By way of introduction, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Jewish History and Culture starts out in Chapter 1: “For thousand of years, the world has had a love-hate relationship with the Jews. Okay, more hate than love. Jews have been harried and hunted, cursed and condemned, exiled and slaughtered. Yet, strangely enough, they’ve also been respected and envied, admired and emulated, and universally acknowledged as the source of many of the major religions of the world.”

What the world refuses to get—especially at this holiday time of the year—is that the Jewish religion is the ONLY religion God ever gave in human history. He never even gave a Christian religion.

Religion, by definition, is what men do to try to bind themselves back to God. The English word is a compound of the Latin words leggio (where the word ligament comes from), which means to bind, and re, which is the concept of doing it over again.

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If you look in the Bible, the word religion only appears five times—once in Acts, twice in Galatians and twice in James—and is used by Paul to refer to the “Jews’ religion” in a derogatory manner.

In the one positive reference, James 1:27 says, “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.”

Jordan reasons, “If you ask the average guy on the street what’s a good religion, visiting the orphans and the widows in their afflictions, and staying out of any contamination of worldly things, wouldn’t be exactly what he’d be thinking. People use that verse and say, ‘You need to be mindful of the poor,’ and that kind of thing, but most of the crowd out there trying to take care of the poor doesn’t follow the latter part of that passage.”

Ignored, too, is the plain fact that the Book of James is written specifically to the future “believing remnant” in Israel who will face tremendous temptation during the Tribulation.

Jordan asks, “When you read that verse does your mind run to any other verse in particular? Remember when Jesus said to some people, ‘Because you visited me (in prison and fed me and clothed me), come unto the kingdom. Because you didn’t visit me, you can’t come into the kingdom’? Matthew 25 is where it is.

“This is a tribulation passage talking about what the remnant’s going to be up against. Why would they be fatherless? Because somebody’s killed their daddy. Their daddy’s standing up for Christ and they’ve beheaded him and put the (women and children) in prison.

“Matthew 23 talks about how they devour widows’ houses with long prayers and that kind of stuff. The unspotted from the world—that’s exactly what Revelation talks about. So all that fits in with Israel’s program in the tribulation.

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Religion in Scripture, when it’s a good thing, has to do with the message God gave the nation Israel, and it’s during Christ’s earthly ministry that their God-given religion is relegated to ‘the Jews’ religion’ because of the overwhelming apostasy.

As Christ Himself summarizes the situation in Matthew 23, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!
[38] Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.
[39] For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.”

Jordan says, “Notice He says ‘your house is left unto you desolate’? Just a little bit before that He’d gone in and ran the money-changers out of the temple and called it ‘my house.’

“What He’s doing, in essence, is saying, ‘I’m God; I’m the one whose glory resides back in the Holy of Holies over the mercy seat. The Shekinah glory, that’s my glory—that’s me and I’m leaving! And when I leave, just write Ichabod over the door; the glory’s gone!’ And that’s what happened with Israel’s religion.”

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As Matthew 21:18-20 reports, ‘Now in the morning as (Christ) returned into the city, he hungered.
[19] And when he saw a fig tree in the way, he came to it, and found nothing thereon, but leaves only, and said unto it, Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever. And presently the fig tree withered away.
[20] And when the disciples saw it, they marvelled, saying, How soon is the fig tree withered away!’

The fig tree in the Bible is a type of religion. In Genesis 3, when Adam and Eve sinned, they made aprons out of fig leaves. As Jordan reasons, “Operation Fig Leaf was man’s attempt to cover himself up before God. Operation Fig Leaf is really Operation Religious Cover-up.”

Jordan continues, “There are four trees that represent the nation Israel, three of them good—the vine, olive and fig. God gave Israel special duty as a nation (the vine). He gave them special duty as the olive tree—the scriptural aspect of the nation, meaning access to God—and then He gave them special position as the fig tree; a religion in the earth.

“Over and over, you’ll see where He talks about, for example, in Isaiah 5, God planted a vineyard. That’s the nation. You’ll see the parable in the vineyard and in it He had a fig tree. He’s got a nation with a religion in it.

“So when Christ comes to the fig tree (in Matthew 21) there’s a lot going on here than just Jesus getting mad at a tree out there. He doesn’t just get mad at trees—‘Well, I don’t like fig trees!’

“When it says He ‘saw a fig tree in the way’ and ‘found nothing theron,’ the issue there is He came seeking fruit from the fig tree and found none so He cursed it. His (earthly) ministry was about coming and seeking fruit from Israel’s religious activity and since He found none, He curses it.

“People make the mistake some time and identify the fig as representative of Israel the nation. You know, a couple of chapters over in 24, Jesus talks about, ‘Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh:
[33] So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.
[34] Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.’

