Is Israel the Best Friend of Christians in the United States?

Anyone who pays attention to conservative politics in the [u]nited States at present for half a minute will hear some variant of the phrase, ‘Israel is the greatest ally of the U.S. in the Middle East (or, in the world, according to some variations of this statement).’ The basis of the statement is that Christians and Jews have some sort of mystical religious bond – that they worship the same, or nearly the same, God – and this should translate into close political ties between the States and Israel.

But these statements are never examined for their veracity. We aim to do so now. Should Christians in the U.S., and especially in Dixie, consider Jews/the nation of Israel their best friend in the world? Church history, when one actually reads it, says No.

Let us look first at the lives of the saints. There is abundant evidence of Jewish malice toward Christians. From the early Christian era is the life of St Matrona:

The Holy Martyr Matrona of Thessalonica suffered in the third or fourth century. She was a slave of the Jewish woman Pautila (or Pantilla), wife of one of the military commanders of Thessalonica. Pautila constantly mocked her slave for her faith in Christ, and tried to convert her to Judaism. Saint Matrona, who believed in Christ from her youth, still prayed to the Savior Christ, and secretly went to church unbeknownst to her vengeful mistress.

Pautila, learning that Saint Matrona had been to church, asked, “Why won’t you come to our synagogue, instead of attending the Christian church?” Saint Matrona boldly answered, “Because God is present in the Christian church, but He has departed from the Jewish synagogue.” Pautila went into a rage and mercilessly beat Saint Matrona, tied her up, and shut her in a dark closet. In the morning, Pautila discovered that Saint Matrona had been freed of her bonds by an unknown Power.

In a rage Pautila beat the martyr almost to death, then bound her even more tightly and locked her in the closet. The door was sealed so that no one could help the sufferer. The holy martyr remained there for four days without food or water, and when Pautila opened the door, she again found Saint Matrona free of her bonds, and standing at prayer.

Pautila flogged the holy martyr and left the skin hanging in strips from her body. The fierce woman locked her in the closet again, where Saint Matrona gave up her spirit to God.

Pautila had the holy martyr’s body thrown from the roof of her house. Christians took up the much-suffered body of the holy martyr and buried it. Later, Bishop Alexander of Thessalonica built a church dedicated to the holy martyr. Her holy relics, glorified by many miracles, were placed in this church.

The judgment of God soon overtook the evil Pautila. Standing on the roof at that very place where the body of Saint Matrona had been thrown, she stumbled and fell to the pavement. Her body was smashed, and so she received her just reward for her sin.

Several centuries later, we find similar things happening in the life of St Eustratius:

Martyr Eustratius of the Caves was born in the eleventh century at Kiev into a wealthy family. As an adult, he received monastic tonsure at the Kiev Caves monastery, after giving away all his possesions to the poor. Saint Eustratius humbly underwent obediences at the monastery, strictly fulfilling the rule of prayer and passing his days in fasting and vigilance.

In 1096 the Polovetsians captured Kiev and ravaged the monastery of the Caves, doing away with many of the monks. Saint Eustratius was taken into captivity, and was sold into slavery with thirty monastic laborers and twenty inhabitants of Kiev to a certain Jew living in Korsun.

The impious Jew tried to make the captives deny Christ, threatening to kill those who refused by starving them. Saint Eustratius encouraged and exhorted his brother Christians, “Brothers! Let none of us who are baptized and believe in Christ betray the vows made at Baptism. Christ has regenerated us through water and the Spirit. He has freed us from the curse of the Law by His Blood, and He has made us heirs of His Kingdom. If we live, we shall live for the Lord. If we die, we shall die in the Lord and inherit eternal life.”

Inspired by the saint’s words, the captives resolved to die of starvation, rather than renounce Christ, Who is the food and drink of Eternal Life. Exhausted by hunger and thirst, some captives perished after three days, some after four days, and some after seven days. Saint Eustratius remained alive for fourteen days, since he was accustomed to fasting from his youth. Suffering from hunger, he still did not touch food nor water. The impious Jew, seeing that he had lost the money he had paid for the captives, decided to take revenge on the holy monk.

