c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Rudin is the National Interreligious Affairs Director of the American Jewish Committee.)

UNDATED _ The Rev. Jerry Falwell, the founder of the Moral Majority and Chancellor of Liberty University, recently told a pastors conference in Tennessee that with the approach of the millennium, the dread Antichrist will soon arrive on earth. This ultimate personification of evil, he said, will deceive the world before Jesus returns in triumph to provide the final redemption of humanity.

Had Falwell stopped with this prediction, few people would have noticed his remarks since he was simply expressing a basic evangelical Christian belief.

However, Falwell went further and identified the Antichrist as a Jewish male _ a description that set off a firestorm of public criticism that included myself and Roman Catholic Bishop Walter F. Sullivan of Richmond, Va., Falwell’s home state.

While Falwell confidently predicted that the dreaded archenemy of God will be Jewish, the specific New Testament references to the Antichrist _ which occur only in 1 and 2 John _ provide no religious or ethnic identity.

Indeed, many scholars believe the New Testament descriptions of the Antichrist are actually veiled references to Nero and Caligula, the hated anti-Christian Roman emperors of the period.

Over the past 2,000 years many contradictory beliefs grew up among Christians regarding the precise identity of the Antichrist. For some early Protestant reformers the Antichrist was the pope in corrupt Rome.

In more recent times, the term has been given to tyrants including Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Saddam Hussein. Even Mikhail Gorbachev has been called the Antichrist because of the distinctive red birthmark on his head _ a sure sign of”the evil one”for some Christians.

But Falwell’s remarks represent something more dangerous than pinning the Antichrist label on a dictator. Falwell has engaged in some millennial madness because his ideas play into a tragic old story: the latent anti-Semitism that is so much a part of Western culture. Because of Falwell’s influence, he has unwittingly provided his followers with radioactive anti-Jewish material that can have potentially devastating effects.

For centuries Jews have been depicted in both Christian and secular cultures as the personification of evil and the defilers of society.

In medieval times the church frequently portrayed the Jewish people in both literature and art as the wicked opponents of Christianity because of their refusal to accept Jesus as the Messiah. As a result of their spiritual”blindness,”Jews were eternally punished by God and destined to wander the world as outcasts and pariahs.

The Nazis malevolently employed these traditional ugly images in their brutal genocidal campaign to rid the world of both Jews and Judaism. It has always been an easy stretch from the wicked Antichrist to the equally wicked Jews.

Because of that history, Falwell was sharply criticized by both Jews and Christians. Sullivan called Falwell’s description of a Jewish Antichrist”reprehensible and outrageous.” In the face of mounting criticism, Falwell attempted to soften his remarks. While denying he intended to stir up anti-Semitic passions, Falwell held firm to his concept of a Jewish Antichrist:”I can certainly understand that someone who is not knowledgeable about evangelical theology might misinterpret what we believe about the Antichrist …. To me, this has been a caution that when we preach on eschatological matters, we must always fill in the blanks ….” One of the”blanks”Falwell filled in relates to his”end of days”view of the state of Israel. Even though he is a longtime supporter of the Jewish state, Falwell strongly believes that eventually Israel”will be converted [to Christianity] in totality, that they will oppose the Antichrist and enter the kingdom of Christ … the Jewish nation will be established for eternity _ and Christ will reign from Jerusalem.” This episode about the identity of the Antichrist graphically illustrates the ambivalence of the contemporary evangelical-Jewish encounter.

On one level, these two faith communities share a profound commitment to the security of modern Israel, and evangelicals and Jews worked closely together in the Soviet Jewry struggle.

However, flashpoints often appear that vividly display the ambiguous evangelical-Jewish relationship. In 1980, for example, Bailey Smith, then the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, declared that God”does not hear”the prayers of a Jew. In 1988 some evangelical leaders were upset with the film,”The Last Temptation of Christ,”and blamed”Hollywood Jews”for making an anti-Christian movie. Three years ago the SBC adopted a resolution urging increased efforts to convert Jews to Christianity, and some evangelicals openly support the so-called”Jews for Jesus”movement.

Clearly, it’s going to be a bumpy ride for evangelicals and Jews as we move closer to the millennium.

DEA END RUDIN