“People say, ‘Well, the budding of the fig tree was the establishment of the nation Israel in 1948,’ and you’ve got people who’ve done all kind of goofball things with that. One guy made $3 million in 1998 with that. But error makes money; we’re going to see that in Galatians.

“The error there in trying to make the budding of the fig tree the establishment of Israel in 1948 is the fig tree doesn’t represent the nation. If it did, what does that verse 19 (in Matthew 21) say? If the fig tree represented Israel as a nation, you could never have the nation again. Because whatever it represents, it’s over with; never to bear any fruit!

“God did away with Israel’s religious life, did He not? Hebrews 7:11 says, ‘If therefore perfection were by the Levitical priesthood, (for under it the people received the law,) what further need was there that another priest should rise after the order of Melchisedec, and not be called after the order of Aaron?’

“In other words, God has ‘disannulled’; He’s set aside the old Mosaic Law covenant and replaced it with a new Messianic covenant. So, the old religion He gave Israel is done away with. It became ‘the Jews’ religion’ because they couldn’t do it.

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“Notice Paul in Galatians 1 is talking about that ‘Jews’ religion.’ It’s interesting he calls it that because by this point he understands that what that thing was was a bunch of dead works that really wasn’t accomplishing anything although he thought it was.

“Paul writes in Galatians 1:13, ‘For ye have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews' religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it. And profited in the Jews' religion above many my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers.’

“There’s two good reasons there for you to understand why Paul didn’t get his message from the saints in Jerusalem. No. 1, he persecuted the Pentecostal Jerusalem church beyond measure and wasted it.

“What was the attitude they had toward him? They didn’t trust him; they feared him. Verse 22 says he ‘was unknown by face unto the churches of Judaea which were in Christ:
[23] But they had heard only, That he which persecuted us in times past now preacheth the faith which once he destroyed.’

“Their attitude was, ‘Hey, that guy’s our enemy! He’s persecuting us!’ and they literally were afraid of Paul.

“In Acts 9, after Paul got saved and tried to talk to them, they didn’t want to talk to him. Acts 9:26 says, ‘And when Saul was come to Jerusalem, he assayed to join himself to the disciples: but they were all afraid of him, and believed not that he was a disciple.’

“And this (occurred) at least three if not four years after Paul’s been saved. It says ‘when Saul was come’ and that’s going to be down in Gal. 1:18—‘after three years I went up to Jerusalem.’

“They were all afraid of him and, believe me, when Paul was going around and ‘breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord,’ if you look back at Acts 9:1, notice what he’s wanting to do. He’s wanting to destroy these guys!

“In Acts 22:3, Paul says, ‘I am verily a man which am a Jew, born in Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, yet brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, and taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers, and was zealous toward God, as ye all are this day.’

“Gamaliel taught binding, punishing letters. When Luke recorded it, he just kind of gave you a general summary, but when Paul talks about what he was doing, he says, ‘I persecuted them unto the death!’

“As he testifies in Acts 26, ‘Which thing I also did in Jerusalem: and many of the saints did I shut up in prison, having received authority from the chief priests; and when they were put to death, I gave my voice against them.
[11] And I punished them oft in every synagogue, and compelled them to blaspheme; and being exceedingly mad against them, I persecuted them even unto strange cities.’

“He was involved in killing some of these people; martyring them. It says ‘he wasted it; he persecuted the church beyond measure.’ He did it to men and women—nobody’s safe! He went to Damascus; he had letters. He had warrants issued by the government of Israel to go and extradite these people from Damascus and bring them back to Jerusalem.

“Now, when you carry government warrants and go execute them, you are an official of the government, are you not? Can you understand why the Apostle Paul would call himself in I Timothy ‘the chief of sinners’?!

“When Paul said that, he didn’t mean, ‘I’m the worst profligate. I’m the nastiest, raunchiest, filthiest-mouth-inhabited guy you ever met.’ In Philippians 3, he said, ‘In touching the law I was blameless.’ What he meant was, ‘I was the leader.’

“And when you think about him leading the world’s rebellion against Christ, and you realize he literally was the official representative of his nation in persecuting (Christians) . . . When Christ stopped him on road to Damascus, the hymn writer says, ‘He stopped my wild career.’

“The words Christ said were, ‘Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?’ He hated Christ and he hated those who named the name of Christ. Now, there’s somebody in the Bible who’s also going to do that in the prophetic program. He’s known as ‘the man of sin; the son of perdition,’ the one who becomes the personification of the Lie Program.

“And as soon as you’re sitting in that chair tonight, the Apostle Paul understood that if God had not interrupted that prophetic program back there in time past, chances were very good that he could have been a prime candidate to have been that man himself! Now that’s a scary thing for a fellow! Paul understood just how deceived he was.”