The radiant Feast of the Resurrection of Christ drew near, and the Jewish slave owner was celebrating the Jewish Passover with his companions. He decided to crucify Saint Eustratius. The cruel tormentors mocked the saint, offering to let him share their Passover meal. The Martyr replied, “The Lord has now bestown a great grace upon me. He has permitted me to suffer on a cross for His Name just as He suffered.” The saint also predicted a horrible death for the Jew.

Hearing this, the enraged Jew grabbed a spear and stabbed Saint Eustratius on the cross. The martyr’s body was taken down from the cross and thrown into the sea. Christian believers long searched for the holy relics of the martyr, but were not able to find them. But through the Providence of God the incorrupt relics were found in a cave and worked many miracles. Later, they were transferred to the Near Caves of the Kiev Caves monastery.

The prediction of the holy Martyr Eustratius that his blood would be avenged was fulfilled soon after his death. The Byzantine Emperor issued a decree expelling all Jews from Korsun, depriving them of their property, and putting their elders to death for torturing Christians. The Jew who crucified Saint Eustratius was hanged on a tree, receiving just punishment for his wickedness.

There are also Christian children who suffered tortures and death from the Jews. Here are a few examples:

THIS martyr was another victim of the implacable rage of the Jews against our holy religion. He suffered in the twelfth year of his age. Having been not long bound an apprentice to a tanner in Norwich, a little before Easter, in 1137, the Jews of that city having enticed him into their houses, seized and gagged him: then they bound, mocked and crucified him, in derision of Christ: they also pierced his left side. On Easter-day they put the body into a sack, and carried it into Thorp-wood, now a heath, near the gates of the city, there to bury it; but being discovered, left it hanging on a tree.  . . .  Mr. Weever writes that, “the Jews in the principal cities of the kingdom, used sometimes to steal away, circumcise, crown with thorns, whip, torture, and crucify some neighbour’s male-child, in mockery and scorn of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. St. Richard of Pontoise, in France, was martyred by them in that manner. As also St. Hugh, (according to Matthew Paris and John Capgrave,) a child crucified at Lincoln, in 1255.

And one other:

IN the year 1472, when the Jews of Trent (famous for the last general council held there) met in their synagogue on Tuesday, in Holy Week, to deliberate on the preparations for the approaching festival of the Passover, which fell that year on the Thursday following, they came to a resolution of sacrificing to their inveterate hatred of the Christian name, some Christian infant on the Friday following, or Good Friday. A Jewish physician undertook to procure such an infant for the horrid purpose. And while the Christians were at the office of Tenebræ on Wednesday evening, he found a child called Simon, about two years old, whom by caresses and by showing him a piece of money, he decoyed from the door of a house, the master and mistress whereof were gone to church, and carried him off. On Thursday evening the principal Jews shut themselves up in a chamber adjoining to their synagogue, and at midnight began their cruel butchery of this innocent victim. Having stopped his mouth with an apron to prevent his crying out, they made several incisions in his body gathering his blood in a basin. Some, all this while, held his arms stretched out in the form of a cross: others held his legs. The child being half dead, they raised him on his feet, and while two of them held him by the arms, the rest pierced his body on all sides with their awls and bodkins. When they saw the child had expired, they sung round it: “In the same manner did we treat Jesus the God of the Christians: thus may our enemies be confounded for ever.” The magistrates and parents making strict search after the lost child, the Jews hid it first in a barn of hay, then in a cellar, and at last threw it into the river. But God confounded all their endeavours to prevent the discovery of the fact, which being fully proved upon them, with its several circumstances, they were put to death: the principal actors in the tragedy being broken upon the wheel and burnt. The synagogue was destroyed, and a chapel was erected on the spot where the child was martyred.

