominational Calvary Church takes a “pro-Bible view of the Israeli people,” said L.E. Romaine, assistant pastor of Calvary Chapel. He referred to Genesis 12:2, where God speaks to Abraham, the father of Israel: “And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee.”

Funds Donated

Smith said Calvary Chapel has donated $453,000 to the Israeli government to help establish settlements in “upper Galilee” (now known as the occupied West Bank) and built baptismal sites for Christian pilgrims there. Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa, called the “original hippie church” for converting thousands during the Jesus Movement in the mid-1970s, has spawned 305 other independent Calvary Chapels that claim an estimated 35,000 members.

Many of the other rally participants came from other Calvary Chapels. Some wore Jews for Jesus T-shirts.

Jews and Christians share common roots and a common destiny, Smith said. “They are looking for their Messiah. We are looking for the Messiah. The only difference is that we feel it will be the Second Coming.”

But sometimes the greatest degree of anti-Semitism comes from within the church, from those who mistakenly believe they are following Scripture, said speaker Billy Ingram, pastor of Maranatha Community Church in Los Angeles.

Some anti-Semitism comes from evangelicals themselves who believe in the so-called “Kingdom Now” theology in which Jews “have no future,” said Hal Lindsey, televangelist and author of “The Late Great Planet Earth.”

They are repeating the “false interpretation of prophesy” first made in the 3rd Century AD that used allegory to replace Israel with the notion of the church, Lindsey said. “This gave the Jewish people no legitimate reason to exist as a distinct people. The church said you have no right to live among us. A century or so later, secular kings said you have no right to live among us. It climaxed with the Nazis saying you have no right to live. . . .

“I say history can repeat itself” said Lindsey, whose latest book, “Never Again,” describes the dangers of anti-Semitism.

Like others, Lindsey said he supports the state of Israel as a “fulfillment of prophecy.”

The prophecy that began with Israel being restored as a nation in 1948 will culminate in the coming of the Messiah and result in “mass conversion” of the Israelis to “faith in Jesus as Messiah,” he said.

Harold Ezell, western regional director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, watched the rally with his wife, Lee. “It’s amazing to me that anti-Semitism can survive,” he said. “It’s an anti-God thing. If you don’t love God’s children, you don’t love God.”