After reading these accounts, it should surprise no one to hear the Fathers of the Church warning Christians about friendship with Jews. St John Chrysostom (+407), one of the greatest of the Holy Fathers, who rose to become Patriarch of Constantinople, had this to say in one of his sermons:

Many, I know, respect the Jews and think that their present way of life is a venerable one. This is why I hasten to uproot and tear out this deadly opinion. I said that the synagogue is no better than a theater and I bring forward a prophet as my witness. Surely the Jews are not more deserving of belief than their prophets. “You had a harlot’s brow; you became shameless before all”. Where a harlot has set herself up, that place is a brothel. But the synagogue is not only a brothel and a theater; it also is a den of robbers and a lodging for wild beasts. Jeremiah said: “Your house has become for me the den of a hyena”. He does not simply say “of wild beast”, but “of a filthy wild beast”, and again: “I have abandoned my house, I have cast off my inheritance”. But when God forsakes a people, what hope of salvation is left? When God forsakes a place, that place becomes the dwelling of demons.

(2) But at any rate the Jews say that they, too, adore God. God forbid that I say that. No Jew adores God! Who say so? The Son of God say so. For he said: “If you were to know my Father, you would also know me. But you neither know me nor do you know my Father”. Could I produce a witness more trustworthy than the Son of God?

(3) If, then, the Jews fail to know the Father, if they crucified the Son, if they thrust off the help of the Spirit, who should not make bold to declare plainly that the synagogue is a dwelling of demons? God is not worshipped there. Heaven forbid! From now on it remains a place of idolatry. But still some people pay it honor as a holy place.  

. . . Our common Mother (the Church) has lost not a cloak but a brother. The devil stole him and now holds him in Judaism. You know who stole him; you know him who was stolen. Do you see me lighting, as it were, the lamp of my instruction and searching everywhere in my grief? And do you stand silent, refusing to denounce him? What excuse will you have? Will the Church not reckon you among her worst enemies? Will she not consider you a foe and destroyer?

A tremendous holy man of our own time, St Paisios of Mt Athos (+1994) also warns:

Difficult times are ahead. Great trials await us. Christians will suffer great persecutions. Meanwhile, it’s obvious that people don’t understand that we’re on the verge of the end times, that the seal of the Antichrist is becoming a reality. As if nothing’s happening. That’s why Holy Scripture says that even the chosen will be deceived.

The Zionists want to rule the earth. To achieve their ends they use black magic and satanism. They regard satan-worship as a means to gain the strength they need to carry out their plans. They want to rule the earth using satanic power. God is not something they take into account…

The trendline is pretty easy to discern. But a digression is necessary before closing. None of this is meant to gin up violence against Jews. There are of course some who do very good things in the world. Robert Amsterdam, for instance, is doing praiseworthy work defending the Orthodox Church from the persecutions of the Zelensky regime in the Ukraine. And many Jews have become notable Christians over the years: the Holy Apostles chief among them, but also saints like St Kyriakos, Patriarch of Jerusalem (martyred in 363 AD, who was a Jew named Jude before his baptism).

Nevertheless, it is a great mistake for Christians in Dixie or anywhere else to say of the Jews or the nation of Israel that they are our best friends in the world. That is an appellation which must be reserved for our brothers and sisters in Christ, who are in fact the True Israel: ‘Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham’ (St Paul’s Letter to the Galatians 3:7). Our foreign policy ought, therefore, to focus on strengthening ties with Christian countries around the world rather than obliterating and ostracizing peoples who refuse to dance to the Israeli/Zionist tune.

But because of the spirit of delusion that has befallen the world (II Thessalonians 2:11), it is difficult for people to accept words like these. Christians must prepare themselves to face hardships, as St Paisios cautioned above. But he also assures them that as they undergo trials, the joy of the Lord will be with them:

Let us not expect the spiritual spring if we don’t first pass through the spiritual winter during which the spiritual vermin die. We mustn’t expect the divine to blossom within us if the human hasn’t first died.

Those who suffer deeply for the salvation of the whole world and help in their own way (as strugglers) and humbly entrust themselves to the hands of God, feel the greatest joy in the world. Their life is a constant doxology, for they flutter about internally like angels, glorifying God day and night.

With those words in mind, Christians should go forth into the world to tell the Truth to any who have ears to hear.

-By Walt Garlington